Remember, he's former KGB. You know he's assembling gigabytes of blackmail for Trump and everybody close to him (looking at YOU, Kellyanne). We're talking murdered whore with Trump Jr.'s DNA all over her. Let me annex everything from Estonia to Greece, little Donald, and Uncle Putey will make this all go away.
and apparently the new rule is you have to have celebrity status to bubble up above the rabble that currently populate U.S. politics.
People have short memories, but I remember the dozen idiots that Trump competed against in the primaries. To beat those guys, all he had to do is show up and be himself. If only another rich guy with an ego the size of his offshore bank accounts had entered the race, there might have been a competition. I also remember lots of people with Hollywood names, from Arnold to Clint Eastwood to Sonny Bono, who sailed over the competition each time they ran for office. If Oprah had run instead of Hillary, Trump would be in the wastebin of history, and people actually asked her to but she just smiled and said no.
I know how to beat Trump in 2020: Beyonce. She might not be able to answer a single question about policy, but the way we vote today, Queen B would turn Trump into a memory faster than she can sell-out a concert. Jay-Z as first man... put that in your pipe and smoke it.
... not to out-source critical shit to contractors.
But you want to be able to hire and fire them easily, on the whims of the budget, right? And to show efficiency with as tiny a staff as possible, right? And to obfuscate responsibility if something goes wrong, right? If your assistant commits treason on your watch, you're to blame because you should have picked up on it, at least. But a contractor? Who takes the fall for contracting the contractor? Fingers point everywhere but nobody's directly responsible for what a contractor does (except when he does something good, you can take credit).
Out-sourcing. Your stepping-stone to success in management.
But for people with built-in bullshit detectors (regrettably, I'm one), all that "delivers the fastest internet in America" and the "fastest in-home Wi-Fi" is deceptive head-fake fluff if they're the only provider available.
In other words, who gives a shit that they "deliver the fastest internet in America" and the "fastest in-home Wi-Fi", when all that matters is whether you live in their coverage area? Who are they talking to in these ads? Are there really that many people out there struggling with DSL or dial-up? There are so few areas where Comcast coverage overlaps with a Fiber carrier and has to truly compete, I can't imagine that they give a shit.
I think these ads are nothing but public-relations fluff, more about making people feel "positive" about the company than actually selling anything. Makes investors feel good, props up the stock price. But in the real world, when you move into a neighborhood you look up the local water company, the gas company, the electric company, and the TV/internet providers(s) and just sign the fuck up. If there's competition available, then great, you have a choice; otherwise you just sign. But I might suggest, at least for TV, try out an antenna and see if you can pick enough stuff up for free... anything else you want you can probably get through sling, Netflix, Amazon, etc.
Saves you a ton of money (and irritates the hell out of the cable companies) if you tell 'em "No, I don't want 'triple-play,' I only want Internet."
Sigh. The tale of FIOS in the NE and Mid-Atlantic is as complicated as it is sad. All I can say is, I have FIOS and it's great. Reliable speed, tests at a faster score than what I'm supposed to paying for, and except for that time when I cut through my poorly buried fiber while digging in my garden, no down time.
But I had to MOVE here to get it. I'm minutes away from my old house, but within those city limits it's all Comcast. And even as their reliability improved with time (when I started with them uptime was pathetic) they were always irritating. The only good thing is they permitted me to buy my own docsis modem and router, giving me that warm smug feeling and saving me a few bucks each month (except when their billing department conveniently "forgot" and tried to sneak the modem rent back in every two or three months). But modems for fiber-based systems like FIOS are harder to come by and keep working, so these days I just give up and pay Verizon their damn modem rent (at least it works well).
So, I used to HATE FIOS commercials when I lived in an area that would NEVER get it. Now that I live in an area that has it, I feel a little smug but it still ain't right. I still remember stories of miles and miles of "dark" fiber buried all around, waiting for someone to put it to use, but Verizon still shows no interest in expanding anywhere they ain't at already. It burns me to think how much these assholes just don't care... unless some regulator squeaks or some little won pops up offering an affordable alternative, then they scream and pay lobbyists about anti-competition and gubmint interference and all sorts of invisible hand bullshit, everything except just providing a good service and charging a fair price for it.
