And I'm not trying to use a strawman argument. But your implication with your McCarthy statement ("bend over") was clear. How else should that be taken? And the thing always ignored about McCarthy was that he was *right*. I'm NOT saying that the ensuing methods and madness were appropriate.
Then you are not arguing that McCarthy was right. He never uncovered spies; he carried around a stupid brief case that he claimed contained the names of known foreign agents working in the State and Defense Departments. If, in the course of doing a random search for documents, we found that spies had infiltrated these departments it wasn't because of any evidence that Joe McCarthy had provided. He was challenged several times to produce his evidence and always declined. Then he would go out and do a couple of stump speeches and come back to the Hill to pound on a few people in the entertainment industry.
Who the hell cares if a fucking actor or director is a Communist? What compromise to national security did that pose?
But once we found and suspected paid Soviet spies in government and press, including some high posts, what should our reaction have been?
Well, if by WE you mean government staff working on probable cause, then they should follow the law and prosecute.
Nothing ol' Joe did followed proscribed legal principles that honored the presumption of innocence that is codified in the Bill of Rights.
You've got a point there. I mean, $450 every 8 years. That's over $50 per year! That's nearly $5 every month! That's damn near $0.16 per day!
Spoken like a true tax collector.
It's too bad that us programmers live so far below the poverty line, or else some day we might be able to hope for a system that we could pay off $450 over 8 years for. That's really stretching the budget.
Some *former* US programmers do live below the poverty line. And thousands of foreign programmers do as well.
I would really hate to see my software costs get in the way of hardware costs. As I'm spending a few hundred every few years on hard drives, plus $350 to ATI whenever I feel like I need a step up, then there's the CPU for $200 or so every few years, and you know memory is so cheap now, I might as well get another 2GB there soon. And as long as I'm upgrading my CPU, I might as well go with a new motherboard too, throw in another $150 there.
You are talking about choices to purchase. No one is forcing you to make those purchases.
Why should someone who only writes a few text documents and communicates via email pay for a new machine when their current one is perfectly servicable with the exception that the OS has quit working?
But pay a couple hundred bucks for a stable operating system I've never had problems with that will recognize all of this hardware the first time I boot it, without my intervention and without having to write my own goddamn driver or compile the kernel? NEVER!!
I've never written my own driver either. You must be high.
If you think that's a good thing (or that ignoring it is a good thing), then we probably won't see eye to eye...
I was in the midst of doing an investigation on a piece of rural farm land for a property transaction in Southern Idaho. Part of that investigation required that I go to the local courthouse and look up records attached to that particular parcel. As I was scanning through the record books, I came across a whole section of records that all started and ended in roughly the same language. They were filed around the time of the McCarthy Army investigations. All of the people who filed these documents were doing so because they feared being labeled as Communists by a local demogogue who was riding along on the Red Scare. They were oaths of allegiance to the United States.
The thing that pisses me off about that whole record set is that all of these people were in fear of their OWN FUCKING GOVERNMENT. Not one spy would have missed an opportunity to follow the herd and file their own oath. So what did that exerise do in improving the security of the US? Not one fucking thing.
You are right: If you think that making people fear their government in order to MAYBE catch some spies is a good thing, they we will definately not 'see eye to eye".
I mean, if you shouldn't try to stop people who are paid by your national enemies,
You know I never said that, so beat your strawman by yourself.
Is it ever ok for US intelligence and/or military capability to use domestic surveillance and/or intelligence-gathering to protect our assets (be they life, property, and so on),
Yes.
or is it always better to err on the side of privacy in domestic concerns, and use the standard US criminal justice system to prosecute crimes after they have already occurred?
To answer that question you would have to know in advance the motivation and capacity of the group/individual to commit harm. There are laws on the books that do not require thrashing the presumption of innocence or the Bill of Rights to protect us.
Is there ever a circumstance where preemption could be appropriate, or would universal privacy always trump, say, the lives of thousands of others?
Depends on what you consider pre-emption.
