Sometimes I wish Slashdot would let me download my mod points in an open format and use them on another web site. I have some Facebook posts in mind that need down-modding.
Except that since you posted those comments, you can no longer use your mod points on them. OOPS.
However, there is also some pretty smart stuff like food and safety regulations (most of it) and putting on your farking seat belt and wearing a helmet.
Mandatory belt and helmet laws reduce the supply of transplant-ready organs from young and otherwise healthy donors, as well as preventing an improvement in the average intelligence of the species. If Death By Personal Stupidity was reclassified as suicide for insurance payout purposes, everyone's (well, everyone important's) objections would be handled much more reasonably.
If the market is indeed perfectly free, then there are no profits.
Only according to the Strong Definition of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which is obviously false. People can trade their worthless gold for priceless grain, and other people their worthless will-rot-if-not-sold grain for valuable gold, producing profit to either side because a thing only has value to each individual at each different point in time.
If the Strong Definition was correct, then there would be no losses (except via taxation), either, even by the incompetent. Since some people CAN and DO lose their shirts in a free market, the Strong Definition describes a non-existent situation. QED
BTW, as to AC's contention that "it will show people that open standards are indeed necessary" , that is also false. Superior to closed standards, perhaps, but not necessary. It will always be easier for creators to not bother with open standards, especially if someone has a great new idea that doesn't fit into them, yet.
Personal responsibility is hard; it's easier to give up our rights in exchange for protection and favors from the government.
Especially because the people proposing something always want to give up someone ELSE'S rights, not their own. Of course, when two different groups want the opposite group's rights curtailed in opposing fashion...
Oh, sure, it may well have involved Chinese as cannon fodder - Mongols integrated a lot into their empire. But it was still not a Chinese invasion - it did not represent the interest of any Chinese nation-state or somesuch.
At the time of the initial invasion of the West (which crested with the utter defeat of Poland right at the time that the Great Khan died, then stabilized controlling the Russian city-states), China was a possession of the Mongols. Possession as in Uncle Tom and Simon Legree, not something as benevolent as Ireland and Great Britain in the pre-Easter Rebellion period. It was in the interest of the owner of China (at least the northern part -- I understand that a Sung remnant survived in the South for a while longer), therefore it was in the interest of a Chinese nation state.
It's about Polish and Czech not wanting to deal with their eastern neighbours in a neighbourly manner
Their eastern neighbor is Ukraine. It may be about Poland and the Czech Republic not wanting to deal with Russia by leaving themselves open to nuclear blackmail.
During the Cold War, there was a joke: Name the only country surrounded on all sides by hostile Communist countries? Answer: The USSR. Russia hasn't become any less nasty to the countries that it controlled.
First, since the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, isn't the cold war over. Why is Russia still rattling sabres? As far as I can tell, they no longer have the ambition of conquering Europe.
False. The Cold War against the USSR ended. The Russians still want to conquer Europe to prevent Europe from conquering them (because who WOULDN'T want to conquer a country of terrible winters and worse muddy springs and autumns? Haven't we learned from the French and German examples?) and that has never changed, it was just that the Russians no longer had the ability to even credibly threaten that.
Second, even back in cold-war days, the objections to missile defense were bizarre. MAD was exactly that: "mad". Governments agreeing to *not* defend their respective citizens: truly mad.
To be fair, the Soviets never bought into that. Their goal was to win any nuclear exchange. They had an extensive defense system around Moscow.
My understanding is that the missile system IS for our defense. The idea is to place the defenses closer to the origin of the missiles, so they have more time to react and can destroy them further from populated areas. (like over the Atlantic maybe?)
It also opens up options like using fast, guided micro-missiles that tail their target for an easy hit at low relative speeds, instead of something that has to be pinpoint precise and catch the target head-on at high relative speeds.
Which "our" do you mean? This will defend against missiles launched against Central and Western Europe, but attacks on the USA will come over the Arctic, and these sites will be useless against them. Basically, from the Russian PoV these sites defend against a reconquest of the lost parts of the European USSR, which were part of the Empire before WWI.
Can any Ukrainians tell me WHY your country sent all its nuclear weapons back to what was obviously going to be your chief enemy, back when the USSR fell apart?
This also doesn't take into account that there is no love lost between China and Russia, and they've been somewhat at odds for decades.
Yeah, over 50 of them. The Russians have been paranoid about another Chinese invasion since Ivan the Terrible defeated the last remnants of the Golden Horde. More recently, the two countries have had several shooting wars since the 1960s, with some thousands dead on each side, each time, that have been hushed up as neither side gained anything but open slots for promotions.
