Facebook as your primary point of contact is a blaring siren of FAIL (unless you're a hipster, in which case you already FAIL but you obviously need facebook to collectively fail with your failbook hipster "friends".)
Yes he (Leo Apotheker) did. And he was right. Also, he might have overpaid (granted) for Autonomy, but the whole so-called "fraud" that neither Whitman's board, nor their lawyers and accountants doing the due diligence spotted (because it wasn't), is the basis for a massive write-down that Whitman needed as a backdrop to make it appear as if her efforts generated any revenue whatsoever. Whitman's HP's devious avoidance of legal discovery is entirely congruous with a strategy of sweeping her crap under the carpet of that write-down, based on no discernible evidence and HP's accounting misunderstanding at best. She is possibly the most toxic HP CEO since Fiorina.
Here's one improbability that relies on so many coincidences Istill think its barmy anyone thinks this belongs in the realm of credibility:
probability of not getting caught with box-cutters x probability of being able to hijack planes without pilot mayday x likelihood of coincident military exercises reducing intercept aircraft availability x likelihood of coincident simulations to confuse controllers x likelihood of PC simulator and minimum prop training providing the ability to actually fly jet aircraft at speed into targets x airframe remaining controllable and not breaking x steel buildings not being able to sustain collision and fire of little remaining fuel and furniture x probability of a nearby building collapsing symmetrically at near freefall from fires and masonry damage x 19 committed alqaeda terrorists acting alone..... is so astronomically unlikely and coincidental as to beggar belief.
Of course, certain well-placed insiders could remove a number of those variables, but what would I know, I'm just a lunatic conspiracy theorist.
Very good question. Equally, if we are supposedly (in) a simulation, what are we a simulation "of"? Could we ever have access to that (in order to observe a difference from the simulation) or are we just simulacra without reference to an ultimate reality?
The appearance of numerical factors in observed reality is taken to imply a possibly numerical simulation, but this itself presumes that if observed reality were not apparently numerically-conditioned it would then not indicate a simulation (i.e. necessary but not sufficient to prove an unsimulated reality under this schema.) An unquantifiable chaos is an odd characteristic to expect of an apparently 'non-simulated' reality. Or rather, being unintelligible, it could not cohere as a reality or be recognisable as such at all, at least if we take quantifiability to be necessary for intelligibility and coherence.
This is HP technology in which case, if it finally reaches the light of day, it will most likely:
1) suck
2) break within 2 years
3) lose information
4) be "supported", if that's the right word, by a bunch of illiterate indians
and
5) suck.
The student who learns.e.g 3DSMax - even though he got his software for free, is in fact expanding the base of available people who can use it, the "ecosystem" if you like, which indirectly benefits the maker. Companies choosing this software over others because of labour availability, will buy licenses. It actually makes sense for a software developer to surreptitiously allow piracy in most cases. Their real customer base won't be affected, but their market conditions will improve significantly.
When supposedly business critical applications are running on a db which, even at its most ACID, can't provide transactions for DDL schema evolutions (during updates, for example) - i.e. the MySQL schema is MyISAM and not ACID InnoDB. Which means, still open to corruption. Not my definition of business critical.
Businesses which decide they want certain applications - their cms, erp systems etc. to be business critical, need full ACID compliance from their dbms, and the open source choice for that is PostgreSQL if they don't go commercial. Choose other applications on top of that by all means, but don't refer to any which offer mysql only as business critical (or, the IT staff who do are fools.) These will drive porting efforts for the inferior OS software which supports mysql only.
... essentially they spent their time re-doing things they've already done. I can't imagine a worse job to be honest. Being employed to do the same thing that your friend did yesterday, knowing that it'll never finish.
Obviously, you've never worked at "a large IT hardware and services" company then, as that's pretty much the norm unlike games development where it's an exception.
It's not so bad, you'd be surprised how untroubled you become with all the Sisyphean re-doings and go-nowhere projects. Pass the time, work regular hours, make some friends and some decent money and enjoy your life outside work. I do.
