I don't think its really an anti-science thing. I think NASA gets yanked around primarily because everyone know what it is and knows (more or less) what it does.
Whats going on here is that the politicians think that when you need to say you're cutting budgets, NASA's a great place to take the cuts. Because people know what it is and so many people don't give a shit about what it does. Politicians like to cut the space stuff precisely because it is visionary and scientific. They put forth a position "we don't have the money for that stuff". Ironically "that stuff" is the stuff that can best motivate the country to hope and dream again. But our current crop of politicians (including the ones who use those words in their slogans) have no idea how to hope and dream for a better future, they'd rather cheat and steal for it.
Has veto power, oversees the executive branch, is the Commander in Chief of the US Military (sometimes this doesn't mean that much, but right now we have military action going on all over the place), Is the boss of the top law enforcement officer in the country.
He also is supposed to send a proposed budget for running all that stuff he's responsible for. Now it is correct that congress is supposed to pass a budget that may or may not agree with the one the president proposes.
All in all the President's a very powerful guy.
I will also go out on a limb here and say that if Obama wanted to go to Mars, he could make a strong case for it. It just doesn't appear that he's that interested in space or NASA. It does disturb me however that if Obama said "Mars by 2020!" the republicans would automatically be against it because Obama asked for it (the reverse is also true, see GWB). I'm sick of the parties playing games with NASA.
Also, most color photos from NASA are gong to be in fake color and exaggerated contrast, made to highlight certain features (or impress congressmen), not to look accurate.
Actually, they don't really have a real color view they can show us. Sensors on spacecraft see multi-band (read color) images as single bands representing intensity for each band. These black and white views are actually the view of a particular band filtered on the wavelength of the light it is looking for.
The false-color images derived by NASA generally use 3 bands to create a RGB style image with a single particular band standing in for Red, Green, and Blue. The reason these images are false-color is that often the Red band is all or in part filtering to find infrared light, and the blue is sometimes filtered more toward violet and UV.
They really often times can't make a true color image. Because there is more science value derived from being able to see values in bands that are tuned slightly away from the visible (especially wrt infrared).
I can agree with you about the Republican Majority in the house being a problem, but the problem in the Senate is Harry Reid and the Senate leadership. There is no excuse for the Senate not passing budgets anymore, that blame falls at Harry's feet.
One in a billion people have something to actually fear about what they say getting them killed or otherwise harm
Um, while this may be true for the whole population of the world. It is demonstrably NOT true for the populations of China, Syria, Iran, Egypt, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba,........
Hell, I'm beginning to think its not even true for the whole world and that you're quite wrong.
Anonymity is unimaginably important when you are standing up to a power structure that does not want you saying what you are saying.
I can't re-implement his code, its covered under the GPL! In fact that's the crux of the matter.
In order to get around what he did you'd need to develop a clean sheet implementation of VLC which included none of the code from the GPL version.
Because what you suggest is exactly what the people who built the iOS app did and he used the GPL to singlehandedly dash their efforts.
My original point was that if walled gardens are bad (and they do have some negative consequences), then Microsoft's Windows 8 store should not distribute a VLC app either for exactly the same reasons the iOS app was quashed. Anything else and this guy is acting like a hypocrite and yes, an asshole.
Regarding Apple, I do agree they could improve their policy with respect to free apps. I would love to see open source apps allowed to be distributed from the App store without any DRM attached at all. That would be enough to render this issue moot.
Yeah, if only the left wing anti-media, anti-capitalism forces could help us take the RIAA and MPAA out.
I have no respect at all for people like you who thing that your precious left would save us from these schmucks.
BOTH parties are totally sold out to the media companies. That's why, no matter what side your reps are from you have to continually tell them how evil these bills are.
This is no event that will convince the denialists because there is no event that hasn't be equaled at some point in the planets history. That the extreme events are coming faster and faster will be completely lost on them.
