You know that would still be a big attraction today. But in 40 or 50 years, yeah, it would eventually become a giant eyesore.
TOS debuted in 1966, that's 46 years ago. It's as popular today as it ever was. At this point, it's safe to say it's a hallmark of science fiction. A life-sized replica would remain culturally relevant for much longer than 50 years. It's hard to imagine that people would ever look at it and say "what's that supposed to be?" and even if they did, it would be like looking at the Great Pyramid. Even though we don't really know what it originally meant, it's simply too large to be ignored.
People often bring up the idea that a megastructure may become an eyesore over time. I can't think of an example where that's been true. As far as buildings go, if it's huge and strange looking, people will be impressed buy it. It doesn't matter how old it is.
Most people don't know how to compile code. Simply make the source available (under GPL or whatever so that you can prevent other companies from selling your software) and still charge for the working version. Or, if you're developing mobile software, charge for the version on the App store.
If you're writing software for developers (like libraries) you're not going to be able to do it unless you can keep your costs low enough that you can get buy on the charity of other developers. I don't mean any offense, but developers aren't the most charitable lot either.
You're modded funny, but I don't think it's a joke because a lot of people seem to think like that. The flaw, of course, is that 90% of federal spending goes to the military or social programs, which really don't do much for those issues. Moreover, any funding for regulations could be (and often are) paid for with fees instead of taxes.
It's always bothered me that forensic science doesn't involve science. It would be easy enough to reproduce the events using the same phone and recording equipment and voice samples with a few different people to establish a baseline for what we "should" expect. But instead they simply can't be bothered with scientific controls. We are just supposed to take their word for it that it should be a "90%" match. I'm this context we don't even know what 90% means.
Don't forget the 9th amendment. There seems to be a lot of people on both sides who've forgotten that just because some freedoms are explicitly declared doesn't mean all others are forfeit.
Nevertheless, Africa is a whole continent. It has plenty of good farmland. Look at the US, most of it is "some of the poorest soil on earth." But the reality is you can still do a lot with it, using conventional farming techniques.
Can't it though? The latest version of the design includes retro rockets built into the sides for launch escape and propulsive landing. As long as you can birth it to the station properly, it seems like all the rest of the hardware you need is going to be there for sure.
I suspect that was a rhetorical question. But for anyone who may be wondering, this is part of a complicated shell game our government plays with money in order to distract our attention away from what it is really doing.
The idea is that Microsoft makes a product that is really only fit for dogs (when compared with the alternatives). Developers know better, but the businesses Microsoft sells to don't know the difference and will take whatever Microsoft sells (like dogs). This was more true in the past, but it's not so true today.
Preventing a counterstrike is still a defensive use. But I can't believe a missile defense system could embolden a strike, because it would have to be 100% effective before anyone would consider it, and there's just no way to guarantee that. It's not even really feasible against a country with a lot of nukes like China or Russia.
All military technology puts the other side at a disadvantage and provoke a countermeasure and is as such offensive.
A missile defense system could only be useful in deflecting an attack. That means it is strictly defensive. Any other interpretation is meaningless doublespeak. You can't provoke someone by building a fence around your house, and that's all this is. And, as you've pointed out, it would never actually give the US the ability to attack with impunity. You can't have it both ways. It can't counter an all out offensive, so it's not a threat to Russia or China. That's the end of the story.
While it's fun to hypothesize about how you'd thwart a defense system with a $20 instrument (as if anything could be deployed on a rocket for $20!) there isn't much sense to it. The balloon thing, for example, would only work against a single interceptor, while the plan is to deploy several. Given the suggestion comes from a report that lists the need to deploy multiple missiles as a weakness, this shows a complete lack of ability or desire to look at the situation rationally on behalf of the person writing the report.
A lot of people get their panties in a bunch over missile defense, and the main reason seems to be that it upsets the status quo. The same people were probably worrying that the end of the cold war might mean WWIII. In reality, missile defense is just another defense R&D project, like any other. There's no good reason to believe it could "never succeed," nor has anyone put forth an argument why it's bad that is any more insightful than "it might upset somebody." Every defense project might upset somebody. It's not an argument against it in itself.
First of all, a Missile Defense System never worked and will never work.
How do you know? Huge strides are made everyyear in the fields of electronics, radar, and optics. These advances are directly applicable to a missile defense. Things which weren't possible in the '80s (I can't believe people even still bring star wars up in these discussions) and 2000s may be possible today. Saying it will never be possible is quite a bold statement, especially since we have a good idea how we'd attempt it today.
Seconds, it is offensive, just like any military technology.
Sure, just like armor, or radar, or satellite imaging, or barricades, or moats. Yes, clearly all military technology is offensive in nature. This is a perfectly fine definition as long as you realize you've eliminated the word "defensive" from your vocabulary.
