He is the text from my previous post in a different thread which I think addresses your concerns.
"It's true that it'd take a lot of energy to do anything in space using rockets, but that's not really the idea is it? The idea is that this kind of R&D will produce technologies capable of doing space travel efficiently. Moreover, they might lead to technologies that make every day life more efficient.
You're right that we don't need infinite growth (population wise) as a species. In fact, as nations become industrialized, their birth rate usually drops (perhaps due to chemicals? work related stress? not wanting kids?). Whatever the reason, in maybe a dozen more decades overpopulation probably won't be an issue and the world's population will level out. Japan and (a lot of) Western Europe are already to the point where they no longer replacing their population (except through immigration).
The real point is advancement. Perhaps as we develop space travel it will lead to a greater understanding of nature and the universe in general. More over, hopefully it will inspire people to increase their own understanding of the universe. Most important of all, perhaps it will allow people to put all their insignificant problems in perspective, and allow people to work together toward a better human society rather than merely squabbling about petty differences. Sadly these are all just the pipe dreams of a foolish young idealist, but I can dream, can't I?"
The statement "what if it can't be done?" is absurd all around. Nothing "can't be done" it's just that some things are harder to do than others. What if ther's no water on the moon? Maybe we'd have to harvest oxygen and hydrogen from other minerals on the moon then. Or are you implying that there is no oxygen or hydrogen on the moon at all?
And what is this about "There is no chance to make an Antarctic colony", there are Antarctic colonies! Sure they're not self-sustaining, but they certinally could be given enough R&D. I mean, if the earth is a self sustaining biosphere, and it's neerly a closed system, than it is definatly possible (not that I did not say easy) to make self sustaining systems in a man-made closed biosphere as well.
When people say it's impossible to colonize other planets, what they really mean is that it's hard. Well, somethings we have do things that are hard (well, maybe you don't). No one ever learned anything by saying "well, we could try somehting new, but it will be difficult, and what we try might not work, so I guess we'd better jsut stick to doing things the old way. If everyine thoght that way we'd still be swingning form trees.
It's true that it'd take a lot of energy to do anything in space using rockets, but that's not really the idea is it? The idea is that this kind of R&D will produce technologies capable of doing space travel efficiently. Moreover, they might lead to technologies that make every day life more efficient.
You're right that we don't need infinite growth (population wise) as a species. In fact, as nations become industrialized, their birth rate usually drops (perhaps due to chemicals? work related stress? not wanting kids?). Whatever the reason, in maybe a dozen more decades overpopulation probably won't be an issue and the world's population will level out. Japan and (a lot of) Western Europe are already to the point where they no longer replacing their population (except through immigration).
The real point is advancement. Perhaps as we develop space travel it will lead to a greater understanding of nature and the universe in general. More over, hopefully it will inspire people to increase their own understanding of the universe. Most important of all, perhaps it will allow people to put all their insignificant problems in perspective, and allow people to work together toward a better human society rather than merely squabbling about petty differences.
Sadly these are all just the pipe dreams of a foolish young idealist, but I can dream, can't I?
I totally agree with you about the breast feeding thing, but isn't it a little extreme to accuse large corporations of trying to control the food supply?
I mean, these companies won't be able to take out patents on existing crops after all. They're really just trying to secure a return on their investment. Genetic modification is by no means an inexpensive process, and companies that invest in it don't want to see their investments go up in smoke.
I think if anything the problem here is that these companies don't maintain enough control over their product. You can be assured that they'd much rather have technological ways of protecting their intellectual property over legal ones. I'm sure that sooner or later they'll develop, as you say, a proprietary chemical or something that you need to grow the crop. If that happens that'd be great, since it'd remove a lot of the problems all around.
Yeah, but you'd never produce prions in this manner, or at all for that matter. Prions do a very poor job of catalyzing reactions and are completely useless for anything other than giving people vCJD. And I can't think of any other proteins that work when denatured. The shape of a protein is what gives its unique catalytic capability, denature it and that shape is gone, along with its functionality.
As for prions, not a lot is understood about them. It seems like they work by denaturing proteins, thus shutting down cell functions and generating more prions. They only seem to be a problem for nerve tissue, perhaps because of its low rate of division, but no one really knows. Also, while they do seem to be a large problem for herbivores (mad cow, chronic wasting disease, and a few other variants) they don't seem to have much of an effect on the carnivores that eat those herbivores. This seems to be true of people as well. Despite the fact that many millions of people (in Britain and elsewhere) have been exposed to BSE contaminated beef, there have only been a few thousand reported cases of vCJD.
Some researchers believe that natural herds of animals rely on carnivores to remove the animals with chronic wasting. While human hunters usually select the largest, healthiest animals, carnivores typically target the smallest, or weakest animals. This is a theory that will be soon put to the test as the elk herds in Yellowstone become infected with the chronic wasting epidemic that is sweeping northward through the Rocky Mountains. Researchers have noted chronic wasting starting to appear in the elk herds in Teton National Park, which borders Yellowstone on the south.
Also, CJD (the original kind of CJD which hits people in the later years of their life) seems to be tied to prions, but doesn't seem to be a problem for young people. CJD hasn't been tied to exposure to BSE, it seems that some people just get it later in life.
