Anyhow, for fully autonomous, I mean no user-control aside from setting the destination though I'd allow for route specifications. And yes, there are stupid drivers who are unsafe. They need to go. At first blush you appeared the type who claims that autonomous vehicles will be here, and mainstream, in five years. They pop up here fairly often. Now that I see your reply, you appear more reasoned.
We'll have them. Just not for a while. Probably not until I'm gone, at least not wide-scale.
The smell... I know, I know... However, the smell is what gets me. I love it. I've a reading desk with a large window that looks out into the back yard. I was not home for the turning of leaves this year but sitting there, in the natural light, pouring over a tome... It's idyllic. I'd hate for it to go when I go. I think my kids will do it justice, even if it's just to preserve it for the next person.
I am quite willing to bet that I'm older than you. Probably by a significant margin. I'm retired, so I have lots of free time. However, it has never lost its appeal.
Thanks. I have yet to come across that one. I don't watch much television - I've just got better stuff to watch than what I found on television. Well, better stuff for my wants/needs. A quick Google says it's a reality TV show type of thing so it's unlikely that I'd have seen it. I did see another one, at a friends, and it wasn't very interesting. Ah well...
Hmm... Thanks. I've seen a pawn shop program at a friends place. I don't think it was that one. I think it was in Detroit or something. It was not very interesting.
My sentiments exactly. Sure, I know the picture. That was everywhere. The one in the junk yard? I honestly don't think I'd have recognized that. It'd be nice to claim I would but I don't think I would have. I'd have recognized that it was unique and, from the looks of things, fairly well made. The wheels, especially those, would have made me think that it should be held on to until I found out exactly what it was.
Yeah, I recognized the picture - I did not recognize the picture of the junk. Well, I don't think I'd have recognized it. It would have been curious enough to set aside and find out what it is, however. The wheels, especially, would have piqued my interest.
It can, in Linux, still be a little cludgy. If you're in the Debian or Ubuntu realm and outside of the terminal then GDebi does allow for automatic PPA additions. Sometimes, however, you'll use the terminal and have to add the PPA, the GPG signature, etc... It works. I like it. It still could probably use some spit and polish.
Give Opera a try. It's actually really nice. It's built off the Chromium source now but too divergent to be folded back in, probably. They rip out all the Google services but you can still use the Chrome extensions and there's a ton of Opera extensions so you won't find anything lacking that you're not already lacking. It hardly ever pops up in the exploits list and is updated regularly. There's a dev, beta, and stable build. It's fairly light, all things considered, and rather feature-rich. The devs seem to be receptive of complaints and feature ideas. 'Snot bad... I'm waiting to opine more on Vivaldi but Opera is pretty damned awesome.
If you're stuck using Windows then it's probably your best choice but you won't know until you try it. It's worth it, in my opinion. The interface is intuitive and clean. The layout is well reasoned. All in all, it works for me. It may suit your needs. Who knows?
You are correct, I think. I help out on a couple of Linux forums - it helps me learn too. I swear, those ClamAV and ClamTK type apps cause more problems than they're worth. They're the source of much ire, at least with me, and I can't stand the end results. I purposefully skip those questions. No, Macs don't need them either. Actually, I ran Windows with nary a security app running live and had zero detected problems.
Security is a process, not an application. I do some pretty dangerous/stupid shit with my computers. I sandbox them and do them in VMs. I do them on isolated networks. I do them with complete, working, backups. I do rely on some form of web of trust (and then willingly venture beyond that). I've put live XP boxes up, on broadband, unpatched. Well, behind a hardware firewall and NATed router but you know, I've done it. I've run Windows without any protection at all - live scanning protection, and kept it that way for ages. Years.
I don't have much experience in the Mac world. I own one. I've bought more Apple devices than anyone here, probably - just this year alone. I don't have anything against them and their OS seems fine - I've just not taken the time to learn the UI well and it's contrary to much that I've learned/adapted over the years. (I know there's got to be a terminal there, I should probably have bothered finding it.) Ah well...
Not everyone's a zealot. You are. You're a lunatic. That's okay, though. We're probably all lunatics in our own special way.
Cars are recalled now because we have better consumer protection. Cars are, in fact, much better now than they ever were. You can probably trust me on this - I own more cars currently than most will own in their entire lives. I've quite a collection.
I am not an admin, at least by profession, though I've done the work. That sounds like a horrible solution but, you know, I don't actually have a better idea except that not updating sounds horrible and hopefully you keep these unpatched browsers pretty locked down.
