A lie, used to establish the basis of precedent, and to continue to act as if you are "winning".

No, not chump change at all. The kind of "not chump change" that should get you RICO charges. Because this is about as "corrupt organization" as you can get.

Nothing the *AAs have ever told us about copyright is based in fact, and they've used those lies to bully laws into existence which favor them. It's really time to start applying actual criminal charges to these organizations. Because they really are corrupt oligarchies who demand influence over the law.

Some of these clowns need serious jail time. And every politician who is paid for by them has sold us up the river to enrich themselves.

So, just fucking great, we have huge multinationals lying in public, and paying the politicians to get what they want.

Why do you need to evaluate the credibility of something that's obvious? A similar technique was already used to confirm the identity of the woman in the famous National Geographic photo of the Afghan Girl. The photo was taken before iris scanning was practical as biometric security. But the photo contained enough detail (on 35mm Kodachrome slide) that in 2002 they used her iris pattern in the photo to verify that they had found the correct woman.

Any photograph with sufficient resolution and contrast to show fingerprints will work. The point being that although the prints may not show up to the eye in the photo, processing it to enhance the size and contrast may make the prints stand out. I myself have taken a photo of a lecturer using a telephoto, and noticed in post-processing that the photo had sufficient resolution that I could barely discern fingerprint ridges he'd left on the cup he'd been drinking from.

Biometric security based on something you're leaving copies of everywhere is a pretty stupid idea. It just hasn't been exploited enough for the general public to realize that it's stupid.

For one, a Hohmann Transfer is actually the least energy direct trajectory between two orbits. It was used for all interplanetary missions before Mariner 10, Pioneer 11, and the two Voyager spacecraft, when people got the idea and computing power made possible the calculation of gravity assist orbits which could get you there for even less energy. This has culminated in the discovery of the Interplanetary Transport network.

If you're willing to use more energy than a Hohmann Transfer (accelerating away from Earth, decelerating as you approach Mars) you can, resulting in an even shorter trip time. It's all about how much energy you're willing to burn.

There's perhaps an even more compelling argument why the atmosphere is good for us if we intend to land on Mars AND launch again: ISRU and the Sabatier reaction could be a huge win. If you plan to spend a few months on the surface, you can generate a ton of methalox fuel using the local atmosphere and only half a ton of water.

If the process works that is... that is, the machinery to manufacture the fuel has never been tested beyond the crudest laboratory bench level. There's a whole host of known unknowns between the laboratory bench and a working prototype on Mars. Let alone a fully operational unit that can be trusted with human lives.

That article is from 2007. Since then a Sky Crane was used to land the 1 ton Curiosity rover on Mars.

Which means we've upped the current limit to around 6% of the fifteen ton weight of the Apollo LM. Which in turn means we're still far, far short of the weight of any plausible manned Mars landing vehicle.
 

Worst case would be the humans don't land close enough to the supplies to be able to survive long-term, in which case Plan B is to explore similar to how the Apollo Lunar program did, and head back after several days.

Even a short stay lander is going to way around 45 tons - three times the weight of the Apollo LM weight we don't know don't how to land now.

Do learn to read - I said nothing about the space industry. I specifically limited my comments to the discussion at hand... manned space travel.

Actually the "faulty" part was the roller bearing for the bay doors, and it should be noted that the part was being used so far outside its design parameters at the time of failure that the analysis provides no useful information.

Actually, it does - because titanium is, and will be for a long time, a major structural material for spacecraft.
 

none of whom are paying the bills. The people paying the bills are largely indifferent to the science, and only want to know "whats in it for us?"

Yeah, much of the vox populi are largely indifferent to the science - but they're also largely indifferent to the idea of man in space too.
 

I'm not off at all, and space flight had the cold war which saw the USA alone spending many times what the entirety of world war II cost the entire world.

Yes, you are off, way off. And if space flight has the Cold War - that was it's WWI.

Even that I agree with you about what is possible or even likely, doesn't change the fact that the article is patently NOT about "How Target's Mobile App Uses Location Tech To Track You"

...for their terrific job and a wonderful tree display.

And kudos also to the admins with the balls to tell the administration and Google to fuck off with their politically-correct bullshit.

The fact that you said "texting and driving is perfectly safe." It's not. Ever. Be a grown up and admit your mistake, or go away. Don't double-down on stupid.

Perhaps. It is up to others to decide if it is earned or unearned.

Non sequitar. I cannot do everything of course, and that isn't even relevant to my point. side note, I do know how to garden, and as a hobby, I often make my own cured meats. It's enjoyable, and oddly relaxing.

