But each time anyone attempts to emphasize the fact that business has turned its back on just about everything except its quarterly earnings,
It's a business! WTF do you expect? A business exists for ONE PURPOSE: to make money for its shareholders. That's it, that's all. There are no altruistic subtexts or charitable agendas. They exist to make money. If you can help it make money, congratulations, welcome aboard. They'll give you all kinds of benefits and perks, as long as your net cost is less than your net benefit to the company (and thus, the shareholders). How the hell did you THINK it worked??? Why would/should it work any other way? This is capitalism! If you don't like it, there are plenty of other places you can go to that will guarantee you a lifetime of repetitive, unfulfilling, but secure low-paying work under a professedly-benevolent communist regime.
If you stay here, you are welcome to start your own company. Perhaps you didn't get the memo, but the "American dream" is not a birthright to be given, but rather a reward to be taken. Go out, take some risks, put your back into it, and EARN IT.
LOL. Sorry, I left that $200,000 I'd saved up in my other pants. Can you spot me?
They made the choice to buy a house. Perhaps they should have chosen a loan arrangement with payments they could manage on a reduced income. Are they married? Can't their spouse pay the bills for a while? What about unemployment insurance? A severance package? Maybe renting out a bedroom in that house to a college kid for a few months? Biting the bullet, selling it, and moving into an apartment until they find another job? Yah, that sucks, but it beats declaring bankruptcy.
I knew plenty of extremely well qualified individuals who lost their job during the last bubble burst, and some of them still haven't found a reasonable paying job.
They're being too picky. Geez, the bubble burst 4 freakin' years ago. If the "individuals" you speak of really truly are "extremely well qualified," then there are other forces at work here. Maybe they have unreasonably high expectations. They are holding out for the perfect job, and refuse to interview for anything less. Maybe they refuse to move to an area with better opportunities. Maybe your definition of "reasonable paying" is a lot higher than mine. But to say that an extremely well qualified person, laid off 4 years ago, is still unable to find a reasonable paying job is just dishonest.
Noone ever promised me that life would be fair, nor do I expect it to be.
So that means we shouldn't fight so that it is?
I think you need to read this:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
Was it fair that >200,000 people were killed by a Tsunami the day after Christmas? Was it fair that 36 families had to learn that their loved ones were killed in Iraq yesterday? Was it fair that 11 LA commuters were killed by a quasi-suicidal nutcase who parked his SUV in front of a train?
These are all tragedies. But short of moving everyone, everywhere inland 10 miles, disbanding the military, and eliminating all railway/traffic crossings everywhere, this stuff will happen. There's nothing we can do about it.
Should we fight for fairness? Yes, of course. We should fight to ensure that minorities have an equal shot at jobs as everyone else. We should ensure that the disadvantaged have health care. Should we ensure that no one ever has to get fired because "it's not fair?" Of course not.
Sometimes the economy sucks. Sometimes people are legitimately bad employees. And sometimes a company just wants to make more money. That's life. Suck it up. If you can't handle unfairness now, how are you going to react when an innocent family member gets terminal cancer? Life isn't always fair, nor can it be.
They are not a charity organization. If they identify employees who are not pulling their weight, they are not obligated to keep them, just because the company happens to be in the black. It is every employees' responsibility to continuously prove their worth, to generate value for the company.
So they can get fired again. I gotta ask: when do we get real jobs?
Why don't you start by taking responsibility for your own career? If you don't like being at the whim of those who employ you, then employ yourself. Go into business for yourself. Contract out your services. Quit complaining that these people owe you an ongoing free handout, just because you may have made them some money a few years ago.
Nothing, until their car gets reposessed and the bank forecloses on the house.
Boo-freakin-hoo. Maybe they shouldn't have overextended themselves, living beyond their means an on eggshell-bed of credit that will inevitably collapse. Sure, living beyond your means "is the American way," well that won't fly. You're supposed to be smarter than average, and should know better than to borrow so much money that missing a couple paychecks will send you into foreclosure.
This has already been debunked. You want to count everything to do with gaming ("Hardware and software," your own words") against a small slice of the movie industry ("feature movies"), in order to bolster a claim that gaming is bigger than movies. To be fair, if you are including hardware and software for gaming, then surely you should include DVD players, concessions sales, rentals, and merchandising in your "movie" number, in which case you see the reality that the gaming industry is still overwhelmingly dwarfed by the movie industry.
