Well its cool if you are trying to win at the religion game. To become a winner in the religion game you need to maximize the number of warm bodies in your flock, and hopefully in turn the amount of land they control, and their wealth, and in a representative democracy the number of votes they cast.
The papacy may have their panties in a twist over the sanctity of sperm and DNA but its more likely the ulterior motive is that they want good Catholic families to all have 10+ children. They want a women to bear a child every year throughout the child bearing years of the mother. I guess they could just abstain from sex to avoid that result, like many husbands are going to stand for that.
Being a minority religion in a particular country or region is usually bad, you face discrimionation and have very limited power over the general affairs of the region. Catholics, Islam and Mormons all promote prolific breeding which is why Cathlocs and Islam are two of the worlds dominant religions. Mormons are a fast growing thanks to prolific breeding and prosletyzing. Modern society's taboo against marriage and sex with girls under the age of 18 does in fact severly hinder population growth which is why throwback Mormons still do it along with polygamy.
Needless to say in a world bursting at the seams, the fact that relgions still compell their flock to maximize population growth is certain to eventually spell doom for the planet. Eventually we are going to run out of space, water, food, eregy, we will have deforested the planet, and fished the oceans in to extinction.
As much time as Catholic theolgians spend thinking grand thoughts about the proper way for people to live you think they would have grasped by now that:
- overpopulation is bad - wars over religion are bad and its a leading cause for wars, especially as religions compete for living space and power over that space - celebacy among priests is bad because it turns them many of them in to sexual time bombs. Perhaps celibacy is a contributor to their thinking on trying compell their flock to abstain outside of marriage for the purpose of breeding.
You think they might have realized AIDS is bad too, since its crashing the size of their flock in places like Africa, but the more sinister religious fanatics view AIDS as a way to punish and dispose of sinners, and to compell abstinance and monogomy.
You do have to remember that Catholicism and Islam are not particularly old religions and they started from nearly zero and have grown to over a billion members each in one and two millenia. Maximizing population growth a thousand years ago was a really smart idea for them. Today, not so smart, but they are so mired in tradition and the past they haven't grasped that the population explosion is going to eventually wipe the planet. Well it is smart, in fact necessary unless all religions stop the breeding contest at the same time. If one relgions approves birth control and the other doesn't, its akin to unilateral disarmament.
Protestants are kind of funny. They did break with the Catholic church and they broke out of some of its ruts. Many protestant demoninations are cool with birth control, though you see signs that the fundementalists and born agains have realized they are being out bred by Catholics and Muslims so are returning to favoring locking their women in the home and compelling them to breed at higher rates. If they dont the Protestants are going to be toppled from power and dominance. For example in the U.S. the huge influx of Catholics as legal and illegal immigrants, and who in turn breed prolificly once in the U.S. are eventually going to push WASP's out of power with sheer numbers. They already are in places like California and Colorado. It appears its only a matter of time before Catholics will be the dominant sect in the U.S and already are throughout the rest of the Western Hemisphere. That must be giving the born agains, currently in power in the U.S., something to think about. They need to close the borders to the flood of Catholics, but that would deprive them of the cheap labor they need for their factories, farms and janitorial work. What to do....
I'm so happy for your wife, but this isn't really the dynamic behind mandatory and uncompensated overtime.
Productivity gains in labor statistics, especially for workers are almost always tied to making people work more hours for less money, it can be just more hours, just less money or both. The classic example is you lay off a percentage of your work force every year and each year the people who survive have to do more and more work to compensate for their fallen bretheren. They are also motivated to work harder to avoid the next round of layoffs, though if you do this enough it eventually devestates morale, everyone starts praying to get laid off and get the comp package, and it destroys the company. The exec who initiates the annual layoffs often look like a superstar for the improved productivity and profitibility, or at least decresaded losses, as long as they bail before the company implodes.
You wife's boss sounds like an exception. If your wife is super productive great for her but in most high tech sweatshops she would still be compelled to improve her productivity each year, year in and out and eventually she will be pushed in to large amounts of uncompensated overtime, the more productive she the more work will eventually be piled on her. How many years has she been in this position?
You are also glossing over the rationale for the "death march", the time when a product needs to get out the door and was for whatever reason behind schedule, badly planned, overly ambitious, redesigned and rescoped in the middle or all the way through, or some percentage of management or programmers are just bad at what they do.
In the death march there are more bugs to fix than the staff can possibly fix in the time left on the schedule, and there is a large, and zealous QA staff, finding bugs at or in excess of the rate they can be fixed. Some bugs are futured to try to stay on schedule but you do to much of that and the product ships as bugg crap. The companies bottomline depend on shipping the product in a certain quarter so if the schedule misses the company stock craters.
The one, nearly inevitable, solution is the entire staff is put on 70-80 hours weeks, it doesn't matter if your wife is super productive, and all those salaried programmers ain't gonna get paid overtime for the extra 30-40. If they are lucky they might get some comp time after the product ships when they are completely fried and tettering on the edge of burn out and permenent damage. If they company's execs are enlightened and the product does well they will profit share, and everyone gets stock and bonuses that makes it almost seem worth while. If they are normalthe lion's share of the bonuses land in the pockets of the executives, and the staff will probably be blessed with layoffs or reorganization after they product ships. This encourages them to be grateful to just be happy they still have a job, and be happy that that executive compensation packages now average 400 times that of the average worker versus the 30-40X it was 10-20 years ago. They still have their job so they have the opportunity to repeat the death march as much as once or twice a year.
Your exceptionally productive wife can't just "get her work done" in a death march. As soon as she fixes all the bugs in her queue it will just be refilled.
Bill is also the one that said 640K of memory is all anyone would ever need. He's really not much of a technology visionary, he is just really good at ripping off other peoples stuff and putting it in to ruthless, unpitying production.
Lets just chalk this up as another quote he will have haunting him forever when he has the implants to triple his intelligence, terabytes of memory exapansion, and to give him immortality when his brain is scanned and replaced with one giant implant before it craters form old age. After all if the technology ever arrives to Xerox our brains Bill is likely to be the first one with the cash to pay for the service.
Pretty unlikley anyone will ever invest the effort necessary to correlate your GPS location to the timing on a stop light.... especially when they can just put cameras at intersections and take a picture of your plate... and already do.
But, there is kind of an innevitable march going on here... and who said innovation was slowing down. I doubt you can stop it now. Maybe innovation is slowing down in major scientific advances to make our lives betterm but innovative application of technology to suffocate us all in the name of "security" is certain to accelerate. (Innovation is certain to continue in the creation of new miracle drugs some of which will do as much or more harm than good, and in particular psychiatric drugs will continue their march towards trying to make everyone behave in a uniform, socially preferred manner). Most people haven't seen it but the one signficant film George Lucas made was THX-1138 because it was presicent. Everything else he did was fluff by comparison.
There will be video cameras covering every city, small and large, well thats already happened, it just needs to be networked to the authorities, Britain has a big lead there, and computers need to get better an automated checking for socially unaccpetable behavior.
There will be RFID tags in everything, including the ID cards we will soon be forced to carry at all times, so you can be instantly identified in public places, along with everything you are wearing and carrying. Any failure to carry your ID can be flagged too, we'll have face recognition as a backup too. Credit cards and store discount cards already allow backtracking your activities, and everything you buy, if you are ever suspected of a crime. RFID will just expand the tracking to your every move, not just when you buy stuff and allow tracking people that still use cash as rare as they are these days.
GPS devices are going to be put on all children using the now non stop media fixation on a tiny number of kidnappings, murders and sex crimes as justification (Curiously the stories with legs in the media are alays pretty, preferably blonde, girls, ideally from middle to upper class families).
