In other news, guy with no qualifications makes unqualified statements...

Care to update the wiki page? At least according to that....

ATV capable of 7,667kg to orbit.
Dragon capable of 3,310 kg pressurized ( + another 3,310 non pressurized)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_space_station_cargo_vehicles

Who knows... maybe just maybe NASA is paying for token payloads until SpaceX gets their flight rate up (and thus some notion of improved reliability).

No its ridiculous (and yet another example of the idiotic entitlement mentality destroying this once great nation) to think that somehow the US deserves seats on the Soyuz because we helped build the ISS. We (the US) had a ride to space. It was our own pimped out space taxi. We no longer have that ride... by choice, by design, by policy, yada yada. It's not Russia's job to drive us to work just because we decided to scrap our old ride BEFORE building a new one. You want to do something (possibly) productive? Write to your representatives in .gov and tell them NASA needs more $.

The same way everyone else has... trial and error. Have you seen the montages? For example http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13qeX98tAS8

Also building cars doesn't really give you all that much expertise in building rockets.

Oblig...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FFgVayrWjs

Actually Mr "because its there" died on Everest. Don't get me wrong in many ways George Mallory was an incredible individual. However, following in his footsteps is not the path to a positive outcome.

First we have to deal with "abundant rare earth" elements, and now we have to listen to "silent beeping"? The future... it is so confusing.

The next generation rover Curiosity is launching around the end of November 2011. It makes the existing rovers look like rc cars. Having said that, I agree that along with bigger / better Curiosity, they should have considered a half dozen Spirit clones with different science packages. Though the issue isn't the cost of the rover, but delivering it. Its not cheap. I'd rather see the funding after Curiosity put towards a sample return mission.

I'm sure at that level of income, the Gov't will be more than happy to provide you with numerous subsidies to ensure your quality of life and continued pursuit of the American Dream.

Read the books that follow if you haven't. They figured out how to pull that fail from the fire and move on.

This is part of a sci-fi story... which one I can't remember... where the "friendly" aliens tell the people that the human scientists have been lying to them, hiding all kinds of technological breakthroughs, etc... to demonize the scientific community... who of course end up being the very folks who save humanity from alien annihilation!"

Does this sound familiar to anyone?

Yeah them chess stories sound awfully fishy. Also, as someone who lived in Tokyo for a year, I gotta say there is much variation in the microcosm that is Tokyo. Its not like a vast uniform wasteland of pachinko and soap parlors =)

I've been around Hokkaido, Kyoto, Okinawa, and more. The most "Japanese" experience to my mind at least... was exploring the Izu Hanto, just a day's train ride from the bustle of Tokyo. Your mileage may vary. To bfl, I would suggest that if you do go (and you should!)... go with as few expectations as possible. You'll enjoy it more. Even buying a loaf of bread can be an adventure sometimes.

Adding other repositories to your package manager / software sources is really that difficult? Might want to try a few searches and check out a howto or two...

Agreed! My desktop... Ubuntu, my Mythbox... Ubuntu. My always on ancient laptop ... Puppy Linux (Ubuntu based now). I stick to the LTS images and don't move until a new release looks good wrt forum chatter. Thus far I'm pretty content. The only other dist catching my eye has been Mint and oh look what that is based on... ;-)

So it'd be Kuro5hin?