You always hear this argument about space advancing technology but every time you hear it the advances cited seem to came from the Apollo era. I'd really like to see a list of advances, with earth bound applications, that have come from the space program in the last 10 years. I really doubt there are many. NASA simply hasn't done a whole lot worthwhile in a long time, especially in the context of the space shuttle and the space station.,
I think you are failing to see the forest for the tress. For Linux to be REALLY successful on the desktop there needs to be one distro, or a very small number of distro's, which have critical mass in terms of development, testing, quality assurance, applications and support.
Every time a new splinter group is created the main thing they achieve is massive duplication of effort, doing builds, setting up net infrastructure, testing builds, developing the 150th new GUI installer, keeping on top of security updates and most importantly testing to insure that it works well.
The reason the Linux kernel is so successful is that there is more or less just one, granted with some variants, but everyone focuses on one kernel and it gets a lot of good testing and there isn't a lot of duplicated effort.
So far it appears Bruce is lacking the diplomatic skill and vision to pull together competeing interests to create a critical mass distro, which is what everyone was hoping for in the wake of Red Hat's misguided demise. UserLinux hasn't even started yet and Bruce has already created a massive schism that will drive off half his developer and user base. Why, well we don't know why. There is absolutely no reason KDE couldn't be maintained as an option like just about every other distribution around. By having it as an option you pick up a whole lot of developers and users to support it. By shunning it, they leave and you instantly destroy any shot you had at critical mass. By telling KDE developers and users, "big deal, roll your own" your just creating another splinter and another massive duplication of effort.
Its about time this community grew up and realizes that 9000 distro's IS NOT A GOOD THING. Just because you CAN do 9000 distro's doesn't mean you SHOULD do 9000 distro's. It does give 9000 egos an opportunity to be a distro boss but thats about all it accomplishes.
As for the GTK versus Qt thing I would echo other comments that any company that is developing commercial GUI software is likely to pick Qt. Fact is GTK works but it is a complete mess of a programming API. If you are investing a lot of money in developing serious GUI software, well designed, C++ offers so many compelling advantages, developers will pay for the commercial license because its cheaper in the long run to start on top of a solid toolkit.. Your programmers time is the expensive thing. A Qt license is cheap by comparison. C is great for kernels but it isn't a rational choice for developing complex GUI's.
About the only group the Qt license punishes is developers attempting to develop proprietary software on a shoestring and I dont imagine they are the highest priority group. The bulk of the software that matters is either open source or serious commerical software both of which work just fine with the Qt license, as is.
Re:Why isn't this on the cover of Newsweek?
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More E-Voting SNAFUs
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· Score: 1
CNN is a little busy covering Kobe, Jacko, Laci, plastic surgery, infidelity, etc. They are desperately trying to prop up their ratings and unfortunately its an indictment of people in general, and American's in particular, that the majority would rather watch salacious, gossipy news that has no real relevance, or hard right rhetoric because its entertaining and it satisfies our egos that we are powerful.
Stuff like this that is kind of boring to most even though it is fundemental to protecting our most basic rights.
To be honest American's don't really deserve democracy or freedom any more. We are to lazy to protect it, make it work or even really care about it. We've pretty much let our government be sold to the highest bidder which means big corporations and the very wealthy. Odds are the next present will be the one that runs the most effective media blitz in 2004 and odds are that will be the Republicans.
There is a golden rule, he who has the gold rules.
This decision has NOTHING to do with "confusing ordinary end users". In the enterprise the IT department would pick the desktop they prefer then install, configure and customize it. The user is unlikely to ever encounter the choice.
This is an unfortunate decision on the part of Bruce and UserLinux if they follow through with it. It will most probably halve the number of developers and users that will even consider this distro. They might argue they don't have the resources to support both desktops but since they are halving the number of contributors they have they aren't coming out ahead on the available resources equation by making this silly choice.
It really conveys that, rather than maintaining an open mind, and supporting both desktops like just about every other distro that some people decided to play favorites for their favorite desktop and ended up telling everyone who disagrees to go to hell.
One compelling argument for Qt that I'm not sure has been made on the UserLinux list is its going like gangbusters in the smartphone space and if you are targeting the enterprise you really desktop apps and phone apps with common heritage. Microsoft does.
The community really needs to find a replacement for Red Hat/Fedorea that is not entangled with the whims of a corporation more concerned with its stock price than its users. We also need a distro that has the kind of critical mass and corprate support Red Hat has. UserLinux sounded like it might be the ticket but at this point it appears to be yet another fracture inducing distro.
I spend a lot of days wishing the whole open source community would learn to work together, like the Linux kernel developers manage to do for the most part, but it seems to be a lot more fun to fork everytime there is a decision point so every big ego can have a project of its own to be the boss of.
I think you need to realize the DOJ is enforcing antitrust laws in accordance with the very pro big business bias of the chief executive for whom they work. Antitrust enforcement is a very political issue and it changes every time the politician in power changes.
It was no coincidence that the last Microsoft antitrust suit had its legs kicked out from under it by the DOJ as soon as Bush and Ashcroft took power. Microsoft is a sacred cow to the Bush administration and nothing is going to be done to hinder its business practices as long as they are in power.
So its unlikely Real is going to get any serious help from the DOJ and most probably will find the DOJ hostile to them. The Bush administatration has no qualms about monoplies because monopolies are extremely efficient businesses and they make some lucky people a lot of money.
Microsoft is one of a dwindling number of U.S. companies that generates a huge trade surplus with the rest of the world.
Microsoft is an integral part of the both the Dow and the Nasdaq so the Bush administration is going to strive to insure nothing happens that would adversely impact their stock price since it impacts the indexes everyone watches as a gauge of economic success in the U.S. As you recall Microsoft's stock price suffered when it appeared they might actually be punished for antitrust violations.
Having a U.S. company dominate an industry as essential as computing is very desirable for political, security and economic reasons.
The flip side of this is Linux is doing so well outside the U.S. because many nations and businesses have realized its not in their best interest to be at the mercy of Microsoft and the U.S. for such an essential part of their infrastructure.
Just wait until Graham's bill try's to go some place in the senate or house. You will see some goon's, I think their names are Frist and DeLay, who will see that the bill sleeps with the fishes. At a minimum it will be conveniently decided that its to late to fix the problem, at least on a national level until 2006, an off year election that doesn't count for nearly as much as 2004 does.
It is encouraging that a bunch of activists, including the industrious hacker that exposed Diebold's dirty laundry, have managed to make some headway in stopping some serious potential vote stealing next year but there is still a huge potential for abuse in 2004 and everyone needs to keep working to stop it before it happens. Don't let some of this positive news make you think this is over.
The U.S. is more deeply divided then its been in long time and both sides are going to bend or break every rule in the book to beat the other. It still rings in my ears how Bush campaigned as "A uniter, not a divider". Whatever your politics, you have to agree. thats proven to be untrue.
... being used on the greatest technological achievement of humankind.
You mean they are running it on Linux??? No, that couldn't be it. You couldn't possibly be referring to the ISS could you? If so exactly what about the ISS is a great achievement other than they managing to spend staggering sums to accomplish nothing. The ISS is in a close race with the war in Iraq in that category.
I haven't read the details of how this report is generated but the Washington Post said the agencies self report the data. As a result the whole thing should be taken with a grain of salt. Getting an "F" could be a cynical ploy by an agency to make itself look bad and get billions more dollars to spend on new computers. These are bureacracies and they tend to work this way especially when it comes to maximizing their budgets and the deficit.
The report would be much be much more creditable if an independent inspector general or analyst audited the agencies and probed their defences. Perhaps someone who knows can describe how the report is produced and how likely it is to be a meaningful assessment of real security,
It seems that all of your ideas hinge upon a self-sustaining colony. We'd certainly better send some folks to investigate whether or not that is ever possible before we start sending settlers. I agree with you that our long term goal should be colonization of a planet (not Mars necessarily if it is not adequate), but that's a goal that should be significantly farther down the road. It might not ever be possible. Between the extreme temperatures, lack of water, etc, we might never find a planet we can colonize that is within our reach.
