Well, if they are going to teach alternative theories in public schools, then they should give all theories exposure. I hereby demand that my own theory, called "Backward-Time-ism", be taught as well.
"Backward-Time-ism" (or BTI for short) posits that our understanding of evolution (or creation, doesn't matter what you call them, they're both wrong) is backwards because our own perception of time runs counter to its actual true direction. Life started zillions of years in what we call the future in a perfectly ordered universe as perfect beings, which over time (running in its true direction, towards what we would call "history") through the natural progression of entropy has resulted in lesser and lesser beings coming into existence. Our concept of God or gods is really simply a dim, instinctive, imperfect recollection of our true origins. What we perceive as "history" is really the preordained future descent into further biological entropy that will occur as time marches us towards the inevitable maximum of biological entropy: the primordial soup. In the conventional so-called "theory of evolution", this serves as the cradle of life. In the so-called "theory of intelligent design", this is the muck from which God or gods form man. In either case, it is apparent that neither scenario holds water, since entropy only runs one way. Eventually as the universe grows more chaotic, the Earth and solar system will fly apart, and the universe will collapse and disappear into a single point of energy about 14 billion years from now, an event we currently misunderstand as the Big Bang.
In the meantime, don't worry about the mess in the Gulf. It's been there forever, and is about to disappear in a few months.
At least for me... I wouldn't trust a single piece of hardware from anybody to handle something critical... There is no computer maker good enough that you want your... Work [to] hinge on the uptime of a single machine... I am less concerned about trying to optimize for reliability of any specific system than I am about making sure that backups and some amount of redundancy are in place, and trying to buy from sellers with a [good] reputation...
Very true, but that all depends on one's definition of "critical", as well as one's budget, and other factors like time to restore, and cost of downtime. Backups are essential in any business environment, but shouldn't be a substitute for system reliability.
If a server supports an essential business operation, it should have sufficient internal resiliency and redundancy (mirrored HDDs, multiple hot swap PSUs, ability to blacklist failed components on reboot, ECC memory, etc) that it can withstand a number of common failures with minimal business-day interruption, so that repairs can be taken care of after business hours. If its function is 24x7, or not able to tolerate even minimal downtime, there should be external redundancy through clustering.
Beyond that, you're right - vendor support is huge. I've seen people shake their heads at the cost of internal components for a Sun or IBM or HP servers, and wonder how those vendors can get away with charging $1k (or whatever) for a 360GB drive HDD, without fully realizing the reason it costs many times what a larger-capacity el cheapo PC SATA drive is that it spins 2 or 3 times as fast, with a different hardware interface and higher throughput, at far higher duty cycles, with lower failure rates, in an enterprise-class server or storage array. Of course, that being said, the margins on those things do tend to be really high.
The US Treasury data is as close to a primary source as you can reasonably get. Wikipedia mangles the numbers and compares them to GDP, etc. If the question is "Did Clinton really have a surplus?", I'd rather have unadulterated numbers straight from the source, and do my own basic analysis.
We'll have to see the effect of the Obama administration on those statistics... I don't think he can make a turnaround from the impact of the economic meltdown by the end of his current term.
I think you strike at the heart of it here. And frankly, by that measure, every President has inherited (and received either blame or praise for) an overall fiscal situation they can do little to influence.
Reagan inherited a ridiculous mess from Carter.
Clinton inherited an economy that was already emerging from trouble under Bush 41.
I could go on, but the point is that the annual GDP is largely a lucky or unlucky result of an economy the POTUS does not directly control, whereas spending is something that their name is directly attached to.
And I think both of us are being a little narrow in defining the whole of the Republicans or Democrats by the Presidents they have produced. The truth is that much of the fiscal damage is done at the Congressional or State and local levels, and when I look at the politicians in those positions (I live in Massachusetts, so I see lots of Dems tax-n-spend), I see Democrats spending like mad, with Republicans close on their heels.
How does "Dubyite" strike you?
I think we have a winner. I'm going to start using that.
That's okay though, because it means we actually agree completely.
Mostly, yes. I am for sane, rational regulation and enforcement, with additional regulations only as the result of careful, thoughtful engineering, and disaster reviews.
I apologize if I read your post to mean something other than you intended.
