Given NASA's constant funding problems for the last few decades
During the last few decades (1990-) NASA has enjoyed consistent funding just north of 15 billion inflation adjusted dollars every year. That pattern has survived four presidents and almost six administrations.
The "funding problem" you imagine is received bullshit. Given that NASA is just one of many 'discretionary' costs that must compete with the ever bloating welfare state and chronic $1E12+ annual deficits since 2008, a NASA spending authority loss of only 5% is a testament to our values and our wisdom.
Our wisdom... sounds weird doesn't it? Taking the occasional break from self-flagellation is useful behavior.
Xerox, Bell Labs, AT&T, Kalpana (later Cisco) all put in huge parts, like Ethernet, switching and UNIX. People like Kevin Dunlap and Paul Vixie out of DEC gave us BIND (DNS)
Here (under 'Affiliations') is a histogram of contributing authors to all RFCs. The title says "companies" but it enumerates non-companies like NASA, Berkeley and MIT. So citing RFCs blows a big hole in your own argument.
Your training as an anti-corporate malcontent has given you some blind spots. The Internet is largely American (Western, if your being diplomatic) and created by for-profit entities. But feel free to continue indulging whatever illusions make you feel good.
Because it looks like they are regulating advertising.
Advertising and print. That is the characterization that appears in the linked story, anyhow.
If, by print, they include all forms of printed pornography then they've just outlawed pornographic magazines. Do not doubt for one second that busy-body parents won't use this to have any form of even slightly suggestive literature banned from schools as well. That is the mind-set this kind of governance embraces.
It's feminism run amok. "Gender stereotype" is mantra those people chant to each other. Now it's law in Europe.
And if you think this precedent setting victory is going to satisfy them and they'll just go away now you're a fucking idiot. Letting online porn slide was a premeditated legislative feint. They'll be back for internet porn as well.
You Europeans submitted yourselves to the statists in Brussels. Enjoy having your minds set right.
That sounds a lot like the sentiments expressed yesterday about Kentucky (Rand Paul's state.) Perhaps you people need to rethink the stereotypes you've been trained with.
This kind of thing happens whenever you have an opinionated celebrity with controversial views that are at odds with a lot of their fan base.
Erm... no. No it doesn't. It "happens" when celebs fail to be politically correct. When a celeb with a cohort of degenerates sayssomethingpoliticallycorrect it is celebrated and rewarded. No media drama. No discussion about precisely how far we need to bury the reprobate.
The phenomena is not symmetric. There are social check valves through which we stratify each other. Those valves are arranged by wealthy, urban multi-culties and their many well trained aspirants.
until everyone has special favors and everyone is paying for everyone else's stuff in addition to providing much needed jobs for lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, regulators, etc.
"We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket."
We've long since played cards we've dealt ourselves. That's why there is a vast cloud of pollution drifting out of China. We've feathered our environmental pressure group nest at home and shipped our industry and its energy demands out of "the environment."
Mexico doesn't have a Feinstein to wreck their solar build outs. For purposes of this discussion Mexico isn't in "the environment" either. It's just another destination for refugee industries evacuating the US.
Are you telling me that a free market does not work
The "free market" is not involved. UK government policy to reduce carbon drives both the adoption of wind, which we learn does not produce expected output, and deliberately inflates gas cost while lowering heating benefits to reduce demand, producing fuel poverty.
Adopting wind and its false promises is government policy. Fuel poverty is government policy. Connection complete.
large upfront costs... takes 20 years... half-way cancelled project
Bullshit.
That phenomena is unique to Western nations that indulge pressure groups and their abuse of the legal system, coupled with a leadership vacuum. China builds a reactor in under 24 months. The completed cost of an AP-1000 reactor in China is $2 billion as of 2009.
other forms of energy such as solar will have since grown cheaper
Even if that ancient promise were to one day come true it won't matter. Building will not be permitted. Period.
The UK already figured out that wind power claims are exaggerated. By a lot. "Fuel poverty" is now an 'issue' that appears regularly in the UK press. It's killing people.
Don't believe any of it; they're all oil company shills. Yay saving the planet.