Would you consider it okay for the police to have shot and killed the 9/11 highjackers before they could commit their crimes? I do.
Would you consider it okay to have a military group gather intelligence, not notify local authorities about what they have acquired (because it could compromise intelligence sources), and then execute a *suspected* highjacker before they could commit their crimes?
What about that same scenario but done completely undercover and they person just "disappeared".
What about a disappearance of a political rival of a local political leader?
What if they disappearance had NOTHING to do with terrorism? How would you prove otherwise?
Black-and-white liberty and freedom quotes aside, is there any gray area, any balance that can be struck between privacy and the desire of those charged with the protection of the United States to protect it, and indeed what I would regard a very important need to protect it from catastrophic (e.g., 9/11-style) harm?
Yes. They are called the Bill of Rights.
Is it possible to have appropriate oversight of such activities, or would you argue that such mechanisms for oversight and investigation already exist (e.g., warrants, etc.)?
That would be nice to have even now.
If so, how can we expect the government and those charged with protection to keep up with all potential threats?
Eliminate the Bill of Rights. Then you have more to fear from your government than from the terrorists (see above).
There were numerous calls for better "human intelligence" after 9/11, including many by those opposed to the current war effort. If the collection of such intelligence is appropriate overseas, why is the same collection not appropriate in the context of people planning the same type of attacks against the US or its interests, but who are operating within our own borders?
Gathering intelligence inside of the US is performed by an agency that has oversight by US courts. The military does not fall under the jursidiction of civilian courts.
I'd appreciate honest, and not cynical, answers.
These are honest answers.
Please consider that no matter how much you personally may distrust the machinery of government, I would remind you that you would likely find that in face-to-face discussions with individual military, intelligence, or other government personnel, you'd find a genuine and deep-seated desire to do what is best.
But they are sometimes governed by people who do NOT have the desire to do what is best.
With every iteration of goverment expansion to 'help' or 'protect' people we end up with more of this horseshit. A few people are having problems getting enough to eat? Increase taxes and feed everyone (even those who can fend for themselves). Don't like your neighbor getting high? Start a war on drugs. Three thousand people get killed in a terrorist action? Take everyone's civil liberties away.
National governments do few things better than non-profit community organizations and local governments. National government policies are over arching and generic. They often do not take into account local priorities and rarely meet their grand objectives despite spending billions of dollars.
This action is nothing new. Surveillance will always be pitched in the guise of protecting lives. Nothing is ever said about the potential pitfalls of giving the government unlimited surveillance powers. If you listen to the proponents of universal surveillance, no one will EVER use the information gathered for political advantage. No one will EVER harrass a political opponent based on intelligence gathered in a terrorist investigation. And because all of this data is gathered under the cloak of NATIONAL SECURITY, no one will ever *see* the information in order to check its veracity.
This is just one more example of bureaucracies grabbing power in the midst of national uncertainty. If you have ever worked either in a federal agency or as a contractor to one, you will recognize this as one more example of empire building. After they get these surveillace powers, they will need more staff and resources to maintain them. That means more Directors, more Assistant Directors, more Section Managers, and so on. Their budgets will increase and the deficit will continue to climb.
Isn't it ironic that the Chinese government is helping to fund the War in Iraq AND the eradication of US civil liberties?
Open your wallet, bend over, and get ready to get your McCarthy injection.
Your posting sounds a lot more like incorrect bitching about a fictional problem than a real-life experience.
Yes, but we Linux users are constantly bashed over the head with the last remaining leg that Microsoft stands on - ease of use for the 'regular Joe'.
If you think calling a rep to get your paid for software is easier on ol' Joe than just taking the CD out and reinstalling the software, then we obviously have two differing standards of *ease of use*.
Then we should all just pack it in and go back to using Microsoft, right?
How wonderful do Microsoft's products perform when they have no competitor on the horizon?
Go back a few years and look at their product history when they had successfully crushed their biggest competitor. Their products turned to shit within a couple of release cycles.
