A completely bullshit comparison used to push some idiotic market-fundamentalist position. What these comparisons never take into account is the different standards of accountability faced by government and big corporations. The government has to be far more transparent, and can rarely externalise. The corporations lies its arse off and passes costs onto others (normally the general public). In this instance, the development of Falcon 9 was so cheap because they simply used existing techniques and systems developed with public money.
When Kennedy made his speech committing the US to go to the moon, the US had been building up a base of rocket science experience for over 15 years - a combination of import German experts and indigenous projects, learning systems management the hard way through repeated explosions.
For the last 15 years (more in fact) the US has funneled most of its top achievers into the idiotic financial industries and internet start-ups (or White Star Line deckchair management, as I like to think of it). Everyone is conditioned by advertising and education to think primarily of financial rewards, and thus science and engineering have become increasingly unattractive to graduates and those sectors have suffered. I am not having a particular go at the US here - the situation in this regard is considerably worse here in the UK - but it is the US being discussed here.
Historically there seems to be a gap of at least 15 years between a government starting to take rocketry/spaceflight seriously and them becoming a leader in the field:
Verein für Raumschiffahrt contracted by German army to develop liquid fueled rockets in 1930, V-2 becomes a viable weapon 1944-1945
Soviet government started GIRD in 1931, Launched Sputnik in 1957 - total war mobilisation (directing rocket efforts to Katushyas and such) and Korolev being shipped to the Gulag along with several other key people probably contributed to how long this took.
US basically ignored rockets and laughed at Goddard until the V-2 showed up, they acquired it and von Braun in 1945 but didn't start pulling ahead in the space race until the mid 1960s
As a counter example, some European countries formed the ELDO (European launcher development organisation) in 1964 without much indigenous expertise; it failed to produce a single functioning rocket before being embarassingly sidelined in 1974. However, in 1979, the first Ariane rocket flew, and the series has gone on to become very successful.
The point is, you can't just throw money at space when you've not got a science/engineering culture in place that can use it, and expect results. Today is not 1960 - is highly unlikely there is fertile ground for funding to fall on even if there was a political will to return to the moon/go to mars.
US business is only putting stuff into space with the US government holding its hand, and is providing services no better (or inferior) to existing space agency ones from around the world. Corporate space exploration is an annoyingly over-hyped, ideologically driven addendum to actual space exploration.
SpaceShipOne is a toy. Falcon 9 is, optimistically, a marginal improvement on the $/kg rate you get from a Russin Proton launch. Way to kick 1960s Soviet rocket ass, guys. And you only needed the help of the USAF to do it!
NASA does a fine job, no-one with any knowledge disputes that. The shuttle was burdensome and now its gone, it frees NASA up to look at getting to Mars. If they've the political will and the money behind them, there is no real doubt they can do this. Seems unlikely in the long term.
In short, the US space program is great, its just let down by the US as a nation; the blind reductionism applied to any government program, the ideologically motivated notion that corporations always perform better than government agencies (ignoring the fact that their efficiency largely comes from sweeping their costs under the carpet, which a democratically accountable government can't do nearly so much), and the general inability to commit to a single mission for your space program as you did in the 1960s.
The ConDem coalition could repeal the DEA any time they liked. Nick Clegg even hinted he would make such a repeal a condition of joining a coalition, and this has now been shown to be an outright lie.
"dipping a needle in" underplays the complexity of that attack. The ricin had to be deployed in a specially manufactured pellet (the design of which confirmed Soviet involvement, IIRC)
I think the key point is that the prosecution had to show that the information these people had obtained was actually being used for terrorist acts. With the presence of the ricin, the possession of the instructions to make it became a crime because they clearly weren't being obtained for curiosity/education.
You could easily argue in court that the materials you own are for personal, educational purposes. Unless, of course, the police had just found a load of homemade ricin in your house...
I have the feeling the conviction has more to do with a bunch of white supremacists holding large quantities of ricin, than that actual act of learning how to make it.
Both of you, just fucking stop. Overpopulation is not the worlds most pressing problem. Its just a pretext for racists to claim that 'breeds' too much. Never 'has children' of course because these people are sub-human to you guys. Ignorant, racist fucks.
A working one? Certainly not. Considering they fucked up an implosion type a-bomb (which the west put into mass production in the 1940s), they probably wouldn't be able to handle something so technical.
Why is paying off the deficit so urgent that it requires a corporate raid on the assets of the nation? This sounds like neoliberal propaganda to me, a transparent pretext for turning over even more of our society to the false god of the 'marketplace' when the damage that has already done in the banking sector is still being felt.
They were sold to members of the British public with enough disposable income to buy shares. Don't try and pretend there was anything democratic about this move.
Spare us the 'land of the free' bullshit. Americans are not free-spirited and independent thinking - I know because I've seen the contents of your media.
