> They could use GSM to lockout stolen phones, but don't.
Much more fun to track it, and find the telephonic equivalent of chop shops. Then, they can tell the phones to brick.
It is better for the company to issue you a new phone, though (remember, if they catch the thief, it becomes evidence, and you don't get it back from the courts for months, during which time you might switch providers).
They don't use the IMEI blacklists as much as they could because the EIR is an optional part of the GSM equipment base, which means that most providers (especially small ones) didn't buy one, and so don't update the lists, and so they aren't worth buying, and around it goes.
> let me say that IM is DEFINITELY overtaking email for instant communication
Cogent, except that email was never designed for instant communications, that was what we elders had talk or chat (the programs) for, whether on TOPS-20 (first place that I used it), Xerox Altos, Unix, Compuserve, whatever.
Sort of like saying that hammers are overtaking Philips screwdrivers for nailing together boards.
When distributed networks become truly transparent and ubiquitous, we are going to see a future where todays Internet will look absolutely archaic.
Actually, people (even here on Slashdot) will be complaining that evil corporations want to irradiate us all with dangerous electromagnetic radiation, similar to X-rays or microwaves, for their own profit (OK, here, they will leave out the microwaves AND X-rays bit, and just consentrate on the one). And they will even be able to quote Heinlein to support their position.
Read Waldo and Magic, Inc., and forget the happy nonsense towards the end about him figuring out how to become a strong and deft acrobat/magician.
And what exactly do you consider precise when tossing around nuclear weapons?
Precise enough to take out enemy silos before they can launch.
How is a submarine docked in front of New York, capable of frying the entire east coast before anyone knows its there, AND retreating into depths of the ocean before the first SLBMs drop... how is that not a first strike weapon?
(Putting you as the aggressor, to better personalize things)
Because our second strike takes out your cities and contaminates your farmland. Result is, you are dead. Granted, dead too, but still dead.
If, OTOH our precise missiles can take out your forces before they launch, odds are that we only take out 10-30% of your population as collateral damage. We then get on the hotline, and suggest that you reconsider (whatever the casus belli was). You can retaliate with WHAT? You might have enough missiles left to take out a few cities, if you can find and maybe retarget them (except that we destroyed your command-and-control, also), then suffer the full wrath of our response (exterminating the survivors). Or, you submit, and go on with 60-90% of your population still alive, but harmless.
THAT is a proper first strike.
The only way that a sub can be a first strike weapon (short of massive improvements in missile guidance and accuracy) is to fake a third party launching, and let the victim and the innocent (well, not guilty) bystander duke it out.
As for MHD... well... the book DID use the MHD
Aha. Well the referenced Wikipedia entry had it wrong, then. A pump-jet would not be particularly quiet, but a breakthrough seawater MHD (Hall Effect, actually, iirc) sub could be (probably would be, but we cannot tell until there is a working prototype).
Of course, especially if fitted with a good scope. An unrifled musket is not, though.
> SLBMs sure as hell are not for "home protection". Its a > "get them before they get you and still have a reserve"-weapon.
No, it is a "Kill them after I am dead" (aka, 2nd or 3rd strike) weapon, able to take out cities or contaminate the farm belts of the enemy, but not terminate precise targets. Unless your goal in the first strike is to induce a full spasm response, of course.
And I think that the wiki article is wrong, and that the book used MHD also. After all, we used pump-driven propulsion in the Vietnam-era river boats, so a sub with one would not be interesting, or particularly quiet.
Quick post, I am not sure that many of you realise that the Americans and Russians were allies at the end of the 2nd world war.
Co-belligerents, at best. Stalin promised to intern any B-17s that had to land in the Soviet Union after bombing German's in HIS theater (eg, after a proposal to help the Polish Revolt which occured just before the Russian would have retaken the main Polish cities).
The USA and most of the European nations hated communism with a passion unparalleled to their apparent hate of Hitler
Which is why they rearmed the Wehrmacht and SS and had them reattack the Soviet Armies, as Patton suggested. I wondered why that happened. Oh, wait, it didn't.