You can't expect a random user to jump through a dozen hoops to get sound working properly (yes there are still random issues with sound all the time).
And it took Microsoft 20 years to get it right. Why do people forget that plug and play on Microsoft was never an easy task prior to XP?
Microsoft gives their software away for free? This is fabulous news!
Of course everyone knows that the cost of Microsoft's software is buried in the purchase price of the computer. Gates and Co. didn't get rich by giving their software away - just giving it away at cost to crush competitors. Then the cost for the product continued to climb with each new release (which was coded to break compatibility with earlier releases).
Sorry, just watched six guys on laptops code and tweak for two hours failing to get the newest, hippest OS du jour to even recognize basic hardware.
No need for apologies. Apple users were watching Windows users perform the same frustration-filled dance for nearly two decades.
It took the XP release for Microsoft to get right what Apple did in the 1980's.
I think that Linux has made some marvelous achievements with a fraction of the financial resouces of Apple and Microsoft. To compare Linux to Microsoft and declare Microsoft the winner is like declaring Dilophosaurus the best and final winner of evolution 190 million years ago.
Linux's primary achievement has been to keep the operating system market competative and alive. By constantly nipping at the heels of Microsoft, open source products like Linux have kept Microsoft working hard to develop new products. By showing that open source software (e.g., BSD) is a viable platform for developing high-end user interfaces (OSX), Apple has benefitted as well.
Anyone who dismisses the real lessons of what Linux has achieved in the last 16 years is fated to be stuck in the Jurrasic with the other dinosaurs.
If I have in fact read more into it, I apologize, but these are things I feel passionate about.
Don't beat yourself up too much over it as I share some of the sentiment that you have expressed about manned missions. The unfortunate thing about manned missions is that we often ask people to take extraordinary risks for little scientific progress. If the objective is to tweak the nose of your nearest competitor, then that is risk taking for a different objective.
Manned missions are not necessary to explore our nearest neighbors. That is a fact. The colonization of space (ala Star Trek) is technically impossible at this time and is certainly not be possible with our current understanding of space-time.
There is no warp drive and may never be.
I feel mankind has to explore space, because ultimately there are resources we can tap there to improve life here. Imagine being able to ship heavy industrial manufacturing up to the Moon, reducing the amount of pollution and environmental damage. The Moon is just chock full of mineral resources waiting to be tapped, so we no longer have to lay waste to our planet to dig them out. The list goes on.
I'm not convinced that there is enough smelting capacity on the Moon to justify mining it (it is cheaper to do it on the Earth). As for shipping our industrial capacity to the Moon, I can't see the power capacity to make that work. Inventing an entire supply chain with only the promise of higher prices for end products? Again, I'm dubious of the risk justification in that venture.
Better we spend our resources closer to home correcting problems we have made here.
What it comes down to is that there are alway Nervous Nellies who look at the expense and/or danger factor involved in something and go "we shouldn't do that" while simultaneously hiding under their beds. The movement of Mankind to space is inevitable, just as Columbus, Magellan, Cook, the Wright Brothers, and Lindbergh leading us into new frontiers was in their time.
Well, the explorers you have mentioned found habitable lands. I don't think there is many habitable areas close to the Earth worth colonizing.
You can't stop progress, and anyone who thinks we're going to sit here on our over-crowded, polution-tinged rock and let the robots have all the fun is kidding themselves.
You have obviously read more into my post than I intended. Don't let me stop you from using my post as a platform for your own agenda.
I hope you were trying to be funny. The Zatoichi series of movies is the Japanese equivalent of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. These movies are great cinema and incredibly entertaining - regardless of your propensity to croon over all things Japanese.
Explain why there are so many shared code snippets between the source files of the same programmer or group of programmers. In fact, the Linux kernel is one big code sharing exercise:-P
>>Would you prefer a baker make that determination?
I would prefer that no determination, no discrimination, be made at all.
Translation: no science.
After all, that it the function of science.
All information is useful to those who care to look at it;
Including Greek mythology?