Are you serious? Office Communicator on its own is pointless and when linked to Outlook is one of the worst software combinations ever. When either gets stuck, it takes the other out with it. Disconnect and reconnect to a VPN for example, and if you were using them together, Communicator will hang and you will have to restart Outlook and lose whatever you were writing because its obviously not multithreaded at some key point where it interacts with Communicator.
As a Linux fan, I can still admit that M$ are capable of writing good software (excel isn't bad), but in Outlook and Communicator you have two dark minions of Hell. Avoid. Like the plague.
Well, once I get a patent awarded for a method of signaling, by "making a fist with the palm facing the signaler, then raising the middle finger toward the signalee", I will use it to signal to IBM what I think of their patent.
ah,but sun a really selling niagara on the basis of compute power over electricity consumption - equipping a datacentre with niagara is going to be very much less power-hungry (and require less aircon) than any cell-based equivalent.
Its the standard SCO move - sue when your business is going down the pan. Its an admission of defeat in the competitive sense. Dump Net2Phone stock now.
I think you're referring to the crash in swiss airspace. In that instance, one of the pilots ignored the warning system and took the last instruction from the air traffic controller instead, resulting in the crash.
the reason for inflation is not govt printing more dollars--
The reason for inflation is general appreciation of prices based on the (circular) expectation of increased prices. If your government prints money its increasing the supply of one commodity - dollars - which people want in order to buy things. If you oversupply the commodity, its price falls. So the value of the dollar falls relative to everything, or (from the other side) the price of everything goes up. Now thats inflation, so I don't know what planet you've been living on. Ah, except salary - yes well most of the US has been suffering an effective pay cut year on year for the last 20 years, pay packets have not increased and the dollar value is sinking. But strangely, its not gone down by as much as it really should given the profligate money printing that has been going on. The reason for that is that countries at the moment have to buy oil in dollars, propping up the value. What , Iran and Venezuela want to sell oil in Euros?? US = fucked.
Because you're still hopelessly tied in to a steaming pile of hack-prone, virus-ridden shit called Windows. Now if you move to a.NET VB platform, the nice people at the Mono project have provided you with a solution which allows you to run on a decent operating system, providing your VB code doesn't reference a laundry-list of broken, insecure COM objects (in which case you should rewrite your code on a platform used by Real Men, like J2EE etc.)
At least with mono, you are able to regain some of your manliness by running your VB.NET code on an operating system in which you can't get Administrator privilege and run random code simply by looking at the wrong kind of image metafile.
Unless cleaning up after broken software and virus infestations is how you earn your $$$.
The majority of Israeli citizens would have no problem with a Palestinian state and withdrawing from all of the occupied areas if they could do so peacefully.
ROFLMAO Seriously, that is delusional. Israel is never going to withdraw to its only legitimate borders, recognised in 1948. Even if it were possible to withdraw to 1967 borders, "the majority" of Israeli's, particularly the settlers including lots of american expats with an inflated view of their own importance from a country with a history of native american landtheft, are not going to vacate the stolen land. "If they could do it peacefully" is only true in the sense you don't mean it, i.e. if you could pull the settlers out of the West Bank as well as Gaza peacibly that would probably mean shooting them all first - isn't going to happen. The Palestinians are victims first of landtheft, then of occupation. If some choose to strap bombs to themselves, sure they're doing the wrong thing, but hell I can understand why. But retrospectively the Israelis cite the terrorist violence they have brought on themselves as a reason for not withdrawing. Its an argument that is totally bankrupt.
Its like I stole your house and I'm squatting it, but last week you hit me in the street while I was out walking, so now your house is rightfully mine because I need it to protect myself. WTF ??? The uncomfortable truth is that for the sake of lebensraum for a largely immigrant population, Israel is willing to risk the occasional terrorist attack, and would rather secure what peace it can by further oppressing the Palestinians. It could have real peace tomorrow if it went to its 1948 borders (pretty high population density too, though not as much as Hong Kong.) You need to ask yourself why it doesn't, if peace were really its primary objective.