Actually, if it had rammed the berg, it would have survived, as only the front couple compartments would have flooded. Instead, it grazed the berg in just the right way to open the most compartments, so that it sunk before another ship could get there and set the lifeboats of both ships to ferrying the passengers to the rescue ship(s) (the expected role of lifeboats at the time, which proved to be a flawed plan in worst case scenarios).
As far as "upscale" goes the QM2, is probably near the top today. Even an affordable cruise is typically a bigger ship, Concordia class, than Titanic. While a Concordia is not much bigger, if you going to book some time on fancy floating palace don't you want to be on the very biggest? Was that not part of the Titanic's initial draw?
Another problem with a recreated Titanic is that it was an ocean liner, not a cruise ship. It was designed for a fast passage, not as a floating hotel and casino that would stay in the Greater Miami Metropolitan Area. No pool, no movie theater, no top-heavy decks on decks.
There are lots of cruise ships around, but only a couple liners left. I doubt that the reason is just that owners are mostly landlubbers. Expect this plan to fall victim to Due Diligence.
I'm sorry, but as I remember it, both the French and the Russians died in larger numbers than the British, and neither country's troops were under his command.
Is it Godwinning to point out that the Nazis produced very useful data related to the survival of ditched aircrews in the North Sea by destructively testing some of their prisoners in icy cold water to determine how long they really survive? Interestingly, the results were that even in the starved condition that they were in, the subjects survived much longer than were expected.
Mengele's experimentation was crap, but most was very good, if you ignore that the subjects were human. I understand that the Japanese also did very good work, using British and Australian PoWs as their subjects. The Stanford experiment lasted just a few days, and did not even determine the LD1 levels.
This is one area where the spammer scum have ruined email.
Actually, this was ruined for email before there even WAS email. Robert Heinlein wrote a short book on how to influence politicians, and he laid out all the steps. Basically, the less you care, the less they care, so in the "good old days" a telegram beat a hand-written note, which beat a typed note; signing a petition or sending a pre-written message just makes the signer feel good, but these are completely ignored. An email is almost identical to the pre-written message that some group wants everyone to sign and send in; at best it is the typed message, except that you haven't bothered to expend your precious toner on it.
Secondly, if you belong to an ORGANIZED group, mention it. Even better if you are an officer of it, and mention that. Even a Ladies Sewing Circle member beats the lone crank; the member can convince her group to vote her way, while the lone writer cannot convince anyone.
Seriously, people, this stuff is obvious if you think about it.
nah, man. but if you've put enough majorana particles in the air, it can get pretty hazy.
That would be purple haze... (jimi hendrix reference for you youngsters)
Who is Jimi Hendricks, grandpa?
And what was his unit, rank, and service number before he left the US Army? Seriously, if they don't recognize the reference to one of his most popular songs (as measured by radio play on FM radio, sponsored by stores with names like Heads Together) why would they recognize his name?
The grass in the quad is at CMU, not Pitt. At Pitt, the Quad is all concrete, except for the lucite over where home plate at Forbes Field was (and is, I guess, since the plate is still visible through the lucite). And, unless they are reseeding the area around the Cathedral Of Learning again, it will be easy to tell if they are burying bombs in the area where people gather after evacuation.
No, the Tokyo Fire Raids killed far more Japanese than the two atomic bombs, combined. More died in Dresden, too, but not by so large a ratio. Not that sqrt(2) cares, since he would be happy if we killed them all by starvation, just don't save Japanese lives by killing a small percentage with nukes.
By all accounts, sectarian war is also how Saddam Hussein took power and ran his regime. Saddam was a Sunni, as were approximately 20% of the Iraqi population; meanwhile, he gassed the Kurds and engaged in major terror operations against the Shi'a.
Um, the Kurds are Sunnis as well, just non-Persian Indo-Europeans. And like most dictators, he ran his regime by pitting each group against the others. If Tikrit had risen against him, he would have "engaged in major terror operations" against his home town, too.
Does it count as brains when one joins a club that trades a few years of vile and dehumanizing cruelty and debauchery for a lifetime of well paid sinecures coopted through the connivance of fraternity brothers?
Who is getting the vile cruelty inflicted on whom? And for how long?
Also, the debauchery sounds interesting, unless you are thinking of something different from what I am.
Slashdot Mirror
Sometimes I wish Slashdot would let me download my mod points in an open format and use them on another web site. I have some Facebook posts in mind that need down-modding.
Except that since you posted those comments, you can no longer use your mod points on them. OOPS.
However, there is also some pretty smart stuff like food and safety regulations (most of it) and putting on your farking seat belt and wearing a helmet.
Mandatory belt and helmet laws reduce the supply of transplant-ready organs from young and otherwise healthy donors, as well as preventing an improvement in the average intelligence of the species. If Death By Personal Stupidity was reclassified as suicide for insurance payout purposes, everyone's (well, everyone important's) objections would be handled much more reasonably.