I really dont see the benefit of a short duration manned exploratory mission. Robotic missions can do all the essential resource searching better. A short duration manned mission wouldn't cover much ground and the long low G exposure would be a real problem when the astronauts return to earth. It will need to be proven but I wager a human can adapt to 1/3 G on Mars as long as they dont plan on returning to earth and 1G which is another reason for a one way trip.
Water, oxygen and fertilizer would seem to me to be the big issues. I would agree you would want to insure you are good at recycling, which the Russians already are to an extent, and you can either find or manufacturer supplements on planet. Presumably with abundant nuclear power and the basic build blocks you could manufacture enough to replenish your reserves. Again robotic missions would be better at finding basic resources better than a manned exploratory mission.
Extreme temperatures are a fact of life though they are a lot less extreme than a moon base would face. Build habitats underground at first and again make sure you have an abundant, redundant nuclear power plants as the Russians are already planning.
As for "biological entities" this is nearly a non issue. It is another compelling reason for a one way trip. If you are round tripping you would need to be extremely careful to not return a biological agent to earth. On a one way trip you need to have some concern that an agent doesn't infect the colonist but I wager the odds of there being biology on Mars is slim and of it being able to infect humans, even slimmer. As for colonists carrying contamination to Mars some of that is a fact of life and we should get over it. It would be comendable to screen colonists to prevent scourages like HIV and Hepatitis from making their way to the new world.
As for radiation exposure, once again shield the habitats and provide the best shielding you can in space suits or vehicles.
The people going on this mission would know what they are signing up for and it wouldn't be under the expectation they are going to a place with swimming pools and shopping malls. They would be going to a place with a hard, subsistence living. Instead of thinking like a modern American think like a frontiersman in the mid 1800's who struck out in a wagon with a marginal prospect for survival but did it anyway. These frontiersman did have explorers lead the way but so do we, its just that ours are machines.
I wager this mission would weed out a lot of the weak kneed over achievers in the current NASA astronaut core.
As the article indicates this is not that much of a problem if you design the crew compartment, or at least part of it, with a second hull and fill it with water which you'd use when you get there anyway. The major challeneges are:
- a pretty major propulsion system to get a heavy ship headed to Mars at a high rate of speed, presumably nuclear - getting a lot of mass into LEO in the first place
It doesn't bode well for a new Moon or Mars mission that NASA can't even get mass in to orbit in a reasonable way. As I've said before throwing a bunch of money into NASA for a new space initiative is not a good idea. As the shuttle and ISS show NASA has developed fundemental institutional flaws which tend to result in large amounts of money being spent and not much being accomplished. To think you're just going to set a new goal and get a better outcome, with no structural change, is naive. Set up a new skunkworks if you want to accomplish something in space, hire the best people and reward them in a meritocracy, not a bureaucracy.
This article is also flawed in the same way as most discussions of a Mars mission. The goal SHOULD NOT be a round trip. The goal should be to start sending big unmanned cargo ships, carrying water, food, habitats, green houses and nuclear power plants to Mars and when they are arriving reliably send colonists on a fast one way trip to stay for the duration. The other major challenge finding men and women who are compatible and are willing to produce future versions of the colonists.
Spending 60 billion to send a few astronauts to pick up rocks and come back just isn't worth it. Apollo kind of proved this. As soon as landing on the moon had been done, missions to pick up rocks didn't hold public support.
A permenent colony is also kind of an underhanded way to insure long term funding for the program since once you have colonists on Mars you are going to have to do whats necessary to keep them alive, until they are self sufficient (though they may not be fully self sufficient for a long time for manufactured goods like electronics).
Once you have a self sustaining colony you are insured a perpetual mission and are free of the whims of whether Mars 18 will be funded or not.
Odds are the next country to use nuclear weapons will be the same country that first and last used them, the U.S. The Bush administration has decided it would be a good idea to develop new, small, tacticial nukes to use on bunkers and have managed to fund it. Many in Congress are appalled and put constraints on the funding, R&D only, as well as a stipulation that Congress has to authorize deployment of these weapons. But once the ball gets rolling in a government that favors preemptive warfare you have to wonder...
Technicly nukes would be a great choice for busting bunkers but the obvious danger is that once you make it acceptable to use little nukes it will be a lot more palatable to use big ones and to use them to solve more problems.
Its so ironic to see U.S. politicians rail against WMD's when its fact the U.S. always has been and continues to be in the forefront of developing and using them. Many of the nuclear documents found in Iraq were from the Eisenhower administration's "Atoms for Peace" program and were definitely dual use. And, of course, the U.S.was actively supporting Iraq when Saddam began using using chemical weapons. At the time time we were using him a as a proxy to wage war against Iran and fundementalist Islam. Iran was in danger of winning the war by using human wave attacks of young boys to overrun Iraq's trenches. We almost certainly encouraged or turned a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons to stave off these attacks and certainly did supply Iraq with precursors for chemical and biological weapons, anthrax in particular. We also supplied them with cluster bombs from Chile to use against these human waves. Some of the key players at the time VP George H.W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.
You can't really blame countries for wanting nukes and missiles. Its one of the few methods for insuring the U.S. and everyone elese doesn't f**k with you.
Here is an interesting, though left wing interview with Standard Schaefer on the ulterior motivies of the imminent plan by the Republicans to privatize social security and to use it to pump money in to Wall Street. It should be taken with a grain of salt but raises a lot of thought provoking questions about how the markets really work.
Assuming the Republican's retain control of power next year its a near certainty they are going to make a first attempt at privitizing Social Security. The case for this was very strong during the bubble, they just had to point to how much money people were making in the stock market versus the miniscule return on the money in social security.
This movement suffered a major setback when the bubble burst and large numbers of small investors had their retirements wiped out and ended up working at Walmart. Of course they could have stayed the course, assuming they hadn't put all their money in complete turkeys Wall Street told them were sure things, and would have come out OK but a lot of people saw their life savings disappearing at an alarming rate and managed to get out just in time for the bottom of the market.
So Wall Street and the Republicans are pretty keen on the current bull run to continue, and are doing everything they can to fuel it, as in extremely low interest rates to fuel margin buys and cutting taxes on dividends, so they can resume the plan to move Social Security money that is mostly going towards covering the deficit in to the stock market. The influx of this new money should further fuel a boom market that will rival the last bubble. Unfortunately there is a pretty good chance it will be followed by another huge correction, another one those in the know will correctly time, and get out on top, while the most basic retirement security of a lot of average people will be wiped out again.
From the article above:
"The financial sector is looking at these funds like a shark that sees nice juicy prey swimming in the water. They would love to get their hands on Social Security and Medicare funds to manage, at a 2% fee. Even just 1% this would amount to tens of billions of dollars annually, not including the speculative gains that could be made on the turbulent market run-up."
Because ISS is stagering expensive isn't a good argument as to why more worthwhile efforts in space can't be done. Just compare ISS to MIR. MIR was done on a shoe string and wasn't gold plated pretty but it accomplished 10 times more for 100 times less. We want more MIR's and not more ISS's.
One fundemental problem at NASA is its a huge bureaucracy. Having worked there you soon discover most of the bureaucrats there spend most of their time trying to justify and increase their budget and staff. If your a bureaucrat that is the main gauge of your success, how much money you spend and how big your empire is. There isn't really any gauge of performance to make sure you are really accomplishing something with the money. These bureaucrats in turn give most of the money to contractors like Boeing and Lockheed who are out to make a profit first and accomplish the goal second. Boeing in particular is looking so corrupted they can't be trusted any more. NASA doesn't have a lot of real engineers left. The civil servants tend to be contract managers trying to keep an eye on an army of contractors who are trying to pocket as much money as possible.
ISS is also expensive because it was redesigned over and over and over and over again. It did lack consistent funding and suffered massive political interference but they key problem it has is it lacks a clear purpose and goals people can latch on to and it probably didn't have the project management and engineering to get a job done.
