*shrug*

I'm all for the commercialization of Space. NASA was/is a waste of time and money.

You don't have to be much of a science fiction fan to appreciate the opportunities created by a serious presence in space. Even if we teleoperated everything from the ground, orbital power is a winner. Asteroid mining to prevent the destruction of our own environment down here is a winner. And human history has proven time and time again that opportunities can be opened up by endeavors and scientific discovery that we couldn't even begin to imagine at the outset.

There's so much more we should be doing up there. The shuttle was just farting around in LEO. We should end it to do something better, not end it to abandon a manned presence in space. If we're not going to move forward up there, other nations will. And we will have ceded the high frontier.

The reason for this is simple. The energy requirements of achieving orbit are simply too high given that mankind is mired in the chemical-energy age. A real human presence outside of LEO cannot be achieved without nuclear propulsion. There simply is no other way around the energy requirements.

Why do I say this? Because mankind has already given up a 60 year old technology capable of boosting entire cities anywhere in the solar system, and even for achieving low relativistic velocities.

Cost estimates projected that for 1% of the US GDP (a paltry $130 billion, not even 10% of the dual stimulus and bank bailouts) we could build an operate an 8 million ton vehicle in the solar system. This is an estimate based on using 1958 materials, and a craft designed with modern, strong materials (carbon fibers and the like) could be significantly heavier.

It is *simply impossible* to fathom that this $130 billion dollar investment would not achieve greater dividends than, say, Obama stimulus. It may have even been superior to the economic effects of the TARP.

And I'd hazard a guess that it would improve both the economy and health care (through technological advances) if we spent the $900 billion Obama is allocating for HCR on Orion vessels (we could build a fleet of ships the size of Star War's Star Destroyers!).

Space Factories. Space Farms. Fleets of Solar Power Satellites. High Energy Risk Free Research Stations. Cities on the Moon. Cities on Mars. Massive Scale Asteroid Belt Mining. Construction and operation of additional vessels outside the Earth's magnetosphere.

So we have to detonated some nuclear explosives in the Earth's atmosphere to get it going. Mankind did this for years, and old for war purposes, not science/economic. Not to mention, the launching of Solar Power Satellites would probably result in a net reduction of radiation emissions due to man's activities.

Even then, the total fallout from an Orion program would be minimal:

But the main unsolved problem for a launch from the surface of the Earth was thought to be nuclear fallout. Any explosions within the magnetosphere would carry fissionables back to earth unless the spaceship were launched from a polar region such as a barge in the higher regions of the Arctic, with the initial launching explosion to be a large mass of conventional high explosive only to significantly reduce fallout; subsequent detonations would be in the air and therefore much cleaner. Antarctica is not viable, as this would require enormous legal changes as the continent is presently an international wildlife preserve. Freeman Dyson, group leader on the project, estimated back in the '60s that with conventional nuclear weapons, each launch would cause on average between 0.1 and 1 fatal cancers from the fallout.[14] Danger to human life was not a reason given for shelving the project - those included lack of mission requirement (no-one in the US Government could think of any reason to put thousands of tons of payload into orbit), the decision to focus on rockets (for the Moon mission) and, ultimately, the signature of the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963. The danger to electronic systems on the ground (from electromagnetic pulse) is insignificant from the sub-KiloTon blasts proposed.

It's dishearting, isn't it? Makes chemical rockets like the shuttle seem like glorified children's toys

And by "change economic direction of the past", you mean, vote out the democrats who have been in power since 2006, and return the Republicans to power, right?

An unpopular sentiment on Slashdot, but the "new" democrats, epitomized in Obama, have put this country on the fast track (within a decade) to national bankruptcy.

Mark my words, without a change in direction, we will end up close to 100% debt-to-GDP, and then China will start a trade war with the view that a trade war will hurt them less then us. Thankfully, however, it seems that the American voter has tired of the democrats, and we'll safely have the adults back in charge this November. Better yet, Obama will remain president, and given that the job market won't recover till 2013+, we'll have another Reagan revolution in 2012.

And Republicans will be around to take the credit for the recovery.

Say what you will about Bush's pre-2006 economic policies, he left the national debt situation better off than Clinton did.