It is legal to carry around a gun unless it's hidden. Don't try going going into a store with a rifle strapped to you back though, they'll kick you out for makikng the other customers(not to mention the emploees) nervous.
Could someone please explain why I was modded redundant? I posted it because there was a distinct lack of posts along these lines. I guess that's slashdot for ya...
Since when was cable in any way a necessary service? Can't you see how absurd it is to complain that someone you pay to entertain you charges too much money for it and doesn't do a good enough job. Why don't you entertain yourself for god sake? This is nothing the government should be concerned with. Regulating the entertainment industry more would just be more wasted tax dollars with absolutely, positively no benefit to society what so ever.
Complaining that someone making you buy a luxury you don't want is absurd, because you don't need to buy it, period. Cable companies bundle like this because they know they can squeeze a bit of extra money out of people who are willing to pay for cable. You know what, there is nothing wring with that. If you're spending this much money on something you don't need, it's obvious you have the extra money. This doesn't hurt anybody.
I can't believe people are saying things like this honestly and frankly. How can you say that you are forced into buying things you don't want? Do you need leather seats? Pop music? MTV? CNN? If you have the money to throw away on this crap, you shouldn't complain that some corporation managed to squeeze a little extra out of you, obviously you don't need it anyway. It's your own fault for being so greedy that you think you need all that crap in the first place.
Does any one else here get the idea that we as a country are WAY too pampered. I mean, seriously, how can you complain about being "forced" into cable television. No one needs cable, and there are a lot of alternatives regardless. This isn't a bunch of "Evil Corporations" making you pay through the nose for life-giving services. In fact, the services they offer aren't particularly spectacular or useful at all. We have no right to complain about an entertainment company failing to entertain us cheaply and effectively. Why can't people just go do something that's actually fun for a change? Or is it just that everyone's forgotten how?
This is bunk. You don't need cable, it isn't an essential service. It's probably better for people if they can't afford cable in the first place, that way they don't waste all their time sitting around watching mid-numbing worthless TV shows.
Government-approved monopoly my eye! What about wireless, satellite, or perhaps maybe even broadcast TV, it's free. I can't believe people think the government should be involved in regulating something like this. It'd just be a waste of our tax-payer dollars and a waste of our government's time.
I used to have some respect for McCain, but I'm starting to have some doubts.
"Plants that grow quickly are weak and relatively worthless for construction"
I whish this were true, but have you noticed the ammout of "lumber" in modern houses that is made of glued and pressed wood chips. It's even common to use pressed materials in beams now (instead of just pannels).
I used to live in a hose that was built in 1949, and the beams in it were STRONG. The 2 by 4's in it actually had those dimensions. Also, it had 1/2 in thich teak floors. That's hard wood.
I wish they'd stop building houses of of wood. I'm sure that with a few billion dollars in research, we could develope inexpensive ways of building custom houses from concrete and steel. I think I'd much rather live in a strong, perminant building than a flimsy, cheep building like the ones being built right now. My apartment feels like I could knock it over if I pushed against it hard enough. Oh well, maybe in a few more years they'll be able to build the kind of houses I want.
". . . manned flights cost more than three times as much."
The Shuttle costs three times as much. This it largely because it makes no sense to use a reusable craft for this purpose. If they were launched in the same vehicle, the reason it'd cost more to send a manned mission is the weight of the people and their living space (which isn't much compared to the structure and the payload of the shuttle).
So, it doesn't make a lot of sense to use a manned mission to launch a satellite(duh!), but it does make sense to send a manned mission to do things like build a space station, or conduct research. Of course, the ISS is still pretty useless regardless, so all all the money we've spent developing and constructing it has had little or no direct benefit(spin-off's from research aside).
On the other hand, a manned moon base may prove useful from a research standpoint, as well as in-terms of the future benefit. This is because it'd be a lot cheaper and easier to develop ways of refining lunar minerals and manufacturing things in low gravity/hard vacuum if scientists were actually on the moon doing the research as opposed to trying to do the research by remote-control. Further, it would give us a good chance to try to develop self sustaining colonies (I.E. hydroponics, life support, construction).
Of course, all these benefits exist in respect to the colonization of mars, the only difference is that it takes a lot more time to get to and from mars, which makes it more challenging and less likely to succeed. Yes I know that it "takes more energy to get to the moon" but that doesn't negate that fact that it takes only a few days to get to moon, while it'd take at least a month to get to mars. A lot can go wrong in the course of a month, doesn't it make more sense to start with a the closer target first?
As for the future benefits, you have to think long term. Gaining experience with colonies might some day help us to colonize the rest of the solar system (note that I said might someday, so don't tell me I'm stupid for saying that). People that say that it'll never be economical or practical to colonize space simply lack imagination. Of course we won't be confined to earth forever. In the future it may be possible to build space elevators, enormous mag-lev catapults, fusion drives, reaction-less drives maybe even faster than light drive systems. Sure, a lot of these things will never be invented, but certainly something will as long a we continue trying. I would think that people would have realized by now that the future is uncertain, and that nothing is flat-out impossible.