GPS tracking on all cars is pretty much inevitable too. Oh wait its already happening, in case you didn't know, GM is already doing it through OnStar and the amazing thing is people pay handsomely for the priveledge of letting GM know where they are at all times, and letting GM control the locks on your doors, and to kill your engine. I think you get a break on insurance rates to bribe you in to accepting it. Great technology if someone steals your car, but needless to say you should probably avoid an OnStar equipped car if you ever turn to the dark side or need to elude the authorities. People say well I will never be a criminal so why should I mind. They just never stopped to think what happens if their government ever turns on them, you know in to a repressive dictatorship, all this technology can be used against good people who just want their freedom back or want to topple an illegitimate government.
In order to do my duty as a grammar Nazi, irregardless is pretty much a double negative. I think you mean regardless. Saying irregardless means having regard, the "ir' and the "less" canceling each other out. Dictionaries only list it because its so frequently used and sometimes considered a humorous mangling of the English language.
This mauling of the language is a plague and it must be stamped out at every turn, otherwise its going to destroy language as we know it.
If you recall the key reason behind the main desktop fork it was because of licensing. If Trolltech had put Qt under GPL in the beginning it would have drained most of the impetus from Gnome and the world would be a vastly better place. I dearly wish HP or IBM would by Trolltech and put Qt under pure GPL and GTK and Gnome would die a quick death. Linux might have a chance on the desktop if it defragmented. As it is now its just a mess, its a pure headache for users and application developers alike.
Whether the GPL is a hindrance to Linux or not is kind of moot point anyway. The chances Stallman or GNU would change the license on the many importan pieces they control are zero, the chances of Linus changing his are slim, the chances you can get all the other thousands of developers to change theirs, also zero.
So ESR is just stirring shit to no good end. I guess he has to do something to maintain his fame.
"Unlikely that Russian women can turn enough tricks between now and then to pay for it though."
Nice... racist, sexist, petty and immature all in one sentance. Good work. I really hope you don't work for NASA otherwise you are a leading indicate of exactly how far its fallen.
Uh, no the fears are TOTALLY founded and the GPL is the thing thats stopped it so far. The danger doesn't really go back 20 years. Nobody corprate cared about Linux until like 5 or 10 years ago. Now they do. As soon as you put a BSD license on Linux some company will fork it and "differentiate" it. If someone big does it like HP, IBM, Novell or Red Hat there will be doom in the air.
BSD is failing because its been massively differentiated, its so fragmented it has no critical mass. Why it fragmented is hard to say but the license is a leading candidate. Linux doesn't really need to risk following in their footsteps if the license lead to its niche status.
The Linux desktop is failing because its been fragmented especially between GTK and Qt, Gnome and KDE, and in audio API's. Most users don't want a differentiated OS. They want lots of apps that do what they want and they can count on to work. Differentiation in apps good, in OS bad.
"So why aren't HP, IBM, Novell and Wall Street now making proprietary branches of FreeBSD instead?"
If you know how execs and marketeers think, if the opportunity exists to develop proprietary features for Linux that would "differentiate" their product and help them justify selling their flavor for more, and drive sales of their product over their competitors, they will. On Linux all the engineers and lawyers just say, sorry dude you can't make it proprietary becuase its GPL.... THWACK.... the marketing guy is cut off at the knees before he can spawn fragmentation and proprietariness.
You would hope companies like HP and IBM learned from their mistakes fragmenting UNIX. While they were busy differentiating, Windows was busy unifying their market and burying UNIX.
The GPL is an important insurance policy to keep companies honest and from backsliding to their old proprietary ways.
You ditch the GPL and Linux will fragment just like UNIX did. Companies like HP, IBM, Novell and the now Wall Street obsessed Red Hat would start doing all their work on proprietary branches in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage and "differentiate" their product which is exactly what all the proprietary Unix flavors did. "Differentiation" was the death knell for proprietary UNIX. They are all dead and dieing due to the fragmentation of resources and applications, while Linux is going strong.
Maybe we don't need ESR any more. Some of his lunatic rants make people nervous about using open source.
"Both can operate alone, and both were paid for using US$."
Bullshit. Zarya and Zvezda are the core of the station. The ISS was habitable when they were there along with Unity. America's module Destiny is a lab module, I dont think it is self sufficient.
The key point is the station was operational when Zarya and Zvezda were there and could be again. I don't remember how essential Unity is though I'm sure its handy. Its a simple docking module its not a major achievement.
"If you undocked all the US parts (delivered by the Shuttle) the Russian part would be a pretty cold place as it wouldn't have any power."
Bullshit again. You dont seme to know what you are talking about. Zarya and Zvezda have solar panels. They provided enough to power for those modules to be habitable and operational before any American panels were added. They wouldn't have an abundance of power without the American solar monstrosity, but they would have enough. I wager there will never be enough people or equipment on the ISS to use all the power form those overgrown American panels. There is a Russian power module, NEP, too though I think its sitting on the ground or maybe cancelled.
"It also would lose attitude control eventually because the Russians use propulsive control."
Bullshit again. As long as they refuel it, once in a while, propulsive control will work indefinitely. They worked OK before the inertial system was installed, it work OK on MIR for years. The inertial system is nice since it can use electricty instead of propellent, but both Hubble and ISS have shown this approach still has serious reliability problems. I'd say its a toss up between the two approaches. Its nice to have both if you can afford it.
As I said elswhere it would have to be no strings attached grants, NASA no where in sight, maybe with some incentive clauses and milestones like Ansari X prize.
"I guarantee that in a matter of years his organization will be just as inefficient and bloated as that of the traditional aerospace companies."
I doubt it, its contrary to his nature to go down that path. He likes building air and space craft for the sheer love of it and not because its a welfare check. He hates bureaucracy to the root of his being.
First day you start this project you post Kelly Johnson's rules on the wall and live by them. Kelly did, for the most part, for decades.
Before you start the first rule is the to make the site and the project a bureaucrat and politician free zone other than maybe an inspector general to insure basic fiscal oversight.
Dude you completely don't get it, that is really what you need to fix America's manned space program. Kelly Johnson was exactly like that in fact its Rule #3 of his famous 14 rules:
Rule No. 3
The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10 percent to 25 percent compared to the so-called normal systems).
Adding an army of mediocre warm bodies leads to spiraling costs, and makes schedule slips happen instead of speeding up the schedule. If you dont follow this rule you end up with the bloated bureaucratic pile that is NASA. Kelly built the U-2 and the SR-71 in an amazingly short period of time and on small budgets precisely because he had small teams of very good people and those planes were big leaps forward.
Having said that I really doubt that Burt is quite the primadonna you are painting him as. Melville sure isn't the "best" test pilot in the world. He is a high school drop out with no engineering expertise, and a seat of the pants flier. He was a machinist in Ohio and Burt hired him because he built one of Rutan's kits, flew out to Mojave to show it off and Rutan liked him and his wife. All the people in the Black Sky documentary seemed to be completely fond of and devoted to the Rutan and would go to the end of the earth for him. Melville genuinely gushed about the closeness of their friendship and that he would do ANYTHING for RUtan. There are at least 20 core people on the X Prize team and they all seemed to love Burt, so much for "cant work with 2 people".
The engineer that lead building SpaceShipOne was very young, not exactly a pillar of respectability, and not very experienced when he started. He said a big company wouldn't have given him a chance to do anything like what he was doing there. Rutan seems to have an eye for young talent and willingness to gamble on them.
To put it another way I'm almost postive you wont find any project leader at NASA's politburo that commands the respect and devotion from his team that Rutan does.
Have you worked with him or is this just a new phase of your mud slingling and belittlement campaign against Rutan while you pretend to "respect" him. Its getting old.
