Launch platform too.. I'd imagine that launching a rocket off of the moon would cost much less fuel than launching one from Earth and that it would be easier to maintain a sustainable base on the moon than floating in space. You could probably also construct and launch a much heavier Mars exploratory craft from parts shipped to a moon base than you could from Earth.

These things would be expensive, but if we had a sustainable / expanding base there it would get cheaper and easier over time.

But yes, I'm stretching here by using it as more of a descriptor of attributes than actual profession, thanks for the clarification!

I refer to a bureaucrat in this case as someone who is a narrow minded administrator of the bureaucracy that is the United States legal system, which is a perfectly valid definition and can be applied to a politician.

In this case, I also specified him as a bureaucrat who has no idea what he is talking about. The examples you gave would be bureaucrats who do, indeed, know what they are talking about :).

So, I would counter that it is you, sir, who does not completely understand the definition of a bureaucrat!

I know I'm not the only one who FREAKING HATES the idea of bureaucrats making decisions on this shit about which they have NO IDEA what they are talking about.

Argh, I know it's happened and will happen for years, but I hate hate hate it. They need to make a board of legitimate professionals in the industry who know WTF they are talking about to come up with any regulations that might be made.

Definitely have not lol (I was IT in college and ran a few labs that had tons of annoying engineering specialization applications), hopefully with Vista and 7 being more like Linux in the security department (and I know this is probably hoping too much) new projects will start developing their windows applications from the ground up to run at user level so that we can actually effectively and simply secure the computer.

It won't happen, but I can always daydream.

50% of statistics worldwide are made up entirely, /. accounts for 10% of statistics worldwide and 9.99999% of those that are made up.

"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer."

Albert Einstein

Exactly, it's pretty damn obvious that IQ is just a measure of your brain's raw computing power. And we all know that just because you have a fast CPU doesn't mean your computer is great at everything, it depends heavily on the software and OS (experience).

Also to further the analogy, some stuff can run great on a weak CPU (math/science) but require a powerful sound card (music), GPU (art), fast burner (sports) or high quality monitor and keyboard/mouse (social).

In my administration experience, I've found that this is never the case. There is no such software that requires access to everything. It may require you to make exceptions for particular files or entries, and this may be painful to track down, but you will be rewarded by not having calls to re-install their computer.

I've seen horribly written engineering software that was written by maybe 3 guys in a lab somewhere and sold to maybe a few schools. I couldn't get the damn thing to run for hours in locked down user mode until I finally realized it required WRITE ACCESS to a .dll.... Which makes absolutely ZERO sense for an application but I just made an exception for that .dll and everything ran great.

Point being, the setup is a hassle but every application can run in user mode. IMHO, the cost of figuring out how to install and get an application running in user mode is your JOB as an IT professional and it will save you hundreds of man hours in fixing malware.

Normal users are retarded, but the worst are doctors and smart/high IQ people that think, "hey, I'm smart in this field, so I must be smart everywhere"... WRONG.

Also, I know from experience that getting over the initial hump of installing and getting all software to run in super locked down user mode (as in, write access to most of the root is locked out) saves you hundreds of hours of fixing malware/viruses.

People will bitch and moan about it to start, but once they realize their computers are running 5x faster than before, stuff works and they don't have to keep calling for help they'll get over it.

^^ This ^^. 99.9% of users (special case exceptions being IT and software engineers/developers) should be on locked down User access with special cases made for applications they need to have installed that are specifically approved and setup by the administrator. End of story.

If you are in IT and on one hand complain about having to setup user's access and field calls for software installs and on the other hand complain that Windows is too insecure then you are a fucking baby who needs to get a new job, since securing and installing software IS your job.

It seems very plausible to me. Rats have abundant sources of food in the environments they thrive in (under cities, etc.). Better memory provides no advantage to food gathering as they are already more than saturated. So whether they can remember 10, 20 or 50 x as much it doesn't matter, they'll still find more food than they need to survive.

Similarly, it would have no advantage to reproduction.

The only feasible advantage I can think of is to avoid predators. But as you said, they reproduce so quickly that having a longer memory may very well have no significant statistical impact on their ability to reach breeding age and/or survive any longer than other rats to breed more.

If that presumption is correct and it does occur naturally then maybe this just isn't an optimal mutation for their locality. Doesn't necessarily have a downside, but the upside is statistically negligible in terms of reproduction and survivability.

Or (IMHO) the most probable presumption is that rats are not at the peak of their evolution and this particular trait just hasn't occurred yet or would not be a naturally occurring mutation.

Your presumption that "if they haven't evolved to do this yet then there must be some disadvantage" is inherently false.

To extrapolate further, using your presumption, "if rats were humans they'd have an evolutionary advantage, why aren't rats humans". I would imagine one could list a million "simple mutations", each giving an advantage, that would lead to a rat having all of the genetic advantages of humans. Why haven't each of these in the chain occurred?

Evolution is not necessarily really even about selective advantage or survival of the fittest. It's about who reproduces the most (which is not necessarily the fittest or most advantaged). In fact, evolution only seems to really accelerate in extreme conditions.

Anyways, I'm going on too far, but I reject your presumption that a genetic advantage must necessarily have a disadvantage if it isn't naturally occurring.

That's the "no-fly" list, which is not the "watch-list". However, those ON the no-fly list are also on the watch-list. Those on the watch-list are mostly not on the no-fly list.