Comment Somewhere... (Score 1) 398
... a dude named Lebowski laughs...
Comment Electric Generators Direct (Score 1) 695
Electric Generators Direct: http://www.electricgeneratorsdirect.com/
'Nuff Said.
Judge Tells RIAA To Stop 'Bankrupting' Litigants 332
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Boston judge who has consolidated all of the RIAA's Massachusetts cases into a single case over which she has been presiding for the past 5 years delivered something of a rebuke to the RIAA's lawyers, we have learned. At a conference this past June, the transcript of which (PDF) has just been released, Judge Nancy Gertner said to them that they 'have an ethical obligation to fully understand that they are fighting people without lawyers ... to understand that the formalities of this are basically bankrupting people, and it's terribly critical that you stop it ...' She also acknowledged that 'there is a huge imbalance in these cases. The record companies are represented by large law firms with substantial resources,' while it is futile for self-represented defendants to resist. The judge did not seem to acknowledge any responsibility on her part, however, for having created the 'imbalance,' and also stated that the law is 'overwhelmingly on the side of the record companies,' even though she seems to recognize that for the past 5 years she has been hearing only one side of the legal story."
Comment Probably Not (Score 1) 216
None of those things came from the space program. With the exception of specific space technology, rockets, for instance, practically nothing was developed for the space program that wasn't in commercial use, or in the commercial use development pipeline at the time.
Intel was developing microprocessors independently of the space program, for instance, and would have made its stuff recursively smaller no matter whether we went to the moon or not. Same for everything on the list you mentioned. Satellites were launched before we even thought about putting a man on the moon. Clarke figured out geosynchronicity in the proceedings of the British Interplanetary Society in the late 1940's, for instance. Even Telstar was planned long before Kennedy's speech, and it's a safe bet the Comsat, one of the only companies to be chartered by the U.S. Congress, would have gotten off the ground without that particular bit of window dressing.
Just Going Out There is a good thing. It's just that with the exception of hurting people and breaking things, (they don't call them force monopolies for nothin') government "programs" are an *effect* not a *cause* of progress.
I would even bet that science itself would be farther along if most of it wasn't paid for by governments, but that's just a WAG...
Intel was developing microprocessors independently of the space program, for instance, and would have made its stuff recursively smaller no matter whether we went to the moon or not. Same for everything on the list you mentioned. Satellites were launched before we even thought about putting a man on the moon. Clarke figured out geosynchronicity in the proceedings of the British Interplanetary Society in the late 1940's, for instance. Even Telstar was planned long before Kennedy's speech, and it's a safe bet the Comsat, one of the only companies to be chartered by the U.S. Congress, would have gotten off the ground without that particular bit of window dressing.
Just Going Out There is a good thing. It's just that with the exception of hurting people and breaking things, (they don't call them force monopolies for nothin') government "programs" are an *effect* not a *cause* of progress.
I would even bet that science itself would be farther along if most of it wasn't paid for by governments, but that's just a WAG...
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