For the first time last year, there were more people in the world who are over 65 than under five. First time ever in history. By the middle of the century, the number of people over 80 will double. By the end of the century, it'll be up sevenfold, globally.
SEVENFOLD? At that rate, by the first half of the century after that, everyone will have died off! (unless we've figured out how to halt/reverse the aging process, and then "age" won't really matter).
Ya gotta question these numbers, but there's definitely a trend among developed nations toward not having kids, while better healthcare helps keep people alive longer. I think the former is ok (and if you don't now, someday you will), but not having kinds is a weird offshoot of how our world has evolved. Without a chance at a sustainable income in those golden child-making years (think get a job at the steel mill right out of high-school after knocking up your prom date... see the first half of The Deer Hunter to get a glimpse of those long-gone happy days), if you have anything to do with it you put off having kids, at least until you and your SO (if you have one) have enough reliable income to support the little tyke (or maybe you're lucky enough to have one or more sets of parental units living nearby who offer free nanny service because they really want grandkids).
The putting-off process very easily becomes indefinite. In some countries in Asia and Europe, this is becoming a big deal. Even in the U.S., population numbers are largely because of immigration.
I think we're gonna need those robots. Nice ones who will make our toys, take out the trash, help us up the stairs, mix up the medicine, and wipe our asses, everything the children of immigrants won't do because they're parent made 'em study real hard and make it into Harvard and MIT, so they can major in robotics 'cause maybe that'll make 'em enough money to someday pay off their student loans so they can maybe, you know, get married and have some kids.
Well... AFAIK the neutrons are not as important as temperature and pressure. The TU device takes uses X-rays resulting the from the fission and travelling at just about c to turn some substrate into plasma very quickly, which then expands very quickly to crush the DT fuel against a core of yet more U-235, which then ignites. Positioned between these two expanding and very hot things, the DT reaches the temp and pressure to overcome its repulsion forces and fuse, which releases lots and lots and lots of fast neutrons.
Here is where things get really sick. The energy from fusion is actually, IIRC, only 10% by mass the energy released from fission. So, what's the point? Your bomb casing has a lot of common U-238, stuff that, unlike rare U-235, doesn't normally do anything but bounce "slow" neutrons back into the bomb casing (aka, a "tamper"). But the fusion reaction releases "fast" highly-energetic neutrons. When exposed to "fast" neutrons, the "inert" U-238 suddenly becomes fissionable... more bomb fuel, more yield. A lot more.
This is what makes H-bombs of the TU design so ludicrous. The yield is practically limitless. In building the largest bomb ever, the Soviets could have produced a device yielding 100 megatons, but upon realizing that this would have destroyed the plane that carried it (among other consequences), they swapped out the U-238 tamper with inert Pb, reducing the yield to "only" 50 megatons, still the largest man-made nuclear explosion in history.
The largest-yield bomb tested by the U.S. was Castle Bravo at 15 megatons, and this was by accident. The researchers misunderstood what lithium-7 would do in the fusion fuel when bombarded by fast neutrons, believing it to be, for all intents and purposes, inert. They were way wrong. Under high neutron bombardment, lithium-7 decays almost instantly into an alpha particle, a tritium nucleus, and another neutron; i.e., more bomb fuel. So, instead of the 8 megatons they expected, they got 15, and an unfortunate change in wind direction sent the fallout onto the inhabited Rongelap and Rongerik atolls, which had to be evacuated, as well as a Japanese fishing boat (ironically named Lucky Dragon No.5). Not a proud day for nuclear research.
Lenin advocated for revolution, which is the problem. Communism, as loaded as that word is, boils down to an economic model that may or may not work. Mostly, it doesn't, because there are too many opportunities to cheat, and too few incentives to play ball. But communes exist, here and there, among like-minded individuals who take it upon themselves not to fuck each other over. But on a broad scale? I wouldn't bank on it.
But none of that matters. Because large-scale communism has never existed. Not because communism is evil... it's because communist revolution is evil. The revolution part gave Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pot (Pol), Kim, whomever, the carte blanche to do whatever to whomever they decided were enemies of the "revolution" (i.e., their rise to power). Even today, years after they've been established, the enemies of the "communism" they supposedly practice in China and N. Korea are called "counter-revolutionaries", because once in place, the "revolution" is never finished. The goal of the "worker's paradise" is never accomplished because of this enemy or that enemy, foreigners abroad or traitors among us. And as N. Korea has shown, it can perpetuate down three whole generations of decadent leadership without an end in sight, even when the citizens are literally starving to death.