That's nice, but I can read whole books on an LCD with no light source - and have done so. So we're pretty much back to square one as to saying which technology will work.

Honestly? I can't anymore. I can read a chapter here or there, but that's all.

But really, I think the arguments about which causes greater eyestrain are silly

Well, then, you must be one of the lucky ones who doesn't get eyestrain.

My eyeballs hurt as I drive at night whenever I see oncoming cars' headlights. I can't read an ebook on my laptop for more than an hour or so, even with the backlight set to minimum. I find watching a TV set to "UltraBright" in a dim room to be impossible. I don't mind reading in direct sunlight, but for some reason I have difficulties with bright screens or displays when the surroundings are dim.

As such, ePaper is a dream come true; a display for an electronic device that we can use for long periods of time without causing headaches or eye strain. And I get the impression that I'm not the only one with these sorts of eye-strain issues.

Hear Hear! I agree completely. I use my Kindle in the same circumstances.

Saying it doesn't make it true, but thank you for "reminding" me of the points I already specifically addressed. Have you actually used a Kindle in typical indoor lighting conditions for any length of time?

I don't know if he has, but I certainly have. My wife and I both have Kindles. One of my best friends has a B&N Nook which he shares with his wife. My sister has the Sony Ebook reader, whatever it is called.

We all agree that the ePaper screen causes a great deal less eye strain, mainly as a result of having no backlight. From my personal experience, as an early adopter of the Kindle with thousands of ebooks, I can say that I have used it many times in every concievable lighting situation, from a 1 watt LED night light, to 10s of watts of CFL, to daylight sun.

Now, I'm not saying that may exist a certain percentage of the population who find the level of contrast causes some eye-strain, but for me, and everyone I know who has bothered to try an ebook reader, including my technically illiterate parents, we all agree that the ePaper is very easy on the eyes.

The other thing I love about my Kindle is the battery life. I don't have to babysit the thing with a charger; I plug it in once a week, and I use it for a few hours a day. It doesn't matter if I traveling on a trip or what not; shorter trips don't even require me to bring the charger.

For the most part, I treat my Kindle like a real book. It doesn't need to be charged often, and it fits well into my briefcase (or my wife's purse). I don't have to pay monthly fees for it, just pay for what I buy. I can't read it in absolute darkness, but I don't find myself frustrated by eye strain after sitting in front of it for hours (unlike, say, my MacBook Pro).

*shrug* People are different. And I'm not even sure if you are in the minority in thinking that the non-iPad eBook readers are unusable today. That being said, all my impressions, and my family & friends' impressions, of today's common ebook readers are positive.

I think the iPad is destined to be another Apple TV.

It's expensive, functionally limited, and a good deal less portable than an iPhone or iPod. I've got several good friends who are mega-apple-fanboys (I'm a moderate apple fanboy, BTW), and not one of them is the least bit interested. Every one of them thought the iPad would be a general-purpose computing device, and it just isn't.

Every one of them would prefer to have an iPhone and a netbook, or an iPhone and a MacBook Air. Frankly, I agree with them. I just don't see the draw of the device.

I'm sure that Apple will sell quite a few of these devices to people who will use them as portable web tablets and video players, but I just don't see the iPad having near the market influence of the iPhone. Apple would have to dramatically alter the OS of the iPad to do that, and I think they are unwilling to support 3 different OSs at one time (they're concerned about fracturing the developer base, and OS X and OS iPod are enough). All that being said, I agree with the FSF's opinion in principle, but refuse to fear the market damaging effects of a device that I just don't think will be that successful.

Now, if the iPad was running Android, or WebOS, or an OS that was easier to tweak into a general purpose computing device, than it's fate might be different. Even then, it's seriously overpriced compared to your average netbook, and I have a feeling that Acer and ASUS's response would be Netbooks sans keyboard.

People just need to face it; as much as John Q Nerd wants a cool-looking Tablet computer, tablet machines continuously fail in the marketplace. Touch devices just don't sell well unless they are pocket portable.

Move to a national VAT

See, thats really the issue, in the U.S.

The current administration would be much more interested in keeping the current tax system, and adding another layer of VAT on top of that. Most of us are pretty unhappy about it; that's why the VAT has such a bad rap in the U.S.