Yeah, I recognize the photo the GP linked to. I then checked the article (just to see if it had a pic, nary a whole sentence was read - I'm no heretic) and there's no way in hell that I'd have recognized that. I'd have kept it until I did know what it was, however. The wheels and tires are too specific to be ordinary junk. They're simply not typical designs on any type of vehicle that I'm familiar with of that age, of today, or at any time in history. They're similar to some but not so similar as to be ordinary. I'd want to know what the hell it was before smelting it down.
As said above, after seeing the image, I'm not exactly sure that it's worth keeping. There are far more interesting things that can be and are displayed. It may hold some value to someone, however. I'm just not sure that it has any historic value outside of a small group of people and, even then, I'm not sure how high they'd prioritize that value. Meh, I'll give him $1000 for it. $1500 if he ships it to my house in Maine.
I'd have been ten when the picture was taken (probably, technically, nine) and I recognize it. I'd also recognize LBJ. I don't know how tall he was but he always looked like a big man in the film footage. Anyhow, it's got a big fucking NASA logo on it and it's in Alabama. Of course you don't smelt it down instantly. Junk yard owners are not dumb, I'm not sure where that stereotype comes from. I think I might recognize it but I have the benefit of now knowing about it so I can't really say.
Actually, I just clicked the link and looked at the picture. I figured I should, before hitting submit. (Don't worry, I didn't read the article.) No, no I'd have not recognized that. Not at all. I'd have been curious and found out what it was, however. That it has specialized tires means that I'd be awfully curious. I'd have also been curious because of the wheels, they're definitely not typical. I doubt I'd have smelted it down until after I knew what it was.
After looking at it, I'm not sure they should be called heroic or if it's really all that valuable as a historic relic. I guess that is for others to decide. I'm not sure that I'm qualified to opine.
I see those are words but they don't make a whole lot of sense to me. Comedy show on television? Another cult classic that I've somehow missed? Bad re-write of some Japanese animation that takes place in Las Vegas?:/
Too many results for Rick in Google to narrow this down./. does confuse me once in a while but this post is strange enough to remark on. That there are two of you indicates that there's something that I am missing. Google is not helpful.
Are you implying that the internet has people who reflect, grow, and learn from their own mistakes? Besides, Friday is the day we rant about social justice folks. I don't think we'll have time for introspection and personal growth. We've got howler monkey screeching and poop flinging to do, ain't nobody got time for self-improvement on Fridays.
The missus is in the room, albeit sleeping. I don't need to have her wake up while opening some page that screams at me or otherwise seem like I need to make a long explanation. I don't even want her to wake up and see me typing it into Google...
Are there actually robophiles? As in, those attracted to robots and not to robots that are programmed to to act and look like humans?
I'm thinking there are but even in my unnecessarily vast browsing (for a friend, of course) I've yet to come across anything of that nature. As in, nothing akin to a factory robot or anything like that. I'm particularly curious to know if there's any who's thing is stuff like non-human-esque robots. I'm sort of assuming you know, I've seen your posts before.
I did once see an image of a man in lady's lingerie who was penising the tailpipe of an SUV but that's not quite the image I'm getting in my head when I think of a robophile. I'm thinking of someone who gets sexually aroused when they see an automobile assembly line. If this person exists, I hope they know to be afraid - to be very afraid. I also hope they know that the robot can never love them back.:(
Sometime, before your mentioned 1875 (which seems an odd year to choose but I'm sure you have your reasons), they invented this thing called the paragraph. I did notice the 1875 bit but, other than that, I stopped sometime around the second sentence.
If you want to be read then it may help to make it readable. Given the posts just prior to your own, I first figured your post was spam. I then tried to parse it, gave up out of laziness, and noticed the 1875. Then I figured I'd reply.
I'm also making this reply a little longer than needed so that you can see the benefit of spacing - namely in paragraphs. I could do the indentation thing but that really doesn't seem to work as well on the internet. No, I have no idea why. Either way, it's just a simple separation of ideas and a pounding (or two) of the enter key and you are able to make your post more easily understood or more inviting to be read, at any rate.
See? Sometimes, I go back and I actually add the paragraphs later. Or, more accurately, I insert the breaks later. This has been a pretty good method. I don't always need to but I try to give my post a quick scan and see if I've made any of the paragraphs larger than I'd actually want to read. If I have then I look for a good place to separate them. That may mean that I need to actually do a little work - I may need to flush something out or delete something. Most things can be broken up at some point or another.