What you're doing is like claiming that "hardware and sales" of gaming generates more revenue than tire sales, so gaming is bigger than the automotive industry. Good luck with that.
yet we have a mechanism that guarantees unpopular viewpoints are stifled?
It doesn't "guarantee" that unpopular viewpoints are stifled, it simply permits them to be. And I for one think that's a good thing. I don't want to see the KKK on NBC, spreading racist hate speech during primetime, because the network is required by law to provide air time to "unpopular viewpoints." Nor should ClearChannel be forbidden to choose to refuse to air any content objectively discussing the positive points of pedophilia that society often overlooks. I don't want to hear that crap, and I'm glad the media is allowed to stifle it.
Actually, a lot of US debt is owed to foreign countries, not to US citizens.
Sure, if by "a lot," you mean "22.7%." I said the majority of the government's debt is owed to its own citizens, and that's correct. You've not contradicted me. here's a complete breakdown.
Defecits are all in the minds of bankers. I bet if there was a consensus to just say "to hell with it," it wouldn't be too hard.
I normally don't respond to AC's, but this is just too easy to ignore. You clearly don't understand how government debt works. The vast majority of debt that the government has accumulated is owed to the citizens themselves, in the form of CD's, savings bonds, and other guaranteed investments. People who wish to invest money buy these bonds, effectively lending their money to the government. The government eventually has to pay this back (by either raising taxes or cutting services), when the baby boomers all retire and cash in their investments.
Are you suggesting that when they show up to demand payout, we tell all those baby boomers "to hell with it," and refuse to pay them back?
Yes, but I want my son to live, and his son, and his son... I think the issue is worth taking a closer look at... for my great great great grandchildren's sake.
If you're so concerned about "the children," I would suggest you focus on a much more significant threat to their ability to pursue the happiness a famous old document promises them: the gigantic, spiralling deficit. A deficit is a tax on your kids. That money will be paid back someday, and deliberately running a deficit is just borrowing money from your kids. It's saying, "We're going to spend more than we have, and someone will pay it back later."
I guarantee you that THAT will be a much, much bigger handicap to future generations than climate change.
The only silver lining for reality shows, IMO, is that we'll never be cursed by their existence in the syndicated re-run market.
You're wrong. COPS, Judge Judy, Blind Date, a slew of home improvement shows, and much, much more are all syndicated. But I'm guessing you didn't realize that "reality TV" is more than just Survivor and Fear Factor.
If the wind is blowing at me I can climb, or I can maintain my altitude for longer with a less steep glide path giving me a greater range.
No, you're incorrect. Being upwind of the airfield is better. The folly you're making is assuming that you can fly "into the wind" and gain altitude. The truth is, in the air, there is no wind. Wind is simply "air movement relative to the ground." If you have no physical connection with the ground, then wind is meaningless (until you wish to re-establish your connection with the ground [i.e., come in for a landing], and find that said ground is a considerable distance away).
Think of it like a raft in a river. If you're sitting on the raft, and can't see the shore, you have no idea if you're stationary in the middle of a lake, or flowing down a river at 15 knots.
"Airspeed" and "Groundspeed" are two completely different things. Wind only affects your groundspeed, not your airspeed.
I beg to differ. I'm also a private pilot, and my only experience in a glider involved strapping on a parachute. The fellow that took me (a friend, coworker, and glider pilot instructor) also wore one.
I suppose maybe it's different where you are, but this is the first I've ever heard of anyone suggesting parachutes for glider pilots. I still question how you'd ever manage to get free of a tumbling plane in free-fall, and what could possibly go wrong in a glider (there's no engine - what could break?), short of a catastrophic structural failure (read: wing collapse, tail falling off). Perhaps you're talking about hang gliders or parasailing?
Why not switch off Huygens when Cassini dissapears below the horizon, and switch it on for the next day? (titan's day is 16 days long..)
Several reasons. Huygens didn't have a receiver. It only had a transmitter. Once Huygens separated from Cassini on Dec. 25, there was no way for Cassini to communicate with it. In fact, if the separation hadn't gone perfect, and Huygens had been kicked off a little harder than planned, it would have plummeted to Titan and been destroyed before it even woke up, as Cassini had no way to send commands to it.