While this is true, it is also true that if we had conditions like the dust bowl, which was a truly terrifying climatic/ecological event, the AGW proponents would be telling us that it is truly the "End of the World".
As the dust bowl proved, it was not, in fact, the end of the world. Now, there were definitive ecological things that HAD to change to avoid having another dust bowl. Tilling methods changed, crop rotation methods were introduced, shelterbelts were encouraged and future dust bowls did not occur.
Climate change is much the same. I should note that the solutions to solving the dust bowl were almost exclusively technological advancements. I believe that technological advancement (not legislation) is the only way to solve the Climate Change issue too. And we are working hard on that. Everyone wants things to be fixed now, because that is the lifeblood of political change (i.e. "DO SOMETHING!"). But I really think the more powerful change, and in the end the more impactful ones are the technological changes. We already see, in the US at least, a move away from coal as an electricity source. We see a movement in the automotive industry from internal combustion through hybirds to electirc cars. I predict that within the next 20 years over half the cars will be electric or hybrid, and in 50 it will be well over 80%. Also, over that time advances in Nuclear (yeah, its gotta play a part), wind and (hopefully, man progress is slow on this) solar, will yield far cleaner electrical generation.
That sentiment isn't really helpful for the folks trying to use Climate Change to get into political office, but it is representative of what is really happening, and as it is, what needs to happen.
This denialsit/zealot dichotomy in the are of Climate Change is an intentionally created political football. I deal with Climate Scientists periodically through my job and they are much much less "the end is nigh" than the media or the politicians are. They are really thoughtfully dedicated to measuring the current climate and figuring out how it works, and also trying to project what future climate will look like. They also know the science can never really be "settled", that too is a political contrivance.
This is why the bolted on metro interface is bad. Because its unnecessary. Microsoft is scared shitless about iOS and android, so they're trying to force a tablet interface on their desktop users because of a desperate hope that using Windows 8 might get them to buy a windows tablet or phone.
The fact that the "magic button" to close full screen apps is an archaic key combo from windows 3.1 is a key indicator of how bad this interface is. I mean alt -f4 is a great shortcut key, but for that to be the great "answer " for closing full screen apps. Yes, I count that as a fail.
I, for one, believe there should be some sort of test you need to pass to prove you have basic understandings of certain things before you can represent others.
How about this test:
Do you have a law degree?
Yes: Oh, I'm sorry you're not qualified to be a representative....
Are you seriously describing an experiment with a cracker and then extrapolating the results to be true on a contential plate scale?
Do I even have to say ITS NOT THAT SIMPLE!!
You cannot extrapolate experimental results from that scale to a global scale and retain any true value from your experiment.
This is a snake oil salesman's trick.
I'm not saying that Fracking might not be a bad thing, I'm just saying that using a cracker to prove that Fracking is a bad thing is total, utter BULLSHIT.
There's not too much there criticising the Core, but there is a statement that many believe they should have begun releasing water earlier in the spring or winter. I share that belief. I think they were too comfortable with how they'd always done things and didn't move fast enough when it became clear there were going to be issues due to high snowfall and rainfall.
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I don't think its really an anti-science thing. I think NASA gets yanked around primarily because everyone know what it is and knows (more or less) what it does.
Whats going on here is that the politicians think that when you need to say you're cutting budgets, NASA's a great place to take the cuts. Because people know what it is and so many people don't give a shit about what it does. Politicians like to cut the space stuff precisely because it is visionary and scientific. They put forth a position "we don't have the money for that stuff". Ironically "that stuff" is the stuff that can best motivate the country to hope and dream again. But our current crop of politicians (including the ones who use those words in their slogans) have no idea how to hope and dream for a better future, they'd rather cheat and steal for it.
Wow. You're so very not right.
The President:
Has veto power, oversees the executive branch, is the Commander in Chief of the US Military (sometimes this doesn't mean that much, but right now we have military action going on all over the place), Is the boss of the top law enforcement officer in the country.
