A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans -- fewer than 100 worldwide -- are building working nuclear-fusion reactors at home.
In other news, a small subculture of amateur neoconservatives are building working homemade tanks, fighter jets and cruise missiles in order to seek out and destroy these Weapons Of Mass Destruction before its too late and a mushroom cloud appears in somebody's basement
Well, first they take a DNA sample of the saliva used to seal the envelope with the anthrax and they match it to a specific person. Then they follow that person around and find out where they usually do their shopping and check which of those stores carry envelopes. From then on it's a simple matter of....
oh, wait...
Is the Olympic Committee going to step up and make sure future governments who host the Olympics don't get to prevent the athletes from protecting themselves?
What a dumb thing to say. They didn't get into any trouble with the Chinese government nor is anybody preventing them from "protecting themselves". They were criticized in the media for a potentially offensive gesture and they apologized, that's all. As one US athlete put it "You don't come in a host's home and plug your nose as you walk through the doorstep". After all, the air is not that bad.
Then again, the Kosovo operation was undoubtedly an invasion of a sovereign country, and so is this - no matter what the de-facto status of South Ossetia is, it is still internationally recognized as Georgian territory,
Well, a cynic might say that following the Kosovo invasion and subsequent recognition by about 40 (mostly NATO) countries, the whole concept of inviolability of sovereign nation's borders is up in the air. What is there to stop Russia saying that if they can do it so can we. A case could be made that NATO countries (let's face we are talking about USA here) are systematically engaged in weakening the international law, which brings about a system of might (which they have) is right. Why shouldn't Russia play by the same rules where it suits it?
In any case, the whole discussion of legal or not legal is nonsense. The issue is the fight for the strategic control of Caucasus between Russia and USA and either side will rationalize using any combination of words such as humanitarian intervention, sovereignty, self-determination, genocide etc etc as it suits it's side.
Yes of course there were rapes and unlawful killings, after all dozens of Serbian soldiers and officers are in jail in Serbia itself for those atrocities, and more are at the international "court" in Hague. However, genocide is something different, "deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group". The total death toll in Kosovo during many years that Serbian army had complete control of it was something in the region of 5000. This is in a population of some 2 million, and it includes combat deaths on both sides as well as civilian deaths on both sides. Don't you think they would have managed to kill more if genocide was their goal? To call that genocide is to cheapen the meaning of the word and to still fall for the western wartime propaganda at the time.
By the way "systematic" rape myth in both Kosovo and Bosnia is just that a myth, which was a useful propaganda tool at the time but nothing more. Rapes happen in any war but there is no evidence that any more rapes occurred during those two conflicts than any other comparable conflicts, and there were similar proportion of rapes committed by all sides, not just Serbs.
The goal is different too -- unlike Russia, US did not gain -- nor planned to gain -- any territory.
Lookup Camp Bondsteel, a huge permanent US military base in Kosovo. Also lookup Rambouillet "negotiations" which preceded NATO bombing of Serbia where the demands included a right for NATO to unrestricted access to Serbian territory. I would say that is a plan to gain territory, or at least presence on the ground in the strategically important Balkans.
On the other hand, if you think Russia is going to war with Georgia in order to increase it's territory by 0.001% you are very naive. The issue is again control of a strategic region and justifying its military presence there by a pretext of "protecting" a small and otherwise helpless minority. Again a strong correlation between Ossertians and Kosovars
Actually, the closest thing to genocide in Kosovo occurred after NATO moved in and the Serbs were ethnically cleansed from most of it. What happened before that was actually very similar to what's happening in South Ossetia, a minority in a defined territory seeking independence and resorting to military means to achieve it with the help of a foreign power. Just replace Russia with USA and the parallels are very clear. As we now know, the atrocities of the Serbs in crushing that rebellion were much exaggerated by the western media and as the UN court recently acknowledged there was no genocide or ethnic cleansing involved. Actually the percentage of Albanians in Kosovo killed during all the years of Milosevic rule was smaller than the percentage of South Ossetians killed in just couple of days of Georgian attack.
Note: not saying that what happened in Kosovo was all right by any means, my point is that the parallels between the two situations are entirely justified and they expose hypocrisy by the west. There is hypocrisy in the Russian position as well but at least they pay a lip service to preservation of territorial integrity (as per international law) in both cases.