Secondly, sure, Titan's day may be 16 days long, but Cassini isn't orbiting Titan. It's orbiting Saturn. And Cassini won't be returning to Titan for more than a month (Feb. 25, if I'm not mistaken). Huygens would have to sleep in the freezing cold for over a month. Its batteries could barely last a few hours in that cold, let alone a month. It's not an issue of going into "standby" mode and saving power, it's an issue of the electrolytes in the cells literally freezing solid.
I started learning to fly a glider recently, and can you guess what the first thing I learnt was? How to put on and operate a parachute.
BULLSHIT. I'm a glider pilot, and we don't use parachutes. ONLY military fighter jet pilots wear/use parachutes. No other pilots do. Least of all glider pilots. Gliders are the safest planes there are. There's practically nothing that can go wrong. And even if, say, a wing snapped and you were spiralling to the ground, it would be physically impossible for you to unstrap yourself, open the canopy, and jump clear of the aircraft due to the extremely erratic attitude and g-forces as you spiralled to the ground.
I'm a licensed glider and private pilot in Canada, and you're lying. Absolutely no part of the the training to be either a glider or power pilot involves parachutes, ever.
why did the Concorde crash just because nobody bothered to remove a bit of metal from the runway?
No one removed it because no one knew it was there. It had just appeared moments earlier. The offending strip of metal fell off of the plane that took off immediately before the Concorde. Are you suggesting that airports institute a policy of thoroughly inspecting runways for FOD between every flight landing/departing?
Oh, so if you don't mind, why exactly do airplanes crash and kill hundreds of people?
I'm going from memory here, but I think it's something like 80% pilot/crew error, 15% weather (which could still be considered pilot error), and 5% mechanical failure. So if those pilots/crew had been following the proper procedure and protocol, then the shit *wouldn't* happen (except in those rare cases where mechanical error is to blame, and even then, most of those cases can be traced back to a mechanic cutting corners and not following said checklists/protocol). The original poster is right. Checklists prevent the shit from happening. When the shit does happen, it's because someone wasn't following the checklists.
So, how much more difficult would a manned Titan mission be than a manned Mars mission?
It would take about 6 months of travel time to get to Mars. It took Cassini 7 years to get to Saturn. That's a lot of oxygen, water, and food packets to bring with them.
Granted, Cassini took the 7 year route to save fuel (read: money), and a more expensive, manned mission could probably get there considerably faster. But it would still be at least a year of in-space travel time.
Note that in the states, a phone number that contains "xxx-555-yyyy" is bogus (used only in the movies).
That's not entirely accurate. Many locations actually do use the 555- exchange. Only numbers in the range of 555-0100 to 555-0199 are reserved for Hollywood productions. For example, here is a list of dozens of places in the United States alone, where the prefix "555-" is used.
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If you want to get rid of an idiot like that the only two sane options are: instigate and support via comprehenive international effort an internal uprising or send a commando team and take him out hoping the next dude in line gets a clue.
You really should read up a bit on Iraqi history and politics. If the US had done what you appear to be suggesting, and assassinated Saddam, the "next in line" would have been one of his sons, most likely Qusay or Uday. One of them was a lazy fuck-up (and thus, probably would not have been tapped for the role), and the other was a ruthless, power-hungry, murderous maniac, even worse than Saddam himself.
Assassinating Saddam and hoping the next guy would be better was not a viable option. The next guy would have been even worse, and the Arab world would have been unanimously polarized against the US (at least now, some of them like you).
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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You act like Saddam's Iraq was some kind of fucking paradise on earth. Saddam started several wars, killed tens of thousands on whims [...]. Iraq and it's people needed a change
I agree that Saddam was a bad leader. The problem is that he was not the only "bad leader" in the world. In fact, it could be argued that he wasn't even the worst.
The argument that opponents of the Iraq war make in the face of arguments such as yours is that your position smacks of hypocrisy and selective enforcement. Sure the citizens of Iraq were suffering under an evil regime. But so are the citizens of North Korea. And Syria. And Lebenan. And a dozen other countries.
Your exact same arguments can be used to justify invading ALL of those other countries, too; yet the United States ONLY chose to invade Iraq, and leave all these other countries to suffer. THAT is why opponents are criticising the war in Iraq.