Most American's would probably be *thrilled* to replace the income tax with a VAT.

Now, who is more likely to afford a heart transplant?

Without question, its the factory worker who puts cars together. Have you seen the UAW health care plans?

Now, the REAL killer app for Google Navigation, which will be apparent to all eventually if it isn't now, is free cloud-provided live traffic.

Amen. This is why I love Sprint's Telenav. Turn-by-turn guidance, with voice directions, and it takes traffic into account.

That's the *future* of city/suburb GPS.

In my opinion, for those "inside civilization"* a GPS phone is vastly superior to a standalone GPS. I've used both extensively.

A standalone GPS is restricted to the database it can carry around. Some, like the Tom-Tom's, have a nice software interface for updating this regularly, but it is impractical to do this more than once a day, and a hassle to boot.

My Pre, on the other hand, running Sprint's Telenav, gets updates "on the wire". This has a side effect of offering you a much larger database, too; you aren't restricted by on-board storage, but can have Telenav's entire phone book at your finger tips. Most areas also have traffic congestion information, as well, which is very, very nice.

You can do other things as well, such as "find the cheapest gas along my route". Not to mention that Telenav fixes the routing on a regular basis; I've seen routing improve in areas that had undergone recent construction. It's really a *very* nice app.

*All that being said, you need to be inside cell coverage for it to work at all. I've heard that they are working on an offline option for which you would carry some data with you, and would sync up when you get back into coverage, but at the moment the cell phone approach is not the best when you are going to spend a significant amount of time off the interstates (IMHO, there is decent Sprint/Verizon coverage everywhere in the US with 5-10 miles of the interstates, but it can get hairy on state highways). This sound like a big problem, however, very very few citydwellers end up in the sticks on a regular basis, and for those that do, you can usually get the last 20-50 miles of your drive done without a GPS system.

The primary complaint will all of you arguments, mind you, is the expense of moving material in to orbit, and to the ground, safely.

We've already got the technology to do that; we've just stepped away from it. Project ORION is achievable using current technology, can move *vast* amount of material into space, and back onto the planet, and would release no more radiation that the various open-air nuclear tests of the previous century, and most likely a good deal less than the various coal burning power plants we have.

Estimates of the value of even a small number of space asteroids in terms of precious metals (techy ones, too) exceed hundreds of billions of dollars .

Low gravity for manufacturing? Okay. What exactly are we going to manufacture that will justify the cost required to ship it up and down the well?

I'd suggest that the combination of low gravity and virtually no prohibition against utilization of huge amounts of energy, and no risks of spreading contamination? One could possibly build some interesting things; a manufacturing plant on the dark side of the moon, using energy beamed down from solar satellites, as one would have to release a truly magnificent amount of radiation before it would negatively affect the earth.

2-3 asteroids might be sufficient to cover the development cost of a Project Orion powered mining program, while simultaneously flooding the world market with technologically useful minerals. New golden age? Who knows.

100+ asteroids, mined over a 30-50 year period, would be incalculable wealth to mankind.

Before flight, there were a great deal of naysayers who sounded a lot like you. Before deep-ocean capable vessels were developed, the entirety of the western world thought that venturing into the Atlantic was pure idiocy. When the Arabs first discovered oil beneath their sands, they couldn't think of what to do with it.

That being said, however, I agree with you, as long as we, the Human race, are restricting ourselves to chemical rockets there really isn't any reason for us to be exploring space, or wasting money on "Space Taxis". Chemical rockets will not be useful for anything but unmanned probes and communication satellites.

Have you seen the CBOs estimates for future deficits?
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/deficit.jpg

What will happen to our economy if both our trade deficit and federal budget deficit continue to grow to astronomical proportions?

Just how many trillions in treasury bonds do you think China, Japan, etc. . . are willing to buy? I don't think that we have an immediate 'debt' crises, in that our Debt to GDP ratio will not really be horrific until 2012-13 or so, but there is an issue of bond market saturation; you can really only sell so many hundreds of billions of bonds before you start to run out of buyers. We're going to bump into that in the next 12-18 months.

