I guy I know on Facebook (well I know him from the Navy) posted a question his sixth grade son got for math homework: you have a bag with 5 red marbles, 3 blue marbles and two green marbles in it. You pull out two marbles without looking inside. What is the probability you will pull out two that are different colors? Show your work.
I answered it and I'm sure I got it right, but he didn't post the "correct" answer and I don't think most American high school students could do it, heck college students for that matter. But a sixth grader? No way.

In other words you are too lazy to learn. If you are an 'end user' who is just getting things done that is acceptable, for you the computer is just a tool. If you are in the IT game you are worse than useless and should be kept from any position of responsibility, certainly never allowed to make any decisions.

This is a fast moving industry, and if you are posting on slashdot odds are you aren't just a random gamer, you work in the business. That means that it is your job to KNOW stuff about NOW, not blindly just keep reinstalling the exact same junk you learned a decade ago. Even on windows. That is what seperates the ones who got into computers because they thought it was a good job and those who see it as a career choice. What have you tried this week? What have you learned this week? These skills become obsolete damned fast, you better be replacing them.

And once you adopt that mindset of constant learning it just makes sense to broaden your knowledge to more than one platform. I have Win7 on this laptop to play games on, Fedora for everything else, Debian on my Mythtv, OpenWRT on my gateway, etc. That forces me to keep up to date on most of the major streams of development. Except for Apple, and frankly I could care less about wearing those chains.

Except for that... you know... that whole Android thing. You can drop a couple million here and there on dead end projects if one occasionally turns around and suddenly becomes the largest OS on the fast growing type of device (mobile). Google sucked the air out of the room for anyone doing maps, e-mail, web browsing, and now mobile devices. That isn't to suggest that there are not worthy competitors in all fields, but Google is a god damn gorilla in each and makes its competitors fight tooth and nail.

Google dumps money into pie in the sky R&D. Most of the time it fails miserably as that sort of things tends to do, but when it wins, it WINS. Google is clearly thinking ahead. They saw mobile coming and got their shit together in time to claim the lions share of the market, something Microsoft and Nokia utterly failed to do despite being in a vastly superior positions to do it.

Google's history in R&D is a jerk off fantasy for anyone who does that sort of work. Mobile is an excellent example because Google wasn't just doing mobile. Google was also doing ChromeOS. Why ChromeOS? Google was doing ChromeOS because it covered its bases, didn't truly know what the "next" thing was, and so had plates spinning for everything. If netbooks had ended up being the next big thing, Google would have been ready. It turned out that the answer was mobile, and ChromeOS faded out. That doesn't make ChromeOS a failure. A failure would have to have picked netbooks over mobile and watched as mobile won. A failure would have been to pick mobile and see netbooks win. Victory is picking both, having one of those investments be a minor waste and having the other investment consume market share like it was their job (which I suppose it is).

I am sure that Google is going to slip from their throne and fall someday when technology takes one hard right turn or another. It is inevitable. Everyone fades or fails eventually. That said, I wouldn't be one to bet against Google any time soon. I for one know I would be doing a lot more browsing on the 'tubes if someone offered me up an autonomous car and then used a pile of dark fiber to line the roads with data connections...

Wrong. With something like a photograph, the right commercial customer may come along and find it ideal for a marketing campaign, etc. The photographer - who has not yet licensed it to anybody else - can then license it exclusively to that company, and charge appropriately. If the image has already been appropriated and used out of context by some other infringing part, that can cause problems for the photographer's later ability to license it as he sees fit. You're not understanding how this works.

And as an attorney and someone who publishes stuff herself, she should know that every work is subject to copyright, and that if she can't see where someone has granted her license to use it without asking, she can safely assume that running off with it and using it as part of her own material is infringement, plain and simple.

1. it's possible that it would NOT be air tight during a major overhaul (like this one). it's also likely that there were cables and hoses going through hatches preventing closure.
2. the spaces are still pretty large and a fire could go quite a while doing a lot of damage, just relying on consuming all the oxygen to put it out, even if they could seal it off. The ops compartment, where this fire occurred, is one of the largest compartments. I believe it is the largest compartment on a 688 class boat.
3. even in drydock there can be people aboard (crew and/or shipyard personnel)

I was a submariner on a boomer that underwent a refueling overhaul at PNSY about twenty years ago.
We had a shipyard worker die in the bilge while working on our boat (I think it was a heart attack or the like).
We also had a small electrical fire that was easily controlled and didn't do a lot of harm.

Bummer.

Sure, society benefits from a public education system. Society would benefit MORE if parents had a choice as to where their kids go. Most parents don't have that choice. For wealthy parent's, it's a no-brainer. For poor parents, it's a no-choice. Why should wealthy kids get that advantage over kids with poorer parents? Shouldn't our kids get equal opportunity?