Ramji has the unenviable task of stretching his neck out into the open source world as Microsoft's representative
I think the the weapon you are looking for is an axe
Re:But what comes next?
on
NASA Turns 50
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
NASA has accomplished some truly amazing feats during the last 50 years, the pinnacle surely being the moon landing of Apollo 11
But that was 40 years ago, which is exactly what the problem is. NASA's budget has been going down ever since (as a percentage of the nation's budget) all the way from 4% to 0.7% and falling. The only way things are going to change in a dramatic way is if somebody figures out a genuine commercial interest in space exploration, which would lead to an increase in NASA's budget and more competition from private sector and from other nations.
Re:NASA is 50. And a big disappointment.
on
NASA Turns 50
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Hmm, that might be because reality is different from science fiction. We don't have intelligent humanoid robots either or even flying cars (you'd think that one would be easy), so are those NASA's fault as well? Increase NASA's budget to more than the current fraction on one percent of the national budget and maybe we'll see some more progress
The indictment accuses Stevens, former chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, of concealing payments of more than $250,000 in goods and services....
It has come to our attention that an earthling called Vint Cerf is making unauthorized use of our work in violation of GPTO (Galactic Patents and Trademarks Office) patent number 0932984720392837409 for Interplanetary Internet Protocol.
We demand that he must immediately cease the use and distribution of our work and that he forwards all copies and relevant documentation to us by the earliest space courier. Failure to do so will result in a lawsuit to the amount of our estimated damages of 1,008,076,123.09 galactic credits (equal to 0.0008 USD).
IMHO the answer is don't. If he is really interested in programming, he will not need much encouragement, in fact the problem might be how to keep in away from the computer long enough to have social life. If he loses interest or finds it too hard, then you might unintentionally put him under pressure to keep going just to keep you happy or to prove he is smart enough, and that ain't no recipe for happiness. Be prepared to deal with a possibility that he might decide programming is not for him and that he really wants to be a male ballerina or something, because that's fine too if it would make him happier in the long run. As for the teaching methods, that's a tough one. I kind of lean towards getting them immersed in one thing, language for example, until they understand it in some depth and then using that as a base to learn other stuff. But then different things work for different kids, so there is no one correct approach
Rather than try to change planets, it may be easier to genetically engineer triple breasted whores who are resistant to sulfuric acid. Colonize Venus AND corner the inter-planetary sex tourism market in one move!
That's only true if their goal is to accurately predict the future. If their goal is to write a controversial article that will show up on front page of slashdot and drive gazillion of clicks to their site then they are very very smart
Ok, so person A writes the software, person B benefits from using it. Your argument is that if B "won't pay" for the software, A should give it for free, right? So in your opinion payments for products and services should be voluntary? You don't think this is unfair to A, or more to the point, it doesn;t discourage A from writing software in the first place?
You can nitpick all you want about the term universal but, if you read the comments and follow the modding patterns on any of the stories dealing with piracy or outsourcing you don't need to be a statistician to see which way the overwhelming majority votes.
I'd say that a substantial proportion of the slashdot community opposes piracy, but opposes the methods being employed to combat even more and you seem to be failing to distinguish between the two.
Possibly, but it doesn't seem that way to me. The methods used to combat software piracy seem fairly mild compared to the methods used to combat most other types of crime. The perpetrators are almost never caught (hence the widespread problem) and when they are, the penalties are not that severe. Compare this to drug or prostitution enforcement where people end up in jail for years despite the fast that they have never hurt anyone, financially or otherwise, which you certainly couldn't say about software piracy.
My conscience is the clearest when I pay for software, it's a little bit murky when I use free software, and it's totally opaque when I use pirated software.
Funny how on slashdot people are almost universally opposed to outsourcing, presumably on the grounds that it puts their jobs at risk, while they are almost universally not opposed to software piracy even though it also puts their jobs at risk (but they get some "free" software yey)
Funny, but it's a good point. How do the employers know that the candidate is showing his/her own code? Even if they are, most likely the code for show will be polished to perfection over however long that takes, and probably not representative of their code while working on a deadline. Far better to give a test during the interview and have your best engineers present to evaluate the candidate
Slashdot Mirror
A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans -- fewer than 100 worldwide -- are building working nuclear-fusion reactors at home.
