My friend's late-'70s Honda Accord got over 40 mpg. Road salt in Michigan ate the door post out so badly that after a few years she had to push up on the roof in order to close the driver's door.
Back in 1999 my boss hung up the phone after several minutes of yelling at her kid. She sighed and said, "Remember Brian, when we were kids and they told us that in the year 2000 everyone would have phones where they could see the other person?"
I agreed that yes, I did remember that. I said that with MSN Messenger and some of the other new software we were actually getting pretty close.
She said, "I don't so much want to see the other person, as I want to be able to reach through and SLAP them!" The inventor of that will be be a gizillionaire overnight.
for a great many years it was actually illegal for private individuals to even try
You really have convinced yourself of that, haven't you? I rather wonder if you realize that there are other countries on this planet besides the Untied States.
NASA would be happy with either scenario, but with the current crop of clowns in DC it doesn't sound like either one is likely. If it's not making tons of money for the banks or weapons industries then it's not on the budgetary horizon.
Benghazi is a great example of the wonders of the free market system. US Marines used to guard embassies, and in problematic countries like Libya consulates as well. When a crowd attacks a team of Marines the next thing that happens is a fleet of helicopters from the closest US military base or Navy squadron appears, full of heavily armed and extremely pissed off rednecks. When a crowd attacks a team of "private security contractors" (a.k.a. mercenaries) their supervisor has to decide who he can call in to do overtime.
Of course Musk has the advantage that SpaceX doesn't have to invent the cryogenic storage systems, rocket nozzles, turbopumps, guidance systems, stabilization systems, heat shields, composite materials, metallurgical alloys, etc., etc. NASA and US taxpayers have already done all the hard work for him over the last half a century. SpaceX isn't building revolutionary technology, they're building evolutionary technology, the sort of thing NASA would have been doing by the end of the 1980s if Ronnie Raygun and his band of bozos hadn't gotten in the way.
Compared to being left the fuck alone, rather than have death squads and dictators imposed on their countries for the benefit of United Fruit, Bank of America, Exxon, Colt, etc. Over 100,000 confirmed dead in the tiny countries of Central America alone during the 1980s, their entire society has been destroyed and will never recover.
Civil war? Not likely under the current circumstances. As long as Netflix and the X-Box networks are still up, anyway. Economic collapse? That's a more likely scenario for civil unrest.
Interestingly enough, the US didn't bother to charge the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange when he flew to the Colombian jungles to solicit the FARC's business. Instead Grassley got the largest bonus of any NYSE president in history. I suppose the FARC has to have some way to launder its money in order to be able to pay Bout and his kind.
Actually your statement is quite incorrect anyway. Of all the major food sources used by humans only yucca/cassava grows well under jungle-type conditions, and to a lesser extent rice. Corn, wheat, rye, barley, potatoes, and sweet potatoes all do very poorly if they grow at all, and only a few varieties of yams do well.
Explain how, in any world, barring only extremely unlikely events (money through gambling), a person who does not try, gets ahead.
Paris Hilton. 'Nuff said.
I will guarantee that every illegal immigrant picking strawberries in a field is 'trying harder' to get ahead today than any heir of Sam Walton. Hard work and effort means almost nothing in our modern economy, connections and an utter lack of morality are the keys to getting rich today.
The Chinese economy and its infrastructure expansion is several times the size of England's. Take the various British infrastructure fiascoes and multiply by many, many times and then see how the numbers compare.
You're not going to get much sympathy from me, I consider mercenaries to be the only life forms on this planet more contemptible than weapons dealers. OTRAG management was knowingly selling technology that was easily convertible to ballistic missiles to countries that they knew were going to use it for exactly that. I personally don't think that Blackwater or DynCorp should be "allowed to actually be a private company" either.
Nah, just pointing out the hypocrisy of neo-cons who thought it was abominable that anyone would object to Palin doing it, but now shriek that Learner should be imprisoned for doing the same thing. No idea if you're in that group, but most of the posters in other forums that bother bringing her up are.
It was illegal for ANY American company to sell computers to the USSR too, so IBM built a factory in Tacna, Peru under a shell company and sold them as many computers as they could come up with the cash for.
I pulled France, Japan, Ecuador and Tahiti out of thin air. Any country with a moderately well educated populace could have fostered a private space industry, the same as they fostered private electronics and automobile industries. Anywhere near the equator could serve as a launching point. OTRAG failed because of extraordinarily questionable management decisions, such as choosing one of the nastiest dictatorships on the planet for a launch site and selling easily-convertible technology to the highest bidder. I remember being enthusiastic about OTRAG when it first appeared, but it very quickly became apparent that it wasn't an organization that was less interested in pioneering private space flight than it was in enriching its management team.