The articles clear Richard Feynman of guilt about his driving Dr. Klaus Fuchs (the highest previously known spy) into Albuquerque, whenever he (Feynman) was visiting his (eventually late) wife in the hospital, there. Koval (somehow) had his OWN jeep, and must have used that to contact his handlers. If they were not separate from the known networks, his name would have come out before this.
Of course, there is always the question of whether Koval, a Communist, would have spied for Russia, vs. the Soviet Union, but that is Putin's to handle.
> Not the Manhattan project, but Chicago Pile-1 (first criticality December 2, 1942)
Which was a test device, to gather data for later use on the bomb, itself. It WAS, however, part of the Manhattan Engineering District Project (the full code name), just as was Oak Ridge, the Los Alamos town and school district, etc.
He RAN the experiments because he was heavily invested in DC power. I doubt that he had to cheat; DC is safer for given voltages, which is why a Van DeGraff generator or a Tesla coil are fun to play with, rather than suicidal.
And comparing Gates to Edison is unfair to Edison, who did do some real work. Gates and Rockefeller, perhaps.
Yes, I do. OTOH, I think that much of season 5 was pushed up from the end of his planned arc. My guess is that the Illyria arc was the planned end, but compressed a couple of episodes' worth. As presented, it was way too much of a railroad.
> > Which Lucas would never have had, without a hit like > > American Graffitti. Alas, Joss Whedon has never had his. > > I really beg to differ here. Joss has been a much better director than George,
Unimportant which is better. Orson Welles was better than either; the problem is the movie and TV businesses are BUSINESSES, not the Olympic Play competition (original Olympics, that is). Neither Welles nor Whedon ever had a hit that made lots of money (especially for the cost). Lucas had a very profitable hit with American Graffitti, which he was able to parley into making Star Wars, which went through the roof.
Except that you mixed up Darby )the killer) with McElroy (the fake identity), this looks like a good analysis. I expect, therefore, that you will be modded down as a troll:-)
> Every single Joss TV show has had a huge cult following, the > fans love the shows, and in reality, it's the fans that count.
No, it is the ratings. The last time that shows were NOT produced just to get ratings, they were put on to please their sponsers, the cigarette companies, and they soon wanted ratings, too.
That is the way that it is, on comercial TV. And if you think that Buffy or Angel would have been made on PBS, I need the number of your dealer.
Seriously, he never got the ratings up high enough for the small networks that he produced for, let alone the majors. If series could be run as Pay-Per-View, maybe fanatical fans would be enough. So far, no one has done that model on a real basis.
That's all right, I have said it enough times to make up for you. Even Rutger Hauer was bad in it.
> and you don't know what happens to the characters that you've grown to love and care for as a viewer.
They die, while attempting to die heroically.
Gunn was already fatally wounded, with 10 minutes left if he was careful (which he had no intention of being). Angel and Spike had both decided to go out in blazes of glory, and Illyria was too devastated (in her inhuman way) by Wesley's death to stop fighting, even if the Legion of Hell decided to pull back after the two vampires were destroyed.
If you really didn't know what happened to them, then I also should tell you that, at the end of their movie, Butch and Sundance die, ripped to pieces by a couple companies of well placed soldiers.
Or were you writing about Harmony, Eve, Anne (ex-Lily, ex-Chanterelle), or Krevlornswath?
> It's a sad pity that Joss doesn't have the financial clout of George Lucas
Which Lucas would never have had, without a hit like American Graffitti. Alas, Joss Whedon has never had his.
If we are to ever have colonies on the moon they will become nations, its how its happened with all sorts of countries that had far reaching empires.
Only with the USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and maybe Argentina. Every other colony, it was the people that were there, reclaiming independence. OK, technically, that list should include Liberia, Rhodesia, and South Africa, too, since they were started as nations by colonists, before the pre-origin natives retook power.
And maybe, there is a quibble about certain Greek colonies, or Carthage wrt Phoenicia, where the colony eventually surpasses its parent, but in those cases, the migrants lost their original citizenship before they actually founded the new colonies.