That said, hopefully this is not taken the wrong way. I'm intentionally avoiding, much, snark and actually thinking that you may have said something interesting and it may be unfortunate because I'll never know. I've actually spent longer typing this than it would have taken to parse your post but I do type quickly and my goal isn't to make it faster but to tell you that I, personally, feel you could make better use of the mighty paragraph feature. Slashdot does it automatically. You need neither the P or BR elements.
Anyhow, in final saying, I've now spent much more time and effort typing this out than I'd have spent parsing your post. I'm hoping that it's a payoff in the future. For all I know, you said something insightful, witty, or humorous. I may be selfish but it'd be nice to be able to read your posts in the future.;-)
Or, just ignore me... That's okay, too. I just figured that I'd try to help. I'm probably not alone in these regards.
One of my first, truly interactive, experiences on the World Wide Web was (and it was painfully slow) a setup at some lab. They'd taken a slushie machine and an ice cream scoop and attached the scoop to a robotic arm. You can see where this is going. Anyhow, you could watch the live video (again, painfully slow) and try to time it so that you could throw a scoop of slushie balls (snowballs) at the researchers when they walked past.
Today, I guess, we could actually target one, have it wait for them, and then have it used some rather advanced input data to figure out when (and at who) to throw the snowball. This data could be shared across multiple robots so that, no matter where they went, the robots would automatically target that person with a snowball.
I played with that thing for hours - it took forever to load. I never hit a soul. It was in some lab somewhere. I've no idea what happened to it, who it belonged to, or whatnot. I just recall that it was in some sort of lab and involved chucking snowballs at the denizens. I think I spent most of a day doing it. I don't think that I was productive, at all, that day. I don't recall ever returning to that site.
No, it's probably not ideal but it'd work if, say, they don't mind damaging the book. If it were my choice and I only had an embossing tool to do it with (and I'm not at all sure why I'd be in such a position) then I'd do the back cover so that the imprint was readable from the inside or I'd aim for another area of the cover - again, making it inside. Unless the book is pretty heavy then, it'd hold up for a while. They could also use the gold leaf - that holds up pretty well but, honestly, I've never put a bunch of weight on them or anything but I suspect the leaf holds up well enough. I've wasted a lot of them and stamped all too many stupid things and don't recall any of the leaf coming off without a bit of work. So, there's that?
It's definitely sub-optimal but it'd probably work. I'm a big fan of the pen and paper and a little notebook. It's worked for me, for years. I have them right it down in the book. They usually remember them. If it's not an important book then I don't really care and may just tell them to keep it as shelf space, while a bunch, is still limited.
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Err... Probably not verbatim. I think I was four or five at the time. And no, I don't remember it from then - I remember it from the many times it was aired.
You can not earmark donations but you can donate to NASA. These donations are even tax deductible. I'm pretty sure Google will find the link for you. I donated when I sold my business. I'd hoped to be able to earmark the funds - specifically for deep space research via a replacement for the Hubble or similar device. The reply that I got for them, I can probably dig out the email if needed, was something along the lines of, "You can donate, we'd love it, but you can not donate for specific goals. If you'd like to donate then here is how and this is how to write it off on your taxes." It was a pretty nice reply but I was unhappy that I could not donate to a specific goal or project.
I have no problem with NASA being a money pit. Not all necessary research is profit motivated. I dare say, funding things that the private industries will not is kind of the point of government spending unless we really want to scale back a lot of things. I'm partial to science for science sake and I love pure research. I'd rather my taxes go there instead of to the military industrial complex. We're pretty good at bombing brown people, not so good at funding a trip to Mars.
Why Mars? Well, if we want humanity to survive then we absolutely need to get off this rock. In order to do long-distance travel we will need to be able to sustain life away from this planet. In fact, if we can sustain life away from this planet then we might be able to, eventually, just be able to live in a variety of space craft and not actually need to colonize (and probably ruin) other planets. Sure, distances may be many generations away in duration but that's okay - we wouldn't even have to move in and fuck over the locals in different solar systems or galaxies. Mars is, potentially, a step in that direction.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody will take my bet. :( I don't blame them.