Are you suggesting an expedition to Olympus in search of Zeus?
those who do not care to look at it will rail against it saying "no data has been presented"
The purpose of that exercise is to keep those who want to live in a world of fantasy from guiding public policy.
because what has been presented is not what they consider data.
So are you going to undergo surgery without "data"?
Your claims are getting wilder by the minute.
They will also claim to not understand perfectly normal english words like irreducible and complexity,
Context?
The proponents of Intelligent Design are the ones who claim to have a different meaning for irreducible complexity (the two words are joined by ID proponents, suggesting that complexity is not just a *common* meaning but an irreducible one - but you knew that and are just intellectually dishonest).
in an effort to preserve their orthodoxy.
Which orthodoxy would that be?
Again, you show an incredible lack of specificity. It is no wonder since you have presented nothing to support your argument other than attacks on the qualifications of anyone other than you to understand your *data*.
What is really sad is the man who thinks that there's only one truth
You should really quit speaking of yourself in third person. I doubt you are running for office, so name regonition is hardly something you need to work so hard to establish. All you end up doing in the absence of a run for public office is encourage others to believe you are a loon.
and he's got a hold of it. He will claim that other people are fundamentalists-
A fundamentalist demands that you accept his claims without evidence - purely on faith.
I have asked for quite the opposite.
Who is the fundamentalist again?
not realizing that he's holding to and defending fundamentals himself.
Explain again how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics relates to Plancks time. That one was funny.
Exactly my point- who are you to decide what is data and what is not?
Would you prefer a baker make that determination?
The people best qualified to make a decision as to whether your data is adequate or not are the people who test your theory. If they feel the data is not adequate to test your assertion, then you have failed to define it properly or it doesn't exist.
You've already decided, by taking on that profession, to ignore data.
Oh, yes... Those dangerous scientists! (que the X Files themesong)
The saddest part of your whole exercise is that you haven't provided any *data* to ignore. You have merely waived your hand around and proclaimed that data exists.
Show me the data. Planck's equations (which you seem hold in some reverence) relied on a body of scientific evidence to produce his theories. He had intellectual discipline.
That's the danger of the scientific method- it traps you into a single method of thought,
No, that is the strength of the scientific method. It allows scientists to separate out meaningless drivel from fact... and does not allow you to explore other methods of thought.
Other methods of thought?
I thought we were discussing science, not science fiction.
To that end, thanks for proving what I've said all along-
You haven't *proven* anything because you don't have the courage to *define* what you are claiming to *defend*.
I even got you in the message above to deny that events are data,
You haven't *got* me on anything. You can't even define what you believe. So much for that gotcha.
and exploring the philosophical meaning behind the theories put forth.
You have a theory? Pity you have articulated it so poorly.
Have fun in your limited playground.
Wave your arms around all you like. Unlike you, the people who defined the laws you are citing as your *data* guided their arguments within the methods you now hold in such disregard. You are just like every other fundamentalist I've discussed this issue with. You criticise what you don't believe yet are unwilling to provide a positively articulated counter-argument. You attempt to use obscure definitions that have no testable components as the basis for your arguments thereby alleviating you of the tedious task of defending your position with something tangible.
And I am quite happy in my playground, thanks. My playground produces useful predictions.
Slashdot Mirror
And I'm not trying to use a strawman argument. But your implication with your McCarthy statement ("bend over") was clear. How else should that be taken? And the thing always ignored about McCarthy was that he was *right*. I'm NOT saying that the ensuing methods and madness were appropriate.
Then you are not arguing that McCarthy was right. He never uncovered spies; he carried around a stupid brief case that he claimed contained the names of known foreign agents working in the State and Defense Departments. If, in the course of doing a random search for documents, we found that spies had infiltrated these departments it wasn't because of any evidence that Joe McCarthy had provided. He was challenged several times to produce his evidence and always declined. Then he would go out and do a couple of stump speeches and come back to the Hill to pound on a few people in the entertainment industry.
Who the hell cares if a fucking actor or director is a Communist? What compromise to national security did that pose?
