Taxpayer wrote:me98765543 wrote:
As for the guy who claims we should be happy because this is free, you are a moron.
Indeed! This site, as are all government sites, is wholly funded by TAX revenue. It is supposed to deliver information related to astronomy, not pseudo-barcode technology. And for the suggestion it's meant for all the "dedicated" fans to print out and plaster everywhere, that's absurd. Even desperately pathetic.
As a US Citizen and Taxpayer, I WANT MY MONEY BACK!!!
1. Do you know what pseudo means? Do you know what a barcode is? Do you realize that a 'pseudo barcode,' by it's very definition, would not work? A QR code is not a psuedo anything. It is a QR code. It contains a lot more information than a barcode, which you would know if you had read the information that came with the picture.
2. Do you realize that by the time you figure out your share of how much you paid for this service through taxes, it is going to be so small a fraction of a cent that it might as well be free? Think about it:
- NASA's yearly budget = about $20 billion. (from http://www.nasa.gov)
Divide that by the number of people in the US (over 18 and thus probably paying taxes): 234,546,071 (from census 2010)
And we find that on average we pay : $85.27 per person in the US toward the total NASA budget per year. This doesn't include funds from other sources, like donations and such.
Now let's break down the cost of running a website:
- Take one of the most expensive web hosting companies and just round up (GoDaddy) to $10 a month for $120 a year.
Take an estimate of the hourly rate of paying the people who make APOD happen: we'll be generous and say $60,000 salary a year x 3 employees, working 1 hour a day each to make APOD: 60,000/365 = 164.38/24 = $6.85 an hour (remember this is salaried time, and APOD shows up on weekends) * 3 employees = $20.54 a day * 365 days = about $7500 a year.
So our total cost estimate should be $7620 a year for web hosting and to pay employees to manage the site (note that the web hosting is probably a lot less, since APOD is only a small part of NASA's webspace).
Now for the clincher: what percent of $20 BILLION is $7620? Let's see: 7620 divided by 20,000,000,000 = 3.81x10
-7
Apply that percentage to the $85.27 each person contributes in taxes each year to NASA = .00325 cents.
So you pay .00325 cents each YEAR for APOD. If you pick up a found penny you receive over 300 times that amount of money.
Still want to call the person who said APOD was free a moron?
3. Some people have already touched on this: If you have a smart phone, and you use the QR code reader to read this QR, you link back to APOD. Well, not very impressive today, but tomorrow, when you log onto your smart phone, you will have a link to TOMORROW's APOD. Also, printing this QR out and posting it places is a great way for those who love astronomy to promote and share APOD with others. What have YOU done to promote Astronomy? Have you ever tried raising funds for a planetarium or getting a town to cut down on light pollution? I have done both. I will be printing this picture out and plastering it around. I love astronomy and want to share that love with everyone.
If you choose to call that absurd and pathetic rather than dedicated, well, it is a free country. I would rather be absurd and pathetically dedicated than someone who demands entitlement and whines when it doesn't appear.
For those that insist the QR should have taken us to an astronomy picture: Why? How many people do you think only just realized they could look up APOD on their smart phone? It wasn't something I had really thought about doing before. Now I know that if I have to be away from my computer for a few days, I can still enjoy APOD. I think that's worth having to wait until tomorrow for more eye-candy.
4. If you don't have a smart phone, so what? Can you not learn about digital graphic coding? Would you be upset if APOD posted a picture of the actual plate with the actual code that was sent out with Voyager? Do you get upset when APOD posts weather pictures, such as lenticular clouds? Lenticular clouds aren't technically astronomy--they're meteorology (which itself can be a subset of astronomy when applied to
other planets). Do you whine as much when those show up as you do when a digital graphic coding method shows up?
5. I tune in to APOD to learn about astronomy, and often times APOD is only a launching point for a few hours of surfing astronomical and scientific topics. Astronomy is a collection of different scientific disciplines, including planetary geology, astrophysics, cosmology, particle and quantum physics, general and special relativity--the list goes on. I like to learn about science. APOD points the way. If I just wanted astronomical eye-candy, I'd go to google, select images, and type in 'astronomy.'
6. Yes, it's a free country. Yes, the forum is a place for you to air your views. And sure, if you're not happy with a service--even if you only pay a tiny fraction of a cent for it--go ahead and complain. But you shouldn't act surprised when others complain about your complaining.
7. I am also allowed to air my views here, and so I have. I tried to do it without resorting to calling anyone names. Calling names doesn't hurt the person you're calling names as much as you think; it actually kills
your argument, because when intelligent people see someone resorting to name calling, they assume the name-caller has run out of valid points and is now just lashing out in anger because they feel invalidated.
Wait, I feel another opinion coming on:
I love APOD and hope it is continued well into the future! Good Job!
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NASA's budget for 2011:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/420990main_FY_2 ... b_2010.pdf
2010 Census:
http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/brie ... 0br-03.pdf
