Why haven't they tried spinning up a spacecraft to simulate gravity? It seems like a logical step but NASA has been quiet about doing this. At least it would ameliorate (heh... I get points for using that word) some of the issues with long periods of time in zero gravity.
I've never met one of these mythical windows fanboys. Can someone point out to me where they are?
Actually, read any story about Apple, Mac, or OS X on The Register and chances are the Windows Fanbois and Microsoft Apologists will be out in force making disparaging comments. Especially if the article points out a flaw.
(To be fair, the Mac Fanbois tend to do the same thing in Windows or Microsoft articles, but you weren't asking about them.)
That's a great resource, thanks for posting it.
I read Bell Canada's history up to about 1905 and then skimmed onward from there. It did indeed become a monopoly through government mandated favoritism and also through some exclusivity contracts with the railways and aggressive marketing that would probably be illegal today. I couldn't find anything that suggested federal money was used for its networks in a direct way though.
For example, nitroglycerine is used as a heart medicine, yet if you ingest 100ml of it pure, your life expectency will be greatly reduced.
(Actually there are gazillions of examples. Most pharmaceuticals are lethal in high doses, even over-the-counter ones like paracetamol or vitamin D.)
I'll rephrase the last part of my statement for clarity: "... then that eradication is morally right?"
Do I think so? No, but that wouldn't stop it happening if enough people wanted it to. While I don't think murder is morally acceptable, I can't provide a fundamental reason for that belief - I consider it axiomatic. I just wish everyone else were as realistic about the limitations of their philosophy.
The fact that some people commit murders is not evidence that murder is morally right. By the same logic, the fact that people's rights are often violated is not evidence that they don't have those rights.
No, but it is evidence that rights are not something fundamental to the universe, but instead reliant on active enforcement. Things which are fundamental and independent of human society, such as the laws of physics, cannot be violated even if everyone agrees to. People's rights, on the other hand, can, suggesting that they are not in fact fundamental and the whole concept of "natural" rights is a bit silly, really.
fetishization of homeownership raised the default rate among the poorest buyers, who should have been renting
The poor should be renting and paying someone else's mortgage as well as paying them profits instead of paying their own mortgage? I can see renting when home prices are skyrocketing or if the renter is only going to be there a short period, but that's it. If you rent someone else is profiting off of you.
Are you seriously telling me that the mighty US financial industry lost hundreds of billions because of a modest, and highly predictable, increase in default rates of relatively small loans, often government backed, to known credit risks? Was that all it took?
Too many lenders made mortgages for more than borrowers could reasonable afford, I don't expect borrowers to know how much they can afford any more than the bank that lends them money, banks are supposed to be the experts. It didn't help that government encouraged mortgage companies to make those mortgages. Building regulations don't help keep cost down either, and may drive costs up.
Falcon
it was the Clinton administrations wet dream that everyone no matter how poor should own their own house that is the root cause of the current situation
And Bush's ownership society had nothing to do with it? When Clinton left office the budget was almost balance but under Bush it ballooned into the largest deficit ever. Though I hate to admit it Clinton cut government and Bush expanded it.
Republican presidents expanded government and a democrat shrank it.
Falcon
In the (almost entirely hypothetical, at least at the retail level) neutral and highly competitive internet access market, demand for bandwidth is very high, because bandwidth is cheap and useful for almost anything.
Welcome to a perfectly competitive world.
Any time a company is making billions in profits on something commodifiable, you have a market inefficiency.
And that reality is one of the disconnects that exists in the mind of "free market" conservatives.
It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.