Dear sir, you are getting your stories mixed up, not to mention you might want to go back to read what I wrote. It was not that she didn't know. The issue I took with her attitude was that she did not want to learn some basic electrical knowledge, presented in good faith in an effort to help her. Then expressed her superiority. That's pretty appalling (to me), as well as graceless and very rude.

And she was an artist, not a Nobel Laureate.

I am a software engineer, and have no delusions that my skills are somehow "better" than that of a car mechanic. But learning how to service my own car (other than the basics like changing my own oil) is a waste of my time.

There is a major difference between you and I. I have never ever found gaining knowledge of anything to be a waste of my time.

And it has been years since I chenged my oil, if you are thinking of that as an example. I have rebuilt engines as a lark on occasion.

I can either be doing work or learning new skills in my area of expertise, which provides far more benefit to both myself and society as a whole. I also pay maids to clean my home each week and a service to do my yard work each week during the warm months.

Which knowledge is of no use to yourself or society as a whole? I think we might be at a sort of impasse here, because I gobble up knowledge voraciously, and am very curious about almost everything. Perhaps that is a bad thing? I have what I do to make a living, and am quite good at it, but I fear that limiting myself to that would be, well, very limiting.

Heavens, this isn't even my argument. My time was/is quite valuable also, and one of my biggest abilities was to interface effectively with either the maintenance people or the important visiting politician or CEO or University president or whoever. I can tell you, that is a talent that apparently few have. I ended up in computer support for the "stars" just because of that. The people who would normally do that had great difficulty dealing with people "way above their station". Their outlook, not mine. I walked in, and calmly fixed the problem And that support wasn't in my job description, it was just something I picked up by being curious about computers. Admittidely I have worked intensively with computers since the mainframe only days. But it was an example of non job description knowledge.

No one I know of thinks of me as an ego case. I regularly was commended for the ability to work well with difficult people. Some of them even appreciated a little reminder that they were just human also. Some didn't of course, but that's a matter of reading people.

Why wouldn't you? The blue collar superiority complex is like a celebration of stupid, not unlike the street cred some like to emulate. Everybody works at their job, everyone has something to contribute.

I have never been victim of the idea that some knowledge is useless, or there were things to kow that were outside of any purpose. Of course, I was the weirdo that kept a dictionary in the bathroom. And I still voraciously learn how to do new things. I find the concept that there is some limit of knowledge about things that is useful, that having a wide breadth of knowledge makes you a jack of all trades, and a master of none to be a lack of imagination or understanding of th mind. The human brain has a huge capacity for learning.

My kowledge of other matters, including things that are "below my station" or even "above my station" has served me and my employers very well on many occasions. They think I can "think outside the box". I merely draw on the basic concepts of matters they have not believed useful or important. I can fix your car, or have a bit of discussion about quantum physics. And at some level, there is an interesting interconnection if one looks with an open mind.

Logically, if you tabulate the expected remaining years of life lost, rather than simply count the number of lives lost, then children and infants increase the degree of the tragedy. For this reason, 20 children dying because a preschool burned down is a greater tragedy than 20 elderly patients dying because a nursing home burned down.

Unlikely. It is extraordinarily difficult to crash a plane because you hit the coffin corner. The moment you stall, you lose altitude, and you're no longer in the coffin corner. A simple stall recovery, and you're back in normal flight. The A320 in particular is designed so the computer will automatically recover from stalls if the pilots simply release all controls. It takes severe disorientation or stupidity (e.g. one of the pilots on AF447 kept directing the plane to pitch up without telling the other pilot what he was doing, as the other pilot was trying to pitch it down to recover from the stall) for a plane to crash because of this.

10 PRINT "RADIO SHACK SUCKS!!!"
20 GOTO 10
RUN

That was too obvious, and the store employee would kill the program them moment they saw it.

10 PRINT ">";
20 INPUT A$
30 PRINT "ERROR: RADIO SHACK COMPUTER DETECTED"
40 PRINT "OPERATING SYSTEM DISABLED"
50 GOTO 10

That would leave them scratching their heads trying to figure out what was wrong, as it looks just like the normal command prompt but produces the same "error" message after every command typed.

If we do it, people say that no one loses anything if you make a copy, and that sharing has been part of human culture for ages. These people should have nothing to whine about if Sony then goes to do the same thing.

Sony has been one of the advocates for de facto life-ruining punishment for copyright violation. They will almost certainly continue being that in the future too. So why shouldn't they get hoisted by their own petard when it turns out they're not just cruel but also hypocrites? Avenge their victims and dethrone the malefactor.