That's why your argument holds no water. If what you say is true, they why is the US not taking the same action in North Korea? North Korea is also ruled by an evil dictator. Plus, we know North Korea has nuclear weapons, and we know they've been testing ICBMs capable of reaching western US shores. Saddam lacked both of these reasons, yet you invaded Iraq, and have left North Korea completely alone, free to continue developing their weapons programs.
Do you see what I'm saying? Why Iraq, and not these others? If Saddam was so bad, then why not also take out these other guys, who are equally bad, or worse? If the US felt they had to do something about the miserable living conditions in Iraq, then why aren't they also acting in these other nations, which live under even worse regimes? Why isn't the US doing anything to stop the genocides in Sudan? Why is the US so interesting in "liberating" millions of Iraqis, but completely ambivalent about ending the famine and disease killing millions in Africa?
When someone can provide a solid answer to these questions, then I may begin to understand those of you who can support the Iraq war.
Re:How Israeli Companies Are Succeeding...
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I've agreed with most of what you've said so far, but I've got to take issue with these comments:
Never you mind that the chances of them getting one are hundreds of millions to one
Actually, they're much better than that. North Korea may already have nuclear weapons, and it is not at all unheard of for other "iffy" nations like Libya or Syria to acquire the tech.
they have no way to smuggle it in even if somehow they managed to get it
1. Rent cargo container on ship leaving port from poorly regulated, poverty stricken nation. 2. Line said container with lead. 3. Wait 3 weeks.
those who they stole it from would be crying foul and alerting everyone.
Honestly, I don't want to offend you, but it is pretty common knowledge that there are an enormous number of warheads out there that have been decommissioned, or just plain lost post-cold-war, particularly in nations which have seen their political and economical structures crumble (USSR). Remember the nuclear warhead that they finally found off the coast of Georgia just a few months ago? Surely you realize that that's just the tip of the iceberg?
Of course, such devices have long since expired and wouldn't function, but they would provide valuable design information to the individuals. All they'd need after that would be some fissile materials and a quiet place to put it all together.
Fission bombs are frighteningly easy to construct. Fusion devices are much, much harder, but would not be necessary. A fission bomb would get their point across quite succinctly. Recall that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fission bombs.
I agree with most of what you said. However, nuclear proliferation is a very, very serious concern, and should not be trivialized.
Do these jobs generate goods and services that are given to Israel? If so, then is it really such a big difference?
Yes. The reason it makes a big difference is because if we were in fact simply handing over billions of dollars in tax money, the US would be draining their own economy. By instead using that money to pay USAmerican workers, local jobs are created, even if the fruits of those labours (the materialistic products that are output) are eventually sent overseas. The workers still get paid. Once the product is created, it is irrelevant whether it is used in the US or used somewhere else. The government has footed the bill.
Note a further interesting side-effect of administering aid this way: When the money is used to pay US workers, those workers pay income tax on that money, and thus at least 20% of it or so goes right back to the government anyway. The money that the workers actually get to keep, they spend on houses, property taxes, utility bills, clothing and groceries, all of which have taxes applied to them, so the government actually recoups even more of their investment.
If they had simply sent a cheque for $2 billion to Isreal, then all of that money would leave the US economy and government, permanently. By doing it this way, almost half of it ends up right back in the government's pocket, and the other half is little more than a subsidized "work-for-welfare" program for US defense employees.
It sure as hell isn't law here in the UK, and I'm betting our export market in DRM-free DVD players/recorders will get an enormous boost around July 2005 if that's the case where you are.
If such a law actually exists (and I'm not convinced it does), then it would only apply to the US. However, players imported into the US would have to adhere to the US regulations. Namely, if the law says the players must obey a "broadcast" flag, then the players coming in from overseas would have to be modified for sale in the US market. This is not unique - several products are already produced in special runs for certain markets.
And since the US doesn't actually manufacture any DVD players locally, I don't expect any international markets to suddenly find themselves with a gap created by the (non-existent) US manufacturers suddenly only selling crippled DVD players.
