I totally agree with you there - we could have just nuked Iraq for much less than 10% of our current expenditures, without the loss of a single American life. I think that would be horrible, and totally wrong to do, but more effective and cheaper.
At the risk of sounding crass, I wonder if those Iraqi fighters realize the price we've paid in American lives and dollars to protect their civilian populations.
The whole thing is just so frustrating, because our businesses are getting taxed into oblivion to subsidise the military jobs program. I think some old-fashioned ingenuity and greater cost controls would benefit the productivity and effectiveness of our armed forces.
My friend is part of an armored brigade in the army, getting ready to be deployed the second time over there. They lack basic policing equipment such as battering rams for doors, but they are required to sweep houses periodically and search for people.
The US defense budget is totally messed up, lobbiests from Lockheed and other Star Wars companies sap away funding that should be spent on improved pay and equipment for the soldiers on the ground to do their job better.
I live in a country with a 300 billion dollar annual PEACETIME military budget, and they can't locate an accidentally dropped nuclear bomb in 12 feet of water to recover it?
Instead, a hobbiest treasure hunter with a civilian boat and a WalMart geiger counter has to do the job for them and send the US military a GPS point.
That makes me sick to my stomach, no wonder we can't find Osama or WMD's.
Tell me again who's the real winner when it takes a 5 billion dollar nuclear aircraft carrier to deploy a 20 million dollar plane flown by a pilot with a million dollar education, dropping a ten thousand dollar bomb just to kill some Iraqi kid hiding in a hole with a $20 russian surplus rifle?
This to me is symbolic of everything that's wrong with our bloated defense budget.
This never occured to me before, but I wonder if anyone has ever looked into insuring the shuttle against natural disaster?
The cost of such a coverage would probably be on par with terrorism insurance for the olympics, but it would be interesting to see how the policy got written.
I'm pretty sure the dollar value is probably too high for a private insurance company, but it's an interesting speculative exercise. Anyone work for a big reinsurance company and want to comment?
The only reason I have Messenger installed on all my computers is to give me a popup when I have a new message in my hotmail account.
If google can popularize Gmail enough, and integrate it with their messenger service, I can see alot of people switching over.
Triple points if they could get it to work with the other messenger services seamlessly. I would rather have one client, and be able to talk to everyone. Although there are probably some legal/technical issues to prevent this from working properly, it would definitely give me incentive to switch to an all-google solution for my personal communications.
Quadruple points if Google bought Vonage or a VoIP company and integrated everything seamlessly. That would be cool, but a little scary.
Hey, if every Republican on Slashdot chipped in a buck, we could provide a $200 purse for the first person to put a pic of Monica Lewinski on the Jumbotron.
Joe Trippi--heralded on the cover of The New Republic as the man who "reinvented campaigning"--was born in California and began his political career working on Edward M. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1980. His work in presidential politics continued with the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean.
He's got quite a bit of experience as a campaign manager - maybe he just needs to be a little more selective in his employers...
Hi all, Thought I'd chime in since SWG stole my life about 3 months ago. It's really fun for me - there's 10 or 15 planets to explore, and really only one or two are sucky. Everything else is interesting. The graphics are good, and the music is excellent. There are interesting loot drops, and many NPC quests you can do (some better than others).
You can join the Empire or the Rebellion - you can wear stormtrooper armor, or you can kill storm troopers. There's lots of dungeons, and a new one that is hard even with a group of 20 combat masters.
I was a commando/swordsman, two of the most offensive professions in the game. It's pretty fun to be able to explore around and put your skills to the test. Most things are easy to kill at that point, except for the really high end enemies like Nightsister Elders. It took me 10 minutes to kill one, and a bunch of lesser things kept spawning around me when I was about dead. Fun stuff!
The main problem is if you try to start as a crafter. You don't have any money or resources, and you're trying to compete against established businesses with the best resources and millions of dollars.
My advice is to start off as a combat person with novice artisan, scout, and medic - this way you can kill stuff for money, heal yourself, find good quality resources and harvest them from dead enemies, and place your own harvestors to dig metals out of the ground. Save your money, save your resources, and read www.swgcraft.com and forums.station.sony.com/swg to learn your future trade. Once you're sort of well off, then start dropping your combat for your crafting.