So what does their study say about "western" who have been raised rural?
You may safely assume they fall under the "primitive, gun-loving hillbilly rednecks" stereotype and omit them from humanity as well. Given contemporary social science I suspect any America "raised rural" would necessarily occupy the "least human" end of the humanity continuum.
Innovation in 'social science' amounts to finding new ways to disparage Americans specifically, and more generally anyone with the temerity to emulate them. These are professional malcontents; the finest hate-mongers on Earth, teaching us all what we are to loath. Hindu hut-dwellers are about the only form of humanity not subject to their highly refined contempt.
We are feathering our environmental nest at home and stocking our shelves from unregulated hell holes.
At some point this evacuation of our industrial base to China will emerge as a moral issue. It's already an employment issue for the working class and a fiscal issue for the nation, but neither of those seem to comfortable office people and the ruling class.
Maybe the shame of all this will.
Importing from regimes that do not have equivalent regulatory rigor is exploitation.
Inconvenient Party affiliation omitted, twice in one day.
Back here we have a Democrat state senator Toni Harp from Connecticut trying to "Ban Kids From Using Arcade Guns." Now we have Democrat state senator Ira Silverstein of Illinois with another statist gem.
Could we please stop this game? When we're raging about Republicans there is no hesitation qualifying names with parties. I know it's inconvenient that all bad government isn't the fault of fundies, but pretending statists aren't a problem isn't helpful behavior.
Some large fraction of the slashdot crowd enjoys characterizing anti-illegal immigration types as 'racists.' Illegal immigration wiped out meat packing unions. It lowered the wage floor for tens of millions of workers.
Don't bitch about H-1B pressure if you have no patience for textile workers whinging about their 'jerbs.' Your degree doesn't mean shit; now you're just as fungible as Sally Mae and her meat cleaver, and you have less cause to complain; the H-1B guys are at least legal.
So don't be racist. Our borders and your job must be open to all... only racists say otherwise.
You were doing fine until you starting mouthing educrat talking points. NCLB has been on the books for 11 years. The phenomenon we're discussing is much older than that. 30+ years at least. Just before the NEA propaganda derailed your thinking you got close:
One thing we could do to fix it is stop pushing college so hard. Many of my kids would be better served in a tradeschool than a university
The notion you express about "not pushing college so hard," is a naive reflection of the problem; we are supposed to be investing in capable students and not abandoning our standards and expectations to accommodate everyone in the name of fairness. We fund everyone with little or no regard for capability; if you can fog a glass you can get a pell grant and as much unsecured debt as you can stomach, because any other policy is unfair... and this policy damage goes all the way back to primary school.
One consequence of the civil rights movement was equivocating tracking with racism. During the 1970's the US public education system eradicated tracking as a mechanism to stratify students based on performance. I personally experienced this as the curriculum of a second grade class changed (new books, all uniform with no separate coursework for different groups) mid-course in 1976 when I was a student. The civil rights empowered educrats went on a jihad against tracking throughout the US. No delay or resistance was tolerated. Today, 'fairness' is the overriding imperative of all US public education.
Nations where high academic performance prevails don't do this to themselves. It's self inflicted.
so the only real "solution" is to dump money at the problem.
The solution is tracking. Students from indifferent, "keeping up with the kardashians" watching households get shunted to remedial schools so they're well prepared to flip burgers or whatever. The diligent students get rewarded with more challenging schools and more investment by the public.
The is done in all nations where high academic performance prevails. We use to do it as well. Then we conflated tracking with racism and eradicated it. The eradication was so thorough that today people like you are oblivious to the concept, believing the public money cannon is the only answer. Shades of Orwell there.
None of this is feasible. The ACLU mentality prevails in the US and actually fixing our education system is never going to be permitted. That's how we vote, anyhow.
What you are witnessing is the disintegration of American secondary education. We have seen a dramatic decline in the preparation of incoming freshman. Even strong students who are very prepared on paper have major and substantial gaps in their education. Professors are struggling to manage this situation. Do you teach to the students in a way that will maximize their learning? Or do you teach the course content at a level consistent with your own notion of academic integrity and what the course catalog lists as the content of the course? Do you somehow split the difference, or if so, how? These are the questions we are trying to answer.