Slashdot Mirror
But each time anyone attempts to emphasize the fact that business has turned its back on just about everything except its quarterly earnings,
It's a business! WTF do you expect? A business exists for ONE PURPOSE: to make money for its shareholders. That's it, that's all. There are no altruistic subtexts or charitable agendas. They exist to make money. If you can help it make money, congratulations, welcome aboard. They'll give you all kinds of benefits and perks, as long as your net cost is less than your net benefit to the company (and thus, the shareholders). How the hell did you THINK it worked??? Why would/should it work any other way? This is capitalism! If you don't like it, there are plenty of other places you can go to that will guarantee you a lifetime of repetitive, unfulfilling, but secure low-paying work under a professedly-benevolent communist regime.
If you stay here, you are welcome to start your own company. Perhaps you didn't get the memo, but the "American dream" is not a birthright to be given, but rather a reward to be taken. Go out, take some risks, put your back into it, and EARN IT.
Damn whiney Gen-Y crybabies. Geez.
LOL. Sorry, I left that $200,000 I'd saved up in my other pants. Can you spot me?
They made the choice to buy a house. Perhaps they should have chosen a loan arrangement with payments they could manage on a reduced income. Are they married? Can't their spouse pay the bills for a while? What about unemployment insurance? A severance package? Maybe renting out a bedroom in that house to a college kid for a few months? Biting the bullet, selling it, and moving into an apartment until they find another job? Yah, that sucks, but it beats declaring bankruptcy.
I knew plenty of extremely well qualified individuals who lost their job during the last bubble burst, and some of them still haven't found a reasonable paying job.
They're being too picky. Geez, the bubble burst 4 freakin' years ago. If the "individuals" you speak of really truly are "extremely well qualified," then there are other forces at work here. Maybe they have unreasonably high expectations. They are holding out for the perfect job, and refuse to interview for anything less. Maybe they refuse to move to an area with better opportunities. Maybe your definition of "reasonable paying" is a lot higher than mine. But to say that an extremely well qualified person, laid off 4 years ago, is still unable to find a reasonable paying job is just dishonest.
So that means we shouldn't fight so that it is?
I think you need to read this:
Was it fair that >200,000 people were killed by a Tsunami the day after Christmas? Was it fair that 36 families had to learn that their loved ones were killed in Iraq yesterday? Was it fair that 11 LA commuters were killed by a quasi-suicidal nutcase who parked his SUV in front of a train?
These are all tragedies. But short of moving everyone, everywhere inland 10 miles, disbanding the military, and eliminating all railway/traffic crossings everywhere, this stuff will happen. There's nothing we can do about it.
Should we fight for fairness? Yes, of course. We should fight to ensure that minorities have an equal shot at jobs as everyone else. We should ensure that the disadvantaged have health care. Should we ensure that no one ever has to get fired because "it's not fair?" Of course not.
Sometimes the economy sucks. Sometimes people are legitimately bad employees. And sometimes a company just wants to make more money. That's life. Suck it up. If you can't handle unfairness now, how are you going to react when an innocent family member gets terminal cancer? Life isn't always fair, nor can it be.
They are making profits.
They are not a charity organization. If they identify employees who are not pulling their weight, they are not obligated to keep them, just because the company happens to be in the black. It is every employees' responsibility to continuously prove their worth, to generate value for the company.
So they can get fired again. I gotta ask: when do we get real jobs?
Why don't you start by taking responsibility for your own career? If you don't like being at the whim of those who employ you, then employ yourself. Go into business for yourself. Contract out your services. Quit complaining that these people owe you an ongoing free handout, just because you may have made them some money a few years ago.
Nothing, until their car gets reposessed and the bank forecloses on the house.
Boo-freakin-hoo. Maybe they shouldn't have overextended themselves, living beyond their means an on eggshell-bed of credit that will inevitably collapse. Sure, living beyond your means "is the American way," well that won't fly. You're supposed to be smarter than average, and should know better than to borrow so much money that missing a couple paychecks will send you into foreclosure.
Hardware and software. More than feature movies.
This has already been debunked. You want to count everything to do with gaming ("Hardware and software," your own words") against a small slice of the movie industry ("feature movies"), in order to bolster a claim that gaming is bigger than movies. To be fair, if you are including hardware and software for gaming, then surely you should include DVD players, concessions sales, rentals, and merchandising in your "movie" number, in which case you see the reality that the gaming industry is still overwhelmingly dwarfed by the movie industry.