Anyhow, for fully autonomous, I mean no user-control aside from setting the destination though I'd allow for route specifications. And yes, there are stupid drivers who are unsafe. They need to go. At first blush you appeared the type who claims that autonomous vehicles will be here, and mainstream, in five years. They pop up here fairly often. Now that I see your reply, you appear more reasoned.
We'll have them. Just not for a while. Probably not until I'm gone, at least not wide-scale.
The smell... I know, I know... However, the smell is what gets me. I love it. I've a reading desk with a large window that looks out into the back yard. I was not home for the turning of leaves this year but sitting there, in the natural light, pouring over a tome... It's idyllic. I'd hate for it to go when I go. I think my kids will do it justice, even if it's just to preserve it for the next person.
I am quite willing to bet that I'm older than you. Probably by a significant margin. I'm retired, so I have lots of free time. However, it has never lost its appeal.
Thanks. I have yet to come across that one. I don't watch much television - I've just got better stuff to watch than what I found on television. Well, better stuff for my wants/needs. A quick Google says it's a reality TV show type of thing so it's unlikely that I'd have seen it. I did see another one, at a friends, and it wasn't very interesting. Ah well...
Hmm... Thanks. I've seen a pawn shop program at a friends place. I don't think it was that one. I think it was in Detroit or something. It was not very interesting.
My sentiments exactly. Sure, I know the picture. That was everywhere. The one in the junk yard? I honestly don't think I'd have recognized that. It'd be nice to claim I would but I don't think I would have. I'd have recognized that it was unique and, from the looks of things, fairly well made. The wheels, especially those, would have made me think that it should be held on to until I found out exactly what it was.
I've yet to try that. Any good? And they mentioned MATE - which is Ubuntu under the hood.
Yeah, I recognized the picture - I did not recognize the picture of the junk. Well, I don't think I'd have recognized it. It would have been curious enough to set aside and find out what it is, however. The wheels, especially, would have piqued my interest.
It can, in Linux, still be a little cludgy. If you're in the Debian or Ubuntu realm and outside of the terminal then GDebi does allow for automatic PPA additions. Sometimes, however, you'll use the terminal and have to add the PPA, the GPG signature, etc... It works. I like it. It still could probably use some spit and polish.
Give Opera a try. It's actually really nice. It's built off the Chromium source now but too divergent to be folded back in, probably. They rip out all the Google services but you can still use the Chrome extensions and there's a ton of Opera extensions so you won't find anything lacking that you're not already lacking. It hardly ever pops up in the exploits list and is updated regularly. There's a dev, beta, and stable build. It's fairly light, all things considered, and rather feature-rich. The devs seem to be receptive of complaints and feature ideas. 'Snot bad... I'm waiting to opine more on Vivaldi but Opera is pretty damned awesome.
If you're stuck using Windows then it's probably your best choice but you won't know until you try it. It's worth it, in my opinion. The interface is intuitive and clean. The layout is well reasoned. All in all, it works for me. It may suit your needs. Who knows?
You are correct, I think. I help out on a couple of Linux forums - it helps me learn too. I swear, those ClamAV and ClamTK type apps cause more problems than they're worth. They're the source of much ire, at least with me, and I can't stand the end results. I purposefully skip those questions. No, Macs don't need them either. Actually, I ran Windows with nary a security app running live and had zero detected problems.
Security is a process, not an application. I do some pretty dangerous/stupid shit with my computers. I sandbox them and do them in VMs. I do them on isolated networks. I do them with complete, working, backups. I do rely on some form of web of trust (and then willingly venture beyond that). I've put live XP boxes up, on broadband, unpatched. Well, behind a hardware firewall and NATed router but you know, I've done it. I've run Windows without any protection at all - live scanning protection, and kept it that way for ages. Years.
I don't have much experience in the Mac world. I own one. I've bought more Apple devices than anyone here, probably - just this year alone. I don't have anything against them and their OS seems fine - I've just not taken the time to learn the UI well and it's contrary to much that I've learned/adapted over the years. (I know there's got to be a terminal there, I should probably have bothered finding it.) Ah well...
Not everyone's a zealot. You are. You're a lunatic. That's okay, though. We're probably all lunatics in our own special way.
Well, seeing as you asked...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You'll probably try to weasel out of it. Those goalposts won't move themselves.
Cars are recalled now because we have better consumer protection. Cars are, in fact, much better now than they ever were. You can probably trust me on this - I own more cars currently than most will own in their entire lives. I've quite a collection.