Anyway, I think that enough people in charge will be able to read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress to avoid that. It might turn out like the last part of Asimov's The Gods Themselves, at worst.
Interestingly, the Mr. Anderson that I thought of was Gerry, and Space 1999 (where only the spacecraft were puppets).
Of course, it does fit in with a suggestion I saw on Usenet, that Dukakis had actually won in 1988, but pissed the aliens (either Blue or Grey, whichever the governemnt is supposed to be working with) off so much that they had to rewind time and change the election results to avoid wiping us out.
> Apparently it's not "proper" to write them clockwise from the top in any form of cursive or something.
Well, it is slightly more inefficient when you connect to the next character, so you might get more fatigue after you finish copying the entire Bible, or something.
> soviet scientists (even though scientists are supposed to be reasonable people) had faith in communism
Or at least faith in Comrade Stalin, and more importantly, in his secret police. Really, most Soviet advancements during the Stalin Era were created by prisoners under a death sentence, deferred until they were no longer useful. They might have very nice homes that were better than the non-sentenced workers' apartments, but if they were seen as having slacked off, they could be put up against the nearest public wall and shot at any time. It just took one such demonstration a year, in most places.
> Where is the nearest place I can take my curious children > to see full sized assembled dinosaur fossil skeletons?
Since other posters suggested as far away as Europe, I feel free to add this:
The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, PA displays actual fossil dinosaur skeletons. Most places just display plaster or fiberglass castings, usually painted to look like the original rock. They have a very nice collection, including a T-Rex, an allosaurus, a stegosaurus, and a Diplodocus carnegii (guess why it is named that) that takes up most of the hall. Going to the (in same building) library was fun, growing up.
How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?
You will find that predators are almost always smarter than their prey. After all, if the prey were smarter than their predators, they wouldn't get eaten, and the so-called predators would starve, then go extinct (or shift prey, at least).
> My bet: a "jets are cool propellers are old attitude."
But the V22 does have propellors, really big ones, too. The jet engines are there to provide power, only, like in most military helocopters. Or M-1 tanks, for that matter.
Slashdot Mirror
> They could use GSM to lockout stolen phones, but don't.
Much more fun to track it, and find the telephonic equivalent of chop shops. Then, they can tell the phones to brick.
It is better for the company to issue you a new phone, though (remember, if they catch the thief, it becomes evidence, and you don't get it back from the courts for months, during which time you might switch providers).
They don't use the IMEI blacklists as much as they could because the EIR is an optional part of the GSM equipment base, which means that most providers (especially small ones) didn't buy one, and so don't update the lists, and so they aren't worth buying, and around it goes.
> let me say that IM is DEFINITELY overtaking email for instant communication
Cogent, except that email was never designed for instant communications, that was what we elders had talk or chat (the programs) for, whether on TOPS-20 (first place that I used it), Xerox Altos, Unix, Compuserve, whatever.
Sort of like saying that hammers are overtaking Philips screwdrivers for nailing together boards.
Actually, people (even here on Slashdot) will be complaining that evil corporations want to irradiate us all with dangerous electromagnetic radiation, similar to X-rays or microwaves, for their own profit (OK, here, they will leave out the microwaves AND X-rays bit, and just consentrate on the one). And they will even be able to quote Heinlein to support their position.
Read Waldo and Magic, Inc., and forget the happy nonsense towards the end about him figuring out how to become a strong and deft acrobat/magician.
Precise enough to take out enemy silos before they can launch.
(Putting you as the aggressor, to better personalize things)
Because our second strike takes out your cities and contaminates your farmland. Result is, you are dead. Granted, dead too, but still dead.
If, OTOH our precise missiles can take out your forces before they launch, odds are that we only take out 10-30% of your population as collateral damage. We then get on the hotline, and suggest that you reconsider (whatever the casus belli was). You can retaliate with WHAT? You might have enough missiles left to take out a few cities, if you can find and maybe retarget them (except that we destroyed your command-and-control, also), then suffer the full wrath of our response (exterminating the survivors). Or, you submit, and go on with 60-90% of your population still alive, but harmless.
