Armstrong: "I thought we had a 90% chance of getting back safely to Earth on that flight but only a 50-50 chance of making a landing on that first attempt. There are so many unknowns on that descent from lunar orbit down to the surface that had not been demonstrated yet by testing and there was a big chance that there was something in there we didn't understand properly and we had to abort and come back to Earth without landing."

Seems like a decent estimate. The landing computer had issues that almost was cause for an abort. I'm surprised NASA decided to ignore the alarm. Who wants to try to land with an active error code? Two even. In hind-site it was the correct decision, but the cause was unknown at the time.

http://www.theguardian.com/sci...

In that case, I don't care if they DO fake it!

some money on the side that's still worth something despite the inflation

Inflation has been relatively mellow. The cost of raw materials has gone up largely due to higher demand by a modernizing Asia and Brazil. But, services have been almost flat due to a jobs recession such that total inflation averages out to a "typical" historical rate, perhaps even a little low.

Favorite "Apollo" moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Bart got to see stars & moons himself.

Don't include JCL, for heaven's sake.

It was felt by many economists that letting all those big banks and car companies fail would have triggered a ripple effect on suppliers and the economy as a whole. Whether that is true or not is an academic issue that is difficult to test because we cannot fork history.

And most of the new banking regulations don't affect small banks.

Multiple studies keep coming out that say there is no general STEM skills shortage. But big biz lobbies the opposite view and gets its way by essentially legally bribing politicians using campaign donations and ads.

Same with global warming: the plutocrats don't want to pay for pollution reduction & clean-up, so bribe in place the political "belief" that warming is a hoax, and half the population believes the lie now.

Same pattern, same shit: the middle class takes it in the balls so that they can get even richer.

Do you have any evidence about the skill category of workers they laid off?

this is the result of global free market economy

Even if technically true, H1B visas are legally only supposed to be used when there is a real shortage of domestic talent, not body-shopping for the best deal.

Lately the Tea Party has even been questioning the idea of big oligopolies, which create insufficient competition. Maybe some good can come out of the movement. Politics is not all black-or-white. (Although in my opinion, 90% of their agenda is problematic.)

That's shady. If they're doing that then they should be called on it and heavily fined and/or have their H1B visa rights revoked. That said, I'm not even sure I agree with the requirement that employers demonstrate a need. Given that it's the law, though, they should be held to it.

But the legal-trained people making or checking the laws know diddly shit about technology such that it's easy to wave them away with spin, bullshit, and FUD.

or somebody isolated from their family (across the globe) such that they work 14 hours a day.

It seems more likely that there are simply not enough highly skilled programmers willing to move to Seattle available in the US.

How do you know that?

MS doesn't want to spend money on retraining. They want instant gratification (ROI). But they lie about that desire when they do the "shortage dance" to Congress.

Microsoft: "But they are old farts. We want young hipsters without families that make fluffy angry birds, not Microsoft Bob."