In other news, a small subculture of amateur neoconservatives are building working homemade tanks, fighter jets and cruise missiles in order to seek out and destroy these Weapons Of Mass Destruction before its too late and a mushroom cloud appears in somebody's basement
Well, first they take a DNA sample of the saliva used to seal the envelope with the anthrax and they match it to a specific person. Then they follow that person around and find out where they usually do their shopping and check which of those stores carry envelopes. From then on it's a simple matter of.... oh, wait...
Is the Olympic Committee going to step up and make sure future governments who host the Olympics don't get to prevent the athletes from protecting themselves?
What a dumb thing to say. They didn't get into any trouble with the Chinese government nor is anybody preventing them from "protecting themselves". They were criticized in the media for a potentially offensive gesture and they apologized, that's all. As one US athlete put it "You don't come in a host's home and plug your nose as you walk through the doorstep". After all, the air is not that bad.
Then again, the Kosovo operation was undoubtedly an invasion of a sovereign country, and so is this - no matter what the de-facto status of South Ossetia is, it is still internationally recognized as Georgian territory,
Well, a cynic might say that following the Kosovo invasion and subsequent recognition by about 40 (mostly NATO) countries, the whole concept of inviolability of sovereign nation's borders is up in the air. What is there to stop Russia saying that if they can do it so can we. A case could be made that NATO countries (let's face we are talking about USA here) are systematically engaged in weakening the international law, which brings about a system of might (which they have) is right. Why shouldn't Russia play by the same rules where it suits it?
In any case, the whole discussion of legal or not legal is nonsense. The issue is the fight for the strategic control of Caucasus between Russia and USA and either side will rationalize using any combination of words such as humanitarian intervention, sovereignty, self-determination, genocide etc etc as it suits it's side.
Yes of course there were rapes and unlawful killings, after all dozens of Serbian soldiers and officers are in jail in Serbia itself for those atrocities, and more are at the international "court" in Hague. However, genocide is something different, "deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group". The total death toll in Kosovo during many years that Serbian army had complete control of it was something in the region of 5000. This is in a population of some 2 million, and it includes combat deaths on both sides as well as civilian deaths on both sides. Don't you think they would have managed to kill more if genocide was their goal? To call that genocide is to cheapen the meaning of the word and to still fall for the western wartime propaganda at the time.
By the way "systematic" rape myth in both Kosovo and Bosnia is just that a myth, which was a useful propaganda tool at the time but nothing more. Rapes happen in any war but there is no evidence that any more rapes occurred during those two conflicts than any other comparable conflicts, and there were similar proportion of rapes committed by all sides, not just Serbs.
The goal is different too -- unlike Russia, US did not gain -- nor planned to gain -- any territory.
Lookup Camp Bondsteel, a huge permanent US military base in Kosovo. Also lookup Rambouillet "negotiations" which preceded NATO bombing of Serbia where the demands included a right for NATO to unrestricted access to Serbian territory. I would say that is a plan to gain territory, or at least presence on the ground in the strategically important Balkans.
On the other hand, if you think Russia is going to war with Georgia in order to increase it's territory by 0.001% you are very naive. The issue is again control of a strategic region and justifying its military presence there by a pretext of "protecting" a small and otherwise helpless minority. Again a strong correlation between Ossertians and Kosovars
Actually, the closest thing to genocide in Kosovo occurred after NATO moved in and the Serbs were ethnically cleansed from most of it. What happened before that was actually very similar to what's happening in South Ossetia, a minority in a defined territory seeking independence and resorting to military means to achieve it with the help of a foreign power. Just replace Russia with USA and the parallels are very clear. As we now know, the atrocities of the Serbs in crushing that rebellion were much exaggerated by the western media and as the UN court recently acknowledged there was no genocide or ethnic cleansing involved. Actually the percentage of Albanians in Kosovo killed during all the years of Milosevic rule was smaller than the percentage of South Ossetians killed in just couple of days of Georgian attack.
Note: not saying that what happened in Kosovo was all right by any means, my point is that the parallels between the two situations are entirely justified and they expose hypocrisy by the west. There is hypocrisy in the Russian position as well but at least they pay a lip service to preservation of territorial integrity (as per international law) in both cases.
Cash-strapped airlines could end up charging some passengers to use their phones while charging others to sit in a phone-free section of the plane
Thereby enabling smarter airlines such as Southwest to take an ever greater market share by not doing stupid things like that.