If the market is indeed perfectly free, then there are no profits.
Only according to the Strong Definition of the Efficient Market Hypothesis, which is obviously false. People can trade their worthless gold for priceless grain, and other people their worthless will-rot-if-not-sold grain for valuable gold, producing profit to either side because a thing only has value to each individual at each different point in time.
If the Strong Definition was correct, then there would be no losses (except via taxation), either, even by the incompetent. Since some people CAN and DO lose their shirts in a free market, the Strong Definition describes a non-existent situation. QED
BTW, as to AC's contention that "it will show people that open standards are indeed necessary" , that is also false. Superior to closed standards, perhaps, but not necessary. It will always be easier for creators to not bother with open standards, especially if someone has a great new idea that doesn't fit into them, yet.
Personal responsibility is hard; it's easier to give up our rights in exchange for protection and favors from the government.
Especially because the people proposing something always want to give up someone ELSE'S rights, not their own. Of course, when two different groups want the opposite group's rights curtailed in opposing fashion...
Oh, sure, it may well have involved Chinese as cannon fodder - Mongols integrated a lot into their empire. But it was still not a Chinese invasion - it did not represent the interest of any Chinese nation-state or somesuch.
At the time of the initial invasion of the West (which crested with the utter defeat of Poland right at the time that the Great Khan died, then stabilized controlling the Russian city-states), China was a possession of the Mongols. Possession as in Uncle Tom and Simon Legree, not something as benevolent as Ireland and Great Britain in the pre-Easter Rebellion period. It was in the interest of the owner of China (at least the northern part -- I understand that a Sung remnant survived in the South for a while longer), therefore it was in the interest of a Chinese nation state.
The Golden Horde had substantial Chinese logistic support. Frex, all the siege trains were manned by Chinese, with just the top officers Mongols.
Seriously, you conquer the largest, richest nation on Earth (at that time) and you DON'T use its people as the pre-cannon equivalent of cannon fodder?
It's about Polish and Czech not wanting to deal with their eastern neighbours in a neighbourly manner
Their eastern neighbor is Ukraine. It may be about Poland and the Czech Republic not wanting to deal with Russia by leaving themselves open to nuclear blackmail.
During the Cold War, there was a joke: Name the only country surrounded on all sides by hostile Communist countries? Answer: The USSR. Russia hasn't become any less nasty to the countries that it controlled.
First, since the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, isn't the cold war over. Why is Russia still rattling sabres? As far as I can tell, they no longer have the ambition of conquering Europe.
False. The Cold War against the USSR ended. The Russians still want to conquer Europe to prevent Europe from conquering them (because who WOULDN'T want to conquer a country of terrible winters and worse muddy springs and autumns? Haven't we learned from the French and German examples?) and that has never changed, it was just that the Russians no longer had the ability to even credibly threaten that.
Second, even back in cold-war days, the objections to missile defense were bizarre. MAD was exactly that: "mad". Governments agreeing to *not* defend their respective citizens: truly mad.
To be fair, the Soviets never bought into that. Their goal was to win any nuclear exchange. They had an extensive defense system around Moscow.
My understanding is that the missile system IS for our defense. The idea is to place the defenses closer to the origin of the missiles, so they have more time to react and can destroy them further from populated areas. (like over the Atlantic maybe?)
It also opens up options like using fast, guided micro-missiles that tail their target for an easy hit at low relative speeds, instead of something that has to be pinpoint precise and catch the target head-on at high relative speeds.
Which "our" do you mean? This will defend against missiles launched against Central and Western Europe, but attacks on the USA will come over the Arctic, and these sites will be useless against them. Basically, from the Russian PoV these sites defend against a reconquest of the lost parts of the European USSR, which were part of the Empire before WWI.
Can any Ukrainians tell me WHY your country sent all its nuclear weapons back to what was obviously going to be your chief enemy, back when the USSR fell apart?
This also doesn't take into account that there is no love lost between China and Russia, and they've been somewhat at odds for decades.
Yeah, over 50 of them. The Russians have been paranoid about another Chinese invasion since Ivan the Terrible defeated the last remnants of the Golden Horde. More recently, the two countries have had several shooting wars since the 1960s, with some thousands dead on each side, each time, that have been hushed up as neither side gained anything but open slots for promotions.
> The flaw was ramming a giant iceberg.
Actually, if it had rammed the berg, it would have survived, as only the front couple compartments would have flooded. Instead, it grazed the berg in just the right way to open the most compartments, so that it sunk before another ship could get there and set the lifeboats of both ships to ferrying the passengers to the rescue ship(s) (the expected role of lifeboats at the time, which proved to be a flawed plan in worst case scenarios).