Why the fuck are we talking about this? This thread is supposed to be about open-source Darwin from Apple. But I've seen the light. Communism, real actual "communism" as an economic model, is not "evil"... let alone, it will just fade away for the inefficient, unworkable mess that it is (unless your Amish, or hippies, or some other group of super-like-minded individuals who just get up each day and make it work). Revolution is the evil. The U.S. got real lucky with theirs, having only to defeat an enemy a continent away after centuries of working, civil self-governance behind it. But lots of innocent heads rolled in the French Revolution before they got that all sorted out. Since then, every "revolution" I can think of has become a complete fucking blood-bath that propped up a tyrant, and it didn't matter what the reason was... communism, socialism, Islam, cultural purity, racial purity, even (the promise of) democracy. As soon as some leader shouts "revolution!" waving an axe-handle or an AK-47, that's code to angry young men for NO RULES! Loot, rape, kill, pillage, turn-on-your-neighbor, eat-your-children, shave you head, run for the hills, complete fucking ANARCHY. All is us vs. them (and you, probably, ain't in the "us" department).
In the end, like a wildfire, it burns itself out, since revolutionaries generally SUCK at producing anything, especially things that take time (and therefore capital), like food. Sometimes it takes a few generations (U.S.S.R., N. Korea), sometimes it takes less than one (watch... the days of ISIS are numbered, particularly as they lose control of those oil fields, the only source of hard currency they need to buy shit like ammunition and... food). China has been successful because Mao died and his successors have largely let the population do what they've done well for millennia... get shit done, and occasionally throw a bone at whoever is occupying the Forbidden Palace THIS time.
So, don't get your panties in a bunch over trip-wire words like "communism" or "socialism". That's just people thinking people oughta chip in a little, for the good of everyone. Get real suspicious of the guy who cries "revolution" or "overthrow", or anything else that gives him some self-authority to kill people and set himself up as herr Führer who will lead all proper people to paradise by eliminating the riff-raff. THAT's the guy who's gonna fuck everything up.
Feh. Monkeys. Try mine-shafts filled with "stimulating" females for re-populating the Earth. No implants, gets 'em right on their feet. Mein Führer... I CAN WALK !!
Where were these fears when Comcast and NBC Universal got together?
Chalk it up as hindsight. Enough people thought Comcast/NBC wouldn't be so bad, Comcast arguing that the magical Internet itself created the competition, and the old men bought it. Now, we should know better. We can actually see that prices didn't go down, that service didn't improve, that Comcast leverages its content ownership like... duhhhh.... of course they would. The question is whether it's too late, get-used-to-it, mega Comcast companies are the reality now, or whether denying TimeWarner would make Comcast technically too large to exist.
Correction: a free market without the FCC is nothing BUT monopoly. 'cause if the FCC ain't there to police things, the big companies are going to cheat. Buy all the shit up, shut out competition. Why? 'cause if one don't cheat, another one will, so that in the end, there can be only one.
Fair competition? Feh. Playing fair, if you don't HAVE to play fair, is for suckers.
Sounds like you don't have children, or you're raising them in an abandoned mine-shaft or a "Village" out of an M. Night Shyamalan movie. It won't last. Some day soon, your kids will come across an old bottle-cap with "Fanta" written on it and turn on you like "Children of the Corn". Hell hath no fury like a child craving that stuff all the other kids know about.
We've been playing the Trump Drinking Game based on his "compulsive behaviors" at the debates. Each debate, someone does a shot when he sniffs, interrupts the moderator, or says any of "let me tell you," "I'm very proud of it," "it's a (total) disaster," "worst [something] ever," "disgusting," "believe me," and "sad" (may have been others, but I may have passed out). Everybody drinks if he leans into the microphone and says "wrong", boasts about his company, or says "nobody respects women more than me."
Great times. Wasted inside the first 40 minutes. No more debates. Sad.