ISS is also staggering expensive because the shuttle is staggering expensive. With each accident the mounds of paperwork necessary to launch it has exploded and its doubtful that any of that BS makes it any safer. The goofy screen saver headquarters created that ticked off the minutes until the next ISS launch had to happen to keep the Bush from defunding the ISS killed Columbia as much as anything.
As a first step to doing anything useful in space you have to kill the shuttle. Switching back to assembly line produced, simple, expendable rockets until something else can be done would free vast resources to design a new launch method and to do something useful in space again. Its unfortunate but it appears you have to cut your losses on the shuttle and move one. Its throwing good money after bad at this point.
Bottomline is you need to create a new skunkworks, give it a legally mandated long term funding allocation, tell it the goals and turn it loose. But first you have to find a few exceptionally good people, if there are any left, to run it. They in turn need to create a meritocracy in which they hire and reward the best and brightest engineers from around the world. Perhaps this would motivate talented young college students to study aerospace engineering again, if they knew there was a worthwhile place to work again when they graduated.
You are not likely to get much support for nuclear fusion, as in cheap, environmentally friendly, nearly infinite energy from this administration or any other. It would risk putting some very powerful corporations out of business, as in big oil and big coal. Maybe the Bush administration could arrange for them to get a monopoly on the new fusion power plants so they could continue making money uninterrupted but I dont think they would want to risk the corporate upheaval that would follow a break through in fusion. Obviously the economic benefits would be huge but most politicians and executives lack the kind of vision necessary to see that.
To put it another way there is a really good reason, or a really bad reason, why fusion research spending is held down to levels that tends to discourage a breakthrough. Fusion research and Bush's Hydrogen program tends to be jobs program and coporate welfare like ISS, spend a billion now and again to keep it going but dont really try to do anything meaningful.
This is already done to an extent though the loans are generally a privledge reserved for large corporations. For example some of the pork in the energy bill that just went down in flames was a huge interest free loan to some lucky company(think Bechtel or Halliburton though I don't recall for sure) to build the missing pieces of a gas pipeline from Alaska to Chicago. Some lucky company would get free money to build something they would profit from greatly over the years with very little risk.
So the non profit you are refering to is Congress though they do profit it from it in campaign contributions and they wont get carried away doing it because it would piss of Wall Street which also tends to have massive influence in congress and the white house.
The search for life, geology and telescopes are only going to excite scientists. Maybe if you actually found life that would be exciting to people in general but odds are against you and if you do find life in our solar system chances are it will be microbes. We spend way to much attention on the search for life to the detriment of doing something that has a certainty of making a difference.
Building a colony on Mars produces real, tangible results. It expands our biosphere and gives humanity a fallback biosphere if we trash ours or an asteroid does it for us. Get a colony on Mars and you can do all the science you want but you can also build cities, mine resources, terraform and do something that means something long term.
Chances are the space program will push the technology envelope again if we have to solve real problems on Mars, for example learning to live without fossil fuels.
"We cannot do that without a better understanding of the long-term affects of space travel"
That premise is part of the same bullshit used to justify ISS and avoid doing anything for 30 years. The whole point of a fast one way trip to Mars is to minimize time in zero G and exposure to radiation, at least its a lot less than a round trip. We have all the info we need to know what the effects of zero G will be for that time period though it would be nice if the Mars passenger ship used centrifuge to generate 1/3 G to acclimate the crew for Mars. What we really need to know is what life will be like in 1/3g on Mars. Chances are it will be less bad than zero G on the ISS or the miniscule G on the Moon.
Sitting in the ISS does very little to get us to Mars. Sitting on the Moon might be a beneficial starting point. The problem is the Moon is not very much like Mars at all and you run the risk of pouring a bunch of money in it, it proves to be uninteresting, people get tired of it and you never get to the thing that has a point which is to put people on Mars permenently.
Build big, fast specraft, presumably nuclear powered and start sending cargo to Mars. As soon as the cargo ships start getting there safely and routinely, and there is a pool of essential resources send some real adventurers. It will capture the imagination of the world.
I'm not sure what you would really accomplish with a permanent base on the moon. It has very low gravity, no atmosphere and its in doubt if there is water. If you want to do something useful in space put a permenent colony on Mars. Don't waste the time and energy planning another goofy Apollo strategy where astronauts spend huge amounts of time on the round trip to spend very little time there picking up rocks. Send cargo ships followed by a one way trip with colonists who are there to stay. Mars probably has enough resources that a viable, self sustaining colony can be placed there and it will be a nicer place to live than the moon, especially if you start terraforming.
You've accomplished something if you establish a second home for humanity. You also create a real new frontier which is something this world desperately needs for the adventurous spirits.
It would be one big positive for Bush in a sea of negatives if he actually made this happen but there are a bunch of doubts that arise:
- One its become pretty clear he is using the U.S. Treasury's credit card to borrow and spend the U.S. in to an economic boom to insure his reelection. He is spending like a drunk sailor and this may just be more of the same. - Boeing is heading for fairly deep trouble. It can't compete with Airbus, its was caught cheating on launch contract bids and was suspended by the Air Force. The air force tanker contract was also designed to pump tax dollars in to Boeing but the deal stunk so bad they haven't been able to get it signed. I wouldn't be suprised if Bush wants a program to pump a whole bunch of tax dollars in to Boeing to keep it afloat. - NASA, like the DOD, is one big pork barrel. Politicians pour money in it to get votes and pump up the economy in the large number of places powerful politicians have managed to put NASA centers and contractors. It really isn't about space exploration any more. Its just a jobs program which is why the manned space program hasn't dont anything new in 20 years. A new space initiative will be doomed if it goes down the same path. It will be just like the ISS where vast sums are scattered around the country and squandered to no good effect.
The only likely way you will be able to have an effective space program in the U.S. again is to gut NASA and start something more closely resembling the Lockheed skunk works in its glory days under Kelly Johnson. You need a lean, mean team of gifted engineers and managers in one place who are devoted to getting a job done and not in building empires and in a contest to see how big and bloated they can make their budgets and staffs. I really think an International Space Agency would be the way to go and pull all the best engineers from the U.S., Canada, China, Russia and Europe together in one place and tell them to get the job done. The down side is the politicians wont support it unless they get a share of the pork and it would be doomed before it started because of politics.
"No, it is just another news source. It is not a ministry (there is nothing very religious about it). "Propaganda" is a meaningless pejorative used to attack information someone wants censored or hushed up: might as well factor this word out."
Its not currently viable for the government to create its own network in the U.S. so Fox news is the next best thing. If the Bush administration wants to put out a message they can just give it to Fox and they will run with it without questioning its truthfullness. A case in point, just before invading Iraq, when Fox ran stories claiming Saddam had RPV's that could be snuck into America and used to spread biological or chemical weapons on American cities to whip up that last bit of support before invading Iraq. Fox is routinely given preferential access to news and the president as a reward for their favorable reporting, witness the fact Fox went to Baghdad on Thanksgiving while CNN was sent home. A while ago Fox journalist was fired for refusing to report a story she knew was false and her editor knew was false. She sued and lost. The judge indicated it was not necessary for a network to be truthful. Fox's "Fair and Balanced" is known as a big lie. They keep repeating it over and over and people eventually believe it as you apparently do. There isn't ANYTHING balanced about Fox at its heart.
The right wing has largely decimated fair and balanced journalism by constantly accusing the press of a liberal bias and starting Fox which makes every network look liberal by comparison. All the networks have been manuevered into become more conservative and less likely to subject the Bush administration to critical review.
"If forced to make this choice, who would NOT chose this way? Just about everyone, except for those few who view Bush as being worse than Hitler."
The point is Amanpour is most definitely not a spokesperson for Al Quida while Fox is eager to do the Bush adminstration's bidding. All she was saying was the Bush administration largely fabricated the case for war in Iraq and no one questioned the rationale. Subsequent facts tend to suggest she was right as no WMD have been found and there are no proven links to Al Quaida.