What you're doing is like claiming that "hardware and sales" of gaming generates more revenue than tire sales, so gaming is bigger than the automotive industry. Good luck with that.
yet we have a mechanism that guarantees unpopular viewpoints are stifled?
It doesn't "guarantee" that unpopular viewpoints are stifled, it simply permits them to be. And I for one think that's a good thing. I don't want to see the KKK on NBC, spreading racist hate speech during primetime, because the network is required by law to provide air time to "unpopular viewpoints." Nor should ClearChannel be forbidden to choose to refuse to air any content objectively discussing the positive points of pedophilia that society often overlooks. I don't want to hear that crap, and I'm glad the media is allowed to stifle it.
Actually, a lot of US debt is owed to foreign countries, not to US citizens.
Sure, if by "a lot," you mean "22.7%." I said the majority of the government's debt is owed to its own citizens, and that's correct. You've not contradicted me. here's a complete breakdown.
Defecits are all in the minds of bankers. I bet if there was a consensus to just say "to hell with it," it wouldn't be too hard.
I normally don't respond to AC's, but this is just too easy to ignore. You clearly don't understand how government debt works. The vast majority of debt that the government has accumulated is owed to the citizens themselves, in the form of CD's, savings bonds, and other guaranteed investments. People who wish to invest money buy these bonds, effectively lending their money to the government. The government eventually has to pay this back (by either raising taxes or cutting services), when the baby boomers all retire and cash in their investments.
Are you suggesting that when they show up to demand payout, we tell all those baby boomers "to hell with it," and refuse to pay them back?
Yes, but I want my son to live, and his son, and his son... I think the issue is worth taking a closer look at... for my great great great grandchildren's sake.
If you're so concerned about "the children," I would suggest you focus on a much more significant threat to their ability to pursue the happiness a famous old document promises them: the gigantic, spiralling deficit. A deficit is a tax on your kids. That money will be paid back someday, and deliberately running a deficit is just borrowing money from your kids. It's saying, "We're going to spend more than we have, and someone will pay it back later."
I guarantee you that THAT will be a much, much bigger handicap to future generations than climate change.
Judge shows do not count, as well as the venerable home-rebuilding sector that goes back at least as far as "This Old House".
What about Debbie Travis's Facelift? Trading Spaces? While you Were Out? In a Fix? Actually, absolutely every show on TLC is reality TV.
The only silver lining for reality shows, IMO, is that we'll never be cursed by their existence in the syndicated re-run market.
You're wrong. COPS, Judge Judy, Blind Date, a slew of home improvement shows, and much, much more are all syndicated. But I'm guessing you didn't realize that "reality TV" is more than just Survivor and Fear Factor.
If the wind is blowing at me I can climb, or I can maintain my altitude for longer with a less steep glide path giving me a greater range.
No, you're incorrect. Being upwind of the airfield is better. The folly you're making is assuming that you can fly "into the wind" and gain altitude. The truth is, in the air, there is no wind. Wind is simply "air movement relative to the ground." If you have no physical connection with the ground, then wind is meaningless (until you wish to re-establish your connection with the ground [i.e., come in for a landing], and find that said ground is a considerable distance away).
Think of it like a raft in a river. If you're sitting on the raft, and can't see the shore, you have no idea if you're stationary in the middle of a lake, or flowing down a river at 15 knots.
"Airspeed" and "Groundspeed" are two completely different things. Wind only affects your groundspeed, not your airspeed.
I beg to differ. I'm also a private pilot, and my only experience in a glider involved strapping on a parachute. The fellow that took me (a friend, coworker, and glider pilot instructor) also wore one.
I suppose maybe it's different where you are, but this is the first I've ever heard of anyone suggesting parachutes for glider pilots. I still question how you'd ever manage to get free of a tumbling plane in free-fall, and what could possibly go wrong in a glider (there's no engine - what could break?), short of a catastrophic structural failure (read: wing collapse, tail falling off). Perhaps you're talking about hang gliders or parasailing?
Why not switch off Huygens when Cassini dissapears below the horizon, and switch it on for the next day? (titan's day is 16 days long..)