The reason we're worried about Iran is not because they're trying to develop nukes. Of course they're trying to. The reason we're worried about it is because, unlike Stalin and Mao, the Mullahs actually ARE crazy enough to nuke Israel (or us, if they could get a delivery method)
The reason the US is worried is because if they lose nuclear superiority, bang goes their chances of an invasion (or they lose thousands of troops in various ME/Iraq bases trying.) Its a power thing. They want power over oil. If they can't militarily threaten Iran, Iran can sell its oil in Euros (remember, Saddam did that too.) Then Chavez will follow. Pretty soon, the "engine" of the US economy - printing dollars, not "innovation" - which only had value because it was the triangulation currency for the world's most important commodity, becomes as worthless as it should have been the minute Greenspan started the printing press.
As to Israel - where are the IAEA inspectors? Does nobody remember Vanunu? Why should Iran be singled out? (oh yeah, mad mullahs, right... here we go reading the riot act again, pigs fly and saddam had WMDs he was going to use in 45 minutes...) US/Israel FEAR nuclear parity because it seriously reduces their capacity to crusade around the ME, there's clearly no way Iran could gain military supremacy. They just like to stir up FUD in order to build up their other economic lever - military spending, which mostly ends up in the pockets of their neocon buddies, at the cost of further US taxpayer debt. Open your eyes!!
Re:Hardware bubble harder to make
on
The New Boom
·
· Score: 1
But seriously, take a look at the way the stockmarket works. How does it differ from a classic Ponzi scheme ?
The stockmarket, and the gamblers - err, capitalists - who use it, have ensured it got legalised. Otherwise it is a zero-sum game just like the Ponzi, with later entrants' investments (suckers) paying off the earlier ones'. So then, a Ponzi scheme - but with a government license.
However, where enough evidence points to A as more likely being the culprit than B, A is the one that is liable for what has happened.
OK, so the police were unable to find a copy of the the infringing material on any of A's computers. The balance of probabilities has surely shifted in favour of B. Add to that myriad errors that may have taken place leading to suspect A - IP address spoofing, ISP giving the wrong address or keeping the wrong data on file.
Really, unless you can catch someone red-handed in the act of downloading (ie a police bust a guy whose computer is in the middle of uploading some infringing material), there is just too much uncertainty to deliver anything but not guilty. And given the enormous profits those companies are making, thats fair enough.
It's like saying Muslims are terrorists, just because 99% of the active terrorists in the world espouse... Islam.
Terrorists come in all shapes a colours, some of them support Islam after a fashion, many do not. The 99% figure is quite wrong, dare I say it, ignorant.
(That is unless by "terrorist" you limit the definition to the one used by certain news agencies in the US which is largely synonymous with irregular islamic army/resistance. But there are huge problems with that definition anyway, and the ignorance implicit in its use.)
You are freely given into a new world where you freely receive the benefits of a society, for example (depending on your country of origin) you may freely receive healthcare and education; why shouldn't a system you benefit from place one single compunction on you as a result - that you yourself freely give your effort? Under Marx, you also get to choose what it is you want to do, so you're not being forced into an undesireable job, just a job you want to do. You "give away" the fruit of that labour just as you receive the fruits of everyone else's. Very reminiscent of the GPL. It is an enforced philanthropic principle, which is why it riles with selfish gluttons - who mostly have a problem with other people like themselves whom they label 'freeloaders'. Either that or they want to hoodwink you into believing their gluttony is in fact some kind of natural human quality.
Consider how much you are compelled under the current system of capitalism - you are compelled to work to acquire the things you need (shelter, food, work tools etc) from those who have exploited, manipulated or competed their way to being a profitable provider of it. How can you honestly say you are "free" or freer under such a system? These corporate providers have one thing in view: profitability. You come a distant second, their interest in pleasing their customer or making their product affordable exists only insofar as it is necessary for profitability, and all firms work to destroy the few limits to their exploitative capability (ie, other competitors, regulation etc.)