The standard response from the right wing today is "if you aren't with us your against us" and "its our way or the highway". Either you support us 100% or we accuse you of being terrorists. The Republican ad being run now is doing exactly the same thing. It is a way to intimidate everyone into either agreeing with the administration, keeping their mouths shuts or pay a price in retribution. Those are not healthy approaches if your still pretending to have a democracy,.
"Yet, when the Democratic presidents have had such control, it has been "OK". So much for consistency."
You are putting words in my mouth. Its not OK for the Democrats to have control of the executive branch and both houses of congress either. Our government works best when its gridlocked and both parties are hamstrung in trying to implement their off center agendas. Less government is, most of the time, the best government.
I was saying that Republican control of the presidency, both houses in congress, if they gain a clear majority in the supreme court, the press is intimidated into no longer challenging the truthfullness of the government and the war on terrorism continues indefinitely we are headed for an extremely dangerous era and its not likely to be a good time for what is left of democracy in the U.S.
Seems to me they were amazingly accurate. George W. Bush was elected in 2000. If he gets reelected in 2004 and the Republican's figure out some way to break the Democratic filibuster in the senate either by changing Senate rules or getting 60 Republican seats I think you will be hard pressed to differentiate little George from a dictator.
Fox news is, for all intents and purposes, already the propaganda ministry. A brilliant example from U.S.A today in September concerning statements from Christian Amanpour of CNN, one of the few journalists left with the guts to tell it like it is. Especially note the venomous response from Fox at the bottom:
On last week's Topic A With Tina Brown on CNBC, Brown, the former Talk magazine editor, asked comedian Al Franken, former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke and Amanpour if "we in the media, as much as in the administration, drank the Kool-Aid when it came to the war."
Said Amanpour: "I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."
Brown then asked Amanpour if there was any story during the war that she couldn't report.
"It's not a question of couldn't do it, it's a question of tone," Amanpour said. "It's a question of being rigorous. It's really a question of really asking the questions. All of the entire body politic in my view, whether it's the administration, the intelligence, the journalists, whoever, did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels."
Clarke called the disinformation charge "categorically untrue" and added, "In my experience, a little over two years at the Pentagon, I never saw them (the media) holding back. I saw them reporting the good, the bad and the in between."
Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti said of Amanpour's comments: "Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."
Another insightful comment from Volkris. If you can't make your case why don't you stop wasting the bandwidth.
Re:fuckedcompany? no.. fuckedrepublic
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Who Owns The Facts?
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· Score: 3, Informative
Perhaps you would care to actually make your case as to what was wrong in what I said instead of just saying it was BS. I'm always open to learn from my mistakes, but telling someone they are full of shit but not actually saying in what way is about the weakest form of debate you could engage in. Well its not even really debate.
The sneak and peak search provision of the Patriot Act is widely regarded as one of its most detestable parts and will be the first thing called in to question if Congress ever gets around to revisiting the Patriot Act, something I doubt they will find the backbone to do anytime soon.
Did you actually read the link in my post to the University of Georgia. I'll quote since you must not have read it before you started ranting:
Section 213 of the USA Patriot Act not only specifically grants the federal judiciary power to issue sneak and peek warrants, but also, by allowing their use for every federal crime and by placing no meaningful limits on their issuance, encourages their issuance. It may be expected that as time passes the use of such warrants will become the rule rather than the exception in federal court, and that when a conventional search warrant is issued it will almost always have been preceded by a sneak and peek warrant.... Nearly two decades ago a prescient federal judge, in a dissenting opinion, warned that sneak and peek search warrants "constitute... a dangerous and radical threat to civil rights and to the security of all our homes and persons."16 Echoing this sentiment, a law review note published three years later emphasized that sneak and peek search warrants "bestow on law enforcement agents unlimited license to rifle through a person's private residence without the owner's knowledge or consent. There is no check on agents' actions to ensure they comply"17 with protections for individual rights, and "the risk of abuse and the subsequent intrusion into privacy is... severe."18
The same thing was said about the Medicare bill that just passed. The right wing hated it because it is a hugely expensive social program being funded out of deficit spending. The left wing hated it because the prescription drug benefit it was supposed to be all about is piss poor, it outlawed importing drugs from Canada, outlawed Medicare from negotiating fairer prices for drugs like the VA already does, which ensures windfall profits for drug companies, gave huge subsidies to health care coporations, created tax free shelters for the wealthy and it starts trial programs to privatize Medicare.
Didn't matter that both sides of the political specturm hated it. As soon as the drug companies, HMO's and insurance companies started spreading campaign contributions around and sent in an army of lobbiest they bought a slim majority in the house and big majority in the Senate, enough to block a fillibuster.
Passing laws in the U.S. is very rarely about doing anything in the public interest any more. Laws are usually bought and paid for by lobbyists, and under the Republicans these are usually corporate lobbyists whose goal is to further increase the wealth of the wealthy. For the Democrats they tend to be things like unions, environmental groups etc. Unfortunately for the Democrats all of their special interest groups have started to suck in the face of the wealth and power of corporate lobbyists and the wealthy.
Re:fuckedcompany? no.. fuckedrepublic
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I think a case could be made that Illegal search and seizure was largely legalized in the Patriot Act. Of course when you pass a law legalizing it, it is no longer illegal search and seizure. The FBI can now legally break and enter to sneak in to your home without your knowledge or the serving of a warrant. These first began in the 1980's under the Regan administration but it wasn't made explicitly legal until the Patriot act.
The FBI can also subpoena a vast array of private information about you by merely writing a letter to themselves branding you as a terrorism suspect. They no longer need the involvement of a judge so they have shredded the constitutional checks and balances the judiciary held on the executive branch.
I really wish the Republican party and conservatives would stop spouting rhetoric about how they are the party against big government. They seem to only want to limit government intrusion in to money making by wealthy party members and to end social programs that benefit the poor. Though, as the recent Medicare bill shows they are now even in favor of big government social programs as long as most of the money is going in to the pockets of their rich friends.
When it comes to the military, spying, dirty tricks, law enforecemnt and shredding the rights of individuals the Republican party really loves the biggest, most malignant government imaginable. Of course the Democrats were bulldozed in to going along with the Patriot act so are almost equally to blame.
I'm really skeptical that even Microsoft will pull off a transition as disruptive as this one will be. The reason Wintel has been so successful is because its done a really good job of maintaining backward compatibility and continuity that discourages people from jumping ship to other platforms. If they press ahead with this it could become a tipping point in computing.
Here are some forces working against success of a transition to trusted computing the open source community should think about and could leverage to their advantage:
There is a huge installed base of non trusted machines. As soon as you start penalizing machines for being untrusted on the net there will be a lot of unhappy users that may balk at being forced to buy an all new hardware/software setup to gain entry. Instead the net may engage in the self repairing behavior its known for and just route around the trusted parts of the net. One way I can see getting around this is to sell a trusted hardware/OS for a number of years so the platforms is pervasive before trying to kill untrusted platforms.
Its doubtful China or many other country outside the U.S. is going to buy into a system as intrusive and big brotherish as this is, especially when dictated from the U.S. which no one trusts any more. Asia may manufacture trusted hardware to sell to the U.S. but I'm skeptical they they will use it themselves unless places like China develop their own mutation which they control and can use to control their citizens. Asia seems to be moving to Linux and working to develop their own processors to gaurd against being subjected to heavy handed dictates, like this, from Microsoft, Intel and the NSA. If the U.S. gets the EU's backing in this they might have some chance of success. If the U.S. presses ahead alone they might well manage to destroy their market dominance in computing to be replaced by Asia or Europe.
There is a huge pool of legacy software that people are going to insist keep running. Either TCP machines are going to run untrusted software or its unlikely people are going to accept it or want to buy it. Until TCP platforms have a compelling body of trusted software they wont succeeed. Maybe they can sandbox untrusted software but it seems like untrusted software goes against the grain of everything trusted computing is.
There are still a bunch of powerful hardware vendors including Apple, IBM, HP, Dell and SUN that are backing Unix/Linux to one extent or another that are unlikely to subscribe to a hardware lock in that would kill them. As long as we can switch to PowerPC and keep on trucking who really cares, especially now that PowerPC is close to parity with Intel.