I am not an admin, at least by profession, though I've done the work. That sounds like a horrible solution but, you know, I don't actually have a better idea except that not updating sounds horrible and hopefully you keep these unpatched browsers pretty locked down.
Yeah, I recognize the photo the GP linked to. I then checked the article (just to see if it had a pic, nary a whole sentence was read - I'm no heretic) and there's no way in hell that I'd have recognized that. I'd have kept it until I did know what it was, however. The wheels and tires are too specific to be ordinary junk. They're simply not typical designs on any type of vehicle that I'm familiar with of that age, of today, or at any time in history. They're similar to some but not so similar as to be ordinary. I'd want to know what the hell it was before smelting it down.
As said above, after seeing the image, I'm not exactly sure that it's worth keeping. There are far more interesting things that can be and are displayed. It may hold some value to someone, however. I'm just not sure that it has any historic value outside of a small group of people and, even then, I'm not sure how high they'd prioritize that value. Meh, I'll give him $1000 for it. $1500 if he ships it to my house in Maine.
I'd have been ten when the picture was taken (probably, technically, nine) and I recognize it. I'd also recognize LBJ. I don't know how tall he was but he always looked like a big man in the film footage. Anyhow, it's got a big fucking NASA logo on it and it's in Alabama. Of course you don't smelt it down instantly. Junk yard owners are not dumb, I'm not sure where that stereotype comes from. I think I might recognize it but I have the benefit of now knowing about it so I can't really say.
Actually, I just clicked the link and looked at the picture. I figured I should, before hitting submit. (Don't worry, I didn't read the article.) No, no I'd have not recognized that. Not at all. I'd have been curious and found out what it was, however. That it has specialized tires means that I'd be awfully curious. I'd have also been curious because of the wheels, they're definitely not typical. I doubt I'd have smelted it down until after I knew what it was.
After looking at it, I'm not sure they should be called heroic or if it's really all that valuable as a historic relic. I guess that is for others to decide. I'm not sure that I'm qualified to opine.
I see those are words but they don't make a whole lot of sense to me. Comedy show on television? Another cult classic that I've somehow missed? Bad re-write of some Japanese animation that takes place in Las Vegas? :/
Too many results for Rick in Google to narrow this down. /. does confuse me once in a while but this post is strange enough to remark on. That there are two of you indicates that there's something that I am missing. Google is not helpful.
Are you implying that the internet has people who reflect, grow, and learn from their own mistakes? Besides, Friday is the day we rant about social justice folks. I don't think we'll have time for introspection and personal growth. We've got howler monkey screeching and poop flinging to do, ain't nobody got time for self-improvement on Fridays.
The missus is in the room, albeit sleeping. I don't need to have her wake up while opening some page that screams at me or otherwise seem like I need to make a long explanation. I don't even want her to wake up and see me typing it into Google...
Are there actually robophiles? As in, those attracted to robots and not to robots that are programmed to to act and look like humans?
I'm thinking there are but even in my unnecessarily vast browsing (for a friend, of course) I've yet to come across anything of that nature. As in, nothing akin to a factory robot or anything like that. I'm particularly curious to know if there's any who's thing is stuff like non-human-esque robots. I'm sort of assuming you know, I've seen your posts before.
I did once see an image of a man in lady's lingerie who was penising the tailpipe of an SUV but that's not quite the image I'm getting in my head when I think of a robophile. I'm thinking of someone who gets sexually aroused when they see an automobile assembly line. If this person exists, I hope they know to be afraid - to be very afraid. I also hope they know that the robot can never love them back. :(
Sometime, before your mentioned 1875 (which seems an odd year to choose but I'm sure you have your reasons), they invented this thing called the paragraph. I did notice the 1875 bit but, other than that, I stopped sometime around the second sentence.
If you want to be read then it may help to make it readable. Given the posts just prior to your own, I first figured your post was spam. I then tried to parse it, gave up out of laziness, and noticed the 1875. Then I figured I'd reply.
I'm also making this reply a little longer than needed so that you can see the benefit of spacing - namely in paragraphs. I could do the indentation thing but that really doesn't seem to work as well on the internet. No, I have no idea why. Either way, it's just a simple separation of ideas and a pounding (or two) of the enter key and you are able to make your post more easily understood or more inviting to be read, at any rate.