You know what is even worse? All these estimates (CBO, White House, otherwise), are old enough that they do not include the current unemployment calculations. Given that both payroll and income taxes are taking quite an unemployment hit, there is every reason to believe that the CBO deficit estimates are probably about 20%-30% better than reality. Oh, and of course, they don't include the costs of Obamacare, the increase in the capital gains tax (which, historically, actually *reduces* tax receipts), the Energy Cap-N-Trade bill, and other such regulatory nonsense.

Please describe to me how the structural "yearly trillion dollar deficits by 2015" is okay? Also, please describe to me how we the above named programs aren't going to make it worse? Also, given that both the SS and Medicare "Trust Funds" aren't "piles-o-cash", but are "piles-o-bonds", please describe to me how the liquidation and auction process for those bonds won't further worse out situation?

Exactly which one of these issues do you see being resolved after the current "6-month period"?

Capitalism is an economic philosophy, not a force of nature. The business cycle is a statistical phenomenon, not a natural law. Just because former downturns lasted for 12 months or so, doesn't mean that this one won't run for 24, or 36, or 60+.

Some see the previous
administration as a repeat of what was going on in the Soviet Union prior
to it's collapse.

I see the previous administration more akin to the gradual stagnation the Soviet Union experience in the late 60s-early 70s.

I see the *current* administration as to a source of rampant corruption, and very similar to what the Soviet Union was "done in by".

Gigantic budget deficits as far as the eye can see, centralization of economic, industrial, social, and financial policy, huge expenditures upon shady projects with little oversight, and bipartisan efforts to snatch as many crumbs as possible from the budget with little or no thought as to what that will to do the nation.

We are currently watching the socialization of all of our societies "little ills", including the failure of our major industrial sectors (Auto Industry and Large cutbacks in our military industrial complex), socialization of trillions of dollars of losses in the financial sector, and socialization of our escalating health care costs.

There are only so many economic guarantees that can be placed upon the Federal Government before it begins to loose credibility, and before the dollar collapses. While we aren't at that point yet (we are years away, even with trillion+ dollar deficits), there is nothing to suggest that our deficits won't continue to grow through at least 2020, and probably through 2050 (if we last that long). Worse, its not like this money is being spent on pressing concerns; an immediate war, an epidemic crises, or a massive natural disaster. This money isn't even being "invested" in future growth (ie industrial or financial policy). This is money being blown on "societal welfare", or "public goodies", also know as ways to game for votes.

$1 spent on road construction does not get you an additional $1 in economic growth; the same is true for medicare, social security, carbon credits, or bank bailouts.

My 360 RROD'd.

A good friend of mine's 360 RROD'd.

I don't live in a very crowded area, but the UPS store I dropped the 360 off recognized the shipping label at a glance. "Xbox 360, huh? I get 3-4 of those a day."

Neither me, nor my friend, play on our 360 very much. Mine got used perhaps 2 hours a month. Some months it went with no use whatsoever. I had it sitting on the top shelf of a nearly empty stereo rack, on metal perforated shelves, with no walls. Virtual no heat from other equipment, and kept in a cool, air conditioned environment.

Quite clearly, there was a manufacturing error, as I cannot imagine *anyone* using a 360 less than myself.

That being said, MS has been quite reasonable with the warranty extension; they did the right thing, didn't try and charge me, and got the console back to me on time.

Given what I have experienced with the 360, and the failure rates reported in the media, I'd say it is pretty difficult to argue that most users "neglect or abuse" their consoles. The only environment I could imagine that would be more suitable for my console would be to put it in an equipment rack through which I pumped cold air, but clearly thats an unreasonable expectation, and its not like I'm a heavy user of the console anyway.

*shrug* Just my 2 cents.

. . . crying out for a government investigation to figure out "new business" models for them.

For god sakes; provide a relevant service to consumers who are willing to pay for them, or *go out of business*!

The dot com bubble saw a million different companies that tried to sell things that nobody wanted, and each one of those companies cried a river of tears before it evaporated. Some of them even had a few promising ideas, just poor execution.

I'm afraid were about to see a bailout bubble, with huge valuations applied to ancient, dying companies that have no real value except for a "Too Big to Fail" stamp.

Value means you contribute, and generate wealth, preferably for everyone (customers, employees, management, and owners). When Value is defined as, "I hold your economy hostage, you better keep me alive," something is dramatically wrong.