Despite all the doom and gloom I think this could be a boon to Open Source. Microsoft has never really attempted a transition this disruptive to backward compatibility. If people are faced with a transition that destroys legacy software and hardware and appears excessibely intrusive and monopolistic, a lot of countries, companies, developers and consumers may take this opportunity to really opt out of Wintel's hegemony.
There is one real danger though. The U.S. government along with some kind of coalition of the willing could try to pass laws and trade restrictions to make Trusted Computing happen in the name of the "Never Ending War on Terrorism". I would have never believed this to be possible a couple years ago but at this point, especially if we get another four years of Bush and Ashcroft it seems extremely plausible. In this scenario it would be illegal to build or import hardware in coalition countries that did not conform to trusted computing standards and after some transition period it would be illegal to hook non trusted platforms to the Internet. This would almost inevitably lead to a fracturing of the Internet in to at least two disconnected pieces, one free and one not free. Would it be possible to create a clandestine, free, wireless network in the U.S. if the government outlawed a free Internet. How could we cr
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You always hear this argument about space advancing technology but every time you hear it the advances cited seem to came from the Apollo era. I'd really like to see a list of advances, with earth bound applications, that have come from the space program in the last 10 years. I really doubt there are many. NASA simply hasn't done a whole lot worthwhile in a long time, especially in the context of the space shuttle and the space station.,
I think you are failing to see the forest for the tress. For Linux to be REALLY successful on the desktop there needs to be one distro, or a very small number of distro's, which have critical mass in terms of development, testing, quality assurance, applications and support.
Every time a new splinter group is created the main thing they achieve is massive duplication of effort, doing builds, setting up net infrastructure, testing builds, developing the 150th new GUI installer, keeping on top of security updates and most importantly testing to insure that it works well.
The reason the Linux kernel is so successful is that there is more or less just one, granted with some variants, but everyone focuses on one kernel and it gets a lot of good testing and there isn't a lot of duplicated effort.
So far it appears Bruce is lacking the diplomatic skill and vision to pull together competeing interests to create a critical mass distro, which is what everyone was hoping for in the wake of Red Hat's misguided demise. UserLinux hasn't even started yet and Bruce has already created a massive schism that will drive off half his developer and user base. Why, well we don't know why. There is absolutely no reason KDE couldn't be maintained as an option like just about every other distribution around. By having it as an option you pick up a whole lot of developers and users to support it. By shunning it, they leave and you instantly destroy any shot you had at critical mass. By telling KDE developers and users, "big deal, roll your own" your just creating another splinter and another massive duplication of effort.
Its about time this community grew up and realizes that 9000 distro's IS NOT A GOOD THING. Just because you CAN do 9000 distro's doesn't mean you SHOULD do 9000 distro's. It does give 9000 egos an opportunity to be a distro boss but thats about all it accomplishes.
As for the GTK versus Qt thing I would echo other comments that any company that is developing commercial GUI software is likely to pick Qt. Fact is GTK works but it is a complete mess of a programming API. If you are investing a lot of money in developing serious GUI software, well designed, C++ offers so many compelling advantages, developers will pay for the commercial license because its cheaper in the long run to start on top of a solid toolkit.. Your programmers time is the expensive thing. A Qt license is cheap by comparison. C is great for kernels but it isn't a rational choice for developing complex GUI's.
About the only group the Qt license punishes is developers attempting to develop proprietary software on a shoestring and I dont imagine they are the highest priority group. The bulk of the software that matters is either open source or serious commerical software both of which work just fine with the Qt license, as is.
CNN is a little busy covering Kobe, Jacko, Laci, plastic surgery, infidelity, etc. They are desperately trying to prop up their ratings and unfortunately its an indictment of people in general, and American's in particular, that the majority would rather watch salacious, gossipy news that has no real relevance, or hard right rhetoric because its entertaining and it satisfies our egos that we are powerful.
Stuff like this that is kind of boring to most even though it is fundemental to protecting our most basic rights.
To be honest American's don't really deserve democracy or freedom any more. We are to lazy to protect it, make it work or even really care about it. We've pretty much let our government be sold to the highest bidder which means big corporations and the very wealthy. Odds are the next present will be the one that runs the most effective media blitz in 2004 and odds are that will be the Republicans.
There is a golden rule, he who has the gold rules.
This decision has NOTHING to do with "confusing ordinary end users". In the enterprise the IT department would pick the desktop they prefer then install, configure and customize it. The user is unlikely to ever encounter the choice.
This is an unfortunate decision on the part of Bruce and UserLinux if they follow through with it. It will most probably halve the number of developers and users that will even consider this distro. They might argue they don't have the resources to support both desktops but since they are halving the number of contributors they have they aren't coming out ahead on the available resources equation by making this silly choice.
It really conveys that, rather than maintaining an open mind, and supporting both desktops like just about every other distro that some people decided to play favorites for their favorite desktop and ended up telling everyone who disagrees to go to hell.
One compelling argument for Qt that I'm not sure has been made on the UserLinux list is its going like gangbusters in the smartphone space and if you are targeting the enterprise you really desktop apps and phone apps with common heritage. Microsoft does.
The community really needs to find a replacement for Red Hat/Fedorea that is not entangled with the whims of a corporation more concerned with its stock price than its users. We also need a distro that has the kind of critical mass and corprate support Red Hat has. UserLinux sounded like it might be the ticket but at this point it appears to be yet another fracture inducing distro.
I spend a lot of days wishing the whole open source community would learn to work together, like the Linux kernel developers manage to do for the most part, but it seems to be a lot more fun to fork everytime there is a decision point so every big ego can have a project of its own to be the boss of.
I think you need to realize the DOJ is enforcing antitrust laws in accordance with the very pro big business bias of the chief executive for whom they work. Antitrust enforcement is a very political issue and it changes every time the politician in power changes.
It was no coincidence that the last Microsoft antitrust suit had its legs kicked out from under it by the DOJ as soon as Bush and Ashcroft took power. Microsoft is a sacred cow to the Bush administration and nothing is going to be done to hinder its business practices as long as they are in power.
So its unlikely Real is going to get any serious help from the DOJ and most probably will find the DOJ hostile to them. The Bush administatration has no qualms about monoplies because monopolies are extremely efficient businesses and they make some lucky people a lot of money.
Microsoft is one of a dwindling number of U.S. companies that generates a huge trade surplus with the rest of the world.
Microsoft is an integral part of the both the Dow and the Nasdaq so the Bush administration is going to strive to insure nothing happens that would adversely impact their stock price since it impacts the indexes everyone watches as a gauge of economic success in the U.S. As you recall Microsoft's stock price suffered when it appeared they might actually be punished for antitrust violations.
Having a U.S. company dominate an industry as essential as computing is very desirable for political, security and economic reasons.
The flip side of this is Linux is doing so well outside the U.S. because many nations and businesses have realized its not in their best interest to be at the mercy of Microsoft and the U.S. for such an essential part of their infrastructure.
Just wait until Graham's bill try's to go some place in the senate or house. You will see some goon's, I think their names are Frist and DeLay, who will see that the bill sleeps with the fishes. At a minimum it will be conveniently decided that its to late to fix the problem, at least on a national level until 2006, an off year election that doesn't count for nearly as much as 2004 does.
It is encouraging that a bunch of activists, including the industrious hacker that exposed Diebold's dirty laundry, have managed to make some headway in stopping some serious potential vote stealing next year but there is still a huge potential for abuse in 2004 and everyone needs to keep working to stop it before it happens. Don't let some of this positive news make you think this is over.
The U.S. is more deeply divided then its been in long time and both sides are going to bend or break every rule in the book to beat the other. It still rings in my ears how Bush campaigned as "A uniter, not a divider". Whatever your politics, you have to agree. thats proven to be untrue.