See? Sometimes, I go back and I actually add the paragraphs later. Or, more accurately, I insert the breaks later. This has been a pretty good method. I don't always need to but I try to give my post a quick scan and see if I've made any of the paragraphs larger than I'd actually want to read. If I have then I look for a good place to separate them. That may mean that I need to actually do a little work - I may need to flush something out or delete something. Most things can be broken up at some point or another.
That said, hopefully this is not taken the wrong way. I'm intentionally avoiding, much, snark and actually thinking that you may have said something interesting and it may be unfortunate because I'll never know. I've actually spent longer typing this than it would have taken to parse your post but I do type quickly and my goal isn't to make it faster but to tell you that I, personally, feel you could make better use of the mighty paragraph feature. Slashdot does it automatically. You need neither the P or BR elements.
Anyhow, in final saying, I've now spent much more time and effort typing this out than I'd have spent parsing your post. I'm hoping that it's a payoff in the future. For all I know, you said something insightful, witty, or humorous. I may be selfish but it'd be nice to be able to read your posts in the future. ;-)
Or, just ignore me... That's okay, too. I just figured that I'd try to help. I'm probably not alone in these regards.
One of my first, truly interactive, experiences on the World Wide Web was (and it was painfully slow) a setup at some lab. They'd taken a slushie machine and an ice cream scoop and attached the scoop to a robotic arm. You can see where this is going. Anyhow, you could watch the live video (again, painfully slow) and try to time it so that you could throw a scoop of slushie balls (snowballs) at the researchers when they walked past.
Today, I guess, we could actually target one, have it wait for them, and then have it used some rather advanced input data to figure out when (and at who) to throw the snowball. This data could be shared across multiple robots so that, no matter where they went, the robots would automatically target that person with a snowball.
I played with that thing for hours - it took forever to load. I never hit a soul. It was in some lab somewhere. I've no idea what happened to it, who it belonged to, or whatnot. I just recall that it was in some sort of lab and involved chucking snowballs at the denizens. I think I spent most of a day doing it. I don't think that I was productive, at all, that day. I don't recall ever returning to that site.
No, it's probably not ideal but it'd work if, say, they don't mind damaging the book. If it were my choice and I only had an embossing tool to do it with (and I'm not at all sure why I'd be in such a position) then I'd do the back cover so that the imprint was readable from the inside or I'd aim for another area of the cover - again, making it inside. Unless the book is pretty heavy then, it'd hold up for a while. They could also use the gold leaf - that holds up pretty well but, honestly, I've never put a bunch of weight on them or anything but I suspect the leaf holds up well enough. I've wasted a lot of them and stamped all too many stupid things and don't recall any of the leaf coming off without a bit of work. So, there's that?
It's definitely sub-optimal but it'd probably work. I'm a big fan of the pen and paper and a little notebook. It's worked for me, for years. I have them right it down in the book. They usually remember them. If it's not an important book then I don't really care and may just tell them to keep it as shelf space, while a bunch, is still limited.
Cislunar
:( Does that mean I'm a space-shitlord?
"We choose to go to the Moon in this decade, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."
Err... Probably not verbatim. I think I was four or five at the time. And no, I don't remember it from then - I remember it from the many times it was aired.
You can not earmark donations but you can donate to NASA. These donations are even tax deductible. I'm pretty sure Google will find the link for you. I donated when I sold my business. I'd hoped to be able to earmark the funds - specifically for deep space research via a replacement for the Hubble or similar device. The reply that I got for them, I can probably dig out the email if needed, was something along the lines of, "You can donate, we'd love it, but you can not donate for specific goals. If you'd like to donate then here is how and this is how to write it off on your taxes." It was a pretty nice reply but I was unhappy that I could not donate to a specific goal or project.
I have no problem with NASA being a money pit. Not all necessary research is profit motivated. I dare say, funding things that the private industries will not is kind of the point of government spending unless we really want to scale back a lot of things. I'm partial to science for science sake and I love pure research. I'd rather my taxes go there instead of to the military industrial complex. We're pretty good at bombing brown people, not so good at funding a trip to Mars.
Why Mars? Well, if we want humanity to survive then we absolutely need to get off this rock. In order to do long-distance travel we will need to be able to sustain life away from this planet. In fact, if we can sustain life away from this planet then we might be able to, eventually, just be able to live in a variety of space craft and not actually need to colonize (and probably ruin) other planets. Sure, distances may be many generations away in duration but that's okay - we wouldn't even have to move in and fuck over the locals in different solar systems or galaxies. Mars is, potentially, a step in that direction.