THAT is a proper first strike.
The only way that a sub can be a first strike weapon (short of massive improvements in missile guidance and accuracy) is to fake a third party launching, and let the victim and the innocent (well, not guilty) bystander duke it out.
Aha. Well the referenced Wikipedia entry had it wrong, then. A pump-jet would not be particularly quiet, but a breakthrough seawater MHD (Hall Effect, actually, iirc) sub could be (probably would be, but we cannot tell until there is a working prototype).
> Is a rifle a first strike weapon?
Of course, especially if fitted with a good scope. An unrifled musket is not, though.
> SLBMs sure as hell are not for "home protection". Its a
> "get them before they get you and still have a reserve"-weapon.
No, it is a "Kill them after I am dead" (aka, 2nd or 3rd strike) weapon, able to take out cities or contaminate the farm belts of the enemy, but not terminate precise targets. Unless your goal in the first strike is to induce a full spasm response, of course.
And I think that the wiki article is wrong, and that the book used MHD also. After all, we used pump-driven propulsion in the Vietnam-era river boats, so a sub with one would not be interesting, or particularly quiet.
> Stealing an undetectable (super-silent nuclear sub) first strike weapon and running away with it to the enemy?
How is any sub a first strike weapon? That is what you use the bigger, more accurate, land-based weapons for. Which the Soviets specialised in.
I suggest that you read the book, not watch the movie. And, of course, remember that it is all fiction.
Co-belligerents, at best. Stalin promised to intern any B-17s that had to land in the Soviet Union after bombing German's in HIS theater (eg, after a proposal to help the Polish Revolt which occured just before the Russian would have retaken the main Polish cities).
Which is why they rearmed the Wehrmacht and SS and had them reattack the Soviet Armies, as Patton suggested. I wondered why that happened. Oh, wait, it didn't.
Of course, there is always the question of whether Koval, a Communist, would have spied for Russia, vs. the Soviet Union, but that is Putin's to handle.
> Not the Manhattan project, but Chicago Pile-1 (first criticality December 2, 1942)
Which was a test device, to gather data for later use on the bomb, itself. It WAS, however, part of the Manhattan Engineering District Project (the full code name), just as was Oak Ridge, the Los Alamos town and school district, etc.
He RAN the experiments because he was heavily invested in DC power. I doubt that he had to cheat; DC is safer for given voltages, which is why a Van DeGraff generator or a Tesla coil are fun to play with, rather than suicidal.
And comparing Gates to Edison is unfair to Edison, who did do some real work. Gates and Rockefeller, perhaps.
> They die, while attempting to die heroically.
You don't know this.
Yes, I do. OTOH, I think that much of season 5 was pushed up from the end of his planned arc. My guess is that the Illyria arc was the planned end, but compressed a couple of episodes' worth. As presented, it was way too much of a railroad.
> > Which Lucas would never have had, without a hit like
> > American Graffitti. Alas, Joss Whedon has never had his.
>
> I really beg to differ here. Joss has been a much better director than George,
Unimportant which is better. Orson Welles was better than either; the problem is the movie and TV businesses are BUSINESSES, not the Olympic Play competition (original Olympics, that is). Neither Welles nor Whedon ever had a hit that made lots of money (especially for the cost). Lucas had a very profitable hit with American Graffitti, which he was able to parley into making Star Wars, which went through the roof.
Except that you mixed up Darby )the killer) with McElroy (the fake identity), this looks like a good analysis. I expect, therefore, that you will be modded down as a troll :-)
Thus, his watts will be on second.
> Every single Joss TV show has had a huge cult following, the
> fans love the shows, and in reality, it's the fans that count.
No, it is the ratings. The last time that shows were NOT produced just to get ratings, they were put on to please their sponsers, the cigarette companies, and they soon wanted ratings, too.
That is the way that it is, on comercial TV. And if you think that Buffy or Angel would have been made on PBS, I need the number of your dealer.