Blame Intel for this. Intel makes i5's with either have four cores, or two with hyper-threading so the OS thinks it's four. The dual core models tend to draw fewer watts, making them more attractive for laptops and small designs.
JOIN me (on LinkedIn), and I will COMPLETE your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict, and bring ORDER and MEANING To your USELESS ENDORSEMENTS!
I feel this. I'm desperate for an upgrade for my 2010 model. If Apple fucks this up, I'll be torn between a refurbished previous model or an XPS 15 (which is pretty great except, well, Windows).
Seriously, now that HP and Dell are making some decent laptops, Apple has got to start taking their computer line seriously again. Their tendency to take more away with each update, and then sleep on them for months and months while CPU and GPU tech forges ahead, has made for an excruciating experience. I appreciate that Apple products have lifespans and support far longer than your typical "consumer electronics" product, manufactured in bursts and then dropped (is that a revision CA582-J or a revision BB354-Q... Sony and HP were particularly egregious at this), and Apple DOES have excellent support (last Winter, they swapped out the motherboard of a 2010 model for a buddy of mine for free... who the fuck else does that for a 5-year-old product?) but Apple doesn't upgrade anything for well over a year, even their "flagship" Mac Pro. FUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKK. And when they do upgrade, will they ditch something people like... slots in the Mac Pro? MagSafe, SD and USB Type-A ports in the Macbook Pro? I'll need to carry an adapter to plug in... thumb drives? Camera cards? Like nearly everything?
On location, the man says, "here, look at this" handing me a card out of his Nikon, and I gotta say "No... I got a new Macbook Pro... and forgot my dongle..."
I could add this club soda to my gin, or I could use this cool catalyst to turn the club soda into... stronger gin! Kids will be turning Sprite into kamikaze shots in their bedrooms! The liquor cabinet's locked, and yet the child is wasted.... Pbpbpbphhhh.... itza zience pppprrojeckt, Mommmm... A P Kem-isss-Tree!
Can I rig Call of Duty with an AI auto-pilot plug-in, and just sit back and watch it steam-roll over all the sucker humans in the game? If I play an online game like Overwatch and get smeered over and over by an opponent(s) with perfect aim and lightning-quick moves, will I just assume someone's introduced a bot into the game and I'm wasting my time with my hopelessly inferior carbon-based reflexes? Gaming may need its own version of the Butlerian Jihad.
NOT (quite) CORRECT. You can defer updates in the PRO version. Settings-->Update & Security-->Windows Update--> Advanced options-->Defer Upgrades Been working for me for months, whereas my one guinea-pig system that I didn't switch did upgrade eventually. Security updates continued to come through.
Why they don't offer Defer Upgrades in the Home version is... I don't know. Cockiness. Force features on the Home-version Plebes. Why they don't vet these updates better is... bizarre. Apple pushed out five (I think) public betas before releasing Sierra, and the only thing I've noticed wrong is they yanked out PPTP VPN (they sent out warnings, but I didn't get the memo). Maybe the right thing to do, but it still messed me up. OTOH, I yelled at M$ through the Insider Program that their latest wasn't installing, and DID THEY LISTEN? If they'd only just do exactly what I tell them exactly when I say at all times... but noooooooooooo, 'cause we're Microsoft and we all went to Harvard we want to get into CELL PHONES 'cuz Uncle Pewterschmidt says that's where the money is!
Hey, Microsoft, if you that CEO position becomes vacant again, gimme a call. Fix everything, for 1/10 what you pay Satya. Maybe 1/3. We'll talk.
800K 3.5" drives worked fine with the Apple//c later//e's... it was called the UniDisk 3.5, and compared to a 140K 5.25" floppy it was practically a hard drive (well, a Zip Disk, if you remember those things). The//c+ had an 800K disk built-in. The UniDisk was a little-bit smart, had it's own processor if I recall, which allowed it to be plug-n-play with the// line. External 800K disks for Macs, in contrast, wouldn't work on the//'s (except for the//gs).
Manhattan has three basic divisions, "uptown," "midtown," and "downtown." The financial district is contained within the geographic area of "downtown" (which starts at the Battery and has a nebulous northern border somewhere between the Village and 34th St).