Several reasons. Huygens didn't have a receiver. It only had a transmitter. Once Huygens separated from Cassini on Dec. 25, there was no way for Cassini to communicate with it. In fact, if the separation hadn't gone perfect, and Huygens had been kicked off a little harder than planned, it would have plummeted to Titan and been destroyed before it even woke up, as Cassini had no way to send commands to it.
Secondly, sure, Titan's day may be 16 days long, but Cassini isn't orbiting Titan. It's orbiting Saturn. And Cassini won't be returning to Titan for more than a month (Feb. 25, if I'm not mistaken). Huygens would have to sleep in the freezing cold for over a month. Its batteries could barely last a few hours in that cold, let alone a month. It's not an issue of going into "standby" mode and saving power, it's an issue of the electrolytes in the cells literally freezing solid.
I started learning to fly a glider recently, and can you guess what the first thing I learnt was? How to put on and operate a parachute.
BULLSHIT. I'm a glider pilot, and we don't use parachutes. ONLY military fighter jet pilots wear/use parachutes. No other pilots do. Least of all glider pilots. Gliders are the safest planes there are. There's practically nothing that can go wrong. And even if, say, a wing snapped and you were spiralling to the ground, it would be physically impossible for you to unstrap yourself, open the canopy, and jump clear of the aircraft due to the extremely erratic attitude and g-forces as you spiralled to the ground.
I'm a licensed glider and private pilot in Canada, and you're lying. Absolutely no part of the the training to be either a glider or power pilot involves parachutes, ever.
why did the Concorde crash just because nobody bothered to remove a bit of metal from the runway?
No one removed it because no one knew it was there. It had just appeared moments earlier. The offending strip of metal fell off of the plane that took off immediately before the Concorde. Are you suggesting that airports institute a policy of thoroughly inspecting runways for FOD between every flight landing/departing?
Oh, so if you don't mind, why exactly do airplanes crash and kill hundreds of people?
I'm going from memory here, but I think it's something like 80% pilot/crew error, 15% weather (which could still be considered pilot error), and 5% mechanical failure. So if those pilots/crew had been following the proper procedure and protocol, then the shit *wouldn't* happen (except in those rare cases where mechanical error is to blame, and even then, most of those cases can be traced back to a mechanic cutting corners and not following said checklists/protocol). The original poster is right. Checklists prevent the shit from happening. When the shit does happen, it's because someone wasn't following the checklists.
black and white film has higher resolution
Myth.
So, how much more difficult would a manned Titan mission be than a manned Mars mission?
It would take about 6 months of travel time to get to Mars. It took Cassini 7 years to get to Saturn. That's a lot of oxygen, water, and food packets to bring with them.
Granted, Cassini took the 7 year route to save fuel (read: money), and a more expensive, manned mission could probably get there considerably faster. But it would still be at least a year of in-space travel time.
Note that in the states, a phone number that contains "xxx-555-yyyy" is bogus (used only in the movies).
That's not entirely accurate. Many locations actually do use the 555- exchange. Only numbers in the range of 555-0100 to 555-0199 are reserved for Hollywood productions. For example, here is a list of dozens of places in the United States alone, where the prefix "555-" is used.
If you want to get rid of an idiot like that the only two sane options are: instigate and support via comprehenive international effort an internal uprising or send a commando team and take him out hoping the next dude in line gets a clue.
You really should read up a bit on Iraqi history and politics. If the US had done what you appear to be suggesting, and assassinated Saddam, the "next in line" would have been one of his sons, most likely Qusay or Uday. One of them was a lazy fuck-up (and thus, probably would not have been tapped for the role), and the other was a ruthless, power-hungry, murderous maniac, even worse than Saddam himself.
Assassinating Saddam and hoping the next guy would be better was not a viable option. The next guy would have been even worse, and the Arab world would have been unanimously polarized against the US (at least now, some of them like you).
You act like Saddam's Iraq was some kind of fucking paradise on earth. Saddam started several wars, killed tens of thousands on whims [...]. Iraq and it's people needed a change
I agree that Saddam was a bad leader. The problem is that he was not the only "bad leader" in the world. In fact, it could be argued that he wasn't even the worst.
The argument that opponents of the Iraq war make in the face of arguments such as yours is that your position smacks of hypocrisy and selective enforcement. Sure the citizens of Iraq were suffering under an evil regime. But so are the citizens of North Korea. And Syria. And Lebenan. And a dozen other countries.