Seriously, he never got the ratings up high enough for the small networks that he produced for, let alone the majors. If series could be run as Pay-Per-View, maybe fanatical fans would be enough. So far, no one has done that model on a real basis.
> I'm not saying the Kirsty Swanson movie was bad
That's all right, I have said it enough times to make up for you. Even Rutger Hauer was bad in it.
> and you don't know what happens to the characters that you've grown to love and care for as a viewer.
They die, while attempting to die heroically.
Gunn was already fatally wounded, with 10 minutes left if he was careful (which he had no intention of being). Angel and Spike had both decided to go out in blazes of glory, and Illyria was too devastated (in her inhuman way) by Wesley's death to stop fighting, even if the Legion of Hell decided to pull back after the two vampires were destroyed.
If you really didn't know what happened to them, then I also should tell you that, at the end of their movie, Butch and Sundance die, ripped to pieces by a couple companies of well placed soldiers.
Or were you writing about Harmony, Eve, Anne (ex-Lily, ex-Chanterelle), or Krevlornswath?
> It's a sad pity that Joss doesn't have the financial clout of George Lucas
Which Lucas would never have had, without a hit like American Graffitti. Alas, Joss Whedon has never had his.
Only with the USA, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and maybe Argentina. Every other colony, it was the people that were there, reclaiming independence. OK, technically, that list should include Liberia, Rhodesia, and South Africa, too, since they were started as nations by colonists, before the pre-origin natives retook power.
And maybe, there is a quibble about certain Greek colonies, or Carthage wrt Phoenicia, where the colony eventually surpasses its parent, but in those cases, the migrants lost their original citizenship before they actually founded the new colonies.
Anyway, I think that enough people in charge will be able to read The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress to avoid that. It might turn out like the last part of Asimov's The Gods Themselves, at worst.
> I'd say that continued expansion would enable this since there would be no definitive end to the universe.
Big Rip. Look it up.
It's 50 billion years, and out.
Of course, it does fit in with a suggestion I saw on Usenet, that Dukakis had actually won in 1988, but pissed the aliens (either Blue or Grey, whichever the governemnt is supposed to be working with) off so much that they had to rewind time and change the election results to avoid wiping us out.
> Apparently it's not "proper" to write them clockwise from the top in any form of cursive or something.
Well, it is slightly more inefficient when you connect to the next character, so you might get more fatigue after you finish copying the entire Bible, or something.
> How come I've heard of people winning the jackpot, but I've never heard of anyone being struck by lightning 10 times?
I have. She was a forest ranger, and featured on That's Incredible, back in the 1970's.
I think that there was someone (forest ranger, again) on 60 Minutes in the 1990's as well.
> soviet scientists (even though scientists are supposed to be reasonable people) had faith in communism
Or at least faith in Comrade Stalin, and more importantly, in his secret police. Really, most Soviet advancements during the Stalin Era were created by prisoners under a death sentence, deferred until they were no longer useful. They might have very nice homes that were better than the non-sentenced workers' apartments, but if they were seen as having slacked off, they could be put up against the nearest public wall and shot at any time. It just took one such demonstration a year, in most places.
> Where is the nearest place I can take my curious children
> to see full sized assembled dinosaur fossil skeletons?
Since other posters suggested as far away as Europe, I feel free to add this:
The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, PA displays actual fossil dinosaur skeletons. Most places just display plaster or fiberglass castings, usually painted to look like the original rock. They have a very nice collection, including a T-Rex, an allosaurus, a stegosaurus, and a Diplodocus carnegii (guess why it is named that) that takes up most of the hall. Going to the (in same building) library was fun, growing up.
> how many truly smart top predators are there?
How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?
You will find that predators are almost always smarter than their prey. After all, if the prey were smarter than their predators, they wouldn't get eaten, and the so-called predators would starve, then go extinct (or shift prey, at least).
But if Dateline is catching them, they are NOT the top predator, Dateline is.
> My bet: a "jets are cool propellers are old attitude."
But the V22 does have propellors, really big ones, too. The jet engines are there to provide power, only, like in most military helocopters. Or M-1 tanks, for that matter.