You mean they are running it on Linux??? No, that couldn't be it. You couldn't possibly be referring to the ISS could you? If so exactly what about the ISS is a great achievement other than they managing to spend staggering sums to accomplish nothing. The ISS is in a close race with the war in Iraq in that category.
I haven't read the details of how this report is generated but the Washington Post said the agencies self report the data. As a result the whole thing should be taken with a grain of salt. Getting an "F" could be a cynical ploy by an agency to make itself look bad and get billions more dollars to spend on new computers. These are bureacracies and they tend to work this way especially when it comes to maximizing their budgets and the deficit.
The report would be much be much more creditable if an independent inspector general or analyst audited the agencies and probed their defences. Perhaps someone who knows can describe how the report is produced and how likely it is to be a meaningful assessment of real security,
I really dont see the benefit of a short duration manned exploratory mission. Robotic missions can do all the essential resource searching better. A short duration manned mission wouldn't cover much ground and the long low G exposure would be a real problem when the astronauts return to earth. It will need to be proven but I wager a human can adapt to 1/3 G on Mars as long as they dont plan on returning to earth and 1G which is another reason for a one way trip.
Water, oxygen and fertilizer would seem to me to be the big issues. I would agree you would want to insure you are good at recycling, which the Russians already are to an extent, and you can either find or manufacturer supplements on planet. Presumably with abundant nuclear power and the basic build blocks you could manufacture enough to replenish your reserves. Again robotic missions would be better at finding basic resources better than a manned exploratory mission.
Extreme temperatures are a fact of life though they are a lot less extreme than a moon base would face. Build habitats underground at first and again make sure you have an abundant, redundant nuclear power plants as the Russians are already planning.
As for "biological entities" this is nearly a non issue. It is another compelling reason for a one way trip. If you are round tripping you would need to be extremely careful to not return a biological agent to earth. On a one way trip you need to have some concern that an agent doesn't infect the colonist but I wager the odds of there being biology on Mars is slim and of it being able to infect humans, even slimmer. As for colonists carrying contamination to Mars some of that is a fact of life and we should get over it. It would be comendable to screen colonists to prevent scourages like HIV and Hepatitis from making their way to the new world.
As for radiation exposure, once again shield the habitats and provide the best shielding you can in space suits or vehicles.
The people going on this mission would know what they are signing up for and it wouldn't be under the expectation they are going to a place with swimming pools and shopping malls. They would be going to a place with a hard, subsistence living. Instead of thinking like a modern American think like a frontiersman in the mid 1800's who struck out in a wagon with a marginal prospect for survival but did it anyway. These frontiersman did have explorers lead the way but so do we, its just that ours are machines.
I wager this mission would weed out a lot of the weak kneed over achievers in the current NASA astronaut core.
As the article indicates this is not that much of a problem if you design the crew compartment, or at least part of it, with a second hull and fill it with water which you'd use when you get there anyway. The major challeneges are:
- a pretty major propulsion system to get a heavy ship headed to Mars at a high rate of speed, presumably nuclear
- getting a lot of mass into LEO in the first place
It doesn't bode well for a new Moon or Mars mission that NASA can't even get mass in to orbit in a reasonable way. As I've said before throwing a bunch of money into NASA for a new space initiative is not a good idea. As the shuttle and ISS show NASA has developed fundemental institutional flaws which tend to result in large amounts of money being spent and not much being accomplished. To think you're just going to set a new goal and get a better outcome, with no structural change, is naive. Set up a new skunkworks if you want to accomplish something in space, hire the best people and reward them in a meritocracy, not a bureaucracy.
This article is also flawed in the same way as most discussions of a Mars mission. The goal SHOULD NOT be a round trip. The goal should be to start sending big unmanned cargo ships, carrying water, food, habitats, green houses and nuclear power plants to Mars and when they are arriving reliably send colonists on a fast one way trip to stay for the duration. The other major challenge finding men and women who are compatible and are willing to produce future versions of the colonists.
Spending 60 billion to send a few astronauts to pick up rocks and come back just isn't worth it. Apollo kind of proved this. As soon as landing on the moon had been done, missions to pick up rocks didn't hold public support.
A permenent colony is also kind of an underhanded way to insure long term funding for the program since once you have colonists on Mars you are going to have to do whats necessary to keep them alive, until they are self sufficient (though they may not be fully self sufficient for a long time for manufactured goods like electronics).
Once you have a self sustaining colony you are insured a perpetual mission and are free of the whims of whether Mars 18 will be funded or not.
Technicly nukes would be a great choice for busting bunkers but the obvious danger is that once you make it acceptable to use little nukes it will be a lot more palatable to use big ones and to use them to solve more problems.
Its so ironic to see U.S. politicians rail against WMD's when its fact the U.S. always has been and continues to be in the forefront of developing and using them. Many of the nuclear documents found in Iraq were from the Eisenhower administration's "Atoms for Peace" program and were definitely dual use. And, of course, the U.S.was actively supporting Iraq when Saddam began using using chemical weapons. At the time time we were using him a as a proxy to wage war against Iran and fundementalist Islam. Iran was in danger of winning the war by using human wave attacks of young boys to overrun Iraq's trenches. We almost certainly encouraged or turned a blind eye to the use of chemical weapons to stave off these attacks and certainly did supply Iraq with precursors for chemical and biological weapons, anthrax in particular. We also supplied them with cluster bombs from Chile to use against these human waves. Some of the key players at the time VP George H.W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld.
You can't really blame countries for wanting nukes and missiles. Its one of the few methods for insuring the U.S. and everyone elese doesn't f**k with you.
Assuming the Republican's retain control of power next year its a near certainty they are going to make a first attempt at privitizing Social Security. The case for this was very strong during the bubble, they just had to point to how much money people were making in the stock market versus the miniscule return on the money in social security.
This movement suffered a major setback when the bubble burst and large numbers of small investors had their retirements wiped out and ended up working at Walmart. Of course they could have stayed the course, assuming they hadn't put all their money in complete turkeys Wall Street told them were sure things, and would have come out OK but a lot of people saw their life savings disappearing at an alarming rate and managed to get out just in time for the bottom of the market.
So Wall Street and the Republicans are pretty keen on the current bull run to continue, and are doing everything they can to fuel it, as in extremely low interest rates to fuel margin buys and cutting taxes on dividends, so they can resume the plan to move Social Security money that is mostly going towards covering the deficit in to the stock market. The influx of this new money should further fuel a boom market that will rival the last bubble. Unfortunately there is a pretty good chance it will be followed by another huge correction, another one those in the know will correctly time, and get out on top, while the most basic retirement security of a lot of average people will be wiped out again.
From the article above:
"The financial sector is looking at these funds like a shark that sees nice juicy prey swimming in the water. They would love to get their hands on Social Security and Medicare funds to manage, at a 2% fee. Even just 1% this would amount to tens of billions of dollars annually, not including the speculative gains that could be made on the turbulent market run-up."
Because ISS is stagering expensive isn't a good argument as to why more worthwhile efforts in space can't be done. Just compare ISS to MIR. MIR was done on a shoe string and wasn't gold plated pretty but it accomplished 10 times more for 100 times less. We want more MIR's and not more ISS's.
One fundemental problem at NASA is its a huge bureaucracy. Having worked there you soon discover most of the bureaucrats there spend most of their time trying to justify and increase their budget and staff. If your a bureaucrat that is the main gauge of your success, how much money you spend and how big your empire is. There isn't really any gauge of performance to make sure you are really accomplishing something with the money. These bureaucrats in turn give most of the money to contractors like Boeing and Lockheed who are out to make a profit first and accomplish the goal second. Boeing in particular is looking so corrupted they can't be trusted any more. NASA doesn't have a lot of real engineers left. The civil servants tend to be contract managers trying to keep an eye on an army of contractors who are trying to pocket as much money as possible.
ISS is also expensive because it was redesigned over and over and over and over again. It did lack consistent funding and suffered massive political interference but they key problem it has is it lacks a clear purpose and goals people can latch on to and it probably didn't have the project management and engineering to get a job done.