If you want to PvP, then become a fencer. Save up lots of money, buy the best food, armor, shield generators, and weapons, and go to town.
Otherwise, there's tons of things to do. You can be a bounty hunter and eventually hunt player jedis, you can find a nice location and build/furnish your own house, you can help new players get started, start your own guild, join someone else's guild, collect every suit of armor and put it in a museum - there's lots of fun stuff to do.
Its not hard, and its not impossible to compete. But, there is a steep learning curve to be one of the top players on your server. Remember you're competing against people who regularly play 4+ hours a day.
If you're thinking of starting an account, join the Gorath server, its the best:P
Erm, most of your cost would come from building the hotel and having a means of transportation to get there. He's talking about doing this already as a core business. The retail cost of sending someone up would be 100k, according to the post. Thus, you could provide a "service to the non-profit scientific community" valued at 100k, but that actually only cost you in the tens of thousands.
Plus, you get the intangibles of good publicity, the attraction of something to do in space besides watch HBO, and otherwise lend legitimacy to your project. I guess to more appropriately word my original post...
From the perspective of the SpaceHotel operator:
1) Is it possible to deduct trips to space given to nonprofit scientific organizations?
2) Is it possible to deduct the cost of the trips at retail price, even though the actual cost is less?
Would it be possible to mount some scientific equipment in it, send scientists up for free occasionally, and write a portion off on the corporate taxes?
Slashdot Mirror
I totally agree with you there - we could have just nuked Iraq for much less than 10% of our current expenditures, without the loss of a single American life. I think that would be horrible, and totally wrong to do, but more effective and cheaper.
At the risk of sounding crass, I wonder if those Iraqi fighters realize the price we've paid in American lives and dollars to protect their civilian populations.
The whole thing is just so frustrating, because our businesses are getting taxed into oblivion to subsidise the military jobs program. I think some old-fashioned ingenuity and greater cost controls would benefit the productivity and effectiveness of our armed forces.
My friend is part of an armored brigade in the army, getting ready to be deployed the second time over there. They lack basic policing equipment such as battering rams for doors, but they are required to sweep houses periodically and search for people.
The US defense budget is totally messed up, lobbiests from Lockheed and other Star Wars companies sap away funding that should be spent on improved pay and equipment for the soldiers on the ground to do their job better.
I live in a country with a 300 billion dollar annual PEACETIME military budget, and they can't locate an accidentally dropped nuclear bomb in 12 feet of water to recover it?
Instead, a hobbiest treasure hunter with a civilian boat and a WalMart geiger counter has to do the job for them and send the US military a GPS point.
That makes me sick to my stomach, no wonder we can't find Osama or WMD's.
Tell me again who's the real winner when it takes a 5 billion dollar nuclear aircraft carrier to deploy a 20 million dollar plane flown by a pilot with a million dollar education, dropping a ten thousand dollar bomb just to kill some Iraqi kid hiding in a hole with a $20 russian surplus rifle?
This to me is symbolic of everything that's wrong with our bloated defense budget.
Vote libertarian!!
Beat Spam By Not Using Email
:)
To avoid viruses and hackers and such, they used to turn off their servers every night when no one was in the office to monitor them...
It wasn't too hard to get an offsite hosting contract though
Not exactly a refinery, but a similar principle to what you are describing...
Who said Linux could not make it in the print world ?
Now, if only they could make it in the printer world!
Stupid drivers... mumble mumble mumble
This never occured to me before, but I wonder if anyone has ever looked into insuring the shuttle against natural disaster?
The cost of such a coverage would probably be on par with terrorism insurance for the olympics, but it would be interesting to see how the policy got written.
I'm pretty sure the dollar value is probably too high for a private insurance company, but it's an interesting speculative exercise. Anyone work for a big reinsurance company and want to comment?
(wonders if Warren Buffet reads slashdot)
Hehe, if I hadn't already posted here you would get modded funny
I'll be downloading this when I escape from work this evening!
Those games look nice, I'm looking forward to checking out your stuff.
It doesn't help the cause that their google ads are 4 or 5 variations on the theme of:
Download Unlimited MP3s,
Music, CDs Movies, Games,
Software and More!
Geez...
about two weeks ago...
Just in case...
google cache
I've been buying all the seasons of Highlander on dvd, between that and the olympics I'm having a pretty good TV week
The only reason I have Messenger installed on all my computers is to give me a popup when I have a new message in my hotmail account.