He also is supposed to send a proposed budget for running all that stuff he's responsible for. Now it is correct that congress is supposed to pass a budget that may or may not agree with the one the president proposes.
All in all the President's a very powerful guy.
I will also go out on a limb here and say that if Obama wanted to go to Mars, he could make a strong case for it. It just doesn't appear that he's that interested in space or NASA. It does disturb me however that if Obama said "Mars by 2020!" the republicans would automatically be against it because Obama asked for it (the reverse is also true, see GWB). I'm sick of the parties playing games with NASA.
Also, most color photos from NASA are gong to be in fake color and exaggerated contrast, made to highlight certain features (or impress congressmen), not to look accurate.
Actually, they don't really have a real color view they can show us. Sensors on spacecraft see multi-band (read color) images as single bands representing intensity for each band. These black and white views are actually the view of a particular band filtered on the wavelength of the light it is looking for.
The false-color images derived by NASA generally use 3 bands to create a RGB style image with a single particular band standing in for Red, Green, and Blue. The reason these images are false-color is that often the Red band is all or in part filtering to find infrared light, and the blue is sometimes filtered more toward violet and UV.
They really often times can't make a true color image. Because there is more science value derived from being able to see values in bands that are tuned slightly away from the visible (especially wrt infrared).
I can agree with you about the Republican Majority in the house being a problem, but the problem in the Senate is Harry Reid and the Senate leadership. There is no excuse for the Senate not passing budgets anymore, that blame falls at Harry's feet.
Google needs to "leak" a presentation about their fiber project in KC with a slide that says.
Project Completion
- When Time Warner has no more customers in The KC area.
One in a billion people have something to actually fear about what they say getting them killed or otherwise harm
Um, while this may be true for the whole population of the world. It is demonstrably NOT true for the populations of China, Syria, Iran, Egypt, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia, Cuba, ........
Hell, I'm beginning to think its not even true for the whole world and that you're quite wrong.
Anonymity is unimaginably important when you are standing up to a power structure that does not want you saying what you are saying.
Absolutely correct. It is terrifying to me how many people do not get this point.
I can't re-implement his code, its covered under the GPL! In fact that's the crux of the matter.
In order to get around what he did you'd need to develop a clean sheet implementation of VLC which included none of the code from the GPL version.
Because what you suggest is exactly what the people who built the iOS app did and he used the GPL to singlehandedly dash their efforts.
My original point was that if walled gardens are bad (and they do have some negative consequences), then Microsoft's Windows 8 store should not distribute a VLC app either for exactly the same reasons the iOS app was quashed. Anything else and this guy is acting like a hypocrite and yes, an asshole.
Regarding Apple, I do agree they could improve their policy with respect to free apps. I would love to see open source apps allowed to be distributed from the App store without any DRM attached at all. That would be enough to render this issue moot.
He was one contributor to VLC, not the sole creator of it.
In fact his actions stopped a whole bunch of VLC contributors who MADE the iOS app from distributing what they created.
So yes, that his actions to remove VLC from the app store were the actions of an asshole.
prospective parents should have to show that they can financially support a child, successfully complete a parenting class
or they could skip the class if they are a good, loyal member of the party.....
Egads, think this through people, there are more than enough examples of what kind of tyranny evolves from these type of policies.
Yeah, if only the left wing anti-media, anti-capitalism forces could help us take the RIAA and MPAA out.
I have no respect at all for people like you who thing that your precious left would save us from these schmucks.
BOTH parties are totally sold out to the media companies. That's why, no matter what side your reps are from you have to continually tell them how evil these bills are.
Just wondering if that one asshole developer who blocked the client on iOS will block it for windows phone as well.
This is no event that will convince the denialists because there is no event that hasn't be equaled at some point in the planets history. That the extreme events are coming faster and faster will be completely lost on them.