As far as "upscale" goes the QM2, is probably near the top today. Even an affordable cruise is typically a bigger ship, Concordia class, than Titanic. While a Concordia is not much bigger, if you going to book some time on fancy floating palace don't you want to be on the very biggest? Was that not part of the Titanic's initial draw?
Another problem with a recreated Titanic is that it was an ocean liner, not a cruise ship. It was designed for a fast passage, not as a floating hotel and casino that would stay in the Greater Miami Metropolitan Area. No pool, no movie theater, no top-heavy decks on decks.
There are lots of cruise ships around, but only a couple liners left. I doubt that the reason is just that owners are mostly landlubbers. Expect this plan to fall victim to Due Diligence.
I'm sorry, but as I remember it, both the French and the Russians died in larger numbers than the British, and neither country's troops were under his command.
... eugenics.
Did I just manage to invoke Godwin's Law without using a certain historical name? (Never mind that said person didn't invent or implement it first.)
What? Oliver Wendel Holmes?
You forgot to cite Niven's short story for this.
Is it Godwinning to point out that the Nazis produced very useful data related to the survival of ditched aircrews in the North Sea by destructively testing some of their prisoners in icy cold water to determine how long they really survive? Interestingly, the results were that even in the starved condition that they were in, the subjects survived much longer than were expected.
Mengele's experimentation was crap, but most was very good, if you ignore that the subjects were human. I understand that the Japanese also did very good work, using British and Australian PoWs as their subjects. The Stanford experiment lasted just a few days, and did not even determine the LD1 levels.
Could be used to observer history... or to change it.
Especially to change it so that time travel is never invented. Larry Niven had a Law about this.
What's the dual use for the theory of gravity?
Added onto a knowledge of viscous drag and your weaponry, superior artillery aiming.
Why would teleportation lead to the collapse of civilization? All the bridges rusting, maybe (see: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/83804749/Niven_-Larry---All-The-Bridges-Rusting) but it is not like developing psi powers or perfect memories.
This is one area where the spammer scum have ruined email.
Actually, this was ruined for email before there even WAS email. Robert Heinlein wrote a short book on how to influence politicians, and he laid out all the steps. Basically, the less you care, the less they care, so in the "good old days" a telegram beat a hand-written note, which beat a typed note; signing a petition or sending a pre-written message just makes the signer feel good, but these are completely ignored. An email is almost identical to the pre-written message that some group wants everyone to sign and send in; at best it is the typed message, except that you haven't bothered to expend your precious toner on it.
Secondly, if you belong to an ORGANIZED group, mention it. Even better if you are an officer of it, and mention that. Even a Ladies Sewing Circle member beats the lone crank; the member can convince her group to vote her way, while the lone writer cannot convince anyone.
Seriously, people, this stuff is obvious if you think about it.
nah, man. but if you've put enough majorana particles in the air, it can get pretty hazy.
That would be purple haze... (jimi hendrix reference for you youngsters)
Who is Jimi Hendricks, grandpa?
And what was his unit, rank, and service number before he left the US Army? Seriously, if they don't recognize the reference to one of his most popular songs (as measured by radio play on FM radio, sponsored by stores with names like Heads Together) why would they recognize his name?
The grass in the quad is at CMU, not Pitt. At Pitt, the Quad is all concrete, except for the lucite over where home plate at Forbes Field was (and is, I guess, since the plate is still visible through the lucite). And, unless they are reseeding the area around the Cathedral Of Learning again, it will be easy to tell if they are burying bombs in the area where people gather after evacuation.
No, the Tokyo Fire Raids killed far more Japanese than the two atomic bombs, combined. More died in Dresden, too, but not by so large a ratio. Not that sqrt(2) cares, since he would be happy if we killed them all by starvation, just don't save Japanese lives by killing a small percentage with nukes.
By all accounts, sectarian war is also how Saddam Hussein took power and ran his regime. Saddam was a Sunni, as were approximately 20% of the Iraqi population; meanwhile, he gassed the Kurds and engaged in major terror operations against the Shi'a.
Um, the Kurds are Sunnis as well, just non-Persian Indo-Europeans. And like most dictators, he ran his regime by pitting each group against the others. If Tikrit had risen against him, he would have "engaged in major terror operations" against his home town, too.
Does it count as brains when one joins a club that trades a few years of vile and dehumanizing cruelty and debauchery for a lifetime of well paid sinecures coopted through the connivance of fraternity brothers?
Who is getting the vile cruelty inflicted on whom? And for how long?
Also, the debauchery sounds interesting, unless you are thinking of something different from what I am.