Yeah, supply side economics is really bogus. I mean, if the government doesn't spend the money, no one else will, right? This kind of ranting really pisses me off. People that obviously have no grasp of macro-scale economics claiming that they know better than people who actually study it.
Kensian economics has been on the decline for decades. The truth is massive government hurts the economy. This is because the excessive government spending perverts the free market and prevents investment in new ideas. It does this by taking money away from would-be investors and dedicating it to bone headed, woefully inadequate social programs.
Complain about me being a capitalist all you want, the truth is that each tax dollar the government spends for you is one dollar that isn't doing it's job in the free market.
The government should only spend money when it really has to.
"They're still wrong, Opteron came out months before the G5"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the MIPS R1000 and the POWER 4 come out years before the Opteron. And I was under the impression that 64 bit Cray supercomputers came out decades before that. I think what apple was trying to say is that theirs is the first 64 bit personal computer. It all depends where you draw the line between workstation and personal computer I guess.
The Opteron is now and has always been considered a sever/workstation processor. This is because it if large, expensive, and power hungry. You rarely see PC's with that chip. The power consumption/size/cost of the G5, on the other hand, puts is squarely in the realm of the PC.
It's a foregone conclusion that the big bang did happen. It's also a foregone conclusion that the sun revolves around the earth. I mean, look at it, it's so small, and it moves trhough the sky. Clearly this remote sensing ccapibility is all we need to confirm this.
Clearly origional wavelengths ARE known, I mean, the rest of the universe couldn't be comprised of materials that are not well described by our observations here on earth. It is impossible that what we think is hydrogen is anything else but hydrogen. No direct measurements are necessary to confirm this.
And clearly, since we have never observed the laws governing specrtal emmissions here on earth, or even in the limited parts of the rest of our solar system we have explored, changing, they must not change.
Anyway, I do not disagree with you about the usefullness of the hubble, I just think you should understand that measurements it takes are more about curiousity than about practical applications. The main use of the hubble is just proving/disproving theories like the big bang. The only reason we've learned most of what we know through remote obserfvation is because it's so much easier to do. Direct observation and measurement is necessary to refine our understanding.
As for the behavior of plasma in space, you'd really need controlled expierements to learn anything usefull. All the hubble can provide us with is hints about how it behaves.
I don't think you can really expect people to colonize space without some kind of infrastructure. I mean, it'd be far too expensive and dangerous for a group of people to get together and try to colonize another planet with no infrastructure. Think of it as moving west before the oregon trail, sure it can be done, but not many people can do it.
On the other hand, I wonder if it'd be possible to start up a company on the premise of mining materials from the moon. If construction of space elevators proves practical, we could refine melats on the moon manufacture things there, and transport them back to earth. We could launch cargoe from above the L1 point on the lunar elevator so that they'd rondevu with the earth elevator, and use no energy (it'd actually produce energy). This would eb cool because it would have practically no environmentla impact here on earth.
It's a foregone conclusion that the big bang did happen. It's also a foregone conclusion that the sun revolves around the earth. I mean, look at it, it's so small, and it moves trhough the sky. Clearly this remote sensing ccapibility is all we need to confirm this.
Clearly origional wavelengths ARE known, I mean, the rest of the universe couldn't be comprised of materials that are not well described by our observations here on earth. It is impossible that what we think is hydrogen is anything else but hydrogen. No direct measurements are necessary to confirm this.
And clearly, since we have never observed the laws governing specrtal emmissions here on earth, or even in the limited parts of the rest of our solar system we have explored, changing, they must not change.
Anyway, I do not disagree with you about the usefullness of the hubble, I just think you should understand that measurements it takes are more about curiousity than about practical applications. The main use of the hubble is just proving/disproving theories like the big bang. The only reason we've learned most of what we know through remote obserfvation is because it's so much easier to do. Direct observation and measurement is necessary to refine our understanding.
As for the behavior of plasma in space, you'd really need controlled expierements to learn anything usefull. All the hubble can provide us with is hints about how it behaves.
I don't think you can really expect people to colonize space without it. I mean, it'd be far too expensive and dangerous for a group of people to get together and try to colonize another planet with no infrastructure. On the other hand, I wonder if it'd be possible to start up a company on the premise of mining materials from the moon. If construction of space elevators proves practical, we could refine melats on the moon manufacture things there, and transport them back to earth. We could launch cargoe from above the L1 point on the lunar elevator so that they'd rondevu with the earth elevator, and use no energy (it'd actually produce energy). This would eb cool because it would have practically no environmentla impact here on earth.
No offense, but YOU have no idea what you're talking about. Telescopes can't measure red shift, unless you know what origional light wavelengths were in the first palace. This means that astronomers have to make a guess about the red-shift in order to guage the actual light wavelength distrubtion. This means that mesurements done on red or blue shifted spectra are inaccurate at best.
Moreover, saying that "the UDF got us 90% of the way back to the dark era where light cuts off" further proves your ignorance on this subject. The THEORY to which you refer has not been proven, and we don't know that there even was a "dark era" as you say. Even if this theory was true, the estimate that this is 90% of the way back to the dark era is approximate at best. The results of the HUDF are intresting, but they are jsut that, there is no real vaue to annything but the meaningless ramblings of some academics.