The "Financial District" is not really "contained" in downtown anymore. The only major players left: Goldman, the NYSE, the AMEX. And Chase still has a building. The other major financial players have moved to midtown on Park Avenue, uptown from Grand Central and the Helmsley Building. For a while, they were building office parks in New Jersey. And what's taking their place? Residential. Yeah, those old office buildings have turned into luxury condos and co-ops.
For me, the upper limit of "Downtown" is the City Hall and Park Row where J&R used to be. Anything North of City Hall Park isn't proper Downtown. It's lower Chinatown, around Columbus Park where the old people do Tai Chi, whereas on the west side is TriBeCa.
Canal Street is the major dividing line running east-west, and hooks up with the Manhattan Bridge. North of that, you have more Chinatown, what's left of Little Italy, and SoHo to the West, and the Lower East Side to the East where you used to be able to get a cheap roach-filled apartment. Then you reach Houston Street, another major dividing line - North of it is Greenwich Village to the West, East Village to the East. The numbered streets start (Houston Street is essentially "0" street). It's all Village until you reach 14th Street.
It's kinda Midtown from there, 'cause it's no longer Village and damn-well ain't Downtown. But really it's Chelsea, Gramercy and Stuyvesant. Midtown, really, isn't until you get past Flat Iron to Nomad, Kips Bay and the Empire State Building at 34th Street. Then it's really Midtown, stretching up Northward until 59th Street which marks the lower end of Central Park... dividing the City between the Upper East Side to the East, and the Upper West Side to the, you get the idea. Get past the Park, you're in Harlem. North of that, Washington Heights and the GW Bridge to Chris Christie-land. Once you reach Inwood, there's nowhere else to go except across the Harlem River to the Bronx.
The town so nice, they named it twice. What I'd do for a slice.
and also thanks for reminding us that Twitter is the place to memorialize things said before thinking. At least you followed-up to soften it a bit after reviewing the, you know, facts. Kudos for that; many Twitter-users who post something stupid would just as soon double-down on whatever idiocy they posted.
Not sure I get that one. If the service is jumping with all the music and outstretched hands, drool and what-not, not unlike an Metallica concert, a good fart should go completely unnoticed, particularly the silent-but-deadly kind likely to be mistaken for B.O., which from the looks of a typical mega-congregation should be intense. Megachurch services are not quiet, seance-like affairs.
Now, a fart in a confessional, that'll lead to a few Hail Mary's.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry, Putin is way ahead of you.
Remember, he's former KGB. You know he's assembling gigabytes of blackmail for Trump and everybody close to him (looking at YOU, Kellyanne). We're talking murdered whore with Trump Jr.'s DNA all over her. Let me annex everything from Estonia to Greece, little Donald, and Uncle Putey will make this all go away.
and apparently the new rule is you have to have celebrity status to bubble up above the rabble that currently populate U.S. politics.
People have short memories, but I remember the dozen idiots that Trump competed against in the primaries. To beat those guys, all he had to do is show up and be himself. If only another rich guy with an ego the size of his offshore bank accounts had entered the race, there might have been a competition. I also remember lots of people with Hollywood names, from Arnold to Clint Eastwood to Sonny Bono, who sailed over the competition each time they ran for office. If Oprah had run instead of Hillary, Trump would be in the wastebin of history, and people actually asked her to but she just smiled and said no.
I know how to beat Trump in 2020: Beyonce. She might not be able to answer a single question about policy, but the way we vote today, Queen B would turn Trump into a memory faster than she can sell-out a concert. Jay-Z as first man... put that in your pipe and smoke it.
... not to out-source critical shit to contractors.
But you want to be able to hire and fire them easily, on the whims of the budget, right? And to show efficiency with as tiny a staff as possible, right? And to obfuscate responsibility if something goes wrong, right? If your assistant commits treason on your watch, you're to blame because you should have picked up on it, at least. But a contractor? Who takes the fall for contracting the contractor? Fingers point everywhere but nobody's directly responsible for what a contractor does (except when he does something good, you can take credit).
Out-sourcing. Your stepping-stone to success in management.
But for people with built-in bullshit detectors (regrettably, I'm one), all that "delivers the fastest internet in America" and the "fastest in-home Wi-Fi" is deceptive head-fake fluff if they're the only provider available.
