Comment Re:Wow, really? (Score 1) 137
Posting to undo an inadvertently-incorrect moderation.
Still getting used to the "glide" feature on my Synoptics touchpad.
I meant to moderate VortexCortex's comment +1 Funny.
jythie speculated:
I suspect that even though the point that it feels far off has probably delayed reexamining the treaty, another big problem is it represents a rather significant can of worms that governments just do not want to deal with right now, not unless one of them has something significant to gain from it.
I suspect you're right.
That doesn't alter the fact that it's important to the future of the human race that the issue be addressed.
newcastlejon remonstrated:
pigiron quipped:
The moon is a harsh mistress.
That's not a quip, it's the title of a book. A rather well-known one.
Yes it is. One I read the year it was published.
But pigiron was trying to be funny. (I think he succeeded, btw.) That makes his post a QUIP. From Goggle's search page for the term:
quip
noun
noun: quip; plural noun: quips
1.
a witty remark.
synonyms: joke, witty remark, witticism, jest, pun, bon mot, sally, pleasantry;
informal one-liner, gag, crack, wisecrack, funny
"the quip provoked a smile"
archaic
a verbal equivocation.
verb
verb: quip; 3rd person present: quips; past tense: quipped; past participle: quipped; gerund or present participle: quipping
1.
make a witty remark.
"“Flattery will get you nowhere,” she quipped"
synonyms: joke, jest, pun, sally;
MightyMartian sneered:
It's rather irrelevant what you think, Mr. Bigelow. There are currently international treaties banning any nation (and by extension any citizen of a nation) from claiming extraterrestrial territory. So bugger off and do something useful with your money.
There ARE current international treaties banning ownership of an extraterrestrial body. They're foolish and outdated, and they need to be amended. Bigelow is attempting to persuade the US government to begin negotiating that process.
I think Bigelow is a swine - but he's right about what it will take to give private capital the incentive to invest the blood and treasure necessary to colonize and exploit extraterrestrial resources. We're getting ever closer to the day when companies like SpaceX will be capable of creating conglomerates that possess the technology and financial resources to do exactly that - but they won't commit them until they see the possibility of getting sufficient return on their investment to make the risk worth taking.
I'm all for government funding - NASA, the ESA, and so on - for space exploration efforts. But we can't COLONIZE the Moon without first modifying the existing Moon Treaty. Nor can we conduct commercial operations (such as ice mining) without amending it, because that 50-year-old treaty prohibits them.
Anybody - including people you despise - can have a good idea. Ideas should be considered on their own merits, rather than being dismissed out of hand, simply because you dislike their source.
pigiron quipped:
The moon is a harsh mistress.
And Bob Bigelow is a slumlord.
I've lived in one of his bigger "residence hotels". It was a hellhole. Cop cars day and night, shootings and stabbings, bloodstains on the carpet.
I understand Bob Hsieh, co-founder of Zappos, has bought up a big chunk of Fremont Street, and is steadily redeveloping it into a pretty decent area - but, five years ago, downtown Vegas was a complete slum. And Bigelow helped create that slum.
BTW - I think he's probably right about private property rights being the key to giving private capital the incentive needed to invest in colonizing and economically exploiting Luna. That, however, does not change who he is.
Sesostris III noted:
There is also Apple Corps Ltd, owned by the Beatles. There have been trademark disputes between Apple Inc and Apple Corp Ltd, none of which will affect you buying apples (the fruit)).
And Apple Computer was forced to negotiate a settlement with Apple Corps Ltd in every suit the Beatles' company filed. (They were all related to iTunes, which is all about music - and the Beatles worldwide trademark was established in 1968, so Apple Computers' conflicting mark had no legal leg to stand on.)
Trademarks are, for the most part, geographically limited, and apply fairly narrowly to the product or service to which the mark applies. Thus the Saturn automobile company, the Sega Saturn console, and Saturn Internet Services ALL had trademarks on the name Saturn. None of them conflicted with each other, because each represented a different category of product (cars vs. game consoles) or service (an ISP). Very few trademarks are global. Apple Computer is, and so is Apple Corps Ltd. The conflict arose when Apple Computer decided to get into the music business - and ran into a trademark the Beatles had established more than thirty years earlier. So Steve Jobs changed the service's name to iTunes, paid Apple Corps an undisclosed (but clearly substantial) amount of money, and signed a quitclaim agreement to make it all go away. Once that happened, negotiations began between Apple Corps and Apple Computer to make the Beatles' music available on iTunes - which it now is.
In other news, Shuttleworth over-fucking-reached in a major way. The EFF has set him straight. Let's hope he stays that way.
Unless, y'know, he's gay.
krs440 stated:
Sorry, you lost me. I did read your reference.
The aside was directed at the peanut gallery - not at you. (Your user number indicated that you ought to be familiar with the
Yes, it mentions the variation, which is what cause me to do a little searching to see the earliest documented reference I could find with minimal effort. I'm clearly not the expert you are on attribution. However, as a layperson, crediting Paul Mellon for a minimally reworded version of a phrase doesn't seem much better than crediting someone who bothered to use it for a book title.