You missed the point of my comment entirely. The point is that we are not going to develop space based infra structure by sitting around and looking at pretty pictures. We would learn a lot more by doing actual measurements on real samples than we ever could by looking at the spectra from some far-distant stars.
I'd be a lot easier to try to develope a sustainable colony on the moon than on mars. This is simply because it's so much colser that rescue is possible if it is needed. It is also becacause we don't need to worry about cosmic radiation on the short trips to the moon. Just bury the moonbase far enough under ground and it won't be a problem. Once we get tha hang of colonizing other planets, the task will be a lot simpler. These direct to mars people need to realize that we need to take baby steps, start out slow.
Of course, that deosn't meant that the bush plan will even put a colony on the moon, but the idea is sound.
Yeah sure, that wasn't a troll at all. No, really, I honestly think you meant to convey facts in a reasonable, even-handed way. You certainly were not just spewing random anti-bush propaganda in the hopes that someone would reply to your pathetic troll. You would never do that;)
I don't know where to even begin. You honestly think that cutting the deficit by raising taxes has a long term benefit? This idea as laughable at best. The last president who did this during a poor economy was Hoover. Incase you don't know, and I'd doubt you do, this is widely attributed with making the great depression last as long as it did. So what you're really saying is vote Kerry, and he'll raise taxes for the rich, and the economy will collapse. That makes a lot of sense. I'd suspect that even Kerry doesn't intend to do this. I'd bet he's banking, literally, on the fact that a tax increase won't make it through congress. That's right, it's just a ploy to get people to vote for him.
As for keeping jobs here, I can't believe that Kerry is even trying to run on this and on the idea that he'd improve our relationship with our allies at the same time. Did you ever notice that even if bush only gives tax-cuts to companies in order to keep jobs here, the EU screams illegal subsidy. Better for the foreign policy my ass!
No, I'm afraid the truth is that what you have here is a bunch of impossible campaign promises that Kerry makes only because he knows he can say that he tried later and people won't hold it against him. If you vote for Kerry, you might as well be voting for Bush, since they're both so similar. We'll get the same next four years either way. But go ahead and tell yourself that this two party system of ours works just fine. I'm voting for Nader, and that won't make any difference either.
I don't think it's fair to call exploration of our own solar system pie in the sky, and then in the comment say that the Hubbles images are really useful. What real use do the Hubbles images have? They tell us something fundamental about the universe, it's true. But the fact is that interpretation of those images is a guess at best, we can't go to the pace ant time the Hubble deep field comes from, so we can only do limited measurements with them.
On the other hand, maned space missions to other planets would go a long way to helping us build infra structure in space. Image if we could mine all or most of our raw materials on the moon and and transport them back to earth using lunar and terrestrial space elevators. Think of what that would mean for the earth's environment. Think about how much easier it would make the exploration the solar system become. Think about how easy it would become to make an enormous array of large space telescopes to do hundreds of times the work the Hubble can currently do.
What's more practical, a small space telescope that can only give us hints about the wider universe, or an entire space infrastructure which would actually allow scientists to travel to other planets and do research in person?
Of course, that is only the American version of illegal price fixing. I know that a couple years ago in Japan, Apple was sued because they won't allow you to be an Apple Authorized Reseller unless you sell at or above the MSRP. I don't recall how that lawsuit ended, but I'm pretty sure Apple still does things the same way over there.
Also the above post which implied that apple has been doing this to make it's resellers stop selling Apple products is not true. Apple does this to maintain their high quality product image. They want retailers to sell computers by making them look good and promoting their benefits over PC's, rather than selling them at a lower price. Because of the way Apple does business, it doesn't make sense to try to sell computers at a low price point. Due to their higher development costs, Apple computers can NEVER beat PC's at the price game. This means that apple must beat them at the quality and user experience game.
This is why apple has been starting up its own retail chain and trying to get retailers to do the whole "store within a store" thing. They need to play up the quality and usability of their products in order to get sales. Simply slapping a lower price on them will not make them sell.
I just looked it up and it IS pretty nifty. I have an ancient handspring (now owned by palm) visor, and I hardly use it because it is so limited and unwieldy. This PDA actually looks somewhat useful. Granted the keyboard is a bit small, but it's definitely better than typing on my TI 89, and there's always the stylus for text entry.
My only concern it the swiveling screen. It is a really neat idea, but I'm afraid that it's going to make the PLA less durable. Still, if I could afford the $500 I'd get one. Of course, I'd get an iPod too.
The water coming out of a chip fab is usually relatively safe. Most of the chemicals you mention are relatively easy to separate from water. This means that if your plant is in the US or another country with reasonable environmental protection laws, there is much less contamination. I'm not saying that you'd want to drink it, but after a while bacteria and UV will break the chemicals down, and the overall environmental impact will be small (although not zero).
In countries like Korea or Taiwan this is less likely to be the case, but companies will still usually try to reclaim and reuse chemicals (since they do cost a lot of money).