But once we found and suspected paid Soviet spies in government and press, including some high posts, what should our reaction have been?
Well, if by WE you mean government staff working on probable cause, then they should follow the law and prosecute.
Nothing ol' Joe did followed proscribed legal principles that honored the presumption of innocence that is codified in the Bill of Rights.
You've got a point there. I mean, $450 every 8 years. That's over $50 per year! That's nearly $5 every month! That's damn near $0.16 per day!
Spoken like a true tax collector.
It's too bad that us programmers live so far below the poverty line, or else some day we might be able to hope for a system that we could pay off $450 over 8 years for. That's really stretching the budget.
Some *former* US programmers do live below the poverty line. And thousands of foreign programmers do as well.
I would really hate to see my software costs get in the way of hardware costs. As I'm spending a few hundred every few years on hard drives, plus $350 to ATI whenever I feel like I need a step up, then there's the CPU for $200 or so every few years, and you know memory is so cheap now, I might as well get another 2GB there soon. And as long as I'm upgrading my CPU, I might as well go with a new motherboard too, throw in another $150 there.
You are talking about choices to purchase. No one is forcing you to make those purchases.
Why should someone who only writes a few text documents and communicates via email pay for a new machine when their current one is perfectly servicable with the exception that the OS has quit working?
But pay a couple hundred bucks for a stable operating system I've never had problems with that will recognize all of this hardware the first time I boot it, without my intervention and without having to write my own goddamn driver or compile the kernel? NEVER!!
I've never written my own driver either. You must be high.
I'm sorry, what were we arguing again?
I wasn't arguing.
If you think that's a good thing (or that ignoring it is a good thing), then we probably won't see eye to eye...
I was in the midst of doing an investigation on a piece of rural farm land for a property transaction in Southern Idaho. Part of that investigation required that I go to the local courthouse and look up records attached to that particular parcel. As I was scanning through the record books, I came across a whole section of records that all started and ended in roughly the same language. They were filed around the time of the McCarthy Army investigations. All of the people who filed these documents were doing so because they feared being labeled as Communists by a local demogogue who was riding along on the Red Scare. They were oaths of allegiance to the United States.
The thing that pisses me off about that whole record set is that all of these people were in fear of their OWN FUCKING GOVERNMENT. Not one spy would have missed an opportunity to follow the herd and file their own oath. So what did that exerise do in improving the security of the US? Not one fucking thing.
You are right: If you think that making people fear their government in order to MAYBE catch some spies is a good thing, they we will definately not 'see eye to eye".
I mean, if you shouldn't try to stop people who are paid by your national enemies,
You know I never said that, so beat your strawman by yourself.
Is it ever ok for US intelligence and/or military capability to use domestic surveillance and/or intelligence-gathering to protect our assets (be they life, property, and so on),
Yes.
or is it always better to err on the side of privacy in domestic concerns, and use the standard US criminal justice system to prosecute crimes after they have already occurred?
To answer that question you would have to know in advance the motivation and capacity of the group/individual to commit harm. There are laws on the books that do not require thrashing the presumption of innocence or the Bill of Rights to protect us.
Is there ever a circumstance where preemption could be appropriate, or would universal privacy always trump, say, the lives of thousands of others?
Depends on what you consider pre-emption.
Would you consider it okay for the police to have shot and killed the 9/11 highjackers before they could commit their crimes? I do.
Would you consider it okay to have a military group gather intelligence, not notify local authorities about what they have acquired (because it could compromise intelligence sources), and then execute a *suspected* highjacker before they could commit their crimes?
What about that same scenario but done completely undercover and they person just "disappeared".
What about a disappearance of a political rival of a local political leader?
What if they disappearance had NOTHING to do with terrorism? How would you prove otherwise?
Black-and-white liberty and freedom quotes aside, is there any gray area, any balance that can be struck between privacy and the desire of those charged with the protection of the United States to protect it, and indeed what I would regard a very important need to protect it from catastrophic (e.g., 9/11-style) harm?