ISS is also staggering expensive because the shuttle is staggering expensive. With each accident the mounds of paperwork necessary to launch it has exploded and its doubtful that any of that BS makes it any safer. The goofy screen saver headquarters created that ticked off the minutes until the next ISS launch had to happen to keep the Bush from defunding the ISS killed Columbia as much as anything.
As a first step to doing anything useful in space you have to kill the shuttle. Switching back to assembly line produced, simple, expendable rockets until something else can be done would free vast resources to design a new launch method and to do something useful in space again. Its unfortunate but it appears you have to cut your losses on the shuttle and move one. Its throwing good money after bad at this point.
Bottomline is you need to create a new skunkworks, give it a legally mandated long term funding allocation, tell it the goals and turn it loose. But first you have to find a few exceptionally good people, if there are any left, to run it. They in turn need to create a meritocracy in which they hire and reward the best and brightest engineers from around the world. Perhaps this would motivate talented young college students to study aerospace engineering again, if they knew there was a worthwhile place to work again when they graduated.
You are not likely to get much support for nuclear fusion, as in cheap, environmentally friendly, nearly infinite energy from this administration or any other. It would risk putting some very powerful corporations out of business, as in big oil and big coal. Maybe the Bush administration could arrange for them to get a monopoly on the new fusion power plants so they could continue making money uninterrupted but I dont think they would want to risk the corporate upheaval that would follow a break through in fusion. Obviously the economic benefits would be huge but most politicians and executives lack the kind of vision necessary to see that.
To put it another way there is a really good reason, or a really bad reason, why fusion research spending is held down to levels that tends to discourage a breakthrough. Fusion research and Bush's Hydrogen program tends to be jobs program and coporate welfare like ISS, spend a billion now and again to keep it going but dont really try to do anything meaningful.
This is already done to an extent though the loans are generally a privledge reserved for large corporations. For example some of the pork in the energy bill that just went down in flames was a huge interest free loan to some lucky company(think Bechtel or Halliburton though I don't recall for sure) to build the missing pieces of a gas pipeline from Alaska to Chicago. Some lucky company would get free money to build something they would profit from greatly over the years with very little risk.
So the non profit you are refering to is Congress though they do profit it from it in campaign contributions and they wont get carried away doing it because it would piss of Wall Street which also tends to have massive influence in congress and the white house.
The search for life, geology and telescopes are only going to excite scientists. Maybe if you actually found life that would be exciting to people in general but odds are against you and if you do find life in our solar system chances are it will be microbes. We spend way to much attention on the search for life to the detriment of doing something that has a certainty of making a difference.
Building a colony on Mars produces real, tangible results. It expands our biosphere and gives humanity a fallback biosphere if we trash ours or an asteroid does it for us. Get a colony on Mars and you can do all the science you want but you can also build cities, mine resources, terraform and do something that means something long term.
Chances are the space program will push the technology envelope again if we have to solve real problems on Mars, for example learning to live without fossil fuels.
"We cannot do that without a better understanding of the long-term affects of space travel"
That premise is part of the same bullshit used to justify ISS and avoid doing anything for 30 years. The whole point of a fast one way trip to Mars is to minimize time in zero G and exposure to radiation, at least its a lot less than a round trip. We have all the info we need to know what the effects of zero G will be for that time period though it would be nice if the Mars passenger ship used centrifuge to generate 1/3 G to acclimate the crew for Mars. What we really need to know is what life will be like in 1/3g on Mars. Chances are it will be less bad than zero G on the ISS or the miniscule G on the Moon.
Sitting in the ISS does very little to get us to Mars. Sitting on the Moon might be a beneficial starting point. The problem is the Moon is not very much like Mars at all and you run the risk of pouring a bunch of money in it, it proves to be uninteresting, people get tired of it and you never get to the thing that has a point which is to put people on Mars permenently.
Build big, fast specraft, presumably nuclear powered and start sending cargo to Mars. As soon as the cargo ships start getting there safely and routinely, and there is a pool of essential resources send some real adventurers. It will capture the imagination of the world.
I'm not sure what you would really accomplish with a permanent base on the moon. It has very low gravity, no atmosphere and its in doubt if there is water. If you want to do something useful in space put a permenent colony on Mars. Don't waste the time and energy planning another goofy Apollo strategy where astronauts spend huge amounts of time on the round trip to spend very little time there picking up rocks. Send cargo ships followed by a one way trip with colonists who are there to stay. Mars probably has enough resources that a viable, self sustaining colony can be placed there and it will be a nicer place to live than the moon, especially if you start terraforming.
You've accomplished something if you establish a second home for humanity. You also create a real new frontier which is something this world desperately needs for the adventurous spirits.
It would be one big positive for Bush in a sea of negatives if he actually made this happen but there are a bunch of doubts that arise:
- One its become pretty clear he is using the U.S. Treasury's credit card to borrow and spend the U.S. in to an economic boom to insure his reelection. He is spending like a drunk sailor and this may just be more of the same.
- Boeing is heading for fairly deep trouble. It can't compete with Airbus, its was caught cheating on launch contract bids and was suspended by the Air Force. The air force tanker contract was also designed to pump tax dollars in to Boeing but the deal stunk so bad they haven't been able to get it signed. I wouldn't be suprised if Bush wants a program to pump a whole bunch of tax dollars in to Boeing to keep it afloat.
- NASA, like the DOD, is one big pork barrel. Politicians pour money in it to get votes and pump up the economy in the large number of places powerful politicians have managed to put NASA centers and contractors. It really isn't about space exploration any more. Its just a jobs program which is why the manned space program hasn't dont anything new in 20 years. A new space initiative will be doomed if it goes down the same path. It will be just like the ISS where vast sums are scattered around the country and squandered to no good effect.
The only likely way you will be able to have an effective space program in the U.S. again is to gut NASA and start something more closely resembling the Lockheed skunk works in its glory days under Kelly Johnson. You need a lean, mean team of gifted engineers and managers in one place who are devoted to getting a job done and not in building empires and in a contest to see how big and bloated they can make their budgets and staffs. I really think an International Space Agency would be the way to go and pull all the best engineers from the U.S., Canada, China, Russia and Europe together in one place and tell them to get the job done. The down side is the politicians wont support it unless they get a share of the pork and it would be doomed before it started because of politics.
"No, it is just another news source. It is not a ministry (there is nothing very religious about it). "Propaganda" is a meaningless pejorative used to attack information someone wants censored or hushed up: might as well factor this word out."
Its not currently viable for the government to create its own network in the U.S. so Fox news is the next best thing. If the Bush administration wants to put out a message they can just give it to Fox and they will run with it without questioning its truthfullness. A case in point, just before invading Iraq, when Fox ran stories claiming Saddam had RPV's that could be snuck into America and used to spread biological or chemical weapons on American cities to whip up that last bit of support before invading Iraq. Fox is routinely given preferential access to news and the president as a reward for their favorable reporting, witness the fact Fox went to Baghdad on Thanksgiving while CNN was sent home. A while ago Fox journalist was fired for refusing to report a story she knew was false and her editor knew was false. She sued and lost. The judge indicated it was not necessary for a network to be truthful. Fox's "Fair and Balanced" is known as a big lie. They keep repeating it over and over and people eventually believe it as you apparently do. There isn't ANYTHING balanced about Fox at its heart.
The right wing has largely decimated fair and balanced journalism by constantly accusing the press of a liberal bias and starting Fox which makes every network look liberal by comparison. All the networks have been manuevered into become more conservative and less likely to subject the Bush administration to critical review.
"If forced to make this choice, who would NOT chose this way? Just about everyone, except for those few who view Bush as being worse than Hitler."
The point is Amanpour is most definitely not a spokesperson for Al Quida while Fox is eager to do the Bush adminstration's bidding. All she was saying was the Bush administration largely fabricated the case for war in Iraq and no one questioned the rationale. Subsequent facts tend to suggest she was right as no WMD have been found and there are no proven links to Al Quaida.