You taunt me for allegedly listening to Fox & co, and then quote a Wikipedia article? Hey, I like Wiki as much as the next guy, but for actual data, I prefer to listen to the good folks at the US Treasury.
Goverment spending and total debt went up every year, including during the Clinton "surplus" years. I assume that when the news networks were trumpeting the triumph of Clinton's allegedly balanced budget, you bought it hook, line, and sinker?
The Clinton "surplus" was a myth. Every budget that he signed required the government to borrow money. The total government debt went up every year, even in years when the budget was supposedly balanced. There are basically 2 forms of government debt: what it owes other people (people, institutions, foreign countries), and what it owes itself. The reason for the claim of a surplus is that under Clinton, the intragovernment holdings, or what the government owes itself, went up. Essentially, the funds from the Social Security lockbox, were taken as intragovernment holdings, and were used to pay down debt held by the public (individuals, foreign governments, institutions, etc).
I certainly am no fan of the Republicans either, as I certainly tried to make clear in my other post. Both parties are spending us into the poorhouse.
You presume that additional regulations would fix the problem, when in fact they would be just as useless as our current regulations given the same level of enforcement. You yourself highlighted the problem - enforcement. What the industry needs first is vigorous enforcement of existing laws, and that requires a shakeup within our government.
Investigations of most disasters reveal not a single cause, but a combination of factors which lead to the disaster itself. Often, the absence of any one of those root causes may have avoided the disaster, or at least mitigated it to some degree. While I would not minimize the importance of the other factors which have already been acknowledged as key causes, identifying all the possible causes is critical to avoiding future repetition of the problem. If a computer-controlled alarm system was so faulty that its operators shut it down rather than endure its false alarms, we should give it due consideration as a potential contributing factor.
I disagree. Whether it is distilled by fire or ice, concentrating the alcohol of a fermented beverage changes the nature of it. Cognac comes from fermented grapes, but it is not wine, it is a liqueur. I wonder what the BATF thinks about freeze-distillation?
Beer is a fermented beverage generally made from grain, perhaps some herbs/flowers/berries to flavor and/or preserve it, water, and yeast. Generally speaking, if you take a beverage like that and distil it, you've created a different kind of beverage; whiskey.
but if I pulled off the road at one of the rest stops, got into a canoe, and went two or three miles north or south, I'd be lucky to have voice service that worked.
Yes, well, reception inside an alligator can be problematic.
The legitimate producers could afford to price match or even undercut the copied works due to economies of scale...
... if they didn't have to invest in the effort (R&D, movie or music production, etc) to produce something in the first place.
What we really ought to do is simply say "Sure, copy all you want... we'll just deduct it from the bill we owe you," and leave the rest to the Hollywood accountants. Debt problem solved in no time!
The same thing keeping any star from collapsing: fusion. Black holes form when a star of sufficient mass (which is where the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit of 10 solar masses comes in) can't support itself through nuclear reaction in its core. See also supernovae.
exterior, air exposed surface of a combat fighter.
Not to mention that really good radar-absorbing but laser-reflecting aircraft paint has not yet AFAIK been invented. Granted we are talking about different wavelengths, so it should be possible, but I'd guess that those are two military goals that will be difficult to align.
Actually, I'm very happy to see this happen. It is about time we had some common-sense legislation like this.
However, I am bitter and cynical about our leadership and their self-serving tendencies, often exercised at the expense of the basic liberties on which the country was founded. That cynicism has accrued bit by bit for good reason over many years, and will not be easily dissipated by a single common-sense bill becoming law. Can I prove that is why the voted the way they did? No. But it is interesting that this is an election year, and control over Congress is up for grabs.
I in no way advocate the abolition of our system. But I'd be pleased to be rid of most of the politicians currently inhabiting it.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose it could happen; first initial "S", last name "Arcasm".
/home/sarcasm
cd ~
pwd
Well, if they are going to teach alternative theories in public schools, then they should give all theories exposure. I hereby demand that my own theory, called "Backward-Time-ism", be taught as well.