Yes, in other words. Standards are dropping.
Typically educrats use these discussions as an opportunity to claim poverty; not enough public money. I applaud you for not doing that. For the record we're #4 in in the world in spending per student in elementary and secondary education. Way up the high side of the spending histogram. The NEA will say otherwise but they are lying; "percent of GDP" is a misleading calculation.
It's about parenting. Parents have dropped their standards to zero. They do, however, have expectations of schools; don't you dare fail Shaniqua... she showed up every day just like all the other kids.
No need to go overseas. The Veterans Administration under the US DOD uses so-called nurse triage lines with an expert system to direct patients to care over the phone. They're making a mobile, tablet based system now:
The combined solution, called ER Mobile, will make it possible for nurses to perform timely, accurate triage on a mobile device anywhere in the ER, as well as create a comprehensive record that will be recorded in the VA EMR.
Shazam. Tri-corder.
The VA isn't nearly as slavishly obedient to the AMA as private practice, and they definitely don't have employer provided health insurance systems to bilk, so things like this (delegation to nurses) get traction.
Slashdot Mirror
Given NASA's constant funding problems for the last few decades
During the last few decades (1990-) NASA has enjoyed consistent funding just north of 15 billion inflation adjusted dollars every year. That pattern has survived four presidents and almost six administrations.
The "funding problem" you imagine is received bullshit. Given that NASA is just one of many 'discretionary' costs that must compete with the ever bloating welfare state and chronic $1E12+ annual deficits since 2008, a NASA spending authority loss of only 5% is a testament to our values and our wisdom.
Our wisdom... sounds weird doesn't it? Taking the occasional break from self-flagellation is useful behavior.
Profit minded companies
Xerox, Bell Labs, AT&T, Kalpana (later Cisco) all put in huge parts, like Ethernet, switching and UNIX. People like Kevin Dunlap and Paul Vixie out of DEC gave us BIND (DNS)
Here (under 'Affiliations') is a histogram of contributing authors to all RFCs. The title says "companies" but it enumerates non-companies like NASA, Berkeley and MIT. So citing RFCs blows a big hole in your own argument.
Your training as an anti-corporate malcontent has given you some blind spots. The Internet is largely American (Western, if your being diplomatic) and created by for-profit entities. But feel free to continue indulging whatever illusions make you feel good.
Because it looks like they are regulating advertising.
Advertising and print . That is the characterization that appears in the linked story, anyhow.
If, by print, they include all forms of printed pornography then they've just outlawed pornographic magazines. Do not doubt for one second that busy-body parents won't use this to have any form of even slightly suggestive literature banned from schools as well. That is the mind-set this kind of governance embraces.
It's feminism run amok. "Gender stereotype" is mantra those people chant to each other. Now it's law in Europe.
And if you think this precedent setting victory is going to satisfy them and they'll just go away now you're a fucking idiot. Letting online porn slide was a premeditated legislative feint. They'll be back for internet porn as well.
You Europeans submitted yourselves to the statists in Brussels. Enjoy having your minds set right.
Yeah let's just FORGET ALL ABOUT OSX
Yeah let's just FORGET ALL ABOUT Android, it is UNIX and it has a graphical user interface!
Mozilla Firefox is on Android too!
Wait for it.... Waaaaait.....
YES, EMAC FOR ANDROID! Yay.
You neglected a bunch of stuff you stupids, pathetic and stupid, hrmph.
Remember; on sentence per line, just like they taught you.
Stupids.
That sounds a lot like the sentiments expressed yesterday about Kentucky (Rand Paul's state.) Perhaps you people need to rethink the stereotypes you've been trained with.
Hey Hatta, is this also not "real" Feminism?
Because "Eliminating gender stereotypes" sure sounds like the feminist newspeak I've been subjected to since birth.
Whatever. You signed up for this when you submitted to these euro-statists. Enjoy getting criminalized.
This kind of thing happens whenever you have an opinionated celebrity with controversial views that are at odds with a lot of their fan base.