Slashdot Mirror
He is the text from my previous post in a different thread which I think addresses your concerns. "It's true that it'd take a lot of energy to do anything in space using rockets, but that's not really the idea is it? The idea is that this kind of R&D will produce technologies capable of doing space travel efficiently. Moreover, they might lead to technologies that make every day life more efficient. You're right that we don't need infinite growth (population wise) as a species. In fact, as nations become industrialized, their birth rate usually drops (perhaps due to chemicals? work related stress? not wanting kids?). Whatever the reason, in maybe a dozen more decades overpopulation probably won't be an issue and the world's population will level out. Japan and (a lot of) Western Europe are already to the point where they no longer replacing their population (except through immigration). The real point is advancement. Perhaps as we develop space travel it will lead to a greater understanding of nature and the universe in general. More over, hopefully it will inspire people to increase their own understanding of the universe. Most important of all, perhaps it will allow people to put all their insignificant problems in perspective, and allow people to work together toward a better human society rather than merely squabbling about petty differences. Sadly these are all just the pipe dreams of a foolish young idealist, but I can dream, can't I?"
The statement "what if it can't be done?" is absurd all around. Nothing "can't be done" it's just that some things are harder to do than others. What if ther's no water on the moon? Maybe we'd have to harvest oxygen and hydrogen from other minerals on the moon then. Or are you implying that there is no oxygen or hydrogen on the moon at all?
And what is this about "There is no chance to make an Antarctic colony", there are Antarctic colonies! Sure they're not self-sustaining, but they certinally could be given enough R&D. I mean, if the earth is a self sustaining biosphere, and it's neerly a closed system, than it is definatly possible (not that I did not say easy) to make self sustaining systems in a man-made closed biosphere as well.
When people say it's impossible to colonize other planets, what they really mean is that it's hard. Well, somethings we have do things that are hard (well, maybe you don't). No one ever learned anything by saying "well, we could try somehting new, but it will be difficult, and what we try might not work, so I guess we'd better jsut stick to doing things the old way. If everyine thoght that way we'd still be swingning form trees.
It's true that it'd take a lot of energy to do anything in space using rockets, but that's not really the idea is it? The idea is that this kind of R&D will produce technologies capable of doing space travel efficiently. Moreover, they might lead to technologies that make every day life more efficient. You're right that we don't need infinite growth (population wise) as a species. In fact, as nations become industrialized, their birth rate usually drops (perhaps due to chemicals? work related stress? not wanting kids?). Whatever the reason, in maybe a dozen more decades overpopulation probably won't be an issue and the world's population will level out. Japan and (a lot of) Western Europe are already to the point where they no longer replacing their population (except through immigration). The real point is advancement. Perhaps as we develop space travel it will lead to a greater understanding of nature and the universe in general. More over, hopefully it will inspire people to increase their own understanding of the universe. Most important of all, perhaps it will allow people to put all their insignificant problems in perspective, and allow people to work together toward a better human society rather than merely squabbling about petty differences. Sadly these are all just the pipe dreams of a foolish young idealist, but I can dream, can't I?
I totally agree with you about the breast feeding thing, but isn't it a little extreme to accuse large corporations of trying to control the food supply? I mean, these companies won't be able to take out patents on existing crops after all. They're really just trying to secure a return on their investment. Genetic modification is by no means an inexpensive process, and companies that invest in it don't want to see their investments go up in smoke. I think if anything the problem here is that these companies don't maintain enough control over their product. You can be assured that they'd much rather have technological ways of protecting their intellectual property over legal ones. I'm sure that sooner or later they'll develop, as you say, a proprietary chemical or something that you need to grow the crop. If that happens that'd be great, since it'd remove a lot of the problems all around.
Yeah, but you'd never produce prions in this manner, or at all for that matter. Prions do a very poor job of catalyzing reactions and are completely useless for anything other than giving people vCJD. And I can't think of any other proteins that work when denatured. The shape of a protein is what gives its unique catalytic capability, denature it and that shape is gone, along with its functionality.
As for prions, not a lot is understood about them. It seems like they work by denaturing proteins, thus shutting down cell functions and generating more prions. They only seem to be a problem for nerve tissue, perhaps because of its low rate of division, but no one really knows. Also, while they do seem to be a large problem for herbivores (mad cow, chronic wasting disease, and a few other variants) they don't seem to have much of an effect on the carnivores that eat those herbivores. This seems to be true of people as well. Despite the fact that many millions of people (in Britain and elsewhere) have been exposed to BSE contaminated beef, there have only been a few thousand reported cases of vCJD.
Some researchers believe that natural herds of animals rely on carnivores to remove the animals with chronic wasting. While human hunters usually select the largest, healthiest animals, carnivores typically target the smallest, or weakest animals. This is a theory that will be soon put to the test as the elk herds in Yellowstone become infected with the chronic wasting epidemic that is sweeping northward through the Rocky Mountains. Researchers have noted chronic wasting starting to appear in the elk herds in Teton National Park, which borders Yellowstone on the south.