ISC fans predicted years ago that CISC would die, because RISC is so much better.
They under estimated need for compability. Nothing more. nothing less.
The need for *binary* compatibility is artificial and sustained by companies that don't get with the opensource plan. Its from this that you generate a legacy tied to one architecture.
Any software written to a set of ABIs and available as source code (ie opensource licensed products) can be recompiled to different architectures without creating a legacy, architecture dependency. It is the future, and as people use Linux and opensource software more and more the advantage of binary comaptibility that Intel and AMD have will lessen, just as the weight of that legacy (in terms of architectural complexity) will increase.
Other factors, like java's virtual machine, provide even more architecture independence which will only increase with time.
Those of you who worry that the space programme would be funded through tax are ignoring GWB's almost Soviet disregard for capital worth.
Instead of taxing people to fund the Space programme (or to expand the economy), all George has to do is more of what he is already doing: print money; or rather, mortgage the future (with debt) to pay for today. Of course, if there is an infinite source of credit, you can always pay back today's dues with tomorrow's. How? Issue nearly valueless bonds (print money) and wait while China and Japan lap them up to keep their currencies competitive with the dollar.
Of course savvy investors (Europe) know whats going on, don't play the game and watch their currency soar but thats beside the point.
Back to the space programme - all George has to do to pump enormous amounts of money into the system is borrow it (and find suckers to carry it). Now providing this 'stimulation' multiplies as you'd hoped, then you get a net economic win, and hopefully (in addition to more men on the moon) you also have a resurgent economy.
Either way, you will have crippling debts, coupled with a reduced ability-to-pay. But then, those canny investors who got into GWB's military, oil, or space industry programmes will be sitting pretty in their walled enclosures with 24 hour security; and the rest of America can go to hell (and they will) whoever they vote for in future.
Slashdot Mirror
Facebook as your primary point of contact is a blaring siren of FAIL (unless you're a hipster, in which case you already FAIL but you obviously need facebook to collectively fail with your failbook hipster "friends".)
Yes he (Leo Apotheker) did. And he was right. Also, he might have overpaid (granted) for Autonomy, but the whole so-called "fraud" that neither Whitman's board, nor their lawyers and accountants doing the due diligence spotted (because it wasn't), is the basis for a massive write-down that Whitman needed as a backdrop to make it appear as if her efforts generated any revenue whatsoever. Whitman's HP's devious avoidance of legal discovery is entirely congruous with a strategy of sweeping her crap under the carpet of that write-down, based on no discernible evidence and HP's accounting misunderstanding at best. She is possibly the most toxic HP CEO since Fiorina.
Apple managed it OK.
Here's one improbability that relies on so many coincidences Istill think its barmy anyone thinks this belongs in the realm of credibility: ..... is so astronomically unlikely and coincidental as to beggar belief.
probability of not getting caught with box-cutters x probability of being able to hijack planes without pilot mayday x likelihood of coincident military exercises reducing intercept aircraft availability x likelihood of coincident simulations to confuse controllers x likelihood of PC simulator and minimum prop training providing the ability to actually fly jet aircraft at speed into targets x airframe remaining controllable and not breaking x steel buildings not being able to sustain collision and fire of little remaining fuel and furniture x probability of a nearby building collapsing symmetrically at near freefall from fires and masonry damage x 19 committed alqaeda terrorists acting alone
Of course, certain well-placed insiders could remove a number of those variables, but what would I know, I'm just a lunatic conspiracy theorist.