Erm... no. No it doesn't. It "happens" when celebs fail to be politically correct. When a celeb with a cohort of degenerates says something politically correct it is celebrated and rewarded. No media drama. No discussion about precisely how far we need to bury the reprobate.
The phenomena is not symmetric. There are social check valves through which we stratify each other. Those valves are arranged by wealthy, urban multi-culties and their many well trained aspirants.
Burn him. We need to get rid of these damaged minds.
Climate change skeptics too. Line them up.
Gun owners as well.
Racists.
We're going to build some big fires fixing this country.
Sure, if your food is grown in magic land
He's an urban forager that sources his food from the neighborhood while biking and eats it raw.
No processing, cooking, transportation or cleanup.
until everyone has special favors and everyone is paying for everyone else's stuff in addition to providing much needed jobs for lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, regulators, etc.
"We used to make shit in this country, build shit. Now we just put our hand in the next guy's pocket."
— Frank Sobotka, The Wire.
We've got to play the cards we're dealt
We've long since played cards we've dealt ourselves. That's why there is a vast cloud of pollution drifting out of China. We've feathered our environmental pressure group nest at home and shipped our industry and its energy demands out of "the environment."
new-mexico-utility-agrees-to-purchase-solar-power-at-a-lower-price-than-coal
Mexico doesn't have a Feinstein to wreck their solar build outs. For purposes of this discussion Mexico isn't in "the environment" either. It's just another destination for refugee industries evacuating the US.
Are you telling me that a free market does not work
The "free market" is not involved. UK government policy to reduce carbon drives both the adoption of wind, which we learn does not produce expected output, and deliberately inflates gas cost while lowering heating benefits to reduce demand, producing fuel poverty.
Adopting wind and its false promises is government policy. Fuel poverty is government policy. Connection complete.
large upfront costs ... takes 20 years ... half-way cancelled project
Bullshit.
That phenomena is unique to Western nations that indulge pressure groups and their abuse of the legal system, coupled with a leadership vacuum. China builds a reactor in under 24 months. The completed cost of an AP-1000 reactor in China is $2 billion as of 2009.
other forms of energy such as solar will have since grown cheaper
Even if that ancient promise were to one day come true it won't matter. Building will not be permitted. Period.
The UK already figured out that wind power claims are exaggerated. By a lot. "Fuel poverty" is now an 'issue' that appears regularly in the UK press. It's killing people.
Don't believe any of it; they're all oil company shills. Yay saving the planet.
So what does their study say about "western" who have been raised rural?
You may safely assume they fall under the "primitive, gun-loving hillbilly rednecks" stereotype and omit them from humanity as well. Given contemporary social science I suspect any America "raised rural" would necessarily occupy the "least human" end of the humanity continuum.
Innovation in 'social science' amounts to finding new ways to disparage Americans specifically, and more generally anyone with the temerity to emulate them. These are professional malcontents; the finest hate-mongers on Earth, teaching us all what we are to loath. Hindu hut-dwellers are about the only form of humanity not subject to their highly refined contempt.
We are feathering our environmental nest at home and stocking our shelves from unregulated hell holes.
At some point this evacuation of our industrial base to China will emerge as a moral issue. It's already an employment issue for the working class and a fiscal issue for the nation, but neither of those seem to comfortable office people and the ruling class.
Maybe the shame of all this will.
Importing from regimes that do not have equivalent regulatory rigor is exploitation.
You mean the Do-Not-Track that is almost universally ignored? Yeah, lets do that. It's sure to work this time.
Obama has already mandated black-boxes for all new vehical by 2014. Both the EPA and the IRS are going to paw that eventually.
Game over, sheeple.
Inconvenient Party affiliation omitted, twice in one day.
Back here we have a Democrat state senator Toni Harp from Connecticut trying to "Ban Kids From Using Arcade Guns." Now we have Democrat state senator Ira Silverstein of Illinois with another statist gem.
Could we please stop this game? When we're raging about Republicans there is no hesitation qualifying names with parties. I know it's inconvenient that all bad government isn't the fault of fundies, but pretending statists aren't a problem isn't helpful behavior.