I read the CEV RFP. It was a bureaucratic nightmare. The space daily editorial is loopy in spots but it does convey a flavor of how goofy the CEV is going to be. Its more focused on producing mountains of paper and killing trees than on getting people in to space in a reasonable time at a reasonable cost. The paper generation requirements alone are beyond the grasp of any company smaller and less bureaucratic than Lockheed and Boeing. If Burt pissed his pants it was due to the devestation of seeing hopeless bureaucracy in action and especially one in the process of squandering manned space exploration for another decade. Burt isn't exactly young, I doubt he can wait another decade for another manned space vehicle competition to come along when CEV fails.
Maybe I agree with you in one respect, Burt is a realist and it will cost some serious money to build his vehicles to get to LEO and beyond. Since CEV is a writeoff, they have to raise the money on their own and that will be HARD to IMPOSSIBLE. Contrast with NASA who is handed billions of our tax dollars on a platter, year afer year, their track record is one of complete failure since the early seventies, yet the money keeps getting showered on them, decade after decade. That is enough to make any space enthusiast cry.
Lockheed's CEV proposal regurgitation of the their Orbital Space Plane.
As I recall Boeings proposal is an unoriginal attempt to replicate Apollo without the Saturn V. I think it was mostly empty headed artists conceptions as was Lockheeds. Not sure that replicating Apollo wouldn't be a bad idea if we actually want to get back to the moon. Dust off the blue prints, bend the same metal and maybe put in some new computers. More likely to succeed than Lockheed and Boeing's empty headed proposals.
"Actually, I view Burt with great respect"
Geez, now I know you work for NASA, "I view Burt with great respect" though you've been belittling and bashing him every other sentance, because he isn't part of MIGHTY NASA. Whats the matter? Looking in your NASA rear view mirror and seeing a little domestic competition for a change. He has a long way to go but he has one big plus, he is almost universally admired and respected after Voyager and SpaceShipOne. Ordinary people actually know his name. You would be hard pressed to find anyone that knows the name of or will say a kind word about anyone in NASA's manned space ministry.
You just have to hope some Congressman or a President doesn't wake up one day and say to themselves, we've been throwing all this money at NASA and getting nothing for it, maybe we should throw some of it Burt's way just to see what he can do with it. That is the day the Soviet Ministries in Florida and Texas are doomed. We desperately need some like Kelly Johnson to restart the space program and Burt is a LOT like Kelly Johnson. Kelly hate overgrown bureaucracy with a passion too, NASA people seem to love it and that is the sad.
Don't know about those tactics but doing a Google search on IBM lobbyist yields an abundance of matches including this one:
"And IBM's chief lobbyist threatened many European governments with a termination of investment if they did not support software patents"
Personally I've always been amazed that a company can buy a politicians favor for like $3-50K in campaign contribution and get millions or billions of dollars in return out of it, though it sure seems to work. Maybe IBM thought it was a goofy, sleezy practice too and decided to just go for the jugglar with lobbiests and economic threats. Maybe they wanted to sucker people, including employees, with this noble sounding web page about campaign contributions and forgot to mention they still LOVE lobbyists and threatening governments who dont do what they want.
I'm guessing either the EU didn't give IBM the software patents leading to IBM is canning, was it 13,000 Europeans and quitely hiring what was it 14,000 Indians. Does India have software patents, they must?
"Oh, and NASA thanks you for kicking them when they are down."
Oops, forgot this one, NASA's manned space program has been "down" since the early 70's, if we have to wait until the are "up" to kick them then by definiton we will never be able to kick them.
Please note I am carefuly applying all this venom only to NASA's MANNED SPACE PROGRAM. Other parts of the agency do some great work, especially JPL, the great observatory teams, earth monitoring, aeronautics sometimes, etc.
Its just the manned space program that needs to be axed and someone need to start over with a Kelly Johnson style skunkworks, a lean, mean space flight machine. I vote for Burt Rutan as the 21st centry Kelly Johnson, he is sure to be better than any of the bureaucrats in the soviet ministry that is NASA's manned space flight bureau.
Give him NASA's manned space flight budget, and none of the bureaucratic BS and some amazing stuff would happen.
"Comparing scaled $ to NASA $ is like comparing tonka trucks to semis."
Such arrogance, you must work for NASA? Those are my god damn tax dollars your wasting buddy, feeding your ego and not doing much else worthwhile with 'em.
"they are now begging for NASA funds...."
Really how so Thats OK with me though, NASA sure can't do anything useful with my tax dollars I would rather they gave it to Burt than waste it on their welfare program in Florida and Texas.
I know Scaled was going to bid CEV with T/Space before they saw what a bureaucratic cluster fuck it was and that it was rigged so Boeing and Lockheed would win, they always do, its planned that way, so they just said forget it, waste o' time.
"Yes, the Russians are part of the ISS, but if you think they are solely responsible for the last 5 years, you haven't a clue. The Russians would still be flying in itsy-bitsy Salyuts without the miracle that is the Shuttle."
In case you haven't looked at a picture of the ISS and who built what, the core of the station is Russian built(I'm talking built, not who had the money to burn to pay for them). They could undock all the America built parts and the Russians would still have a viable Mir like space station and the Americans would have a pile of space debris. The Russians have had a manned presence in space for like 15 years now versus your puny 5.
Are you just arrogant or dumb. The Russians are still flying in Salyuts and getting in to space because its affordable, relatively safe and reliable, especially compared to the Shuttle. Again dumbass those Salyuts and Progress are the only thing that kept your precious ISS going because the Shuttle is an unreliable deathtrap, not a miracle.
The only miracle about the Shuttle is its a miracle someone thought it was a good idea in the first place, well the idea was good, cheap access to space on a regular basis but the Shuttle met NONE of its promises. Its such a miracle even NASA wants to get rid of them so they stop bleeding the manned space program white and keep it stuck in LEO, along with ISS.
In case you didn't figure it out NASA is probably going back to those itty bitty capsules for CEV, its only going to take them 10 years and billions of dollars to get back to something sane, assuming they dont cancel it or fail like they have every other attempt to replace the shuttle.
"Just remember, it's my sacred 5 year manned presence and your 10 second joy ride with burt."
I'll take Burt hands down. I'm never gonna make it to the ISS, Burt maybe I have a chance to at least get in to space for a reasonable price. NASA has had their chance, they've failed, we are never going to get ordinary people in to space or get out of LEO again if its left to NASA.
Not to mention the ISS is a 100+ billion dollar hole in space with no obvious purpose. I assure you it wont last another 10 years, it will be lucky if its even finished and lasts 5 because even NASA has figured out what a mistake it was and they are going to cut their losses in a vain attempt to pay for CEV, the Moon and Mars which they will never reach.
Lets look at the record for flights putting men in to what is strictly defined as space in the last 2 and half years:
Scaled Composites = 3 if I remember correctly NASA = 0 of this I am sure
Record for fatal accidents in the last 3 years:
Scaled composites = 0 NASA = 1
How much did NASA spend on manned space flight over this period? Not sure anyone knows but its probably like $10-20 billion, Scaled composites spent like $20-30 million.
Who broke the 40 year old altitude record for an aero launched vehicle, Scaled Composites, not NASA.
How many new manned rate vehicles capable of reaching space has NASA designed in the last 30 years, zero. Scaled composites has 1 new design and at least 1 more in the pipe. There is an oribital vehicle on Rutan's drawing board.
"Compare that to a continual human presence in space for almost 5 years."
Yo, dumb ass, the Russians are the ones that have maintained that presence for the last 2 1/2 years. Without them the crew that was in the ISS when Columbia crashed would be dead because the U.S. has had no capability to launch men in to space or get them back for the last 2 1/2 years. It will be 10 years, and billions of dollars, before there is even a remote chance of a new manned rated spacecraft from NASA, the CEV, if it ever gets built. The Shuttle is going to be retired long before then most probably around 2010, so NASA will most probably be unable to launch a man in to space or to the ISS for like 5 years from 2010 to 2015, assuming CEV doesn't slip which it WILL. So if your sacred manned presence is to be maintained then the Russians, Chinese, Indians, Europeans or Japanese will have to service it.