Also, CJD (the original kind of CJD which hits people in the later years of their life) seems to be tied to prions, but doesn't seem to be a problem for young people. CJD hasn't been tied to exposure to BSE, it seems that some people just get it later in life.
It is legal to carry around a gun unless it's hidden. Don't try going going into a store with a rifle strapped to you back though, they'll kick you out for makikng the other customers(not to mention the emploees) nervous.
Could someone please explain why I was modded redundant? I posted it because there was a distinct lack of posts along these lines. I guess that's slashdot for ya...
Since when was cable in any way a necessary service? Can't you see how absurd it is to complain that someone you pay to entertain you charges too much money for it and doesn't do a good enough job. Why don't you entertain yourself for god sake? This is nothing the government should be concerned with. Regulating the entertainment industry more would just be more wasted tax dollars with absolutely, positively no benefit to society what so ever. Complaining that someone making you buy a luxury you don't want is absurd, because you don't need to buy it, period. Cable companies bundle like this because they know they can squeeze a bit of extra money out of people who are willing to pay for cable. You know what, there is nothing wring with that. If you're spending this much money on something you don't need, it's obvious you have the extra money. This doesn't hurt anybody.
I can't believe people are saying things like this honestly and frankly. How can you say that you are forced into buying things you don't want? Do you need leather seats? Pop music? MTV? CNN? If you have the money to throw away on this crap, you shouldn't complain that some corporation managed to squeeze a little extra out of you, obviously you don't need it anyway. It's your own fault for being so greedy that you think you need all that crap in the first place.
Does any one else here get the idea that we as a country are WAY too pampered. I mean, seriously, how can you complain about being "forced" into cable television. No one needs cable, and there are a lot of alternatives regardless. This isn't a bunch of "Evil Corporations" making you pay through the nose for life-giving services. In fact, the services they offer aren't particularly spectacular or useful at all. We have no right to complain about an entertainment company failing to entertain us cheaply and effectively. Why can't people just go do something that's actually fun for a change? Or is it just that everyone's forgotten how?
This is bunk. You don't need cable, it isn't an essential service. It's probably better for people if they can't afford cable in the first place, that way they don't waste all their time sitting around watching mid-numbing worthless TV shows.
Government-approved monopoly my eye! What about wireless, satellite, or perhaps maybe even broadcast TV, it's free. I can't believe people think the government should be involved in regulating something like this. It'd just be a waste of our tax-payer dollars and a waste of our government's time.
I used to have some respect for McCain, but I'm starting to have some doubts.
"Plants that grow quickly are weak and relatively worthless for construction"
I whish this were true, but have you noticed the ammout of "lumber" in modern houses that is made of glued and pressed wood chips. It's even common to use pressed materials in beams now (instead of just pannels).
I used to live in a hose that was built in 1949, and the beams in it were STRONG. The 2 by 4's in it actually had those dimensions. Also, it had 1/2 in thich teak floors. That's hard wood.
I wish they'd stop building houses of of wood. I'm sure that with a few billion dollars in research, we could develope inexpensive ways of building custom houses from concrete and steel. I think I'd much rather live in a strong, perminant building than a flimsy, cheep building like the ones being built right now. My apartment feels like I could knock it over if I pushed against it hard enough. Oh well, maybe in a few more years they'll be able to build the kind of houses I want.
". . . manned flights cost more than three times as much."
The Shuttle costs three times as much. This it largely because it makes no sense to use a reusable craft for this purpose. If they were launched in the same vehicle, the reason it'd cost more to send a manned mission is the weight of the people and their living space (which isn't much compared to the structure and the payload of the shuttle).
So, it doesn't make a lot of sense to use a manned mission to launch a satellite(duh!), but it does make sense to send a manned mission to do things like build a space station, or conduct research. Of course, the ISS is still pretty useless regardless, so all all the money we've spent developing and constructing it has had little or no direct benefit(spin-off's from research aside).
On the other hand, a manned moon base may prove useful from a research standpoint, as well as in-terms of the future benefit. This is because it'd be a lot cheaper and easier to develop ways of refining lunar minerals and manufacturing things in low gravity/hard vacuum if scientists were actually on the moon doing the research as opposed to trying to do the research by remote-control. Further, it would give us a good chance to try to develop self sustaining colonies (I.E. hydroponics, life support, construction).
Of course, all these benefits exist in respect to the colonization of mars, the only difference is that it takes a lot more time to get to and from mars, which makes it more challenging and less likely to succeed. Yes I know that it "takes more energy to get to the moon" but that doesn't negate that fact that it takes only a few days to get to moon, while it'd take at least a month to get to mars. A lot can go wrong in the course of a month, doesn't it make more sense to start with a the closer target first?
As for the future benefits, you have to think long term. Gaining experience with colonies might some day help us to colonize the rest of the solar system (note that I said might someday, so don't tell me I'm stupid for saying that). People that say that it'll never be economical or practical to colonize space simply lack imagination. Of course we won't be confined to earth forever. In the future it may be possible to build space elevators, enormous mag-lev catapults, fusion drives, reaction-less drives maybe even faster than light drive systems. Sure, a lot of these things will never be invented, but certainly something will as long a we continue trying. I would think that people would have realized by now that the future is uncertain, and that nothing is flat-out impossible.