Some large fraction of the slashdot crowd enjoys characterizing anti-illegal immigration types as 'racists.' Illegal immigration wiped out meat packing unions. It lowered the wage floor for tens of millions of workers.
Don't bitch about H-1B pressure if you have no patience for textile workers whinging about their 'jerbs.' Your degree doesn't mean shit; now you're just as fungible as Sally Mae and her meat cleaver, and you have less cause to complain; the H-1B guys are at least legal.
So don't be racist. Our borders and your job must be open to all... only racists say otherwise.
No child left behind
You were doing fine until you starting mouthing educrat talking points. NCLB has been on the books for 11 years. The phenomenon we're discussing is much older than that. 30+ years at least. Just before the NEA propaganda derailed your thinking you got close:
One thing we could do to fix it is stop pushing college so hard. Many of my kids would be better served in a tradeschool than a university
The notion you express about "not pushing college so hard," is a naive reflection of the problem; we are supposed to be investing in capable students and not abandoning our standards and expectations to accommodate everyone in the name of fairness. We fund everyone with little or no regard for capability; if you can fog a glass you can get a pell grant and as much unsecured debt as you can stomach, because any other policy is unfair... and this policy damage goes all the way back to primary school.
One consequence of the civil rights movement was equivocating tracking with racism. During the 1970's the US public education system eradicated tracking as a mechanism to stratify students based on performance. I personally experienced this as the curriculum of a second grade class changed (new books, all uniform with no separate coursework for different groups) mid-course in 1976 when I was a student. The civil rights empowered educrats went on a jihad against tracking throughout the US. No delay or resistance was tolerated. Today, 'fairness' is the overriding imperative of all US public education.
Nations where high academic performance prevails don't do this to themselves. It's self inflicted.
so the only real "solution" is to dump money at the problem.
The solution is tracking. Students from indifferent, "keeping up with the kardashians" watching households get shunted to remedial schools so they're well prepared to flip burgers or whatever. The diligent students get rewarded with more challenging schools and more investment by the public.
The is done in all nations where high academic performance prevails. We use to do it as well. Then we conflated tracking with racism and eradicated it. The eradication was so thorough that today people like you are oblivious to the concept, believing the public money cannon is the only answer. Shades of Orwell there.
None of this is feasible. The ACLU mentality prevails in the US and actually fixing our education system is never going to be permitted. That's how we vote, anyhow.
I am a university professor.
Your answer has left no doubt.
What you are witnessing is the disintegration of American secondary education. We have seen a dramatic decline in the preparation of incoming freshman. Even strong students who are very prepared on paper have major and substantial gaps in their education. Professors are struggling to manage this situation. Do you teach to the students in a way that will maximize their learning? Or do you teach the course content at a level consistent with your own notion of academic integrity and what the course catalog lists as the content of the course? Do you somehow split the difference, or if so, how? These are the questions we are trying to answer.
Yes, in other words. Standards are dropping.
Typically educrats use these discussions as an opportunity to claim poverty; not enough public money. I applaud you for not doing that. For the record we're #4 in in the world in spending per student in elementary and secondary education. Way up the high side of the spending histogram. The NEA will say otherwise but they are lying; "percent of GDP" is a misleading calculation.
It's about parenting. Parents have dropped their standards to zero. They do, however, have expectations of schools; don't you dare fail Shaniqua... she showed up every day just like all the other kids.
In the name of health and safety, children, civil rights and stuff.
Not 'christians', fundies, conservatives or anyone else you've been trained to hate.
The ruling class deciding how you'll live with no help from the church at all.
No need to go overseas. The Veterans Administration under the US DOD uses so-called nurse triage lines with an expert system to direct patients to care over the phone. They're making a mobile, tablet based system now:
The combined solution, called ER Mobile, will make it possible for nurses to perform timely, accurate triage on a mobile device anywhere in the ER, as well as create a comprehensive record that will be recorded in the VA EMR.
Shazam. Tri-corder.
The VA isn't nearly as slavishly obedient to the AMA as private practice, and they definitely don't have employer provided health insurance systems to bilk, so things like this (delegation to nurses) get traction.