In other words, who gives a shit that they "deliver the fastest internet in America" and the "fastest in-home Wi-Fi", when all that matters is whether you live in their coverage area? Who are they talking to in these ads? Are there really that many people out there struggling with DSL or dial-up? There are so few areas where Comcast coverage overlaps with a Fiber carrier and has to truly compete, I can't imagine that they give a shit.
I think these ads are nothing but public-relations fluff, more about making people feel "positive" about the company than actually selling anything. Makes investors feel good, props up the stock price. But in the real world, when you move into a neighborhood you look up the local water company, the gas company, the electric company, and the TV/internet providers(s) and just sign the fuck up. If there's competition available, then great, you have a choice; otherwise you just sign. But I might suggest, at least for TV, try out an antenna and see if you can pick enough stuff up for free... anything else you want you can probably get through sling, Netflix, Amazon, etc.
Saves you a ton of money (and irritates the hell out of the cable companies) if you tell 'em "No, I don't want 'triple-play,' I only want Internet."
Sigh. The tale of FIOS in the NE and Mid-Atlantic is as complicated as it is sad. All I can say is, I have FIOS and it's great. Reliable speed, tests at a faster score than what I'm supposed to paying for, and except for that time when I cut through my poorly buried fiber while digging in my garden, no down time.
But I had to MOVE here to get it. I'm minutes away from my old house, but within those city limits it's all Comcast. And even as their reliability improved with time (when I started with them uptime was pathetic) they were always irritating. The only good thing is they permitted me to buy my own docsis modem and router, giving me that warm smug feeling and saving me a few bucks each month (except when their billing department conveniently "forgot" and tried to sneak the modem rent back in every two or three months). But modems for fiber-based systems like FIOS are harder to come by and keep working, so these days I just give up and pay Verizon their damn modem rent (at least it works well).
So, I used to HATE FIOS commercials when I lived in an area that would NEVER get it. Now that I live in an area that has it, I feel a little smug but it still ain't right. I still remember stories of miles and miles of "dark" fiber buried all around, waiting for someone to put it to use, but Verizon still shows no interest in expanding anywhere they ain't at already. It burns me to think how much these assholes just don't care... unless some regulator squeaks or some little won pops up offering an affordable alternative, then they scream and pay lobbyists about anti-competition and gubmint interference and all sorts of invisible hand bullshit, everything except just providing a good service and charging a fair price for it.
For the first time last year, there were more people in the world who are over 65 than under five. First time ever in history. By the middle of the century, the number of people over 80 will double. By the end of the century, it'll be up sevenfold, globally.
SEVENFOLD? At that rate, by the first half of the century after that, everyone will have died off! (unless we've figured out how to halt/reverse the aging process, and then "age" won't really matter).
Ya gotta question these numbers, but there's definitely a trend among developed nations toward not having kids, while better healthcare helps keep people alive longer. I think the former is ok (and if you don't now, someday you will), but not having kinds is a weird offshoot of how our world has evolved. Without a chance at a sustainable income in those golden child-making years (think get a job at the steel mill right out of high-school after knocking up your prom date... see the first half of The Deer Hunter to get a glimpse of those long-gone happy days), if you have anything to do with it you put off having kids, at least until you and your SO (if you have one) have enough reliable income to support the little tyke (or maybe you're lucky enough to have one or more sets of parental units living nearby who offer free nanny service because they really want grandkids).
The putting-off process very easily becomes indefinite. In some countries in Asia and Europe, this is becoming a big deal. Even in the U.S., population numbers are largely because of immigration.
I think we're gonna need those robots. Nice ones who will make our toys, take out the trash, help us up the stairs, mix up the medicine, and wipe our asses, everything the children of immigrants won't do because they're parent made 'em study real hard and make it into Harvard and MIT, so they can major in robotics 'cause maybe that'll make 'em enough money to someday pay off their student loans so they can maybe, you know, get married and have some kids.
Maybe. Gotta work long hours in that industry. Word has it that working in tech is bad for your sex life (if you believe the opinion of an at least semi-crazy gay billionaire).