Ramji has the unenviable task of stretching his neck out into the open source world as Microsoft's representative
I think the the weapon you are looking for is an axe
NASA has accomplished some truly amazing feats during the last 50 years, the pinnacle surely being the moon landing of Apollo 11
But that was 40 years ago, which is exactly what the problem is. NASA's budget has been going down ever since (as a percentage of the nation's budget) all the way from 4% to 0.7% and falling. The only way things are going to change in a dramatic way is if somebody figures out a genuine commercial interest in space exploration, which would lead to an increase in NASA's budget and more competition from private sector and from other nations.
Hmm, that might be because reality is different from science fiction. We don't have intelligent humanoid robots either or even flying cars (you'd think that one would be easy), so are those NASA's fault as well? Increase NASA's budget to more than the current fraction on one percent of the national budget and maybe we'll see some more progress
Wrong jetpack. This is the one tfa talks about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyb6vnX1My0
It barely gets off the ground too though
The indictment accuses Stevens, former chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, of concealing payments of more than $250,000 in goods and services....
Well, obviously he's "good at calculations"
"hoas to", "tehere", "peopele", "hime"
Let me guess, you are typing this on a cell phone?
But the games only last about 15 days so it doesn't make sense to charge by month
Citizens of Earth,
It has come to our attention that an earthling called Vint Cerf is making unauthorized use of our work in violation of GPTO (Galactic Patents and Trademarks Office) patent number 0932984720392837409 for Interplanetary Internet Protocol.
We demand that he must immediately cease the use and distribution of our work and that he forwards all copies and relevant documentation to us by the earliest space courier. Failure to do so will result in a lawsuit to the amount of our estimated damages of 1,008,076,123.09 galactic credits (equal to 0.0008 USD).
Very truly yours,
Aliens
P.S Greetings, Dr Mitchell
IMHO the answer is don't. If he is really interested in programming, he will not need much encouragement, in fact the problem might be how to keep in away from the computer long enough to have social life. If he loses interest or finds it too hard, then you might unintentionally put him under pressure to keep going just to keep you happy or to prove he is smart enough, and that ain't no recipe for happiness. Be prepared to deal with a possibility that he might decide programming is not for him and that he really wants to be a male ballerina or something, because that's fine too if it would make him happier in the long run. As for the teaching methods, that's a tough one. I kind of lean towards getting them immersed in one thing, language for example, until they understand it in some depth and then using that as a base to learn other stuff. But then different things work for different kids, so there is no one correct approach
Rather than try to change planets, it may be easier to genetically engineer triple breasted whores who are resistant to sulfuric acid. Colonize Venus AND corner the inter-planetary sex tourism market in one move!
These analysts are idiots.
That's only true if their goal is to accurately predict the future. If their goal is to write a controversial article that will show up on front page of slashdot and drive gazillion of clicks to their site then they are very very smart
Ok, so person A writes the software, person B benefits from using it. Your argument is that if B "won't pay" for the software, A should give it for free, right? So in your opinion payments for products and services should be voluntary? You don't think this is unfair to A, or more to the point, it doesn;t discourage A from writing software in the first place?
You can nitpick all you want about the term universal but, if you read the comments and follow the modding patterns on any of the stories dealing with piracy or outsourcing you don't need to be a statistician to see which way the overwhelming majority votes.
I'd say that a substantial proportion of the slashdot community opposes piracy, but opposes the methods being employed to combat even more and you seem to be failing to distinguish between the two.
Possibly, but it doesn't seem that way to me. The methods used to combat software piracy seem fairly mild compared to the methods used to combat most other types of crime. The perpetrators are almost never caught (hence the widespread problem) and when they are, the penalties are not that severe. Compare this to drug or prostitution enforcement where people end up in jail for years despite the fast that they have never hurt anyone, financially or otherwise, which you certainly couldn't say about software piracy.
My conscience is the clearest when I pay for software, it's a little bit murky when I use free software, and it's totally opaque when I use pirated software.
Funny how on slashdot people are almost universally opposed to outsourcing, presumably on the grounds that it puts their jobs at risk, while they are almost universally not opposed to software piracy even though it also puts their jobs at risk (but they get some "free" software yey)
Funny, but it's a good point. How do the employers know that the candidate is showing his/her own code? Even if they are, most likely the code for show will be polished to perfection over however long that takes, and probably not representative of their code while working on a deadline. Far better to give a test during the interview and have your best engineers present to evaluate the candidate
Yeah, but that's because photosynthesis software only runs on Windows