Very good question. Equally, if we are supposedly (in) a simulation, what are we a simulation "of"? Could we ever have access to that (in order to observe a difference from the simulation) or are we just simulacra without reference to an ultimate reality? The appearance of numerical factors in observed reality is taken to imply a possibly numerical simulation, but this itself presumes that if observed reality were not apparently numerically-conditioned it would then not indicate a simulation (i.e. necessary but not sufficient to prove an unsimulated reality under this schema.) An unquantifiable chaos is an odd characteristic to expect of an apparently 'non-simulated' reality. Or rather, being unintelligible, it could not cohere as a reality or be recognisable as such at all, at least if we take quantifiability to be necessary for intelligibility and coherence.
This is HP technology in which case, if it finally reaches the light of day, it will most likely: 1) suck 2) break within 2 years 3) lose information 4) be "supported", if that's the right word, by a bunch of illiterate indians and 5) suck.
The student who learns .e.g 3DSMax - even though he got his software for free, is in fact expanding the base of available people who can use it, the "ecosystem" if you like, which indirectly benefits the maker. Companies choosing this software over others because of labour availability, will buy licenses. It actually makes sense for a software developer to surreptitiously allow piracy in most cases. Their real customer base won't be affected, but their market conditions will improve significantly.
When supposedly business critical applications are running on a db which, even at its most ACID, can't provide transactions for DDL schema evolutions (during updates, for example) - i.e. the MySQL schema is MyISAM and not ACID InnoDB. Which means, still open to corruption. Not my definition of business critical. Businesses which decide they want certain applications - their cms, erp systems etc. to be business critical, need full ACID compliance from their dbms, and the open source choice for that is PostgreSQL if they don't go commercial. Choose other applications on top of that by all means, but don't refer to any which offer mysql only as business critical (or, the IT staff who do are fools.) These will drive porting efforts for the inferior OS software which supports mysql only.
... essentially they spent their time re-doing things they've already done. I can't imagine a worse job to be honest. Being employed to do the same thing that your friend did yesterday, knowing that it'll never finish.
Obviously, you've never worked at "a large IT hardware and services" company then, as that's pretty much the norm unlike games development where it's an exception. It's not so bad, you'd be surprised how untroubled you become with all the Sisyphean re-doings and go-nowhere projects. Pass the time, work regular hours, make some friends and some decent money and enjoy your life outside work. I do.
Chechnya ... I think
Are you serious? Office Communicator on its own is pointless and when linked to Outlook is one of the worst software combinations ever. When either gets stuck, it takes the other out with it. Disconnect and reconnect to a VPN for example, and if you were using them together, Communicator will hang and you will have to restart Outlook and lose whatever you were writing because its obviously not multithreaded at some key point where it interacts with Communicator. As a Linux fan, I can still admit that M$ are capable of writing good software (excel isn't bad), but in Outlook and Communicator you have two dark minions of Hell. Avoid. Like the plague.
Well, once I get a patent awarded for a method of signaling, by "making a fist with the palm facing the signaler, then raising the middle finger toward the signalee", I will use it to signal to IBM what I think of their patent.
ah,but sun a really selling niagara on the basis of compute power over electricity consumption - equipping a datacentre with niagara is going to be very much less power-hungry (and require less aircon) than any cell-based equivalent.
Its the standard SCO move - sue when your business is going down the pan. Its an admission of defeat in the competitive sense. Dump Net2Phone stock now.
I think you're referring to the crash in swiss airspace. In that instance, one of the pilots ignored the warning system and took the last instruction from the air traffic controller instead, resulting in the crash.
the reason for inflation is not govt printing more dollars--
The reason for inflation is general appreciation of prices based on the (circular) expectation of increased prices. If your government prints money its increasing the supply of one commodity - dollars - which people want in order to buy things. If you oversupply the commodity, its price falls. So the value of the dollar falls relative to everything, or (from the other side) the price of everything goes up. Now thats inflation, so I don't know what planet you've been living on. Ah, except salary - yes well most of the US has been suffering an effective pay cut year on year for the last 20 years, pay packets have not increased and the dollar value is sinking. But strangely, its not gone down by as much as it really should given the profligate money printing that has been going on. The reason for that is that countries at the moment have to buy oil in dollars, propping up the value. What , Iran and Venezuela want to sell oil in Euros?? US = fucked.