Well... AFAIK the neutrons are not as important as temperature and pressure. The TU device takes uses X-rays resulting the from the fission and travelling at just about c to turn some substrate into plasma very quickly, which then expands very quickly to crush the DT fuel against a core of yet more U-235, which then ignites. Positioned between these two expanding and very hot things, the DT reaches the temp and pressure to overcome its repulsion forces and fuse, which releases lots and lots and lots of fast neutrons.
Here is where things get really sick. The energy from fusion is actually, IIRC, only 10% by mass the energy released from fission. So, what's the point? Your bomb casing has a lot of common U-238, stuff that, unlike rare U-235, doesn't normally do anything but bounce "slow" neutrons back into the bomb casing (aka, a "tamper"). But the fusion reaction releases "fast" highly-energetic neutrons. When exposed to "fast" neutrons, the "inert" U-238 suddenly becomes fissionable... more bomb fuel, more yield. A lot more.
This is what makes H-bombs of the TU design so ludicrous. The yield is practically limitless. In building the largest bomb ever, the Soviets could have produced a device yielding 100 megatons, but upon realizing that this would have destroyed the plane that carried it (among other consequences), they swapped out the U-238 tamper with inert Pb, reducing the yield to "only" 50 megatons, still the largest man-made nuclear explosion in history.
The largest-yield bomb tested by the U.S. was Castle Bravo at 15 megatons, and this was by accident. The researchers misunderstood what lithium-7 would do in the fusion fuel when bombarded by fast neutrons, believing it to be, for all intents and purposes, inert. They were way wrong. Under high neutron bombardment, lithium-7 decays almost instantly into an alpha particle, a tritium nucleus, and another neutron; i.e., more bomb fuel. So, instead of the 8 megatons they expected, they got 15, and an unfortunate change in wind direction sent the fallout onto the inhabited Rongelap and Rongerik atolls, which had to be evacuated, as well as a Japanese fishing boat (ironically named Lucky Dragon No.5). Not a proud day for nuclear research.
Lenin advocated for revolution, which is the problem. Communism, as loaded as that word is, boils down to an economic model that may or may not work. Mostly, it doesn't, because there are too many opportunities to cheat, and too few incentives to play ball. But communes exist, here and there, among like-minded individuals who take it upon themselves not to fuck each other over. But on a broad scale? I wouldn't bank on it.
But none of that matters. Because large-scale communism has never existed. Not because communism is evil... it's because communist revolution is evil. The revolution part gave Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pot (Pol), Kim, whomever, the carte blanche to do whatever to whomever they decided were enemies of the "revolution" (i.e., their rise to power). Even today, years after they've been established, the enemies of the "communism" they supposedly practice in China and N. Korea are called "counter-revolutionaries", because once in place, the "revolution" is never finished. The goal of the "worker's paradise" is never accomplished because of this enemy or that enemy, foreigners abroad or traitors among us. And as N. Korea has shown, it can perpetuate down three whole generations of decadent leadership without an end in sight, even when the citizens are literally starving to death.
Why the fuck are we talking about this? This thread is supposed to be about open-source Darwin from Apple. But I've seen the light. Communism, real actual "communism" as an economic model, is not "evil"... let alone, it will just fade away for the inefficient, unworkable mess that it is (unless your Amish, or hippies, or some other group of super-like-minded individuals who just get up each day and make it work). Revolution is the evil. The U.S. got real lucky with theirs, having only to defeat an enemy a continent away after centuries of working, civil self-governance behind it. But lots of innocent heads rolled in the French Revolution before they got that all sorted out. Since then, every "revolution" I can think of has become a complete fucking blood-bath that propped up a tyrant, and it didn't matter what the reason was... communism, socialism, Islam, cultural purity, racial purity, even (the promise of) democracy. As soon as some leader shouts "revolution!" waving an axe-handle or an AK-47, that's code to angry young men for NO RULES! Loot, rape, kill, pillage, turn-on-your-neighbor, eat-your-children, shave you head, run for the hills, complete fucking ANARCHY. All is us vs. them (and you, probably, ain't in the "us" department).