"Backward-Time-ism" (or BTI for short) posits that our understanding of evolution (or creation, doesn't matter what you call them, they're both wrong) is backwards because our own perception of time runs counter to its actual true direction. Life started zillions of years in what we call the future in a perfectly ordered universe as perfect beings, which over time (running in its true direction, towards what we would call "history") through the natural progression of entropy has resulted in lesser and lesser beings coming into existence. Our concept of God or gods is really simply a dim, instinctive, imperfect recollection of our true origins. What we perceive as "history" is really the preordained future descent into further biological entropy that will occur as time marches us towards the inevitable maximum of biological entropy: the primordial soup. In the conventional so-called "theory of evolution", this serves as the cradle of life. In the so-called "theory of intelligent design", this is the muck from which God or gods form man. In either case, it is apparent that neither scenario holds water, since entropy only runs one way. Eventually as the universe grows more chaotic, the Earth and solar system will fly apart, and the universe will collapse and disappear into a single point of energy about 14 billion years from now, an event we currently misunderstand as the Big Bang.
In the meantime, don't worry about the mess in the Gulf. It's been there forever, and is about to disappear in a few months.
At least for me ... I wouldn't trust a single piece of hardware from anybody to handle something critical ... There is no computer maker good enough that you want your ... Work [to] hinge on the uptime of a single machine ... I am less concerned about trying to optimize for reliability of any specific system than I am about making sure that backups and some amount of redundancy are in place, and trying to buy from sellers with a [good] reputation ...
Very true, but that all depends on one's definition of "critical", as well as one's budget, and other factors like time to restore, and cost of downtime. Backups are essential in any business environment, but shouldn't be a substitute for system reliability.
If a server supports an essential business operation, it should have sufficient internal resiliency and redundancy (mirrored HDDs, multiple hot swap PSUs, ability to blacklist failed components on reboot, ECC memory, etc) that it can withstand a number of common failures with minimal business-day interruption, so that repairs can be taken care of after business hours. If its function is 24x7, or not able to tolerate even minimal downtime, there should be external redundancy through clustering.
Beyond that, you're right - vendor support is huge. I've seen people shake their heads at the cost of internal components for a Sun or IBM or HP servers, and wonder how those vendors can get away with charging $1k (or whatever) for a 360GB drive HDD, without fully realizing the reason it costs many times what a larger-capacity el cheapo PC SATA drive is that it spins 2 or 3 times as fast, with a different hardware interface and higher throughput, at far higher duty cycles, with lower failure rates, in an enterprise-class server or storage array. Of course, that being said, the margins on those things do tend to be really high.
The US Treasury data is as close to a primary source as you can reasonably get. Wikipedia mangles the numbers and compares them to GDP, etc. If the question is "Did Clinton really have a surplus?", I'd rather have unadulterated numbers straight from the source, and do my own basic analysis.
We'll have to see the effect of the Obama administration on those statistics ... I don't think he can make a turnaround from the impact of the economic meltdown by the end of his current term.
I think you strike at the heart of it here. And frankly, by that measure, every President has inherited (and received either blame or praise for) an overall fiscal situation they can do little to influence.
I could go on, but the point is that the annual GDP is largely a lucky or unlucky result of an economy the POTUS does not directly control, whereas spending is something that their name is directly attached to.
And I think both of us are being a little narrow in defining the whole of the Republicans or Democrats by the Presidents they have produced. The truth is that much of the fiscal damage is done at the Congressional or State and local levels, and when I look at the politicians in those positions (I live in Massachusetts, so I see lots of Dems tax-n-spend), I see Democrats spending like mad, with Republicans close on their heels.
How does "Dubyite" strike you?
I think we have a winner. I'm going to start using that.
That's okay though, because it means we actually agree completely.
Mostly, yes. I am for sane, rational regulation and enforcement, with additional regulations only as the result of careful, thoughtful engineering, and disaster reviews. I apologize if I read your post to mean something other than you intended.
You taunt me for allegedly listening to Fox & co, and then quote a Wikipedia article? Hey, I like Wiki as much as the next guy, but for actual data, I prefer to listen to the good folks at the US Treasury.
Goverment spending and total debt went up every year, including during the Clinton "surplus" years. I assume that when the news networks were trumpeting the triumph of Clinton's allegedly balanced budget, you bought it hook, line, and sinker?
