Pangloss

Yeesh, isn't there a rule about poison pilling threads around here? Somebody needs to take out the garbage. Phi, you a Heinlein fan?

It's always been fascinating to me that extremists are iminently capable of recognizing other extremists, but never recognize it in themselves.

I don't know what the issue with WMP is that you might be referring to. There have been a number of technical issues with regard to DRM that continue to be discussed in the industry. WMP plays a role in that discussion. The down side of DRM is that it infringes upon the widely accepted concept of "fair use". In other words, being able to purchase something (legally), and then use it in various mediums. Opponents of DRM feel that, as the entertainment industry continues to thrive in spite of piracy, the real issue is increasing profits. While making money is in itself not a bad thing, publically-traded corporations have an inherent flaw, in the sense that they're obligated to their stockholders to increase the value of their stock. Nothing else, in fact, matters. Generally speaking, the way to increase stock value is to increase sales. If the market is saturated (as the entertainment market is), then your growth comes from either (a) growth in the entertainment sector as a whole (slow and shared), and (b) finding new profit centers (such as, for example, charging people double if they play the music on two different devices). Both sides of the debate have valid points. Ultimately I believe the problem will be solved by a combination of technology and a re-inventing of the entertainment industry over time. But in order to make that happen, customers need to continue to motivate the industry NOT to close off fair use methods.

Unlike the people in the World Trade Center on 9/11, Hugo Chavez is not a civilian nor an innocent bystander. The issue before us in this thread is whether assassinating a foreign official constitutes (a) terrorism, and (b) an acceptable measure. My personal opinion is "no" on both counts.

This is going to be a serious conundrum for the American political left, which has traditionally staged strong opposition to polygamy on the grounds that it is unfair to women. It's a standard straw man argument, really -- some women are abused, and therefore it is the institution of polygamy which must be stopped, not the abuse itself. After all, men are evil, and therefore anything men do is probably evil. NOW was a big leader in this area. But of course now (if you'll pardon the pun) they have backed themselves into a major hypocrisy. The moral basis for supporting gay marriage is, as Dak said above, a very simple, freedom and fairness based position. Consenting adults, and all that. So how can they go back to opposing polygamy? Whether it becomes an issue again is another matter. Getting the left-leaning press to acknowledge and air out that dirty laundry is a bit of a pipe dream, and the religious establishment of Utah (one of the last great bastions of "conservative democrats") is rather firmly in control of its people, and opposes polygamy. So this debate may simply never come up in the public arena. But I think it's an interesting one.

Just to show how outrageous his comments were, even the ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal web site criticized his remarks yesterday, basically calling him a nutcase, and wondering how he could be opposed to abortion on moral grounds, and yet in favor of assassination.

Digital Rights Management. It's a phrase that's used to refer to the general subject of protecting a piece of media from unauthorized copying. Wikipedia has a decent background article on it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Rights_Management

Fascinating. It's always interesting to see how different cultures apply the normal flaws of human nature in their own particular sociological idiom. If nothing else, at least I don't feel so bad about my own culture's flaws.

<hands IMM a glass of water to help swallow the incoming poison pill>

Fascinating, thanks!

The moon and mars are part of the developing program. Read the link on CEV I pasted in above.

So when does Bono start asking China for aid for Africa?

Yeah, we'll get right on that.

That's interesting, I didn't know that. Why isn't that a disproof of Olber's Paradox? (Which, so far as I've read, is disproven by other means, such as the argument that the universe is finite, or that it is unevenly distributed.) Is it just that the light breaks down so slowly that it would still fill the sky with light (if not for those other factors) before a significant amount of it broke down?

But it wouldn't generate energy, which of course is the whole point. Perhaps (I don't know enough to know if that's possible or not) it might make a perfect energy storage device, but as soon as you extracted its energy it would be gone, and then you'd have to replace it somehow. The article I linked earlier in this thread mentions Richard Feynman's thought experiment on Brownian motion, called a Brownian Ratchet which readers of this thread might find interesting.

An amusing point, but of course it violates the most basic requirement of perpetual motion, which is that it must be changing position with respect to time. If you are referring to the fact that it is moving, along with its surface, you know that that's not perpetual, right? The Earth's rotational motion is not perpetual at all.

I'd be interested in reading more about that if you happen across a link. You can read more about NASA's current plans, and the current approaches being developed into proposals by two coalitions from the military-industrial complex, at this URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crew_Exploration_Vehicle It's worth noting that while Russia's manned program is more or less dead in the water without US taxpayer subsidies, China has not hesitated, and has announced that it will be launching its second manned space mission in just a few months. They're also taking aim at the moon and permanent space habitation.

Some of them are interesting. I think the question in general is a very interesting one. Unfortunately it's a bit early to get much of a feel for it at this point. For one thing, it appears that we will lose the ability to return large payloads from orbit. But that ability was rarely used by the shuttle, because you pretty much had to dedicate the entire mission to that purpose. Much of the reasons why the shuttle was so ineffective at its original goal of reducing the cost of space travel is because we asked it to do too much. Perhaps getting back to older methods will give us a chance to subdivide tasks amongst different vehicles that can be optimized for efficiency.