Your exact same arguments can be used to justify invading ALL of those other countries, too; yet the United States ONLY chose to invade Iraq, and leave all these other countries to suffer. THAT is why opponents are criticising the war in Iraq.
That's why your argument holds no water. If what you say is true, they why is the US not taking the same action in North Korea? North Korea is also ruled by an evil dictator. Plus, we know North Korea has nuclear weapons, and we know they've been testing ICBMs capable of reaching western US shores. Saddam lacked both of these reasons, yet you invaded Iraq, and have left North Korea completely alone, free to continue developing their weapons programs.
Do you see what I'm saying? Why Iraq, and not these others? If Saddam was so bad, then why not also take out these other guys, who are equally bad, or worse? If the US felt they had to do something about the miserable living conditions in Iraq, then why aren't they also acting in these other nations, which live under even worse regimes? Why isn't the US doing anything to stop the genocides in Sudan? Why is the US so interesting in "liberating" millions of Iraqis, but completely ambivalent about ending the famine and disease killing millions in Africa?
When someone can provide a solid answer to these questions, then I may begin to understand those of you who can support the Iraq war.
I've agreed with most of what you've said so far, but I've got to take issue with these comments:
Never you mind that the chances of them getting one are hundreds of millions to one
Actually, they're much better than that. North Korea may already have nuclear weapons, and it is not at all unheard of for other "iffy" nations like Libya or Syria to acquire the tech.
they have no way to smuggle it in even if somehow they managed to get it
1. Rent cargo container on ship leaving port from poorly regulated, poverty stricken nation.
2. Line said container with lead.
3. Wait 3 weeks.
those who they stole it from would be crying foul and alerting everyone.
Honestly, I don't want to offend you, but it is pretty common knowledge that there are an enormous number of warheads out there that have been decommissioned, or just plain lost post-cold-war, particularly in nations which have seen their political and economical structures crumble (USSR). Remember the nuclear warhead that they finally found off the coast of Georgia just a few months ago? Surely you realize that that's just the tip of the iceberg?
Of course, such devices have long since expired and wouldn't function, but they would provide valuable design information to the individuals. All they'd need after that would be some fissile materials and a quiet place to put it all together.
Fission bombs are frighteningly easy to construct. Fusion devices are much, much harder, but would not be necessary. A fission bomb would get their point across quite succinctly. Recall that both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were fission bombs.
I agree with most of what you said. However, nuclear proliferation is a very, very serious concern, and should not be trivialized.
Do these jobs generate goods and services that are given to Israel? If so, then is it really such a big difference?
Yes. The reason it makes a big difference is because if we were in fact simply handing over billions of dollars in tax money, the US would be draining their own economy. By instead using that money to pay USAmerican workers, local jobs are created, even if the fruits of those labours (the materialistic products that are output) are eventually sent overseas. The workers still get paid. Once the product is created, it is irrelevant whether it is used in the US or used somewhere else. The government has footed the bill.
Note a further interesting side-effect of administering aid this way: When the money is used to pay US workers, those workers pay income tax on that money, and thus at least 20% of it or so goes right back to the government anyway. The money that the workers actually get to keep, they spend on houses, property taxes, utility bills, clothing and groceries, all of which have taxes applied to them, so the government actually recoups even more of their investment.
If they had simply sent a cheque for $2 billion to Isreal, then all of that money would leave the US economy and government, permanently. By doing it this way, almost half of it ends up right back in the government's pocket, and the other half is little more than a subsidized "work-for-welfare" program for US defense employees.
THAT is the "big difference" you asked for.
It sure as hell isn't law here in the UK, and I'm betting our export market in DRM-free DVD players/recorders will get an enormous boost around July 2005 if that's the case where you are.
If such a law actually exists (and I'm not convinced it does), then it would only apply to the US. However, players imported into the US would have to adhere to the US regulations. Namely, if the law says the players must obey a "broadcast" flag, then the players coming in from overseas would have to be modified for sale in the US market. This is not unique - several products are already produced in special runs for certain markets.
And since the US doesn't actually manufacture any DVD players locally, I don't expect any international markets to suddenly find themselves with a gap created by the (non-existent) US manufacturers suddenly only selling crippled DVD players.