The standard response from the right wing today is "if you aren't with us your against us" and "its our way or the highway". Either you support us 100% or we accuse you of being terrorists. The Republican ad being run now is doing exactly the same thing. It is a way to intimidate everyone into either agreeing with the administration, keeping their mouths shuts or pay a price in retribution. Those are not healthy approaches if your still pretending to have a democracy,.
"Yet, when the Democratic presidents have had such control, it has been "OK". So much for consistency."
You are putting words in my mouth. Its not OK for the Democrats to have control of the executive branch and both houses of congress either. Our government works best when its gridlocked and both parties are hamstrung in trying to implement their off center agendas. Less government is, most of the time, the best government.
I was saying that Republican control of the presidency, both houses in congress, if they gain a clear majority in the supreme court, the press is intimidated into no longer challenging the truthfullness of the government and the war on terrorism continues indefinitely we are headed for an extremely dangerous era and its not likely to be a good time for what is left of democracy in the U.S.
...the rise of an American dictator in 2000.
Seems to me they were amazingly accurate. George W. Bush was elected in 2000. If he gets reelected in 2004 and the Republican's figure out some way to break the Democratic filibuster in the senate either by changing Senate rules or getting 60 Republican seats I think you will be hard pressed to differentiate little George from a dictator.
Fox news is, for all intents and purposes, already the propaganda ministry. A brilliant example from U.S.A today in September concerning statements from Christian Amanpour of CNN, one of the few journalists left with the guts to tell it like it is. Especially note the venomous response from Fox at the bottom:
On last week's Topic A With Tina Brown on CNBC, Brown, the former Talk magazine editor, asked comedian Al Franken, former Pentagon spokeswoman Torie Clarke and Amanpour if "we in the media, as much as in the administration, drank the Kool-Aid when it came to the war."
Said Amanpour: "I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."
Brown then asked Amanpour if there was any story during the war that she couldn't report.
"It's not a question of couldn't do it, it's a question of tone," Amanpour said. "It's a question of being rigorous. It's really a question of really asking the questions. All of the entire body politic in my view, whether it's the administration, the intelligence, the journalists, whoever, did not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the highest levels."
Clarke called the disinformation charge "categorically untrue" and added, "In my experience, a little over two years at the Pentagon, I never saw them (the media) holding back. I saw them reporting the good, the bad and the in between."
Fox News spokeswoman Irena Briganti said of Amanpour's comments: "Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."
Another insightful comment from Volkris. If you can't make your case why don't you stop wasting the bandwidth.
Perhaps you would care to actually make your case as to what was wrong in what I said instead of just saying it was BS. I'm always open to learn from my mistakes, but telling someone they are full of shit but not actually saying in what way is about the weakest form of debate you could engage in. Well its not even really debate.
... ... a dangerous and radical threat to civil rights and to the security of all our homes and persons."16 Echoing this sentiment, a law review note published three years later emphasized that sneak and peek search warrants "bestow on law enforcement agents unlimited license to rifle through a person's private residence without the owner's knowledge or consent. There is no check on agents' actions to ensure they comply"17 with protections for individual rights, and "the risk of abuse and the subsequent intrusion into privacy is ... severe."18
The sneak and peak search provision of the Patriot Act is widely regarded as one of its most detestable parts and will be the first thing called in to question if Congress ever gets around to revisiting the Patriot Act, something I doubt they will find the backbone to do anytime soon.
Did you actually read the link in my post to the University of Georgia. I'll quote since you must not have read it before you started ranting:
Section 213 of the USA Patriot Act not only specifically grants the federal judiciary power to issue sneak and peek warrants, but also, by allowing their use for every federal crime and by placing no meaningful limits on their issuance, encourages their issuance. It may be expected that as time passes the use of such warrants will become the rule rather than the exception in federal court, and that when a conventional search warrant is issued it will almost always have been preceded by a sneak and peek warrant.
Nearly two decades ago a prescient federal judge, in a dissenting opinion, warned that sneak and peek search warrants "constitute
Didn't matter that both sides of the political specturm hated it. As soon as the drug companies, HMO's and insurance companies started spreading campaign contributions around and sent in an army of lobbiest they bought a slim majority in the house and big majority in the Senate, enough to block a fillibuster.
Passing laws in the U.S. is very rarely about doing anything in the public interest any more. Laws are usually bought and paid for by lobbyists, and under the Republicans these are usually corporate lobbyists whose goal is to further increase the wealth of the wealthy. For the Democrats they tend to be things like unions, environmental groups etc. Unfortunately for the Democrats all of their special interest groups have started to suck in the face of the wealth and power of corporate lobbyists and the wealthy.
The FBI can also subpoena a vast array of private information about you by merely writing a letter to themselves branding you as a terrorism suspect. They no longer need the involvement of a judge so they have shredded the constitutional checks and balances the judiciary held on the executive branch.
I really wish the Republican party and conservatives would stop spouting rhetoric about how they are the party against big government. They seem to only want to limit government intrusion in to money making by wealthy party members and to end social programs that benefit the poor. Though, as the recent Medicare bill shows they are now even in favor of big government social programs as long as most of the money is going in to the pockets of their rich friends.
When it comes to the military, spying, dirty tricks, law enforecemnt and shredding the rights of individuals the Republican party really loves the biggest, most malignant government imaginable. Of course the Democrats were bulldozed in to going along with the Patriot act so are almost equally to blame.
Here are some forces working against success of a transition to trusted computing the open source community should think about and could leverage to their advantage:
There is a huge installed base of non trusted machines. As soon as you start penalizing machines for being untrusted on the net there will be a lot of unhappy users that may balk at being forced to buy an all new hardware/software setup to gain entry. Instead the net may engage in the self repairing behavior its known for and just route around the trusted parts of the net. One way I can see getting around this is to sell a trusted hardware/OS for a number of years so the platforms is pervasive before trying to kill untrusted platforms.
Its doubtful China or many other country outside the U.S. is going to buy into a system as intrusive and big brotherish as this is, especially when dictated from the U.S. which no one trusts any more. Asia may manufacture trusted hardware to sell to the U.S. but I'm skeptical they they will use it themselves unless places like China develop their own mutation which they control and can use to control their citizens. Asia seems to be moving to Linux and working to develop their own processors to gaurd against being subjected to heavy handed dictates, like this, from Microsoft, Intel and the NSA. If the U.S. gets the EU's backing in this they might have some chance of success. If the U.S. presses ahead alone they might well manage to destroy their market dominance in computing to be replaced by Asia or Europe.
There is a huge pool of legacy software that people are going to insist keep running. Either TCP machines are going to run untrusted software or its unlikely people are going to accept it or want to buy it. Until TCP platforms have a compelling body of trusted software they wont succeeed. Maybe they can sandbox untrusted software but it seems like untrusted software goes against the grain of everything trusted computing is.
There are still a bunch of powerful hardware vendors including Apple, IBM, HP, Dell and SUN that are backing Unix/Linux to one extent or another that are unlikely to subscribe to a hardware lock in that would kill them. As long as we can switch to PowerPC and keep on trucking who really cares, especially now that PowerPC is close to parity with Intel.
Despite all the doom and gloom I think this could be a boon to Open Source. Microsoft has never really attempted a transition this disruptive to backward compatibility. If people are faced with a transition that destroys legacy software and hardware and appears excessibely intrusive and monopolistic, a lot of countries, companies, developers and consumers may take this opportunity to really opt out of Wintel's hegemony.
There is one real danger though. The U.S. government along with some kind of coalition of the willing could try to pass laws and trade restrictions to make Trusted Computing happen in the name of the "Never Ending War on Terrorism". I would have never believed this to be possible a couple years ago but at this point, especially if we get another four years of Bush and Ashcroft it seems extremely plausible. In this scenario it would be illegal to build or import hardware in coalition countries that did not conform to trusted computing standards and after some transition period it would be illegal to hook non trusted platforms to the Internet. This would almost inevitably lead to a fracturing of the Internet in to at least two disconnected pieces, one free and one not free. Would it be possible to create a clandestine, free, wireless network in the U.S. if the government outlawed a free Internet. How could we cr