Well that poll doesn't say that the majority of Americans hate Bush. But they certainly disapprove. I think it's fascinating that when the anti-Bush rhetoric cools down, you see Bush's approval ratings plummet, and when the rhetoric heats up, you see his approval rise (as we did in 2004). Cindy Sheehan and the loony left should be careful what they wishes for. But getting to the point of the thread (which I think is interesting), I agree with your point about Africa. I agree with Bono that we can do better, perhaps even matching the growing European "standard" of 0.7% GDP. But one of the reasons for Bono's success is his desire to refrain from partisan rhetoric and focus on the positive, emphasizing the common goals. Americans are tired of being told how evil they are (however justified it may be), and Bono must have sensed that, focusing instead on the positive contributions of Americans around the world. It worked. Other "good" things from Bush? Well let's see.... I should say before I list some things that my list of bad things from the administration is quite a bit longer than my list of good things. But I imagine I'll still take a lot of heat over these points. So be it. Anyway, in no particular order: - Invasion of Afghanistan and removal of the Taliban - Corporate corruption initiative (something like 600 corporate managers convicted, in spite of vast contributions to the Republican party, compared with virtually none by the Clinton-Reno Justice Department) - Supporting/signing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, vastly increasing transparency and responsibility of financial reporting by large, publically-traded corporations - Bankruptcy reform - Expanding Clinton's faith-based initiatives program (but I often critize specific examples of these programs) - Promoting further free trade initiatives and agreements in the face of domestic opposition - Tax cuts -- everyone benefitted, and parents benefitted even more, and even Alan Greenspan believes they had a positive impact on the economy - No Child Left Behind (whose chief sponsor was Ted Kennedy). This also deserves a lot of criticism, but it's important to recognize that it's a step in the right direction, giving Democrats exactly what they've always wanted -- a federal say in local education, amongst other things - The new space initiative (but I think any president who happened to be in office at this time would have made exactly the same decision) - Medicare prescription drug coverage (but this was a bipartisan no-brainer as well) - The new environmental deal with Australia, with details still emerging, sounds promising - Supporting/signing McCain-Feingold (campaign finance reform) (flawed, but also a step in the right direction) - The national "Do Not Call" list (trivial, I know, but hey, it impacted me greatly) - Aid to Tsunami victims, and sending Clinton and his father to the region (Clinton's op/ed piece in the New York Times was a classic that will be remembered for many years) That second point above highlights one of the things that I think constitutes an hypocrisy amongst some administration critics, who claim that he's too stubborn and closed-minded. But I think the criticism is fair, so long as you realize that there is a positive side to that as well as a negative side. He's very much cut from the Teddy Roosevelt mould in that way, and it hurts him in much the same way. Anyway, as I said above, I have an even longer list of complaints about the current administration. But I believe in fairness and credit where it's due.

And there's really no reason to have 445 open (it's used for shoving data around the LAN, but nobody in their right mind would open local shares across the Internet). Anybody with ANY kind of firewall is going to be blocking that port automatically. Since Windows XP Service Pack 2 turns the built-in firewall on by default, the problem stops there. I believe that firewall shipped with Service Pack 1, but at that time it was turned off by default. At any rate, details aside, the truly amazing thing about all of this is that CNN, ABC News and other major media outlets had no firewall. Or perhaps they had one, but had left 445 open for some reason, perhaps for some custom app. (I got it! They were running Liberal News Spin Applier 0.9, which connects to the ACLU and Moveon.org through port 445 in order to make appropriate ideological "adjustments" to their stories.) ;-)

I believe they have a max capacity of 7 on the shuttle, rather than 9. But yeah, I mean that due to the problems of this past mission, we will never see another launch. It's unfortunate, but I think that's the way it's going to go down.

And, by the way, I predicted recently in another thread we will never see another one launched. I still believe that to be the case.

I sure don't, sorry about that, you're going to have to do some digging for that one. My guess would be that it's pretty important, which I imagine is why they let the computer fly virtually the entire program, with the pilot taking over just before it touches down (right about where the wheels pop out). In aviation terms, it's easily the most challenging landing there is, blowing away the dangers of, say, a night-time carrier landing in a raging hurricane. It's not even so much the fact that you can't go around for another attempt, it's just the fact that the thing is barely flying at all, with a descent profile that almost boggles the mind. Moments before it touches down it's still descending at several thousand feet per second, a rate that would have even the most seasoned 747 passenger grabbing for the nearest air sickness bag. One of the more mind-boggling moments is when they put the time-to-landing statistics on the screen. It'll say something like "2500 miles out" and "150,000 feet" followed by "15 minutes to landing". And at that point it's practically standing sill compared with what it was doing in orbit. (grin) Any way you look at it, it's an amazing piece of work.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,16339822%5E29677,00.html I believe that the rise of the Chinese middle class is going to be one of the great stories of the 21st century. On the one hand, you can't help but root for these people. It's also fascinating to see the "Chinese experiment", like the American experiment, try to pave its own path to a unique combination of prosperity and freedom. Alas, it seems likely that there will be many pitfalls along the way. I will say this, though -- few societies are better mentally equipped to handle such travails. After all, it's built right into their language. Many of their language symbols are "overloaded" (to steal a programming term), meaning such contradictory things as "danger" and "opportunity" at the same time. At any rate, I wish them the best of luck. Because of there's one thing I think we can say for sure at this point, it's that the western world will have very little to say about how it goes.

The window of landing opportunity is actually determined long before the shuttle comes anywhere near the atmosphere. About an hour before, if I remember correctly. They make the decision based on various factors, with weather at the landing site being the biggest variable. The decision is made, then thrusters are fired in the direction of current travel, slowing the ship so that it drops into the atmosphere. 90 minutes later it's on the ground (whether the weather is still cooperating or not).