If Barack Obama was to give a Kennedy-like speech (or rather if he had at the beginning of his first term) that he wanted to commit American industry and energy into establishing a colony on Mars as well as spend some significant political capital towards the endeavor....

I might agree with your assertion that he deserved the award.

The sad fact of the matter is that the Obama administration has put space policy concerns as dead last unless he wants to get the vote of Florida, Texas (especially the Austin area where there is Democratic support), and perhaps Alabama, California, and Washington state due to the huge infrastructure of aerospace industries. This can be demonstrated by the fact that Charles Bolden was very nearly the last major cabinet or deputy secretary level appointment made in his administration and relegates any discussion about space policy strictly upon the chief science adviser of his administration. Even when the Democratic Party controlled the House, the chair of the space subcommittee, Gabrielle Giffords, opposed any initiative coming from the White House (in other words, she didn't fear any sort of political consequences from opposing the president even when he was of the same party).

The only reason why commercial crew and some changes have happened at all is simply because it isn't Bush. In other words, current policy is mostly "If the Bush administration did something, we'll do the opposite".

I get your tongue in cheek response here, and I wish it was so simple. I also wish that Obama cared about this initiative to send people to Mars or elsewhere, but in reality it is just political posturing for some pictures and then to be ignored in the end. I seriously doubt any future historian will even say that Obama did anything about space colonization at all.

Aren't you supposed to earn awards before you receive them?

The interesting thing about Sergei Korolev is that he was sentenced to life imprisonment in a Siberian gulag prior to his rehabilitation in becoming the "Chief Designer" of one of the Soviet Union's rocket design bureaus. His life story is something that I find very interesting and something to even admire in terms of the adversity he went through on his life's path to designing the N1 Soviet moon rocket.

Werner Von Braun, on the other hand, was an SS officer who employed slave labor to build his projects in Nazi Germany. I'm not really sure that is anything morally equivalent to even Korolev, much less Elon Musk. The Saturn V rocket was certainly a piece of impressive engineering for its own merits, and Von Braun's management skills in terms of running the Huntsville, Alabama engineering teams is also very impressive and something that I think Elon Musk could certainly learn from as well. None the less, there is some pretty awful baggage that came with Von Braun that if it wasn't for his role in establishing the American ICBM program would have likely put him in prison for a life sentence like did happen to other SS officers of his rank that were engaged in lesser war crimes.

SpaceX and the MCT is at least trying. They claim to be able to send the entire U.S. Senate at once to Mars for permanent relocation. Just convince them that Princess Podkayne of Barsoom is real, and they may even have a reason to go!

How is that any different than NASA spending $20 billion on developing the Orion and SLS system for putting astronauts into space when SpaceX is able to launch those astronauts @ $20 million per seat?

I could name other good examples, but seeing the federal government spend billions of dollars on redundant and otherwise useless projects is hardly new. The bullet train to nowhere being built in California is another similar project.

Now you understand why the karma system was created for Slashdot and other user-driven moderation systems were created like on Reddit or even the "likes" of Facebook. This is hardly the first time complaints about how to regulate trolls has been brought forward, and I have yet to find a reasonable solution to the matter.

Slashdot, at least in the past when Rob Malda and his companions were running the show, at least tried to be respectful and tweak the system when it broke to try and encourage the smart geeks to step forward and post. That obviously couldn't last forever, but it was a major effort, not to mention that Slashdot was relatively obscure and treated as a sort of sweet nugget when you discovered it.

I could say the same thing about Usenet (I used to post there as well) before spambots destroyed it. What also kept Usenet under control was the active enforcement of the non-commercial nature of the internet at the time (not that some people didn't try to push boundaries from time to time). Once the internet went full on commercial, it lost a whole lot of the exclusive geek nature that used to be there as well.... not to mention the invasion by Compuserve and America On-Line that represent the kind of ordinary folks you are complaining about.

Other than the parts and pieces of chemical weapons factories were found in Iraq. It obviously wasn't in place in active production, but why does that matter?

This BTW is the argument that went in circles a little over a decade ago, where sadly there were a great many people in denial that there were any kind of chemical stockpiles much less factories making this stuff in Iraq. I do remember the discussions, including here on Slashdot, that rehashed this same argument over and over again... even to the point some moderators modded my comments down when I pointed out just as you have that Iraq had pre-existing stockpiles.

This wasn't nearly so obvious in the heat of that very public discussion, with considerable misinformation going on sort of like you were suggesting that Iraq was going to nuke New York City if we didn't invade... although that was never claimed by Bush or for that matter Hillary Clinton when she cast her vote to support the invasion of Iraq. That particular vote in Congress is one that IMHO was done by members of congress who were very well informed not just by intelligence agencies but also by their constituents in terms of what the sentiment was from their states & districts when those votes were cast. Anybody claiming ignorance or that they were fooled when that vote was cast is just being stupid and trying to rewrite their own history.

What is your solution? Genocide? I presume that you are not going to be the ones "selected for elimination" for "the final solution".