Don't think that describes my attitude. I KNOW quite well that this is standard practice in Washington so I'm not ignorant of the issue.
I just think that this submission and the article it points to is sensationalist attempt to make out like this is some kind of scandal, and like maybe someone should go to jail for a grand conspiracy.
I think all of the "evidence" in the article are public records, lobbying registration and campaign contributions. There isn't anything remotely illegal about anything Microsoft, Mr. and Mrs. Gates did here that I can see. They are playing the government game by the rules our government created for the game. SO WHAT. Maybe Abramoff will go to jail, but only if his powerful friends decide to let him swing. Maybe a few people will get taken down with him. Microsoft and the Gates family wont get a scratch.
I'm all for changing the rules and people seizing control of their government from the corrupt politicians (which is pretty much all of them or at least all the successful ones), big campaign contributors, corporations and lobbiest. Chance of it happening in the U.S. are nearly zero because %99.9 of the American people have no clue, could care less or if they do understand the problem and care aren't gonna rock the bock trying to change it. That leaves 0.1% who understand, care and are willing to do something about it and they will be swatted like a bug or will be locked up in rubber rooms.
Gotta say this first, enough with the weekly Slashdot stories about some sorry ass committee saying the shuttle might fly, though there is another committe meeting next week at which point maybe it wont. Can we wait until:
A. It launches B. it land safely
and stop the week by week coverage of the pathetic bureaucracy that is today's Shuttle program.
If you want to salvage your faith in American ingenuity and space farering try to catch the Discovery documentary Black Sky: The Race for Space and its sequel, Black Sky: Winning the X Prize. Discover Science ran it a few times in the last few weeks and never tired of watching it over and over. Not sure how it would play with young people but I sure would like to see schools showing it in science classes. Kids with a science and math aptitude and dreams of space travel would probably dig it. Its an interesting and real picture of what its like to work on an engineering team doing something hard and solving hard problems.
I particuarly like the Scaled Composites aero engineer, he had a great sense of humor. He caught a trim problem, in real-time, in the middle of one of the flights that prevented a disaster. He sure looked like he knew his stuff and he designed big parts of SpaceShipOne solo.
He had a line I wish I could quote exactly about how we have all been trained to think we can't do anything amazing any more unless we are part of big government or big business. A key thing The Scaled Composites team wanted to prove is that 20 people working as a close knit team could still do something hard and amazing.
Contrast this with NASA's manned space program, and army of like 10,000 which is squandering billions every year and can't do anything amazing any more, they can't even do things they did 10, 20 and 40 years ago. This is what happens when you take the amazing Apollo team and turn it in to an entrenched bureaucracy, a jobs program, and corprate welfare for Boeing and Lockheed. Its an institution just trying to preserve itself and its tax payer funding and not do anything amazing any more.
News at 11, a big corporation makes campaign contributions to insure they gain influence in Washington.
Breaking news, a major scandal has been unearthed, a big corpooration pays lobbiests with connections to influence politicians.
Geez, EVERY big company does EXACTLY the same thing, look at all the companies on the list in the article that gave more money than Microsoft did, like AOL Time Warner. The only amazing thing about Microsoft is they didn't do it much until the antitrust suite and Congress became active in drafting legislation that directrly impacts their business.
The only plus I can see in their/. submission is thanks to all the Gates/Linux catch phrases maybe some number of geeks will be enlightened that their supposed representative Democracy was in fact sold to the highest bidder like a century or two ago.
This whole submission is a case of taking a somewhat interesting article on politics and business as usual(a.k.a sleezy) and bending it so its certain to make it to the Slashdot front page using certain to succeed hot button catch phrases.
Its mildly interesting that there may be a link between Microsoft, Preston Gates and Abramoff but I assure you there are a LOT of politicians and firms that are going to have sleeze splattered on them thanks to Abramoff now that he's been publicly tagged as a sleeze and a crook, something most insiders have known for a long time.
Its interesting Melinda Gates is on the board of the Washington post but ALL boards are incestuous dens of influence peddaling between the rich and powerful.
Because its called a loss leader not dumping. They are selling something at a loss in order to make a profit later when they take a cut out of the games sold for their console. All game console makers do it because if they make the upfront cost to high people(especially families) wont be able to justify buying it and the whole thing craters. In the end customers still pay for the full price of the hardware though its dribbled out over time in an extra cost tacked on to the games, which people don't notice as much.
To be honest I am no fan of game consoles, especially when they are up at the $400 price point. You are spending a lot of money for something with very limited capability when you could buy a real PC for nearly the same price that can do a lot of other things too. They also usually have a feeble CPU and game developers have to tear their hair out to optimize their games and that it tends to result in games that are a lot less interesting than they could have been on a PC with some CPU power. And there is a huge lock in associated with a console, only one manufacturer and we rant about that when Apple does it. Not sure why its OK for game consoles.
PC games and PC's to run games whether it be Windows based or Linux based using WINE is a much better way to go.
"There would be no starvation or stealing of food as long as production sufficient for the population is maintained."
Production isn't the problem so much as distribution. Though production is the problem too for anything non trivial to make, and that needs to be made on a large scale to satisfy the demand from hundreds of millions to billions of people.
"Where is it written that this production must controlled by a select few?"
The problem is without an economy people are probably not going to build the rather expensive infrastructure needed for things like oil refining, automobile manufacturing or developing all these wonderful CPU's we run now which cost billions to develop and fab. You are unlikely to get any new advanced products or infrastructure in a world without an economy. I imagine people could hand build cars and computers but they would be few in number, expensive and highly variable in quality and performance.
"The problem is when the system permits them to go WAY beyond what they need. Nobody in the U.S. today needs a billion dollars."
You miss the point that greed is the main motivator for people to do anything beyond susbsistence living. Is it a corrosive and destructive force, sure, but without it you wouldn't have most of the non trivial things you take for granted today.
I really think you should be teleported into the utopia you are seeking so we could see how long you would last. The first most obvious thing you would be missing is your computer, and the telecom infrastructure that connects you to the Internet, allowing us to have this discussion.
A lot of people long for the simple life our forefathers led. My family is not far removed from it, my grandparents were pioneers in a remote part of the West. My dad can tell you stories about what life was like in the 1930's in the middle of no where. It wasn't a bad life, it had a lot of really positive qualities, but it was a really hard life, as in it was really easy to be on the edge of starvation if you didn't work really hard or misfortune struck, as in crop failure, the weather was bad, or the economy collapsed in the depression.
Most spoiled urban and suburban dwellers would crater if they had to go back to it. I've seen a few who move out here in order to go back to the simple subsistence life, some make it, most dont, the ones who make it usually cheat and indulge liberally in the modern economy, including working for a wage to make ends meet.
The only problem is you didn't have 6 billion people and giant cities when we were hunters and gatherers. I really doubt you could jump back to a barter economy without economic devestation and mass starvation. Communes work great on a small scale. They would be a bloody bitch to make work on the scale they would have work to support the Earth's current massive population. Of course maybe a mass die off of surplus humans might not be a bad thing.
I am confident people who live on farms would do OK if the economy disappeared over night, as long as they are well armed. Not having fuel for the farm equipment would be a bitch but they could survive on gardening and a lot of back breaking work. All the people in the cities would be screwed, which is why all the farmers would need to be well armed, to drive off all the starving city dwellers trying to steal food.
Hate to break it to you but all the people bartering goods in your economy would end up doing pretty much the same thing Sam Walton did when he owned his first five and dime, collecting all the things people need in once place so they dont have to wander from place to place searching for someone who had what they needed to barter with.
Slashdot Mirror
Well its cool if you are trying to win at the religion game. To become a winner in the religion game you need to maximize the number of warm bodies in your flock, and hopefully in turn the amount of land they control, and their wealth, and in a representative democracy the number of votes they cast.