Labour have not been on the left since the 1980s. You are almost as bad as the guy who wrote the analysis calling them 'socialist'. In everywhere except ultra-rightwing america, that assertion would be laughable. But to you guys, I guess anybody whose primary policy is not giving tax breaks to millionaires is a commie...
I've logged on to my EU battlenet account and the mac client option is still greyed out. Guess they are doing a staggered roll out.
(Yes, I am a mac user from Europe. I also like cappuccino, think universal healthcare is great, and am convinced global warming is caused by human activity. I fully expect a response from crazed right-wing americans)
As for those irredeemable cretins, attracted to any thread that mentions macs and games, who snark 'dont buy a mac for games' - there is a fairly simply response. I don't buy a computer of any sort for games; if you *just* want games, buy an xbox 360, rent a botnet, and go grief the other basement-dwellers on Halo 3. I got a mac because I like having a well-built laptop and an operating system that works properly so that I can get things done. I generally spend most of my day on my computer at them moment; 90% of that time is doing work or browsing the web, both of which I much prefer doing under Snow Leopard than shitty windows 7. I don't think its much to ask that when I choose to play some games at the end of the day, I don't have to reboot into an operating system I find unsuitable for most of my computer activity. And hey, Blizzard and Valve agree, and unlike forum trolls they have some influence in the real world.
Nobody is saying this is close to legislation - what we are saying is 'look what these fuckers think, and remember they have very deep pockets for lobbying'. Of course the EFF has their own agenda - but that agenda involves me keeping control over my own computer and my own data, whereas that of the content cartels does not. This is a moral no-brainer.
Yeah, because the market sorted out the banking sector really well, didn't it.
Market fundamentalism is to proper economics as creationism is to biology. Referring everything to an imaginary entity (be it a god or an invisible hand) is the first recourse of the terminally stupid.
Yup, and it 'solved' it by pushing Russia to the brink of famine (described by Russian lawmakers of the era as 'economic genocide') and resulted in Yeltsin crushing the fledgling democracy.
Slashdot Mirror
A completely bullshit comparison used to push some idiotic market-fundamentalist position. What these comparisons never take into account is the different standards of accountability faced by government and big corporations. The government has to be far more transparent, and can rarely externalise. The corporations lies its arse off and passes costs onto others (normally the general public). In this instance, the development of Falcon 9 was so cheap because they simply used existing techniques and systems developed with public money.
That is debatable
When Kennedy made his speech committing the US to go to the moon, the US had been building up a base of rocket science experience for over 15 years - a combination of import German experts and indigenous projects, learning systems management the hard way through repeated explosions.
For the last 15 years (more in fact) the US has funneled most of its top achievers into the idiotic financial industries and internet start-ups (or White Star Line deckchair management, as I like to think of it). Everyone is conditioned by advertising and education to think primarily of financial rewards, and thus science and engineering have become increasingly unattractive to graduates and those sectors have suffered. I am not having a particular go at the US here - the situation in this regard is considerably worse here in the UK - but it is the US being discussed here.
Historically there seems to be a gap of at least 15 years between a government starting to take rocketry/spaceflight seriously and them becoming a leader in the field:
Verein für Raumschiffahrt contracted by German army to develop liquid fueled rockets in 1930, V-2 becomes a viable weapon 1944-1945
Soviet government started GIRD in 1931, Launched Sputnik in 1957 - total war mobilisation (directing rocket efforts to Katushyas and such) and Korolev being shipped to the Gulag along with several other key people probably contributed to how long this took.
US basically ignored rockets and laughed at Goddard until the V-2 showed up, they acquired it and von Braun in 1945 but didn't start pulling ahead in the space race until the mid 1960s
As a counter example, some European countries formed the ELDO (European launcher development organisation) in 1964 without much indigenous expertise; it failed to produce a single functioning rocket before being embarassingly sidelined in 1974. However, in 1979, the first Ariane rocket flew, and the series has gone on to become very successful.
The point is, you can't just throw money at space when you've not got a science/engineering culture in place that can use it, and expect results. Today is not 1960 - is highly unlikely there is fertile ground for funding to fall on even if there was a political will to return to the moon/go to mars.
US business is only putting stuff into space with the US government holding its hand, and is providing services no better (or inferior) to existing space agency ones from around the world. Corporate space exploration is an annoyingly over-hyped, ideologically driven addendum to actual space exploration.
SpaceShipOne is a toy. Falcon 9 is, optimistically, a marginal improvement on the $/kg rate you get from a Russin Proton launch. Way to kick 1960s Soviet rocket ass, guys. And you only needed the help of the USAF to do it!
NASA does a fine job, no-one with any knowledge disputes that. The shuttle was burdensome and now its gone, it frees NASA up to look at getting to Mars. If they've the political will and the money behind them, there is no real doubt they can do this. Seems unlikely in the long term.