Again, they're not the same quote. "I love it!" and "I'm lovin' it! (tm McDonalds) are not the same statement. They may well MEAN the same thing, but they are not the same quote.
I'm not a particular partisan of Mr. Mellon. If you can find an earlier citation for his exact statement, I'll happily acknowledge it. I'm equally sanguine about accepting that the "ain't" variant came first. My concern is with
As it happens, that someone turned out to be yours truly.
krs440 noted:
Attribution can be tricky. You seem pretty sure that the original statement should be attributed to Paul Mellon, and mention it's from January, 1942. What about this? http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19380705&id=ZysbAAAAIBAJ&sjid=BE0EAAAAIBAJ&pg=1516,6094461 It's the July 5th, 1938 edition of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, specifically, a story entitled "Economics in Eight Words". The last line is "There ain't no such thing as free lunch". I assume that the difference of "There aint" vs "There's" and the missing "a" aren't terribly important. I have no idea if this is the first occurrence of it either.
If you read the reference I cited (pause for derisive laughter from the peanut gallery), you'll note that IT draws a distinction between the two formulations. Like Friedman with the more formal phraseology, Robert A. Heinlein is frequently credited with "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." In fact, he DID come up with the acronym TANSTAAFL (in his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress), which is now widely used, but, as you point out, he certainly didn't coin the parent observation.
So, yes, proper attribution can be obscure. But I still say that's NO excuse for obvious mis-attribution, and no excuse whatsoever for leaving out attribution of living authors' _bon mots_ altogether - especially when the source of those IS indisputable.
Slushdot's fortune cookies need a thorough overhaul.
Just as a for-instance, I keep seeing "There's no such thing as a free lunch" attributed to Milton Friedman. Phrase finder attributes the original statement to journalist Paul Mellon, in a January, 1942 editorial response to a speech by then-vice-President Henry Wallace. It notes that the phrase is associated with Friedman only because he appropriated it as the title of his 1975 book - but he would have been in grade school when Mellon's editorial was first published.
That's far from the only sin of mis-attribution (or, much worse, non-attribution) in the fortune database. I'm CONSTANTLY seeing quotes from Bill Griffith's fabulous Zippy the Pinhead strips (mostly Zippy's own non-sequiturs) show up without attribution to either Griffith (their actual author) or Zippy (his mouthpiece). The same is true of many great Steven Wright lines - and there have to be plenty of others whose authors I don't recognize.
Full disclosure: I'm a writer. Proper attribution is important to me. I'm known for the extent to which I research my work - which makes proper attribution all the more important from my perspective.
canadian_right confessed:
I've always enjoyed the movie Star Ship Troopers as a satire of fascism and chauvinism. I thought it conveyed the spirit of the book, if a bit skewed, quite well.
Oh, for criminy's sake! A "satire of fascism and chavinism" that "conveyed the spirit of the book"? Give to me a break.
The two things are ENTIRELY mutually exclusive. You can convey the spirit of Heinlein's final juvenile novel, or you can make a "satire of fascism and chauvinism", but you cannot do both. In fact, I'm reminded of Heinlein's own observation that, "A man may choose to follow the path of faith, or the path of reason. He cannot do both."
Starship Troopers, the novel, is a straightforward exposition of the process by which callow teenagers are transformed into trained soldiers. There's no trace of sexism in it, and no hint of fascism, either. (That Heinlein sets the story in a society in which an individual must serve the public for a period - remarks he made in response to interviews published over the years made it clear that he did not envision military service as the only option - before being granted the sovereign franchise does NOT amount to "fascism".) The movie, by contrast, discards every trace of what makes the book effective as a coming-of-age tale, replaces Heinlein's social model with a truly fascist one, and makes the military's leadership a clown college (Space marines using carbines against the Bugs? Really?), to boot. It has NOTHING to do with the book, besides sharing a title.
You, sir, are a ninnyhammer.
Jeremiah Cornelius explained:
167 individual people control 37+ Trillion dollars of actual monetary wealth in the world. I am not the reductionist.
If you think that this concentration of wealth does not produce the outcome desired by those individuals? Then you don't see that this is how they got to that position, over the last 30 years, when thety were less than 1/3 as wealthy, and how they used this influence to drive them to the current concentration.
There is NO "tea party" - tho' the passions do actually run that high, 'mong the recruited rabble. There's just the Koch's. They are the "regressive, brute" funding team, of the monied elite.
No, what YOU don't understand it that the Kochs have taken a hit in the past two weeks' free fall on Wall Street. They therefore have sent forth the word that the Tea Party needs to cut it the fuck out.
And the Tea Party is ignoring them.
Thus my "Victor Frankenstein" comment.
I'm telling you that YOUR picture of the current state of Washington and the Repugnican Party is oversimplified. YOU live in California. *I* live in rural Ohio, in the heart of Tea Party country. I'm personally acquainted with far too many of these nit-wits. And they are NOT part of the "everybody in Washington works for the plutocrats" equation.
If all else fails, lower your standards.