Yes. They are called the Bill of Rights.
Is it possible to have appropriate oversight of such activities, or would you argue that such mechanisms for oversight and investigation already exist (e.g., warrants, etc.)?
That would be nice to have even now.
If so, how can we expect the government and those charged with protection to keep up with all potential threats?
Eliminate the Bill of Rights. Then you have more to fear from your government than from the terrorists (see above).
There were numerous calls for better "human intelligence" after 9/11, including many by those opposed to the current war effort. If the collection of such intelligence is appropriate overseas, why is the same collection not appropriate in the context of people planning the same type of attacks against the US or its interests, but who are operating within our own borders?
Gathering intelligence inside of the US is performed by an agency that has oversight by US courts. The military does not fall under the jursidiction of civilian courts.
I'd appreciate honest, and not cynical, answers.
These are honest answers.
Please consider that no matter how much you personally may distrust the machinery of government, I would remind you that you would likely find that in face-to-face discussions with individual military, intelligence, or other government personnel, you'd find a genuine and deep-seated desire to do what is best.
But they are sometimes governed by people who do NOT have the desire to do what is best.
That is the problem.
With every iteration of goverment expansion to 'help' or 'protect' people we end up with more of this horseshit. A few people are having problems getting enough to eat? Increase taxes and feed everyone (even those who can fend for themselves). Don't like your neighbor getting high? Start a war on drugs. Three thousand people get killed in a terrorist action? Take everyone's civil liberties away.
National governments do few things better than non-profit community organizations and local governments. National government policies are over arching and generic. They often do not take into account local priorities and rarely meet their grand objectives despite spending billions of dollars.
This action is nothing new. Surveillance will always be pitched in the guise of protecting lives. Nothing is ever said about the potential pitfalls of giving the government unlimited surveillance powers. If you listen to the proponents of universal surveillance, no one will EVER use the information gathered for political advantage. No one will EVER harrass a political opponent based on intelligence gathered in a terrorist investigation. And because all of this data is gathered under the cloak of NATIONAL SECURITY, no one will ever *see* the information in order to check its veracity.
This is just one more example of bureaucracies grabbing power in the midst of national uncertainty. If you have ever worked either in a federal agency or as a contractor to one, you will recognize this as one more example of empire building. After they get these surveillace powers, they will need more staff and resources to maintain them. That means more Directors, more Assistant Directors, more Section Managers, and so on. Their budgets will increase and the deficit will continue to climb.
Isn't it ironic that the Chinese government is helping to fund the War in Iraq AND the eradication of US civil liberties?
Open your wallet, bend over, and get ready to get your McCarthy injection.
And linux install is like the first hit of crack. Everything after that costs more and more time.
You must be installing from sources. It takes me less time to update my 7 Linux servers than it does my son's Win2k gaming machine.
Yeah, because OS/2 and OS9 were killing in the home desktop market.
You need to look at the full span of Microsofts products to respond intelligently.
Have fun with Microsoft Bob, btw.
Your posting sounds a lot more like incorrect bitching about a fictional problem than a real-life experience.
Yes, but we Linux users are constantly bashed over the head with the last remaining leg that Microsoft stands on - ease of use for the 'regular Joe'.
If you think calling a rep to get your paid for software is easier on ol' Joe than just taking the CD out and reinstalling the software, then we obviously have two differing standards of *ease of use*.
Is there anybody out there who actually pays full retail price for XP and Office????
You do if you don't want to upgrade your PC and still stay with current software releases.
In all instances of a home desktop, XP wins.
Then we should all just pack it in and go back to using Microsoft, right?
How wonderful do Microsoft's products perform when they have no competitor on the horizon?
Go back a few years and look at their product history when they had successfully crushed their biggest competitor. Their products turned to shit within a couple of release cycles.
The real price, not the bullshit open source idiocy price, is more like $30 for Windows
Or $450 to upgrade to a new machine every eight years or so.
That $30 Windows install is like the first hit of crack. Everything after that costs you more and more money.