Because you're still hopelessly tied in to a steaming pile of hack-prone, virus-ridden shit called Windows. Now if you move to a .NET VB platform, the nice people at the Mono project have provided you with a solution which allows you to run on a decent operating system, providing your VB code doesn't reference a laundry-list of broken, insecure COM objects (in which case you should rewrite your code on a platform used by Real Men, like J2EE etc.)
At least with mono, you are able to regain some of your manliness by running your VB.NET code on an operating system in which you can't get Administrator privilege and run random code simply by looking at the wrong kind of image metafile.
Unless cleaning up after broken software and virus infestations is how you earn your $$$.
The majority of Israeli citizens would have no problem with a Palestinian state and withdrawing from all of the occupied areas if they could do so peacefully.
ROFLMAO Seriously, that is delusional. Israel is never going to withdraw to its only legitimate borders, recognised in 1948. Even if it were possible to withdraw to 1967 borders, "the majority" of Israeli's, particularly the settlers including lots of american expats with an inflated view of their own importance from a country with a history of native american landtheft, are not going to vacate the stolen land. "If they could do it peacefully" is only true in the sense you don't mean it, i.e. if you could pull the settlers out of the West Bank as well as Gaza peacibly that would probably mean shooting them all first - isn't going to happen. The Palestinians are victims first of landtheft, then of occupation. If some choose to strap bombs to themselves, sure they're doing the wrong thing, but hell I can understand why. But retrospectively the Israelis cite the terrorist violence they have brought on themselves as a reason for not withdrawing. Its an argument that is totally bankrupt.
Its like I stole your house and I'm squatting it, but last week you hit me in the street while I was out walking, so now your house is rightfully mine because I need it to protect myself. WTF ??? The uncomfortable truth is that for the sake of lebensraum for a largely immigrant population, Israel is willing to risk the occasional terrorist attack, and would rather secure what peace it can by further oppressing the Palestinians. It could have real peace tomorrow if it went to its 1948 borders (pretty high population density too, though not as much as Hong Kong.) You need to ask yourself why it doesn't, if peace were really its primary objective.
The reason we're worried about Iran is not because they're trying to develop nukes. Of course they're trying to. The reason we're worried about it is because, unlike Stalin and Mao, the Mullahs actually ARE crazy enough to nuke Israel (or us, if they could get a delivery method)
The reason the US is worried is because if they lose nuclear superiority, bang goes their chances of an invasion (or they lose thousands of troops in various ME/Iraq bases trying.) Its a power thing. They want power over oil. If they can't militarily threaten Iran, Iran can sell its oil in Euros (remember, Saddam did that too.) Then Chavez will follow. Pretty soon, the "engine" of the US economy - printing dollars, not "innovation" - which only had value because it was the triangulation currency for the world's most important commodity, becomes as worthless as it should have been the minute Greenspan started the printing press.
As to Israel - where are the IAEA inspectors? Does nobody remember Vanunu? Why should Iran be singled out? (oh yeah, mad mullahs, right... here we go reading the riot act again, pigs fly and saddam had WMDs he was going to use in 45 minutes...) US/Israel FEAR nuclear parity because it seriously reduces their capacity to crusade around the ME, there's clearly no way Iran could gain military supremacy. They just like to stir up FUD in order to build up their other economic lever - military spending, which mostly ends up in the pockets of their neocon buddies, at the cost of further US taxpayer debt. Open your eyes!!
But seriously, take a look at the way the stockmarket works. How does it differ from a classic Ponzi scheme ?
The stockmarket, and the gamblers - err, capitalists - who use it, have ensured it got legalised. Otherwise it is a zero-sum game just like the Ponzi, with later entrants' investments (suckers) paying off the earlier ones'. So then, a Ponzi scheme - but with a government license.