Such Missile Defense Systems will only . . . increase the chance of a WWIII.
No one knows what the future holds, or if there will be a WWIII or if there's anything we can do to prevent it. All we can do is make educated guesses. Looking back on cold war history, it is scary to think of how many times missiles could have accidentally been launched. Today, if we look at attacks like the WTC bombing, it seems clear that there are large groups of people who think it's reasonable to kill many innocent civilians in a suicide attack. While nuclear weapons usually are well defended, the possibility exists that one might be stolen or hijacked. A missile defense system could mitigate the potential fallout (figuratively speaking) from such an event.
On the issue of cost: it should be noted that there are cities that could be utterly destroyed by a nuclear missile, with values well in excess of a trillion dollars. That's not to mention the human cost of such an attack. Even if there is only a 1 in 100 chance of that happening over the next 10 years, you could easily justify spending $100 billion on such a project.
Bear in mind that they aren't turtles either. And for all we know they aren't Teenagers or Ninjas. So it might be Normal Adult Fighting Aliens or something like that.
The cold war taught us that the one-upmanship of weapons proliferation as a defence is a bad idea.
First of all, that's not what it taught us. It taught us that it is a winning strategy (the US won the cold war). Second of all, that's not what a missile defense is, because it is not an offensive weapon in itself.
Missile defense systems are actually offensive weapons
No, they aren't. As many people have already pointed out, they aren't effective against an all out assault, only against a few stray missiles. So anyone claiming they would enable or embolden a first strike is really being disingenuous or talking out of ignorance.
Of course, all of this is extremely hypothetical: the ROI on a first strike is so far in the negative that you'd need a telescope to see the bottom of the pit. Nobody benefits from a first strike. Not even Iran.
Everything is hypothetical until it happens. It's called planning ahead. Besides, it is possible to accidentally launch a nuke. Or it's possible for an extremist fringe group to steal one. So while a first strike may not be reasonable, it's not wholly unreasonable to believe a nuke may be headed our way some day. To a lot of people, it seems inevitable.
What this is really about is what every other military boondoggle is about: money for the military-industrial complex.
If the spending is a foregone conclusion, would you rather the money be spent on UAVs to patrol avery corner of the US for drugs and terrorists, or this. As I said, this will not contribute to the erosion of civil liberties.
I doubt the US would rush out and start building a bunch on new missiles if Russia or China were to build a missile defense. We might build a missile defense for ourselves though. The cold war is over. That kind of insane thinking doesn't dominate politics these days.
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TOS debuted in 1966, that's 46 years ago. It's as popular today as it ever was. At this point, it's safe to say it's a hallmark of science fiction. A life-sized replica would remain culturally relevant for much longer than 50 years. It's hard to imagine that people would ever look at it and say "what's that supposed to be?" and even if they did, it would be like looking at the Great Pyramid. Even though we don't really know what it originally meant, it's simply too large to be ignored.
People often bring up the idea that a megastructure may become an eyesore over time. I can't think of an example where that's been true. As far as buildings go, if it's huge and strange looking, people will be impressed buy it. It doesn't matter how old it is.
Most people don't know how to compile code. Simply make the source available (under GPL or whatever so that you can prevent other companies from selling your software) and still charge for the working version. Or, if you're developing mobile software, charge for the version on the App store.
If you're writing software for developers (like libraries) you're not going to be able to do it unless you can keep your costs low enough that you can get buy on the charity of other developers. I don't mean any offense, but developers aren't the most charitable lot either.
They were talking about the original Enterprise, which would only have been 305 meters long.
The it couldn't be a hotel or a casino, as that would take business away from the downtown area (which it was intended to help).
Small government republicans are a myth.
I'm sure you get on their list simply by posting in a subversive thread like this.
You're modded funny, but I don't think it's a joke because a lot of people seem to think like that. The flaw, of course, is that 90% of federal spending goes to the military or social programs, which really don't do much for those issues. Moreover, any funding for regulations could be (and often are) paid for with fees instead of taxes.
The people you're talking about hate federal spending as much as taxes, so it's a double whammy.
It's always bothered me that forensic science doesn't involve science. It would be easy enough to reproduce the events using the same phone and recording equipment and voice samples with a few different people to establish a baseline for what we "should" expect. But instead they simply can't be bothered with scientific controls. We are just supposed to take their word for it that it should be a "90%" match. I'm this context we don't even know what 90% means.
Don't forget the 9th amendment. There seems to be a lot of people on both sides who've forgotten that just because some freedoms are explicitly declared doesn't mean all others are forfeit.
Nevertheless, Africa is a whole continent. It has plenty of good farmland. Look at the US, most of it is "some of the poorest soil on earth." But the reality is you can still do a lot with it, using conventional farming techniques.