In short, the US space program is great, its just let down by the US as a nation; the blind reductionism applied to any government program, the ideologically motivated notion that corporations always perform better than government agencies (ignoring the fact that their efficiency largely comes from sweeping their costs under the carpet, which a democratically accountable government can't do nearly so much), and the general inability to commit to a single mission for your space program as you did in the 1960s.
The ConDem coalition could repeal the DEA any time they liked. Nick Clegg even hinted he would make such a repeal a condition of joining a coalition, and this has now been shown to be an outright lie.
"dipping a needle in" underplays the complexity of that attack. The ricin had to be deployed in a specially manufactured pellet (the design of which confirmed Soviet involvement, IIRC)
I think the key point is that the prosecution had to show that the information these people had obtained was actually being used for terrorist acts. With the presence of the ricin, the possession of the instructions to make it became a crime because they clearly weren't being obtained for curiosity/education.
You could easily argue in court that the materials you own are for personal, educational purposes. Unless, of course, the police had just found a load of homemade ricin in your house...
And a difference between owning the instructions, and owning the instructions, the raw materials, and the finished products.
...could have been the fucking chemical weapons.
I have the feeling the conviction has more to do with a bunch of white supremacists holding large quantities of ricin, than that actual act of learning how to make it.
A future population of 15 billion? Evidence or STFU.
I'm not trying to make myself 'feel better' - I just don't like slashdot posters living off their parents money making veiled eugenic statements.
Both of you, just fucking stop. Overpopulation is not the worlds most pressing problem. Its just a pretext for racists to claim that 'breeds' too much. Never 'has children' of course because these people are sub-human to you guys. Ignorant, racist fucks.
A working one? Certainly not. Considering they fucked up an implosion type a-bomb (which the west put into mass production in the 1940s), they probably wouldn't be able to handle something so technical.
Appeal to popularity fallacy. Ad hominem fallacy. This would seem to indicate the difference between 4: Insightful and -1: Troll, wouldn't it?
He is a purely evil man with his finger on the idiot button. What is not to hate?
Why is paying off the deficit so urgent that it requires a corporate raid on the assets of the nation? This sounds like neoliberal propaganda to me, a transparent pretext for turning over even more of our society to the false god of the 'marketplace' when the damage that has already done in the banking sector is still being felt.
They were sold to members of the British public with enough disposable income to buy shares. Don't try and pretend there was anything democratic about this move.
Yeah, lets just sweep all that nasty Cromwell business under the rug...
Spare us the 'land of the free' bullshit. Americans are not free-spirited and independent thinking - I know because I've seen the contents of your media.
Labour have not been on the left since the 1980s. You are almost as bad as the guy who wrote the analysis calling them 'socialist'. In everywhere except ultra-rightwing america, that assertion would be laughable. But to you guys, I guess anybody whose primary policy is not giving tax breaks to millionaires is a commie...
Electrical tape is a messy fix and probably a temporary one. Heat shrink tubing is far, far better for this.
I've logged on to my EU battlenet account and the mac client option is still greyed out. Guess they are doing a staggered roll out.
(Yes, I am a mac user from Europe. I also like cappuccino, think universal healthcare is great, and am convinced global warming is caused by human activity. I fully expect a response from crazed right-wing americans)
As for those irredeemable cretins, attracted to any thread that mentions macs and games, who snark 'dont buy a mac for games' - there is a fairly simply response. I don't buy a computer of any sort for games; if you *just* want games, buy an xbox 360, rent a botnet, and go grief the other basement-dwellers on Halo 3. I got a mac because I like having a well-built laptop and an operating system that works properly so that I can get things done. I generally spend most of my day on my computer at them moment; 90% of that time is doing work or browsing the web, both of which I much prefer doing under Snow Leopard than shitty windows 7. I don't think its much to ask that when I choose to play some games at the end of the day, I don't have to reboot into an operating system I find unsuitable for most of my computer activity. And hey, Blizzard and Valve agree, and unlike forum trolls they have some influence in the real world.
Most new means of distribution of media have nothing to do with money changing hands, so you fail pretty hard there.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
Nobody is saying this is close to legislation - what we are saying is 'look what these fuckers think, and remember they have very deep pockets for lobbying'. Of course the EFF has their own agenda - but that agenda involves me keeping control over my own computer and my own data, whereas that of the content cartels does not. This is a moral no-brainer.
Yeah, because the market sorted out the banking sector really well, didn't it.
Market fundamentalism is to proper economics as creationism is to biology. Referring everything to an imaginary entity (be it a god or an invisible hand) is the first recourse of the terminally stupid.
Yup, and it 'solved' it by pushing Russia to the brink of famine (described by Russian lawmakers of the era as 'economic genocide') and resulted in Yeltsin crushing the fledgling democracy.