However, where enough evidence points to A as more likely being the culprit than B, A is the one that is liable for what has happened.
OK, so the police were unable to find a copy of the the infringing material on any of A's computers. The balance of probabilities has surely shifted in favour of B. Add to that myriad errors that may have taken place leading to suspect A - IP address spoofing, ISP giving the wrong address or keeping the wrong data on file.
Really, unless you can catch someone red-handed in the act of downloading (ie a police bust a guy whose computer is in the middle of uploading some infringing material), there is just too much uncertainty to deliver anything but not guilty. And given the enormous profits those companies are making, thats fair enough.
...ignorant assholes...
... Islam.
It's like saying Muslims are terrorists, just because 99% of the active terrorists in the world espouse
Terrorists come in all shapes a colours, some of them support Islam after a fashion, many do not. The 99% figure is quite wrong, dare I say it, ignorant.
(That is unless by "terrorist" you limit the definition to the one used by certain news agencies in the US which is largely synonymous with irregular islamic army/resistance. But there are huge problems with that definition anyway, and the ignorance implicit in its use.)
You are freely given into a new world where you freely receive the benefits of a society, for example (depending on your country of origin) you may freely receive healthcare and education; why shouldn't a system you benefit from place one single compunction on you as a result - that you yourself freely give your effort? Under Marx, you also get to choose what it is you want to do, so you're not being forced into an undesireable job, just a job you want to do. You "give away" the fruit of that labour just as you receive the fruits of everyone else's. Very reminiscent of the GPL. It is an enforced philanthropic principle, which is why it riles with selfish gluttons - who mostly have a problem with other people like themselves whom they label 'freeloaders'. Either that or they want to hoodwink you into believing their gluttony is in fact some kind of natural human quality.
Consider how much you are compelled under the current system of capitalism - you are compelled to work to acquire the things you need (shelter, food, work tools etc) from those who have exploited, manipulated or competed their way to being a profitable provider of it. How can you honestly say you are "free" or freer under such a system? These corporate providers have one thing in view: profitability. You come a distant second, their interest in pleasing their customer or making their product affordable exists only insofar as it is necessary for profitability, and all firms work to destroy the few limits to their exploitative capability (ie, other competitors, regulation etc.)
The need for *binary* compatibility is artificial and sustained by companies that don't get with the opensource plan. Its from this that you generate a legacy tied to one architecture.
Any software written to a set of ABIs and available as source code (ie opensource licensed products) can be recompiled to different architectures without creating a legacy, architecture dependency. It is the future, and as people use Linux and opensource software more and more the advantage of binary comaptibility that Intel and AMD have will lessen, just as the weight of that legacy (in terms of architectural complexity) will increase.
Other factors, like java's virtual machine, provide even more architecture independence which will only increase with time.
Those of you who worry that the space programme would be funded through tax are ignoring GWB's almost Soviet disregard for capital worth.
Instead of taxing people to fund the Space programme (or to expand the economy), all George has to do is more of what he is already doing: print money; or rather, mortgage the future (with debt) to pay for today. Of course, if there is an infinite source of credit, you can always pay back today's dues with tomorrow's. How? Issue nearly valueless bonds (print money) and wait while China and Japan lap them up to keep their currencies competitive with the dollar.
Of course savvy investors (Europe) know whats going on, don't play the game and watch their currency soar but thats beside the point.
Back to the space programme - all George has to do to pump enormous amounts of money into the system is borrow it (and find suckers to carry it). Now providing this 'stimulation' multiplies as you'd hoped, then you get a net economic win, and hopefully (in addition to more men on the moon) you also have a resurgent economy.
Either way, you will have crippling debts, coupled with a reduced ability-to-pay. But then, those canny investors who got into GWB's military, oil, or space industry programmes will be sitting pretty in their walled enclosures with 24 hour security; and the rest of America can go to hell (and they will) whoever they vote for in future.