Can't it though? The latest version of the design includes retro rockets built into the sides for launch escape and propulsive landing. As long as you can birth it to the station properly, it seems like all the rest of the hardware you need is going to be there for sure.
I suspect that was a rhetorical question. But for anyone who may be wondering, this is part of a complicated shell game our government plays with money in order to distract our attention away from what it is really doing.
No. It's no longer a hypothesis if you've found the underlying mechanism. This is now officially a theory.
You can build a cave dwelling that still meets those requirements.
The idea is that Microsoft makes a product that is really only fit for dogs (when compared with the alternatives). Developers know better, but the businesses Microsoft sells to don't know the difference and will take whatever Microsoft sells (like dogs). This was more true in the past, but it's not so true today.
It is because no sensible person would eat dog food simply because their company makes it.
Preventing a counterstrike is still a defensive use. But I can't believe a missile defense system could embolden a strike, because it would have to be 100% effective before anyone would consider it, and there's just no way to guarantee that. It's not even really feasible against a country with a lot of nukes like China or Russia.
A missile defense system could only be useful in deflecting an attack. That means it is strictly defensive. Any other interpretation is meaningless doublespeak. You can't provoke someone by building a fence around your house, and that's all this is. And, as you've pointed out, it would never actually give the US the ability to attack with impunity. You can't have it both ways. It can't counter an all out offensive, so it's not a threat to Russia or China. That's the end of the story.
While it's fun to hypothesize about how you'd thwart a defense system with a $20 instrument (as if anything could be deployed on a rocket for $20!) there isn't much sense to it. The balloon thing, for example, would only work against a single interceptor, while the plan is to deploy several. Given the suggestion comes from a report that lists the need to deploy multiple missiles as a weakness, this shows a complete lack of ability or desire to look at the situation rationally on behalf of the person writing the report.
A lot of people get their panties in a bunch over missile defense, and the main reason seems to be that it upsets the status quo. The same people were probably worrying that the end of the cold war might mean WWIII. In reality, missile defense is just another defense R&D project, like any other. There's no good reason to believe it could "never succeed," nor has anyone put forth an argument why it's bad that is any more insightful than "it might upset somebody." Every defense project might upset somebody. It's not an argument against it in itself.
Because it's not funny.
How do you know? Huge strides are made everyyear in the fields of electronics, radar, and optics. These advances are directly applicable to a missile defense. Things which weren't possible in the '80s (I can't believe people even still bring star wars up in these discussions) and 2000s may be possible today. Saying it will never be possible is quite a bold statement, especially since we have a good idea how we'd attempt it today.
Sure, just like armor, or radar, or satellite imaging, or barricades, or moats. Yes, clearly all military technology is offensive in nature. This is a perfectly fine definition as long as you realize you've eliminated the word "defensive" from your vocabulary.
No one knows what the future holds, or if there will be a WWIII or if there's anything we can do to prevent it. All we can do is make educated guesses. Looking back on cold war history, it is scary to think of how many times missiles could have accidentally been launched. Today, if we look at attacks like the WTC bombing, it seems clear that there are large groups of people who think it's reasonable to kill many innocent civilians in a suicide attack. While nuclear weapons usually are well defended, the possibility exists that one might be stolen or hijacked. A missile defense system could mitigate the potential fallout (figuratively speaking) from such an event.
On the issue of cost: it should be noted that there are cities that could be utterly destroyed by a nuclear missile, with values well in excess of a trillion dollars. That's not to mention the human cost of such an attack. Even if there is only a 1 in 100 chance of that happening over the next 10 years, you could easily justify spending $100 billion on such a project.
Bear in mind that they aren't turtles either. And for all we know they aren't Teenagers or Ninjas. So it might be Normal Adult Fighting Aliens or something like that.
First of all, that's not what it taught us. It taught us that it is a winning strategy (the US won the cold war). Second of all, that's not what a missile defense is, because it is not an offensive weapon in itself.
No, they aren't. As many people have already pointed out, they aren't effective against an all out assault, only against a few stray missiles. So anyone claiming they would enable or embolden a first strike is really being disingenuous or talking out of ignorance.
Everything is hypothetical until it happens. It's called planning ahead. Besides, it is possible to accidentally launch a nuke. Or it's possible for an extremist fringe group to steal one. So while a first strike may not be reasonable, it's not wholly unreasonable to believe a nuke may be headed our way some day. To a lot of people, it seems inevitable.
If the spending is a foregone conclusion, would you rather the money be spent on UAVs to patrol avery corner of the US for drugs and terrorists, or this. As I said, this will not contribute to the erosion of civil liberties.
I doubt the US would rush out and start building a bunch on new missiles if Russia or China were to build a missile defense. We might build a missile defense for ourselves though. The cold war is over. That kind of insane thinking doesn't dominate politics these days.
Think about what you are saying. There is no way the US could ever launch a nuclear attack on anybody with impunity.