It was ILLEGAL to build and launch a private space craft in the 60's, 70's, and early 80'sin the United States
FTFY. Any private company could have built its space craft in France or Japan and launched it from Ecuador or Tahiti. Not surprisingly none did. Not because it was illegal to build them in the United States, but because the research and development necessary for a private company to succeed hadn't been completed yet by the US and Soviet governments and handed to them on a silver platter. Robert Goddard would have loved to work with a private company to develop and build rockets, and so would Werner Von Braun and Sergei Korilev. They couldn't though, and had to rely on governments throughout their careers because the time necessary for the ROI is too long for any industrialist to be able to keep shareholders happy.
SpaceX has developed its own rocket engines, but they're evolutionary not revolutionary.
It is not challenged that the brain needs some time to recover from a stoned weekend. And by time I do not mean a day.
I'll challenge it. I can drink three beers on Saturday night,and still feel like crap at noon on Sunday. I can spend the entire weekend stoned, stop smoking about 10:00 Sunday night, and function perfectly well Monday without any noticeable effect except to be a little more relaxed than most Mondays.
For some, the funny voices you could hear when really stoned do not go away
If they're hearing voices it has nothing to do with marijuana. That's not one of the effects of being stoned on pot. If they're hearing voices it's because they're schizophrenic. Their voices are there all the time, perhaps when they're stoned they're just a little more relaxed or curious and start listening.
"heavy young users" of which drugs? If they're in a clinic it's probably because they have a multiple-drug problem, they're hardly a good representative sample of marijuana smokers.
No, nor for when Antarctica rebounds. It's such a slow process that i don't think it will make much difference unless you're looking at it on a time scale of centuries.
When the original OLPC came out (I did manage to get one during G1G1) everyone had been laughing at the concept of a sub-$200 laptop even being possible, much less usable. The entire netbook/chromebook market segment exists because it was pioneered by OLPC. I'm glad to see that they're porting Sugar to Android, but I wonder if the tablets are going to be as robust as the laptops have been. Hopefully they'll be field serviceable, the way that thousands of kids all over the world are servicing OLPCs in their areas.
Last year my sister-in-law in Peru finally retired the Windows 95 laptop that we gave her in 2001, when we gave her a new laptop. My niece is still using the second-hand laptop that we gave her in 2006. IOW, they'll last a frack of a lot longer there than they would here, people will treat them with care because they're (comparatively) expensive and important.
Slashdot Mirror
My friend's late-'70s Honda Accord got over 40 mpg. Road salt in Michigan ate the door post out so badly that after a few years she had to push up on the roof in order to close the driver's door.
Back in 1999 my boss hung up the phone after several minutes of yelling at her kid. She sighed and said, "Remember Brian, when we were kids and they told us that in the year 2000 everyone would have phones where they could see the other person?"
I agreed that yes, I did remember that. I said that with MSN Messenger and some of the other new software we were actually getting pretty close.
She said, "I don't so much want to see the other person, as I want to be able to reach through and SLAP them!" The inventor of that will be be a gizillionaire overnight.
for a great many years it was actually illegal for private individuals to even try
You really have convinced yourself of that, haven't you? I rather wonder if you realize that there are other countries on this planet besides the Untied States.
NASA would be happy with either scenario, but with the current crop of clowns in DC it doesn't sound like either one is likely. If it's not making tons of money for the banks or weapons industries then it's not on the budgetary horizon.
Benghazi is a great example of the wonders of the free market system. US Marines used to guard embassies, and in problematic countries like Libya consulates as well. When a crowd attacks a team of Marines the next thing that happens is a fleet of helicopters from the closest US military base or Navy squadron appears, full of heavily armed and extremely pissed off rednecks. When a crowd attacks a team of "private security contractors" (a.k.a. mercenaries) their supervisor has to decide who he can call in to do overtime.
Of course Musk has the advantage that SpaceX doesn't have to invent the cryogenic storage systems, rocket nozzles, turbopumps, guidance systems, stabilization systems, heat shields, composite materials, metallurgical alloys, etc., etc. NASA and US taxpayers have already done all the hard work for him over the last half a century. SpaceX isn't building revolutionary technology, they're building evolutionary technology, the sort of thing NASA would have been doing by the end of the 1980s if Ronnie Raygun and his band of bozos hadn't gotten in the way.
Compared to being left the fuck alone, rather than have death squads and dictators imposed on their countries for the benefit of United Fruit, Bank of America, Exxon, Colt, etc. Over 100,000 confirmed dead in the tiny countries of Central America alone during the 1980s, their entire society has been destroyed and will never recover.
Civil war? Not likely under the current circumstances. As long as Netflix and the X-Box networks are still up, anyway. Economic collapse? That's a more likely scenario for civil unrest.
Interestingly enough, the US didn't bother to charge the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange when he flew to the Colombian jungles to solicit the FARC's business. Instead Grassley got the largest bonus of any NYSE president in history. I suppose the FARC has to have some way to launder its money in order to be able to pay Bout and his kind.
jungles grow everything in abundance
Corollary: deserts grow nothing in abundance.