While this is true, it is also true that if we had conditions like the dust bowl, which was a truly terrifying climatic/ecological event, the AGW proponents would be telling us that it is truly the "End of the World".
As the dust bowl proved, it was not, in fact, the end of the world. Now, there were definitive ecological things that HAD to change to avoid having another dust bowl. Tilling methods changed, crop rotation methods were introduced, shelterbelts were encouraged and future dust bowls did not occur.
Climate change is much the same. I should note that the solutions to solving the dust bowl were almost exclusively technological advancements. I believe that technological advancement (not legislation) is the only way to solve the Climate Change issue too. And we are working hard on that. Everyone wants things to be fixed now, because that is the lifeblood of political change (i.e. "DO SOMETHING!"). But I really think the more powerful change, and in the end the more impactful ones are the technological changes. We already see, in the US at least, a move away from coal as an electricity source. We see a movement in the automotive industry from internal combustion through hybirds to electirc cars. I predict that within the next 20 years over half the cars will be electric or hybrid, and in 50 it will be well over 80%. Also, over that time advances in Nuclear (yeah, its gotta play a part), wind and (hopefully, man progress is slow on this) solar, will yield far cleaner electrical generation.
That sentiment isn't really helpful for the folks trying to use Climate Change to get into political office, but it is representative of what is really happening, and as it is, what needs to happen.
This denialsit/zealot dichotomy in the are of Climate Change is an intentionally created political football. I deal with Climate Scientists periodically through my job and they are much much less "the end is nigh" than the media or the politicians are. They are really thoughtfully dedicated to measuring the current climate and figuring out how it works, and also trying to project what future climate will look like. They also know the science can never really be "settled", that too is a political contrivance.
This is why the bolted on metro interface is bad. Because its unnecessary. Microsoft is scared shitless about iOS and android, so they're trying to force a tablet interface on their desktop users because of a desperate hope that using Windows 8 might get them to buy a windows tablet or phone.
The fact that the "magic button" to close full screen apps is an archaic key combo from windows 3.1 is a key indicator of how bad this interface is. I mean alt -f4 is a great shortcut key, but for that to be the great "answer " for closing full screen apps. Yes, I count that as a fail.
Back in my day we didn't have this fancy TI-84 stuff. We had our RPN HP calculators and we liked them just fine.
Oh, and get off my lawn ;-)
I, for one, believe there should be some sort of test you need to pass to prove you have basic understandings of certain things before you can represent others.
How about this test:
Do you have a law degree?
Yes: Oh, I'm sorry you're not qualified to be a representative....
Yeah, those are artifacts of the scanning device. A common remote sensing issue.
Are you seriously describing an experiment with a cracker and then extrapolating the results to be true on a contential plate scale?
Do I even have to say ITS NOT THAT SIMPLE!!
You cannot extrapolate experimental results from that scale to a global scale and retain any true value from your experiment.
This is a snake oil salesman's trick.
I'm not saying that Fracking might not be a bad thing, I'm just saying that using a cracker to prove that Fracking is a bad thing is total, utter BULLSHIT.
Sorry that should be Corps not Core.
This article has good coverage of the whole event.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Missouri_River_floods
There's not too much there criticising the Core, but there is a statement that many believe they should have begun releasing water earlier in the spring or winter. I share that belief. I think they were too comfortable with how they'd always done things and didn't move fast enough when it became clear there were going to be issues due to high snowfall and rainfall.
Umm, ok. But if they all leave won't our tax bill for paying all these pensions just go up??
Its not really a catch-22.
Everything the Republicans were telling you about immigration before the election was a lie...
Immigration leads to job growth and economic expansion.
I agree.
But is something that you can't really figure out until you have children.
The problem is that our economy is predicated on growth and has been engineered to be that way for decades.
Lower population growth = lower economic growth
There are ways to fix this issue, but we need to change the way we look at business and economics to do so.