The arrogance of those who go nuts with regards to overpopulation just make me want to puke and try to remove them from the gene pool first as obviously they are the ones who are by far a danger to humanity than what they are preaching about. As long as they are on the margins spouting off nonsense I don't care, but I do care when they get into positions of political power and start to implement their ideas.

Besides, a population crash (a massive drop in human populations) is really a much larger concern right now and something facing both North America and Europe in a huge way.

As for water resources, it is incredibly silly to say that there is any shortage at all for a planet that has so much of it that it is seen as a blue twinkle when seen at a distance due to its abundance. Pure potable water is a bit harder to get, but that is called logistics and allocation of energy resources alone. The Earth can support a population a thousand times what currently exists... perhaps more.

The problem is that chemical weapons are treated as if they were nuclear weapons in terms of diplomatic maneuverings and consequences... or at least were considered as such. In other words, if a country decides to openly use chemical weapons on American soldiers, it is considered "justified" to go ahead and use nuclear weapons in retaliation.

Yes, this is screwed up and seems silly, but it was the chemical weapons that the Bush administration was talking about elsenwhen, not the nuclear or biological weapons.

Iraq also had a nuclear bomb program in the 1980's, but that one got bombed out of existence by Israel when Iraq tried to build a breeder reactor. There certainly wasn't anybody who was serious about finding nuclear weapons in Iraq in the early 2000's decade. The question at hand was with regards to how large and widespread their chemical weapons inventory might be.

I will agree that weev is acting like an asshat and targeting women. I don't think you can make any further generalizations beyond that or try to group him with any specific group unless they are calling themselves the "he-man woman hater's club" (something that came from the Little Rascals movie serials in the 1930's... and even that group was tongue in cheek as they had a girl as a member).

Some guys target women, some women target men, or some jerks simply target "marks" or something else that is weak in their view.

This isn't a gender specific issue though. It is a cyber-bullying issue where both law enforcement and ISPs need to be serious about stamping out this behavior and setting forth explicit policies about harassment and engaging in not just banning those individuals but reaching out with handcuffs and letting them know there are consequences to on-line behavior. Where needed, laws may even need to be enacted because this stuff is getting out of hand.

One group I will acknowledge is at least trying to do the right thing is the Wikimedia Foundation, where explicit policies are in place along with active involvement of the WMF legal counsel to turn over evidence to law enforcement of the country where somebody does this kind of serious death threat. It has happened on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects over the years, and while I have not faced such a threat I would take seriously, I have seen it done on behalf of others.

Facebook on the other hand is a steaming pile of manure and doesn't care what happens to its users. I could name other groups but it is an issue that can and should be addressed in a larger forum.

I have played female characters on MMORPGs before. This is usually just for variety (it is always a secondary account) and to explore the game in a slightly different dimension.

I never try to hit on guys or even act feminine, but I neither confirm nor deny my gender in that situation as well (it is usually assumed I'm female when I'm not). Most of the time it is just some shy kids who try to hit on me (where I say something like "in your dreams... dude" or something else just as pithy) and try to shrug it off. Most of the time it really doesn't even matter, but there are a couple of creeps who go overboard.

It is definitely a different kind of experience in that situation in terms of the social interaction.

You really need to get out of the basement and start to meet some real people. Doing something like missionary work (even for the Pastafarians.... it really doesn't matter) or selling calendars door to door. Something that can give you a chance to actually meet ordinary people who do ordinary things.

Most people are compassionate and care about others. A small minority think of those others as marks or suckers, but that is the problem of that small minority. Trolls like you are talking about are definitely a small minority of the small minority who have some personal issues with society due to genetics or disposition and personality.

As for the misogynist attitude among several posts, I agree this is equal gender opportunity here. Women do things a little different than men, but the brutal asshats among women are just as cruel as any men. They can also screw over men if they want to get their claws into you. Luckily, even among women those are a minority.

Nothing about the GP post you were replying to was stupid and IMHO was spot on for the situation described.

In my case the police wouldn't even act. When I contacted the internet service provider for the communications medium I was using, their response was to delete the threat (very clear, very specific, and yes, I felt and still feel that my children's lives are at risk by this deranged individual). The ISP tried to console me by directing me to a web page about cyber bullying and essentially saying "grow a pair".

That was it. There was no potential for litigation because the ISP deleted the evidence in spite of a screen capture I made (thus I couldn't even confirm it really happened).

As for the rest of your advise, you are simply full of shit and don't know the law.... particularly for situations like this. I do feel like some firearms used against the asshat in this case is very appropriate, but I would need to seek them out first to be assured my kids are safe. That is first degree murder that would put me in a firing squad instead (which is still used in my state). Perhaps worth the price to protect my kids, but not very useful legal advise.

I wish your advise was the way the law works, but it isn't. Instead, I need to bury a child before the law will act.

The Social Security Number is way overused and unfortunately treated as a password rather than as a somewhat (but not always) unique number meant to distinguish one citizen from another for tax purposes. The misuse of that number by banks, credit agencies, and for that matter government bureaucrats is what makes its disclosure so horrible. Otherwise it would be no different than simply disclosing your name or treating it like your phone number.