Actually your statement is quite incorrect anyway. Of all the major food sources used by humans only yucca/cassava grows well under jungle-type conditions, and to a lesser extent rice. Corn, wheat, rye, barley, potatoes, and sweet potatoes all do very poorly if they grow at all, and only a few varieties of yams do well.
Are you suggesting that the fossil fuel companies are headed by aliens? That would explain an awful lot . . .
Explain how, in any world, barring only extremely unlikely events (money through gambling), a person who does not try, gets ahead.
Paris Hilton. 'Nuff said.
I will guarantee that every illegal immigrant picking strawberries in a field is 'trying harder' to get ahead today than any heir of Sam Walton. Hard work and effort means almost nothing in our modern economy, connections and an utter lack of morality are the keys to getting rich today.
The Chinese economy and its infrastructure expansion is several times the size of England's. Take the various British infrastructure fiascoes and multiply by many, many times and then see how the numbers compare.
You're not going to get much sympathy from me, I consider mercenaries to be the only life forms on this planet more contemptible than weapons dealers. OTRAG management was knowingly selling technology that was easily convertible to ballistic missiles to countries that they knew were going to use it for exactly that. I personally don't think that Blackwater or DynCorp should be "allowed to actually be a private company" either.
Nah, just pointing out the hypocrisy of neo-cons who thought it was abominable that anyone would object to Palin doing it, but now shriek that Learner should be imprisoned for doing the same thing. No idea if you're in that group, but most of the posters in other forums that bother bringing her up are.
It was all right when Sarah Palin did it though, wasn't it?
Would have thought they'd have gotten the message when Sarah Palin let her Yahoo mail get out into the wild. Guess not.
It was illegal for ANY American company to sell computers to the USSR too, so IBM built a factory in Tacna, Peru under a shell company and sold them as many computers as they could come up with the cash for.
I pulled France, Japan, Ecuador and Tahiti out of thin air. Any country with a moderately well educated populace could have fostered a private space industry, the same as they fostered private electronics and automobile industries. Anywhere near the equator could serve as a launching point. OTRAG failed because of extraordinarily questionable management decisions, such as choosing one of the nastiest dictatorships on the planet for a launch site and selling easily-convertible technology to the highest bidder. I remember being enthusiastic about OTRAG when it first appeared, but it very quickly became apparent that it wasn't an organization that was less interested in pioneering private space flight than it was in enriching its management team.
NASA had a government granted monopoly on space flight IN THE UNITED STATES
Oh, that's right, this is the only country in the world. I forgot.
It was ILLEGAL to build and launch a private space craft in the 60's, 70's, and early 80's in the United States
FTFY. Any private company could have built its space craft in France or Japan and launched it from Ecuador or Tahiti. Not surprisingly none did. Not because it was illegal to build them in the United States, but because the research and development necessary for a private company to succeed hadn't been completed yet by the US and Soviet governments and handed to them on a silver platter. Robert Goddard would have loved to work with a private company to develop and build rockets, and so would Werner Von Braun and Sergei Korilev. They couldn't though, and had to rely on governments throughout their careers because the time necessary for the ROI is too long for any industrialist to be able to keep shareholders happy.
SpaceX has developed its own rocket engines, but they're evolutionary not revolutionary.
It is not challenged that the brain needs some time to recover from a stoned weekend. And by time I do not mean a day.
I'll challenge it. I can drink three beers on Saturday night,and still feel like crap at noon on Sunday. I can spend the entire weekend stoned, stop smoking about 10:00 Sunday night, and function perfectly well Monday without any noticeable effect except to be a little more relaxed than most Mondays.
For some, the funny voices you could hear when really stoned do not go away
If they're hearing voices it has nothing to do with marijuana. That's not one of the effects of being stoned on pot. If they're hearing voices it's because they're schizophrenic. Their voices are there all the time, perhaps when they're stoned they're just a little more relaxed or curious and start listening.
"heavy young users" of which drugs? If they're in a clinic it's probably because they have a multiple-drug problem, they're hardly a good representative sample of marijuana smokers.
No, nor for when Antarctica rebounds. It's such a slow process that i don't think it will make much difference unless you're looking at it on a time scale of centuries.
When the original OLPC came out (I did manage to get one during G1G1) everyone had been laughing at the concept of a sub-$200 laptop even being possible, much less usable. The entire netbook/chromebook market segment exists because it was pioneered by OLPC. I'm glad to see that they're porting Sugar to Android, but I wonder if the tablets are going to be as robust as the laptops have been. Hopefully they'll be field serviceable, the way that thousands of kids all over the world are servicing OLPCs in their areas.
Last year my sister-in-law in Peru finally retired the Windows 95 laptop that we gave her in 2001, when we gave her a new laptop. My niece is still using the second-hand laptop that we gave her in 2006. IOW, they'll last a frack of a lot longer there than they would here, people will treat them with care because they're (comparatively) expensive and important.