The papacy may have their panties in a twist over the sanctity of sperm and DNA but its more likely the ulterior motive is that they want good Catholic families to all have 10+ children. They want a women to bear a child every year throughout the child bearing years of the mother. I guess they could just abstain from sex to avoid that result, like many husbands are going to stand for that.
Being a minority religion in a particular country or region is usually bad, you face discrimionation and have very limited power over the general affairs of the region. Catholics, Islam and Mormons all promote prolific breeding which is why Cathlocs and Islam are two of the worlds dominant religions. Mormons are a fast growing thanks to prolific breeding and prosletyzing. Modern society's taboo against marriage and sex with girls under the age of 18 does in fact severly hinder population growth which is why throwback Mormons still do it along with polygamy.
Needless to say in a world bursting at the seams, the fact that relgions still compell their flock to maximize population growth is certain to eventually spell doom for the planet. Eventually we are going to run out of space, water, food, eregy, we will have deforested the planet, and fished the oceans in to extinction.
As much time as Catholic theolgians spend thinking grand thoughts about the proper way for people to live you think they would have grasped by now that:
- overpopulation is bad
- wars over religion are bad and its a leading cause for wars, especially as religions compete for living space and power over that space
- celebacy among priests is bad because it turns them many of them in to sexual time bombs. Perhaps celibacy is a contributor to their thinking on trying compell their flock to abstain outside of marriage for the purpose of breeding.
You think they might have realized AIDS is bad too, since its crashing the size of their flock in places like Africa, but the more sinister religious fanatics view AIDS as a way to punish and dispose of sinners, and to compell abstinance and monogomy.
You do have to remember that Catholicism and Islam are not particularly old religions and they started from nearly zero and have grown to over a billion members each in one and two millenia. Maximizing population growth a thousand years ago was a really smart idea for them. Today, not so smart, but they are so mired in tradition and the past they haven't grasped that the population explosion is going to eventually wipe the planet. Well it is smart, in fact necessary unless all religions stop the breeding contest at the same time. If one relgions approves birth control and the other doesn't, its akin to unilateral disarmament.
Protestants are kind of funny. They did break with the Catholic church and they broke out of some of its ruts. Many protestant demoninations are cool with birth control, though you see signs that the fundementalists and born agains have realized they are being out bred by Catholics and Muslims so are returning to favoring locking their women in the home and compelling them to breed at higher rates. If they dont the Protestants are going to be toppled from power and dominance. For example in the U.S. the huge influx of Catholics as legal and illegal immigrants, and who in turn breed prolificly once in the U.S. are eventually going to push WASP's out of power with sheer numbers. They already are in places like California and Colorado. It appears its only a matter of time before Catholics will be the dominant sect in the U.S and already are throughout the rest of the Western Hemisphere. That must be giving the born agains, currently in power in the U.S., something to think about. They need to close the borders to the flood of Catholics, but that would deprive them of the cheap labor they need for their factories, farms and janitorial work. What to do....
I'm so happy for your wife, but this isn't really the dynamic behind mandatory and uncompensated overtime.
Productivity gains in labor statistics, especially for workers are almost always tied to making people work more hours for less money, it can be just more hours, just less money or both. The classic example is you lay off a percentage of your work force every year and each year the people who survive have to do more and more work to compensate for their fallen bretheren. They are also motivated to work harder to avoid the next round of layoffs, though if you do this enough it eventually devestates morale, everyone starts praying to get laid off and get the comp package, and it destroys the company. The exec who initiates the annual layoffs often look like a superstar for the improved productivity and profitibility, or at least decresaded losses, as long as they bail before the company implodes.
You wife's boss sounds like an exception. If your wife is super productive great for her but in most high tech sweatshops she would still be compelled to improve her productivity each year, year in and out and eventually she will be pushed in to large amounts of uncompensated overtime, the more productive she the more work will eventually be piled on her. How many years has she been in this position?
You are also glossing over the rationale for the "death march", the time when a product needs to get out the door and was for whatever reason behind schedule, badly planned, overly ambitious, redesigned and rescoped in the middle or all the way through, or some percentage of management or programmers are just bad at what they do.
In the death march there are more bugs to fix than the staff can possibly fix in the time left on the schedule, and there is a large, and zealous QA staff, finding bugs at or in excess of the rate they can be fixed. Some bugs are futured to try to stay on schedule but you do to much of that and the product ships as bugg crap. The companies bottomline depend on shipping the product in a certain quarter so if the schedule misses the company stock craters.
The one, nearly inevitable, solution is the entire staff is put on 70-80 hours weeks, it doesn't matter if your wife is super productive, and all those salaried programmers ain't gonna get paid overtime for the extra 30-40. If they are lucky they might get some comp time after the product ships when they are completely fried and tettering on the edge of burn out and permenent damage. If they company's execs are enlightened and the product does well they will profit share, and everyone gets stock and bonuses that makes it almost seem worth while. If they are normalthe lion's share of the bonuses land in the pockets of the executives, and the staff will probably be blessed with layoffs or reorganization after they product ships. This encourages them to be grateful to just be happy they still have a job, and be happy that that executive compensation packages now average 400 times that of the average worker versus the 30-40X it was 10-20 years ago. They still have their job so they have the opportunity to repeat the death march as much as once or twice a year.
Your exceptionally productive wife can't just "get her work done" in a death march. As soon as she fixes all the bugs in her queue it will just be refilled.
Bill is also the one that said 640K of memory is all anyone would ever need. He's really not much of a technology visionary, he is just really good at ripping off other peoples stuff and putting it in to ruthless, unpitying production.
Lets just chalk this up as another quote he will have haunting him forever when he has the implants to triple his intelligence, terabytes of memory exapansion, and to give him immortality when his brain is scanned and replaced with one giant implant before it craters form old age. After all if the technology ever arrives to Xerox our brains Bill is likely to be the first one with the cash to pay for the service.
"...failing to stop at a stop light"
.... especially when they can just put cameras at intersections and take a picture of your plate ... and already do.
... and who said innovation was slowing down. I doubt you can stop it now. Maybe innovation is slowing down in major scientific advances to make our lives betterm but innovative application of technology to suffocate us all in the name of "security" is certain to accelerate. (Innovation is certain to continue in the creation of new miracle drugs some of which will do as much or more harm than good, and in particular psychiatric drugs will continue their march towards trying to make everyone behave in a uniform, socially preferred manner). Most people haven't seen it but the one signficant film George Lucas made was THX-1138 because it was presicent. Everything else he did was fluff by comparison.
Pretty unlikley anyone will ever invest the effort necessary to correlate your GPS location to the timing on a stop light
But, there is kind of an innevitable march going on here
There will be video cameras covering every city, small and large, well thats already happened, it just needs to be networked to the authorities, Britain has a big lead there, and computers need to get better an automated checking for socially unaccpetable behavior.
There will be RFID tags in everything, including the ID cards we will soon be forced to carry at all times, so you can be instantly identified in public places, along with everything you are wearing and carrying. Any failure to carry your ID can be flagged too, we'll have face recognition as a backup too. Credit cards and store discount cards already allow backtracking your activities, and everything you buy, if you are ever suspected of a crime. RFID will just expand the tracking to your every move, not just when you buy stuff and allow tracking people that still use cash as rare as they are these days.
GPS devices are going to be put on all children using the now non stop media fixation on a tiny number of kidnappings, murders and sex crimes as justification (Curiously the stories with legs in the media are alays pretty, preferably blonde, girls, ideally from middle to upper class families).