You can't expect a random user to jump through a dozen hoops to get sound working properly (yes there are still random issues with sound all the time).
And it took Microsoft 20 years to get it right. Why do people forget that plug and play on Microsoft was never an easy task prior to XP?
Microsoft gives their software away for free? This is fabulous news!
Of course everyone knows that the cost of Microsoft's software is buried in the purchase price of the computer. Gates and Co. didn't get rich by giving their software away - just giving it away at cost to crush competitors. Then the cost for the product continued to climb with each new release (which was coded to break compatibility with earlier releases).
Sorry, just watched six guys on laptops code and tweak for two hours failing to get the newest, hippest OS du jour to even recognize basic hardware.
No need for apologies. Apple users were watching Windows users perform the same frustration-filled dance for nearly two decades.
It took the XP release for Microsoft to get right what Apple did in the 1980's.
I think that Linux has made some marvelous achievements with a fraction of the financial resouces of Apple and Microsoft. To compare Linux to Microsoft and declare Microsoft the winner is like declaring Dilophosaurus the best and final winner of evolution 190 million years ago.
Linux's primary achievement has been to keep the operating system market competative and alive. By constantly nipping at the heels of Microsoft, open source products like Linux have kept Microsoft working hard to develop new products. By showing that open source software (e.g., BSD) is a viable platform for developing high-end user interfaces (OSX), Apple has benefitted as well.
Anyone who dismisses the real lessons of what Linux has achieved in the last 16 years is fated to be stuck in the Jurrasic with the other dinosaurs.
If I have in fact read more into it, I apologize, but these are things I feel passionate about.
Don't beat yourself up too much over it as I share some of the sentiment that you have expressed about manned missions. The unfortunate thing about manned missions is that we often ask people to take extraordinary risks for little scientific progress. If the objective is to tweak the nose of your nearest competitor, then that is risk taking for a different objective.
Manned missions are not necessary to explore our nearest neighbors. That is a fact. The colonization of space (ala Star Trek) is technically impossible at this time and is certainly not be possible with our current understanding of space-time.
There is no warp drive and may never be.
I feel mankind has to explore space, because ultimately there are resources we can tap there to improve life here. Imagine being able to ship heavy industrial manufacturing up to the Moon, reducing the amount of pollution and environmental damage. The Moon is just chock full of mineral resources waiting to be tapped, so we no longer have to lay waste to our planet to dig them out. The list goes on.
I'm not convinced that there is enough smelting capacity on the Moon to justify mining it (it is cheaper to do it on the Earth). As for shipping our industrial capacity to the Moon, I can't see the power capacity to make that work. Inventing an entire supply chain with only the promise of higher prices for end products? Again, I'm dubious of the risk justification in that venture.
Better we spend our resources closer to home correcting problems we have made here.
What it comes down to is that there are alway Nervous Nellies who look at the expense and/or danger factor involved in something and go "we shouldn't do that" while simultaneously hiding under their beds. The movement of Mankind to space is inevitable, just as Columbus, Magellan, Cook, the Wright Brothers, and Lindbergh leading us into new frontiers was in their time.
Well, the explorers you have mentioned found habitable lands. I don't think there is many habitable areas close to the Earth worth colonizing.
You can't stop progress, and anyone who thinks we're going to sit here on our over-crowded, polution-tinged rock and let the robots have all the fun is kidding themselves.
You have obviously read more into my post than I intended. Don't let me stop you from using my post as a platform for your own agenda.
We could just ask Bruce Willis.
I don't think we have to ask. I think he bolts himself in a rocket every night before he goes to sleeep.
I hope you were trying to be funny. The Zatoichi series of movies is the Japanese equivalent of the Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. These movies are great cinema and incredibly entertaining - regardless of your propensity to croon over all things Japanese.
What kind of probe gives massages? .. oh .. never mind!
No amount of mind-detergent will wash that image away!
Somewhere there is a kid playing Moon Lander on a console that has a wireless connection to the JAXA Mission Control.