If google can popularize Gmail enough, and integrate it with their messenger service, I can see alot of people switching over.
Triple points if they could get it to work with the other messenger services seamlessly. I would rather have one client, and be able to talk to everyone. Although there are probably some legal/technical issues to prevent this from working properly, it would definitely give me incentive to switch to an all-google solution for my personal communications.
Quadruple points if Google bought Vonage or a VoIP company and integrated everything seamlessly. That would be cool, but a little scary.
Or a lawyer, I guess...
In real life, Matthew Leingang is Preceptor in Mathematics at Harvard University.
If you're that in real life, what is there to pretend to be on slashdot?
The REAL reason they went out of business is that everyone was burning and distributing illegal copies of their software.
[/joke]
That's funny!
Reference
Hey, if every Republican on Slashdot chipped in a buck, we could provide a $200 purse for the first person to put a pic of Monica Lewinski on the Jumbotron.
Joe Trippi--heralded on the cover of The New Republic as the man who "reinvented campaigning"--was born in California and began his political career working on Edward M. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1980. His work in presidential politics continued with the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean.
He's got quite a bit of experience as a campaign manager - maybe he just needs to be a little more selective in his employers...
Thanks for that link! I've been looking for something like that for awhile.
Cow guts are inhumane...
use NAUGAHYDE instead.
The regular chip runs relatively cool, just as-is. I have one at home, and have never had any problems with it.
Conversely, I have dual xeons at work. I have to run a fan under my desk to keep my feet from sweating.
Hi all,
:P
Thought I'd chime in since SWG stole my life about 3 months ago. It's really fun for me - there's 10 or 15 planets to explore, and really only one or two are sucky. Everything else is interesting. The graphics are good, and the music is excellent. There are interesting loot drops, and many NPC quests you can do (some better than others).
You can join the Empire or the Rebellion - you can wear stormtrooper armor, or you can kill storm troopers. There's lots of dungeons, and a new one that is hard even with a group of 20 combat masters.
I was a commando/swordsman, two of the most offensive professions in the game. It's pretty fun to be able to explore around and put your skills to the test. Most things are easy to kill at that point, except for the really high end enemies like Nightsister Elders. It took me 10 minutes to kill one, and a bunch of lesser things kept spawning around me when I was about dead. Fun stuff!
The main problem is if you try to start as a crafter. You don't have any money or resources, and you're trying to compete against established businesses with the best resources and millions of dollars.
My advice is to start off as a combat person with novice artisan, scout, and medic - this way you can kill stuff for money, heal yourself, find good quality resources and harvest them from dead enemies, and place your own harvestors to dig metals out of the ground. Save your money, save your resources, and read www.swgcraft.com and forums.station.sony.com/swg to learn your future trade. Once you're sort of well off, then start dropping your combat for your crafting.
If you want to PvP, then become a fencer. Save up lots of money, buy the best food, armor, shield generators, and weapons, and go to town.
Otherwise, there's tons of things to do. You can be a bounty hunter and eventually hunt player jedis, you can find a nice location and build/furnish your own house, you can help new players get started, start your own guild, join someone else's guild, collect every suit of armor and put it in a museum - there's lots of fun stuff to do.
Its not hard, and its not impossible to compete. But, there is a steep learning curve to be one of the top players on your server. Remember you're competing against people who regularly play 4+ hours a day.
If you're thinking of starting an account, join the Gorath server, its the best
Erm, most of your cost would come from building the hotel and having a means of transportation to get there. He's talking about doing this already as a core business. The retail cost of sending someone up would be 100k, according to the post. Thus, you could provide a "service to the non-profit scientific community" valued at 100k, but that actually only cost you in the tens of thousands.
Plus, you get the intangibles of good publicity, the attraction of something to do in space besides watch HBO, and otherwise lend legitimacy to your project. I guess to more appropriately word my original post...
From the perspective of the SpaceHotel operator:
1) Is it possible to deduct trips to space given to nonprofit scientific organizations?
2) Is it possible to deduct the cost of the trips at retail price, even though the actual cost is less?
Any accountants out there?
Would it be possible to mount some scientific equipment in it, send scientists up for free occasionally, and write a portion off on the corporate taxes?