GPS tracking on all cars is pretty much inevitable too. Oh wait its already happening, in case you didn't know, GM is already doing it through OnStar and the amazing thing is people pay handsomely for the priveledge of letting GM know where they are at all times, and letting GM control the locks on your doors, and to kill your engine. I think you get a break on insurance rates to bribe you in to accepting it. Great technology if someone steals your car, but needless to say you should probably avoid an OnStar equipped car if you ever turn to the dark side or need to elude the authorities. People say well I will never be a criminal so why should I mind. They just never stopped to think what happens if their government ever turns on them, you know in to a repressive dictatorship, all this technology can be used against good people who just want their freedom back or want to topple an illegitimate government.
"And irregardless..."
In order to do my duty as a grammar Nazi, irregardless is pretty much a double negative. I think you mean regardless. Saying irregardless means having regard, the "ir' and the "less" canceling each other out. Dictionaries only list it because its so frequently used and sometimes considered a humorous mangling of the English language.
This mauling of the language is a plague and it must be stamped out at every turn, otherwise its going to destroy language as we know it.
"Make up your mind, you can't have it both ways."
If you recall the key reason behind the main desktop fork it was because of licensing. If Trolltech had put Qt under GPL in the beginning it would have drained most of the impetus from Gnome and the world would be a vastly better place. I dearly wish HP or IBM would by Trolltech and put Qt under pure GPL and GTK and Gnome would die a quick death. Linux might have a chance on the desktop if it defragmented. As it is now its just a mess, its a pure headache for users and application developers alike.
Whether the GPL is a hindrance to Linux or not is kind of moot point anyway. The chances Stallman or GNU would change the license on the many importan pieces they control are zero, the chances of Linus changing his are slim, the chances you can get all the other thousands of developers to change theirs, also zero.
So ESR is just stirring shit to no good end. I guess he has to do something to maintain his fame.
"Unlikely that Russian women can turn enough tricks between now and then to pay for it though."
... racist, sexist, petty and immature all in one sentance. Good work. I really hope you don't work for NASA otherwise you are a leading indicate of exactly how far its fallen.
Nice
Uh, no the fears are TOTALLY founded and the GPL is the thing thats stopped it so far. The danger doesn't really go back 20 years. Nobody corprate cared about Linux until like 5 or 10 years ago. Now they do. As soon as you put a BSD license on Linux some company will fork it and "differentiate" it. If someone big does it like HP, IBM, Novell or Red Hat there will be doom in the air.
BSD is failing because its been massively differentiated, its so fragmented it has no critical mass. Why it fragmented is hard to say but the license is a leading candidate. Linux doesn't really need to risk following in their footsteps if the license lead to its niche status.
The Linux desktop is failing because its been fragmented especially between GTK and Qt, Gnome and KDE, and in audio API's. Most users don't want a differentiated OS. They want lots of apps that do what they want and they can count on to work. Differentiation in apps good, in OS bad.
"So why aren't HP, IBM, Novell and Wall Street now making proprietary branches of FreeBSD instead?"
.... THWACK .... the marketing guy is cut off at the knees before he can spawn fragmentation and proprietariness.
If you know how execs and marketeers think, if the opportunity exists to develop proprietary features for Linux that would "differentiate" their product and help them justify selling their flavor for more, and drive sales of their product over their competitors, they will. On Linux all the engineers and lawyers just say, sorry dude you can't make it proprietary becuase its GPL
You would hope companies like HP and IBM learned from their mistakes fragmenting UNIX. While they were busy differentiating, Windows was busy unifying their market and burying UNIX.
The GPL is an important insurance policy to keep companies honest and from backsliding to their old proprietary ways.
Great post. Exactly right.
You ditch the GPL and Linux will fragment just like UNIX did. Companies like HP, IBM, Novell and the now Wall Street obsessed Red Hat would start doing all their work on proprietary branches in an attempt to gain a competitive advantage and "differentiate" their product which is exactly what all the proprietary Unix flavors did. "Differentiation" was the death knell for proprietary UNIX. They are all dead and dieing due to the fragmentation of resources and applications, while Linux is going strong.
Maybe we don't need ESR any more. Some of his lunatic rants make people nervous about using open source.
And I, for one, welcome our new, rich, net savvy, Chinese overlords......
"Both can operate alone, and both were paid for using US$."
Bullshit. Zarya and Zvezda are the core of the station. The ISS was habitable when they were there along with Unity. America's module Destiny is a lab module, I dont think it is self sufficient.
The key point is the station was operational when Zarya and Zvezda were there and could be again. I don't remember how essential Unity is though I'm sure its handy. Its a simple docking module its not a major achievement.
"If you undocked all the US parts (delivered by the Shuttle) the Russian part would be a pretty cold place as it wouldn't have any power."
Bullshit again. You dont seme to know what you are talking about. Zarya and Zvezda have solar panels. They provided enough to power for those modules to be habitable and operational before any American panels were added. They wouldn't have an abundance of power without the American solar monstrosity, but they would have enough. I wager there will never be enough people or equipment on the ISS to use all the power form those overgrown American panels. There is a Russian power module, NEP, too though I think its sitting on the ground or maybe cancelled.
"It also would lose attitude control eventually because the Russians use propulsive control."
Bullshit again. As long as they refuel it, once in a while, propulsive control will work indefinitely. They worked OK before the inertial system was installed, it work OK on MIR for years. The inertial system is nice since it can use electricty instead of propellent, but both Hubble and ISS have shown this approach still has serious reliability problems. I'd say its a toss up between the two approaches. Its nice to have both if you can afford it.
As I said elswhere it would have to be no strings attached grants, NASA no where in sight, maybe with some incentive clauses and milestones like Ansari X prize.
"I guarantee that in a matter of years his organization will be just as inefficient and bloated as that of the traditional aerospace companies."
I doubt it, its contrary to his nature to go down that path. He likes building air and space craft for the sheer love of it and not because its a welfare check. He hates bureaucracy to the root of his being.
First day you start this project you post Kelly Johnson's rules on the wall and live by them. Kelly did, for the most part, for decades.
Before you start the first rule is the to make the site and the project a bureaucrat and politician free zone other than maybe an inspector general to insure basic fiscal oversight.
Dude you completely don't get it, that is really what you need to fix America's manned space program. Kelly Johnson was exactly like that in fact its Rule #3 of his famous 14 rules:
Rule No. 3
The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10 percent to 25 percent compared to the so-called normal systems).
Adding an army of mediocre warm bodies leads to spiraling costs, and makes schedule slips happen instead of speeding up the schedule. If you dont follow this rule you end up with the bloated bureaucratic pile that is NASA. Kelly built the U-2 and the SR-71 in an amazingly short period of time and on small budgets precisely because he had small teams of very good people and those planes were big leaps forward.
Having said that I really doubt that Burt is quite the primadonna you are painting him as. Melville sure isn't the "best" test pilot in the world. He is a high school drop out with no engineering expertise, and a seat of the pants flier. He was a machinist in Ohio and Burt hired him because he built one of Rutan's kits, flew out to Mojave to show it off and Rutan liked him and his wife. All the people in the Black Sky documentary seemed to be completely fond of and devoted to the Rutan and would go to the end of the earth for him. Melville genuinely gushed about the closeness of their friendship and that he would do ANYTHING for RUtan. There are at least 20 core people on the X Prize team and they all seemed to love Burt, so much for "cant work with 2 people".
The engineer that lead building SpaceShipOne was very young, not exactly a pillar of respectability, and not very experienced when he started. He said a big company wouldn't have given him a chance to do anything like what he was doing there. Rutan seems to have an eye for young talent and willingness to gamble on them.
To put it another way I'm almost postive you wont find any project leader at NASA's politburo that commands the respect and devotion from his team that Rutan does.
Have you worked with him or is this just a new phase of your mud slingling and belittlement campaign against Rutan while you pretend to "respect" him. Its getting old.