The Clinton "surplus" was a myth. Every budget that he signed required the government to borrow money. The total government debt went up every year, even in years when the budget was supposedly balanced. There are basically 2 forms of government debt: what it owes other people (people, institutions, foreign countries), and what it owes itself. The reason for the claim of a surplus is that under Clinton, the intragovernment holdings, or what the government owes itself, went up. Essentially, the funds from the Social Security lockbox, were taken as intragovernment holdings, and were used to pay down debt held by the public (individuals, foreign governments, institutions, etc).
I certainly am no fan of the Republicans either, as I certainly tried to make clear in my other post. Both parties are spending us into the poorhouse.
It's possible they already have that technology in production.
You presume that additional regulations would fix the problem, when in fact they would be just as useless as our current regulations given the same level of enforcement. You yourself highlighted the problem - enforcement. What the industry needs first is vigorous enforcement of existing laws, and that requires a shakeup within our government.
I prefer the term "Republicrat". What he did to expand spending and government should earn him an honorary induction into the Democrat Hall of Fame. :)
Investigations of most disasters reveal not a single cause, but a combination of factors which lead to the disaster itself. Often, the absence of any one of those root causes may have avoided the disaster, or at least mitigated it to some degree. While I would not minimize the importance of the other factors which have already been acknowledged as key causes, identifying all the possible causes is critical to avoiding future repetition of the problem. If a computer-controlled alarm system was so faulty that its operators shut it down rather than endure its false alarms, we should give it due consideration as a potential contributing factor.
Sweet! I'll probably try that next winter with a batch of home-brew.
The finished product is still considered beer.
I disagree. Whether it is distilled by fire or ice, concentrating the alcohol of a fermented beverage changes the nature of it. Cognac comes from fermented grapes, but it is not wine, it is a liqueur. I wonder what the BATF thinks about freeze-distillation?
Beer is a fermented beverage generally made from grain, perhaps some herbs/flowers/berries to flavor and/or preserve it, water, and yeast. Generally speaking, if you take a beverage like that and distil it, you've created a different kind of beverage; whiskey.
but if I pulled off the road at one of the rest stops, got into a canoe, and went two or three miles north or south, I'd be lucky to have voice service that worked.
Yes, well, reception inside an alligator can be problematic.
The legitimate producers could afford to price match or even undercut the copied works due to economies of scale...
... if they didn't have to invest in the effort (R&D, movie or music production, etc) to produce something in the first place.
... we'll just deduct it from the bill we owe you," and leave the rest to the Hollywood accountants. Debt problem solved in no time!
What we really ought to do is simply say "Sure, copy all you want
The same thing keeping any star from collapsing: fusion. Black holes form when a star of sufficient mass (which is where the Tolman–Oppenheimer–Volkoff limit of 10 solar masses comes in) can't support itself through nuclear reaction in its core. See also supernovae.
That quote ... it does not mean what you think it means.
In case you hadn't noticed...
The point happened to be about evolution.
Unless you're a special creation or something.
exterior, air exposed surface of a combat fighter.
Not to mention that really good radar-absorbing but laser-reflecting aircraft paint has not yet AFAIK been invented. Granted we are talking about different wavelengths, so it should be possible, but I'd guess that those are two military goals that will be difficult to align.
Fruit flies seem to do the opposite. Delaying their breeding appears to select for longer life spans.
Actually, I'm very happy to see this happen. It is about time we had some common-sense legislation like this.
However, I am bitter and cynical about our leadership and their self-serving tendencies, often exercised at the expense of the basic liberties on which the country was founded. That cynicism has accrued bit by bit for good reason over many years, and will not be easily dissipated by a single common-sense bill becoming law. Can I prove that is why the voted the way they did? No. But it is interesting that this is an election year, and control over Congress is up for grabs.
I in no way advocate the abolition of our system. But I'd be pleased to be rid of most of the politicians currently inhabiting it.
After the first offensive, is every action by both sides thereafter defensive?
No, but the ones formerly considered "offensive" are just modded -1 Troll or Flamebait.
By that would you mean the, *ahem*, "ultimate power in the Universe"?
Only if they blew it up before it was launched. Once it is launched, any steps taken to avoid it are by definition defensive.