..rename it the Zatoichi probe.
It also would have to kill a whole room of other probes to gain that moniker.
Anyways....why did they send the probe up anyways
For the same reason we send robots into hazardous environments - it is too dangerous to justify sending humans.
We need to know how to land on asteroids. That skill might become valuable someday.
Explain why there are so many shared code snippets between the source files of the same programmer or group of programmers. In fact, the Linux kernel is one big code sharing exercise :-P
;)
Shut up, Daryl.
>>Would you prefer a baker make that determination?
I would prefer that no determination, no discrimination, be made at all.
Translation: no science.
After all, that it the function of science.
All information is useful to those who care to look at it;
Including Greek mythology?
Are you suggesting an expedition to Olympus in search of Zeus?
those who do not care to look at it will rail against it saying "no data has been presented"
The purpose of that exercise is to keep those who want to live in a world of fantasy from guiding public policy.
because what has been presented is not what they consider data.
So are you going to undergo surgery without "data"?
Your claims are getting wilder by the minute.
They will also claim to not understand perfectly normal english words like irreducible and complexity,
Context?
The proponents of Intelligent Design are the ones who claim to have a different meaning for irreducible complexity (the two words are joined by ID proponents, suggesting that complexity is not just a *common* meaning but an irreducible one - but you knew that and are just intellectually dishonest).
in an effort to preserve their orthodoxy.
Which orthodoxy would that be?
Again, you show an incredible lack of specificity. It is no wonder since you have presented nothing to support your argument other than attacks on the qualifications of anyone other than you to understand your *data*.
What is really sad is the man who thinks that there's only one truth
You should really quit speaking of yourself in third person. I doubt you are running for office, so name regonition is hardly something you need to work so hard to establish. All you end up doing in the absence of a run for public office is encourage others to believe you are a loon.
and he's got a hold of it. He will claim that other people are fundamentalists-
A fundamentalist demands that you accept his claims without evidence - purely on faith.
I have asked for quite the opposite.
Who is the fundamentalist again?
not realizing that he's holding to and defending fundamentals himself.
Explain again how the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics relates to Plancks time. That one was funny.
>>Someone who works as a scientist for a living.
.. and does not allow you to explore other methods of thought.
Exactly my point- who are you to decide what is data and what is not?
Would you prefer a baker make that determination?
The people best qualified to make a decision as to whether your data is adequate or not are the people who test your theory. If they feel the data is not adequate to test your assertion, then you have failed to define it properly or it doesn't exist.
You've already decided, by taking on that profession, to ignore data.
Oh, yes... Those dangerous scientists! (que the X Files themesong)
The saddest part of your whole exercise is that you haven't provided any *data* to ignore. You have merely waived your hand around and proclaimed that data exists.
Show me the data. Planck's equations (which you seem hold in some reverence) relied on a body of scientific evidence to produce his theories. He had intellectual discipline.
That's the danger of the scientific method- it traps you into a single method of thought,
No, that is the strength of the scientific method. It allows scientists to separate out meaningless drivel from fact.
Other methods of thought?
I thought we were discussing science, not science fiction.
To that end, thanks for proving what I've said all along-
You haven't *proven* anything because you don't have the courage to *define* what you are claiming to *defend*.
I even got you in the message above to deny that events are data,
You haven't *got* me on anything. You can't even define what you believe. So much for that gotcha.
and exploring the philosophical meaning behind the theories put forth.
You have a theory? Pity you have articulated it so poorly.
Have fun in your limited playground.
Wave your arms around all you like. Unlike you, the people who defined the laws you are citing as your *data* guided their arguments within the methods you now hold in such disregard. You are just like every other fundamentalist I've discussed this issue with. You criticise what you don't believe yet are unwilling to provide a positively articulated counter-argument. You attempt to use obscure definitions that have no testable components as the basis for your arguments thereby alleviating you of the tedious task of defending your position with something tangible.
And I am quite happy in my playground, thanks. My playground produces useful predictions.
Yours produces.... ?
What are your results?