I read the CEV RFP. It was a bureaucratic nightmare. The space daily editorial is loopy in spots but it does convey a flavor of how goofy the CEV is going to be. Its more focused on producing mountains of paper and killing trees than on getting people in to space in a reasonable time at a reasonable cost. The paper generation requirements alone are beyond the grasp of any company smaller and less bureaucratic than Lockheed and Boeing. If Burt pissed his pants it was due to the devestation of seeing hopeless bureaucracy in action and especially one in the process of squandering manned space exploration for another decade. Burt isn't exactly young, I doubt he can wait another decade for another manned space vehicle competition to come along when CEV fails.
Maybe I agree with you in one respect, Burt is a realist and it will cost some serious money to build his vehicles to get to LEO and beyond. Since CEV is a writeoff, they have to raise the money on their own and that will be HARD to IMPOSSIBLE. Contrast with NASA who is handed billions of our tax dollars on a platter, year afer year, their track record is one of complete failure since the early seventies, yet the money keeps getting showered on them, decade after decade. That is enough to make any space enthusiast cry.
Lockheed's CEV proposal regurgitation of the their Orbital Space Plane.
As I recall Boeings proposal is an unoriginal attempt to replicate Apollo without the Saturn V. I think it was mostly empty headed artists conceptions as was Lockheeds. Not sure that replicating Apollo wouldn't be a bad idea if we actually want to get back to the moon. Dust off the blue prints, bend the same metal and maybe put in some new computers. More likely to succeed than Lockheed and Boeing's empty headed proposals.
"Actually, I view Burt with great respect"
Geez, now I know you work for NASA, "I view Burt with great respect" though you've been belittling and bashing him every other sentance, because he isn't part of MIGHTY NASA. Whats the matter? Looking in your NASA rear view mirror and seeing a little domestic competition for a change. He has a long way to go but he has one big plus, he is almost universally admired and respected after Voyager and SpaceShipOne. Ordinary people actually know his name. You would be hard pressed to find anyone that knows the name of or will say a kind word about anyone in NASA's manned space ministry.
You just have to hope some Congressman or a President doesn't wake up one day and say to themselves, we've been throwing all this money at NASA and getting nothing for it, maybe we should throw some of it Burt's way just to see what he can do with it. That is the day the Soviet Ministries in Florida and Texas are doomed. We desperately need some like Kelly Johnson to restart the space program and Burt is a LOT like Kelly Johnson. Kelly hate overgrown bureaucracy with a passion too, NASA people seem to love it and that is the sad.
Don't know about those tactics but doing a Google search on IBM lobbyist yields an abundance of matches including this one:
"And IBM's chief lobbyist threatened many European governments with a termination of investment if they did not support software patents"
Personally I've always been amazed that a company can buy a politicians favor for like $3-50K in campaign contribution and get millions or billions of dollars in return out of it, though it sure seems to work. Maybe IBM thought it was a goofy, sleezy practice too and decided to just go for the jugglar with lobbiests and economic threats. Maybe they wanted to sucker people, including employees, with this noble sounding web page about campaign contributions and forgot to mention they still LOVE lobbyists and threatening governments who dont do what they want.
I'm guessing either the EU didn't give IBM the software patents leading to IBM is canning, was it 13,000 Europeans and quitely hiring what was it 14,000 Indians. Does India have software patents, they must?
"Oh, and NASA thanks you for kicking them when they are down."
Oops, forgot this one, NASA's manned space program has been "down" since the early 70's, if we have to wait until the are "up" to kick them then by definiton we will never be able to kick them.
Please note I am carefuly applying all this venom only to NASA's MANNED SPACE PROGRAM. Other parts of the agency do some great work, especially JPL, the great observatory teams, earth monitoring, aeronautics sometimes, etc.
Its just the manned space program that needs to be axed and someone need to start over with a Kelly Johnson style skunkworks, a lean, mean space flight machine. I vote for Burt Rutan as the 21st centry Kelly Johnson, he is sure to be better than any of the bureaucrats in the soviet ministry that is NASA's manned space flight bureau.
Give him NASA's manned space flight budget, and none of the bureaucratic BS and some amazing stuff would happen.
"Comparing scaled $ to NASA $ is like comparing tonka trucks to semis."
Such arrogance, you must work for NASA? Those are my god damn tax dollars your wasting buddy, feeding your ego and not doing much else worthwhile with 'em.
"they are now begging for NASA funds...."
Really how so Thats OK with me though, NASA sure can't do anything useful with my tax dollars I would rather they gave it to Burt than waste it on their welfare program in Florida and Texas.
I know Scaled was going to bid CEV with T/Space before they saw what a bureaucratic cluster fuck it was and that it was rigged so Boeing and Lockheed would win, they always do, its planned that way, so they just said forget it, waste o' time.
"Yes, the Russians are part of the ISS, but if you think they are solely responsible for the last 5 years, you haven't a clue. The Russians would still be flying in itsy-bitsy Salyuts without the miracle that is the Shuttle."
In case you haven't looked at a picture of the ISS and who built what, the core of the station is Russian built(I'm talking built, not who had the money to burn to pay for them). They could undock all the America built parts and the Russians would still have a viable Mir like space station and the Americans would have a pile of space debris. The Russians have had a manned presence in space for like 15 years now versus your puny 5.
Are you just arrogant or dumb. The Russians are still flying in Salyuts and getting in to space because its affordable, relatively safe and reliable, especially compared to the Shuttle. Again dumbass those Salyuts and Progress are the only thing that kept your precious ISS going because the Shuttle is an unreliable deathtrap, not a miracle.
The only miracle about the Shuttle is its a miracle someone thought it was a good idea in the first place, well the idea was good, cheap access to space on a regular basis but the Shuttle met NONE of its promises. Its such a miracle even NASA wants to get rid of them so they stop bleeding the manned space program white and keep it stuck in LEO, along with ISS.
In case you didn't figure it out NASA is probably going back to those itty bitty capsules for CEV, its only going to take them 10 years and billions of dollars to get back to something sane, assuming they dont cancel it or fail like they have every other attempt to replace the shuttle.
"Just remember, it's my sacred 5 year manned presence and your 10 second joy ride with burt."
I'll take Burt hands down. I'm never gonna make it to the ISS, Burt maybe I have a chance to at least get in to space for a reasonable price. NASA has had their chance, they've failed, we are never going to get ordinary people in to space or get out of LEO again if its left to NASA.
Not to mention the ISS is a 100+ billion dollar hole in space with no obvious purpose. I assure you it wont last another 10 years, it will be lucky if its even finished and lasts 5 because even NASA has figured out what a mistake it was and they are going to cut their losses in a vain attempt to pay for CEV, the Moon and Mars which they will never reach.
Lets look at the record for flights putting men in to what is strictly defined as space in the last 2 and half years:
Scaled Composites = 3 if I remember correctly
NASA = 0 of this I am sure
Record for fatal accidents in the last 3 years:
Scaled composites = 0
NASA = 1
How much did NASA spend on manned space flight over this period? Not sure anyone knows but its probably like $10-20 billion, Scaled composites spent like $20-30 million.
Who broke the 40 year old altitude record for an aero launched vehicle, Scaled Composites, not NASA.
How many new manned rate vehicles capable of reaching space has NASA designed in the last 30 years, zero. Scaled composites has 1 new design and at least 1 more in the pipe. There is an oribital vehicle on Rutan's drawing board.
"Compare that to a continual human presence in space for almost 5 years."
Yo, dumb ass, the Russians are the ones that have maintained that presence for the last 2 1/2 years. Without them the crew that was in the ISS when Columbia crashed would be dead because the U.S. has had no capability to launch men in to space or get them back for the last 2 1/2 years. It will be 10 years, and billions of dollars, before there is even a remote chance of a new manned rated spacecraft from NASA, the CEV, if it ever gets built. The Shuttle is going to be retired long before then most probably around 2010, so NASA will most probably be unable to launch a man in to space or to the ISS for like 5 years from 2010 to 2015, assuming CEV doesn't slip which it WILL. So if your sacred manned presence is to be maintained then the Russians, Chinese, Indians, Europeans or Japanese will have to service it.