Yeah, supply side economics is really bogus. I mean, if the government doesn't spend the money, no one else will, right? This kind of ranting really pisses me off. People that obviously have no grasp of macro-scale economics claiming that they know better than people who actually study it.
Kensian economics has been on the decline for decades. The truth is massive government hurts the economy. This is because the excessive government spending perverts the free market and prevents investment in new ideas. It does this by taking money away from would-be investors and dedicating it to bone headed, woefully inadequate social programs.
Complain about me being a capitalist all you want, the truth is that each tax dollar the government spends for you is one dollar that isn't doing it's job in the free market.
The government should only spend money when it really has to.
"They're still wrong, Opteron came out months before the G5"
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the MIPS R1000 and the POWER 4 come out years before the Opteron. And I was under the impression that 64 bit Cray supercomputers came out decades before that. I think what apple was trying to say is that theirs is the first 64 bit personal computer. It all depends where you draw the line between workstation and personal computer I guess.
The Opteron is now and has always been considered a sever/workstation processor. This is because it if large, expensive, and power hungry. You rarely see PC's with that chip. The power consumption/size/cost of the G5, on the other hand, puts is squarely in the realm of the PC.
It's a foregone conclusion that the big bang did happen. It's also a foregone conclusion that the sun revolves around the earth. I mean, look at it, it's so small, and it moves trhough the sky. Clearly this remote sensing ccapibility is all we need to confirm this.
Clearly origional wavelengths ARE known, I mean, the rest of the universe couldn't be comprised of materials that are not well described by our observations here on earth. It is impossible that what we think is hydrogen is anything else but hydrogen. No direct measurements are necessary to confirm this.
And clearly, since we have never observed the laws governing specrtal emmissions here on earth, or even in the limited parts of the rest of our solar system we have explored, changing, they must not change.
Anyway, I do not disagree with you about the usefullness of the hubble, I just think you should understand that measurements it takes are more about curiousity than about practical applications. The main use of the hubble is just proving/disproving theories like the big bang. The only reason we've learned most of what we know through remote obserfvation is because it's so much easier to do. Direct observation and measurement is necessary to refine our understanding.
As for the behavior of plasma in space, you'd really need controlled expierements to learn anything usefull. All the hubble can provide us with is hints about how it behaves.
I don't think you can really expect people to colonize space without some kind of infrastructure. I mean, it'd be far too expensive and dangerous for a group of people to get together and try to colonize another planet with no infrastructure. Think of it as moving west before the oregon trail, sure it can be done, but not many people can do it.
On the other hand, I wonder if it'd be possible to start up a company on the premise of mining materials from the moon. If construction of space elevators proves practical, we could refine melats on the moon manufacture things there, and transport them back to earth. We could launch cargoe from above the L1 point on the lunar elevator so that they'd rondevu with the earth elevator, and use no energy (it'd actually produce energy). This would eb cool because it would have practically no environmentla impact here on earth.
It's a foregone conclusion that the big bang did happen. It's also a foregone conclusion that the sun revolves around the earth. I mean, look at it, it's so small, and it moves trhough the sky. Clearly this remote sensing ccapibility is all we need to confirm this. Clearly origional wavelengths ARE known, I mean, the rest of the universe couldn't be comprised of materials that are not well described by our observations here on earth. It is impossible that what we think is hydrogen is anything else but hydrogen. No direct measurements are necessary to confirm this. And clearly, since we have never observed the laws governing specrtal emmissions here on earth, or even in the limited parts of the rest of our solar system we have explored, changing, they must not change. Anyway, I do not disagree with you about the usefullness of the hubble, I just think you should understand that measurements it takes are more about curiousity than about practical applications. The main use of the hubble is just proving/disproving theories like the big bang. The only reason we've learned most of what we know through remote obserfvation is because it's so much easier to do. Direct observation and measurement is necessary to refine our understanding. As for the behavior of plasma in space, you'd really need controlled expierements to learn anything usefull. All the hubble can provide us with is hints about how it behaves. I don't think you can really expect people to colonize space without it. I mean, it'd be far too expensive and dangerous for a group of people to get together and try to colonize another planet with no infrastructure. On the other hand, I wonder if it'd be possible to start up a company on the premise of mining materials from the moon. If construction of space elevators proves practical, we could refine melats on the moon manufacture things there, and transport them back to earth. We could launch cargoe from above the L1 point on the lunar elevator so that they'd rondevu with the earth elevator, and use no energy (it'd actually produce energy). This would eb cool because it would have practically no environmentla impact here on earth.
No offense, but YOU have no idea what you're talking about. Telescopes can't measure red shift, unless you know what origional light wavelengths were in the first palace. This means that astronomers have to make a guess about the red-shift in order to guage the actual light wavelength distrubtion. This means that mesurements done on red or blue shifted spectra are inaccurate at best. Moreover, saying that "the UDF got us 90% of the way back to the dark era where light cuts off" further proves your ignorance on this subject. The THEORY to which you refer has not been proven, and we don't know that there even was a "dark era" as you say. Even if this theory was true, the estimate that this is 90% of the way back to the dark era is approximate at best. The results of the HUDF are intresting, but they are jsut that, there is no real vaue to annything but the meaningless ramblings of some academics. You missed the point of my comment entirely. The point is that we are not going to develop space based infra structure by sitting around and looking at pretty pictures. We would learn a lot more by doing actual measurements on real samples than we ever could by looking at the spectra from some far-distant stars.