Really? I've heard the opposite. BTW, 20% of public schools are better than four out of five public schools. What if the public school in your area sucks? And yes, some public schools suck. What can a parent do? They have no choice but to send their kids to a failure of a school. Yes, parents can help and teach their kids and make sure their kids learn at home, but if they do that, why send them to the school at all? Successful students are ignored in public schools. If you are smart enough to pass the tests, the teachers move on to those that can't.

And why would you pay to send your kid to a private school that is no better than a public one? If a school that costs money is no better than the free one, that school will fail. Remember, that's how free markets work. The problem is that public schools may never fail. No matter how bad the school is, it will continue to receive thousands of dollars per student. They'll even get paid for students that don't go to that school. Sure, there is the possibility that the elected officials in charge of the school system will get voted out, but in many communities, that never happens and failure multiplies. Ignorance breeds more ignorance. The more ignorant a voting public is, the more likely a failed politician is to be reelected. Public schools are becoming breeding grounds for ignorance every day. HERE is a teacher telling students that they can be arrested for saying bad things about the president. When asked about Bush, she said it was OK to bash him because he was "shitty". A teacher a private school would be fired for both complete ignorance as well as blatant bias. This teacher was suspended, only because there was an uproar over this video. How many teachers get away with this? And again, if I could not afford to send my child to private school, this is where I'd have to send my kids BY LAW! How many other parents are forced to send their kids to schools to "learn" from teachers like this?

So, whose life should I be living?

Disk drives may be replaced, but they won't be going anywhere. What we are starting to see is SSDs replacing HDDs as the primary, boot, OS and application drive. HDD's are kept around for mass storage for photos, videos, music, documents, and even some larger applications. I see HDDs replacing tape drives in the future for readily accessible backups.

So, how have the big traditional space contractors like the Rockwell, Boeing, Lockheed, etc., of old, and now United Space Alliance and United Launch Alliance not delivered on their contracts? Saying that it might cost too much by some measure is one thing, but in terms of space launch to LEO you don't get a better record than ULA. Note, too, that SpaceX is using a significant amount of government infrastructure and personnel to launch and manage its space systems — not to diminish what they're doing one bit.

Actually, this is exactly why a free market works. See, the smart, hard working, and let's face it, lucky people tend to win. They are successful and they multiply. Google creates a search engine. It is successful, more search engines emerge. Some may be better. The better ones will survive. The crappy ones will fail. The "nincompoops" almost always fail. Others see their mistakes and make it a point to not repeat them. The nincompoops usually end up working for the successful ones, benefiting both. It's natural, really. See Darwinism. The strong survive and the weak must multiply fast enough to feed the strong. They are dependent on each other.

The problem is when an external entity, like government, steps in to and starts meddling with things. A politician will point at a successful person and say to the nincompoops, "What has he done to deserve the things he has?" Of course, the answer is, work hard, be smart, take chances and eventually you'll get lucky. The nincompoops hear, "luck" and think it's not fair. This is when the politician, in exchange for votes, vows to punish those that have more and reward those with less.

How do you fix this problem? Education. Why is that not working? The nincompoops have taken over education. For example, I pay to send my child to private school. In pre-K, she learned to read, add, subtract and other things that public school kids don't learn until the 1st grade. She learned this in PRE-K! Next year, in kindergarten, she'll be doing stuff on that public school kids do in the second and third grades. Now I bust my ass to pay for that school, but at the same time, I'm also paying to send my kid to public school, even though she doesn't attend (not that pre-K is even offered). Now in a free-market world, I would get whatever money the school would spend to educate my kid to spend it on the school of my choice. Nothing would be lost from the school as they are NOT TEACHING MY KID. An added benefit would be that those that can't afford to send their kids to the same school my child is going to would be able to do so and give their kids the same opportunity my child is getting. It's better for the kids and takes nothing away from the public schools. Why is this not allowed? Because the nincompoops don't like the competition. They feel that they deserve to get paid for doing lower quality work. The nincompoops are running education and have convinced the voting nincompoops that allowing them to choose where they send their own kids would ruin the eduction their kids receive.

Agreed.

Yeah... that would be the free market. The thing that allowed us to go to the moon and fund a space program was a strong economy. We have had the strongest economy because we have a free market. Yes, natural monopolies should be regulated and unnatural monopolies should be broken up. Yes, environmental regulations are needed to ensure responsibility. But for the most part, the market should remain free. People should be allowed to keep what they earn. People should be free. People should be allowed to fail.

You can't succeed when there is no chance of failure. You can not be free until you are responsible for you own actions. /rant off.