"But for you ignorance is bliss."
Don't think that describes my attitude. I KNOW quite well that this is standard practice in Washington so I'm not ignorant of the issue.
I just think that this submission and the article it points to is sensationalist attempt to make out like this is some kind of scandal, and like maybe someone should go to jail for a grand conspiracy.
I think all of the "evidence" in the article are public records, lobbying registration and campaign contributions. There isn't anything remotely illegal about anything Microsoft, Mr. and Mrs. Gates did here that I can see. They are playing the government game by the rules our government created for the game. SO WHAT. Maybe Abramoff will go to jail, but only if his powerful friends decide to let him swing. Maybe a few people will get taken down with him. Microsoft and the Gates family wont get a scratch.
I'm all for changing the rules and people seizing control of their government from the corrupt politicians (which is pretty much all of them or at least all the successful ones), big campaign contributors, corporations and lobbiest. Chance of it happening in the U.S. are nearly zero because %99.9 of the American people have no clue, could care less or if they do understand the problem and care aren't gonna rock the bock trying to change it. That leaves 0.1% who understand, care and are willing to do something about it and they will be swatted like a bug or will be locked up in rubber rooms.
Gotta say this first, enough with the weekly Slashdot stories about some sorry ass committee saying the shuttle might fly, though there is another committe meeting next week at which point maybe it wont. Can we wait until:
A. It launches
B. it land safely
and stop the week by week coverage of the pathetic bureaucracy that is today's Shuttle program.
If you want to salvage your faith in American ingenuity and space farering try to catch the Discovery documentary Black Sky: The Race for Space and its sequel, Black Sky: Winning the X Prize. Discover Science ran it a few times in the last few weeks and never tired of watching it over and over. Not sure how it would play with young people but I sure would like to see schools showing it in science classes. Kids with a science and math aptitude and dreams of space travel would probably dig it. Its an interesting and real picture of what its like to work on an engineering team doing something hard and solving hard problems.
I particuarly like the Scaled Composites aero engineer, he had a great sense of humor. He caught a trim problem, in real-time, in the middle of one of the flights that prevented a disaster. He sure looked like he knew his stuff and he designed big parts of SpaceShipOne solo.
He had a line I wish I could quote exactly about how we have all been trained to think we can't do anything amazing any more unless we are part of big government or big business. A key thing The Scaled Composites team wanted to prove is that 20 people working as a close knit team could still do something hard and amazing.
Contrast this with NASA's manned space program, and army of like 10,000 which is squandering billions every year and can't do anything amazing any more, they can't even do things they did 10, 20 and 40 years ago. This is what happens when you take the amazing Apollo team and turn it in to an entrenched bureaucracy, a jobs program, and corprate welfare for Boeing and Lockheed. Its an institution just trying to preserve itself and its tax payer funding and not do anything amazing any more.
GO SCALED COMPOSITES!!!
News at 11, a big corporation makes campaign contributions to insure they gain influence in Washington.
/. submission is thanks to all the Gates/Linux catch phrases maybe some number of geeks will be enlightened that their supposed representative Democracy was in fact sold to the highest bidder like a century or two ago.
Breaking news, a major scandal has been unearthed, a big corpooration pays lobbiests with connections to influence politicians.
Geez, EVERY big company does EXACTLY the same thing, look at all the companies on the list in the article that gave more money than Microsoft did, like AOL Time Warner. The only amazing thing about Microsoft is they didn't do it much until the antitrust suite and Congress became active in drafting legislation that directrly impacts their business.
The only plus I can see in their
This whole submission is a case of taking a somewhat interesting article on politics and business as usual(a.k.a sleezy) and bending it so its certain to make it to the Slashdot front page using certain to succeed hot button catch phrases.
Its mildly interesting that there may be a link between Microsoft, Preston Gates and Abramoff but I assure you there are a LOT of politicians and firms that are going to have sleeze splattered on them thanks to Abramoff now that he's been publicly tagged as a sleeze and a crook, something most insiders have known for a long time.
Its interesting Melinda Gates is on the board of the Washington post but ALL boards are incestuous dens of influence peddaling between the rich and powerful.
But really, nothing to see here....move along.
Because its called a loss leader not dumping. They are selling something at a loss in order to make a profit later when they take a cut out of the games sold for their console. All game console makers do it because if they make the upfront cost to high people(especially families) wont be able to justify buying it and the whole thing craters. In the end customers still pay for the full price of the hardware though its dribbled out over time in an extra cost tacked on to the games, which people don't notice as much.
To be honest I am no fan of game consoles, especially when they are up at the $400 price point. You are spending a lot of money for something with very limited capability when you could buy a real PC for nearly the same price that can do a lot of other things too. They also usually have a feeble CPU and game developers have to tear their hair out to optimize their games and that it tends to result in games that are a lot less interesting than they could have been on a PC with some CPU power. And there is a huge lock in associated with a console, only one manufacturer and we rant about that when Apple does it. Not sure why its OK for game consoles.
PC games and PC's to run games whether it be Windows based or Linux based using WINE is a much better way to go.
"There would be no starvation or stealing of food as long as production sufficient for the population is maintained."
Production isn't the problem so much as distribution. Though production is the problem too for anything non trivial to make, and that needs to be made on a large scale to satisfy the demand from hundreds of millions to billions of people.
"Where is it written that this production must controlled by a select few?"
The problem is without an economy people are probably not going to build the rather expensive infrastructure needed for things like oil refining, automobile manufacturing or developing all these wonderful CPU's we run now which cost billions to develop and fab. You are unlikely to get any new advanced products or infrastructure in a world without an economy. I imagine people could hand build cars and computers but they would be few in number, expensive and highly variable in quality and performance.
"The problem is when the system permits them to go WAY beyond what they need. Nobody in the U.S. today needs a billion dollars."
You miss the point that greed is the main motivator for people to do anything beyond susbsistence living. Is it a corrosive and destructive force, sure, but without it you wouldn't have most of the non trivial things you take for granted today.
I really think you should be teleported into the utopia you are seeking so we could see how long you would last. The first most obvious thing you would be missing is your computer, and the telecom infrastructure that connects you to the Internet, allowing us to have this discussion.
A lot of people long for the simple life our forefathers led. My family is not far removed from it, my grandparents were pioneers in a remote part of the West. My dad can tell you stories about what life was like in the 1930's in the middle of no where. It wasn't a bad life, it had a lot of really positive qualities, but it was a really hard life, as in it was really easy to be on the edge of starvation if you didn't work really hard or misfortune struck, as in crop failure, the weather was bad, or the economy collapsed in the depression.
Most spoiled urban and suburban dwellers would crater if they had to go back to it. I've seen a few who move out here in order to go back to the simple subsistence life, some make it, most dont, the ones who make it usually cheat and indulge liberally in the modern economy, including working for a wage to make ends meet.
The only problem is you didn't have 6 billion people and giant cities when we were hunters and gatherers. I really doubt you could jump back to a barter economy without economic devestation and mass starvation. Communes work great on a small scale. They would be a bloody bitch to make work on the scale they would have work to support the Earth's current massive population. Of course maybe a mass die off of surplus humans might not be a bad thing.
I am confident people who live on farms would do OK if the economy disappeared over night, as long as they are well armed. Not having fuel for the farm equipment would be a bitch but they could survive on gardening and a lot of back breaking work. All the people in the cities would be screwed, which is why all the farmers would need to be well armed, to drive off all the starving city dwellers trying to steal food.
Hate to break it to you but all the people bartering goods in your economy would end up doing pretty much the same thing Sam Walton did when he owned his first five and dime, collecting all the things people need in once place so they dont have to wander from place to place searching for someone who had what they needed to barter with.