I'd be a lot easier to try to develope a sustainable colony on the moon than on mars. This is simply because it's so much colser that rescue is possible if it is needed. It is also becacause we don't need to worry about cosmic radiation on the short trips to the moon. Just bury the moonbase far enough under ground and it won't be a problem. Once we get tha hang of colonizing other planets, the task will be a lot simpler. These direct to mars people need to realize that we need to take baby steps, start out slow.
Of course, that deosn't meant that the bush plan will even put a colony on the moon, but the idea is sound.
Yeah sure, that wasn't a troll at all. No, really, I honestly think you meant to convey facts in a reasonable, even-handed way. You certainly were not just spewing random anti-bush propaganda in the hopes that someone would reply to your pathetic troll. You would never do that;)
I don't know where to even begin. You honestly think that cutting the deficit by raising taxes has a long term benefit? This idea as laughable at best. The last president who did this during a poor economy was Hoover. Incase you don't know, and I'd doubt you do, this is widely attributed with making the great depression last as long as it did. So what you're really saying is vote Kerry, and he'll raise taxes for the rich, and the economy will collapse. That makes a lot of sense. I'd suspect that even Kerry doesn't intend to do this. I'd bet he's banking, literally, on the fact that a tax increase won't make it through congress. That's right, it's just a ploy to get people to vote for him.
As for keeping jobs here, I can't believe that Kerry is even trying to run on this and on the idea that he'd improve our relationship with our allies at the same time. Did you ever notice that even if bush only gives tax-cuts to companies in order to keep jobs here, the EU screams illegal subsidy. Better for the foreign policy my ass!
No, I'm afraid the truth is that what you have here is a bunch of impossible campaign promises that Kerry makes only because he knows he can say that he tried later and people won't hold it against him. If you vote for Kerry, you might as well be voting for Bush, since they're both so similar. We'll get the same next four years either way. But go ahead and tell yourself that this two party system of ours works just fine. I'm voting for Nader, and that won't make any difference either.
I don't think it's fair to call exploration of our own solar system pie in the sky, and then in the comment say that the Hubbles images are really useful. What real use do the Hubbles images have? They tell us something fundamental about the universe, it's true. But the fact is that interpretation of those images is a guess at best, we can't go to the pace ant time the Hubble deep field comes from, so we can only do limited measurements with them.
On the other hand, maned space missions to other planets would go a long way to helping us build infra structure in space. Image if we could mine all or most of our raw materials on the moon and and transport them back to earth using lunar and terrestrial space elevators. Think of what that would mean for the earth's environment. Think about how much easier it would make the exploration the solar system become. Think about how easy it would become to make an enormous array of large space telescopes to do hundreds of times the work the Hubble can currently do.
What's more practical, a small space telescope that can only give us hints about the wider universe, or an entire space infrastructure which would actually allow scientists to travel to other planets and do research in person?
Of course, that is only the American version of illegal price fixing. I know that a couple years ago in Japan, Apple was sued because they won't allow you to be an Apple Authorized Reseller unless you sell at or above the MSRP. I don't recall how that lawsuit ended, but I'm pretty sure Apple still does things the same way over there.
Also the above post which implied that apple has been doing this to make it's resellers stop selling Apple products is not true. Apple does this to maintain their high quality product image. They want retailers to sell computers by making them look good and promoting their benefits over PC's, rather than selling them at a lower price. Because of the way Apple does business, it doesn't make sense to try to sell computers at a low price point. Due to their higher development costs, Apple computers can NEVER beat PC's at the price game. This means that apple must beat them at the quality and user experience game.
This is why apple has been starting up its own retail chain and trying to get retailers to do the whole "store within a store" thing. They need to play up the quality and usability of their products in order to get sales. Simply slapping a lower price on them will not make them sell.
I just looked it up and it IS pretty nifty. I have an ancient handspring (now owned by palm) visor, and I hardly use it because it is so limited and unwieldy. This PDA actually looks somewhat useful. Granted the keyboard is a bit small, but it's definitely better than typing on my TI 89, and there's always the stylus for text entry. My only concern it the swiveling screen. It is a really neat idea, but I'm afraid that it's going to make the PLA less durable. Still, if I could afford the $500 I'd get one. Of course, I'd get an iPod too.
The water coming out of a chip fab is usually relatively safe. Most of the chemicals you mention are relatively easy to separate from water. This means that if your plant is in the US or another country with reasonable environmental protection laws, there is much less contamination. I'm not saying that you'd want to drink it, but after a while bacteria and UV will break the chemicals down, and the overall environmental impact will be small (although not zero). In countries like Korea or Taiwan this is less likely to be the case, but companies will still usually try to reclaim and reuse chemicals (since they do cost a lot of money).