In the end, like a wildfire, it burns itself out, since revolutionaries generally SUCK at producing anything, especially things that take time (and therefore capital), like food. Sometimes it takes a few generations (U.S.S.R., N. Korea), sometimes it takes less than one (watch... the days of ISIS are numbered, particularly as they lose control of those oil fields, the only source of hard currency they need to buy shit like ammunition and... food). China has been successful because Mao died and his successors have largely let the population do what they've done well for millennia... get shit done, and occasionally throw a bone at whoever is occupying the Forbidden Palace THIS time.
So, don't get your panties in a bunch over trip-wire words like "communism" or "socialism". That's just people thinking people oughta chip in a little, for the good of everyone. Get real suspicious of the guy who cries "revolution" or "overthrow", or anything else that gives him some self-authority to kill people and set himself up as herr Führer who will lead all proper people to paradise by eliminating the riff-raff. THAT's the guy who's gonna fuck everything up.
Feh. Monkeys. Try mine-shafts filled with "stimulating" females for re-populating the Earth. No implants, gets 'em right on their feet.
Mein Führer... I CAN WALK !!
Where were these fears when Comcast and NBC Universal got together?
Chalk it up as hindsight. Enough people thought Comcast/NBC wouldn't be so bad, Comcast arguing that the magical Internet itself created the competition, and the old men bought it. Now, we should know better. We can actually see that prices didn't go down, that service didn't improve, that Comcast leverages its content ownership like... duhhhh.... of course they would.
The question is whether it's too late, get-used-to-it, mega Comcast companies are the reality now, or whether denying TimeWarner would make Comcast technically too large to exist.
Correction: a free market without the FCC is nothing BUT monopoly.
'cause if the FCC ain't there to police things, the big companies are going to cheat.
Buy all the shit up, shut out competition.
Why? 'cause if one don't cheat, another one will, so that in the end, there can be only one.
Fair competition? Feh. Playing fair, if you don't HAVE to play fair, is for suckers.
Sounds like you don't have children, or you're raising them in an abandoned mine-shaft or a "Village" out of an M. Night Shyamalan movie. It won't last. Some day soon, your kids will come across an old bottle-cap with "Fanta" written on it and turn on you like "Children of the Corn". Hell hath no fury like a child craving that stuff all the other kids know about.
We've been playing the Trump Drinking Game based on his "compulsive behaviors" at the debates.
Each debate, someone does a shot when he sniffs, interrupts the moderator, or says any of "let me tell you," "I'm very proud of it," "it's a (total) disaster," "worst [something] ever," "disgusting," "believe me," and "sad" (may have been others, but I may have passed out).
Everybody drinks if he leans into the microphone and says "wrong", boasts about his company, or says "nobody respects women more than me."
Great times. Wasted inside the first 40 minutes.
No more debates.
Sad.
Blame Intel for this. Intel makes i5's with either have four cores, or two with hyper-threading so the OS thinks it's four. The dual core models tend to draw fewer watts, making them more attractive for laptops and small designs.
JOIN me (on LinkedIn), and I will COMPLETE your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict, and bring ORDER and MEANING To your USELESS ENDORSEMENTS!
I feel this. I'm desperate for an upgrade for my 2010 model. If Apple fucks this up, I'll be torn between a refurbished previous model or an XPS 15 (which is pretty great except, well, Windows).
Seriously, now that HP and Dell are making some decent laptops, Apple has got to start taking their computer line seriously again. Their tendency to take more away with each update, and then sleep on them for months and months while CPU and GPU tech forges ahead, has made for an excruciating experience. I appreciate that Apple products have lifespans and support far longer than your typical "consumer electronics" product, manufactured in bursts and then dropped (is that a revision CA582-J or a revision BB354-Q... Sony and HP were particularly egregious at this), and Apple DOES have excellent support (last Winter, they swapped out the motherboard of a 2010 model for a buddy of mine for free... who the fuck else does that for a 5-year-old product?) but Apple doesn't upgrade anything for well over a year, even their "flagship" Mac Pro. FUUUUUUUUUUUCKKKK. And when they do upgrade, will they ditch something people like... slots in the Mac Pro? MagSafe, SD and USB Type-A ports in the Macbook Pro? I'll need to carry an adapter to plug in... thumb drives? Camera cards? Like nearly everything?
On location, the man says, "here, look at this" handing me a card out of his Nikon, and I gotta say "No... I got a new Macbook Pro... and forgot my dongle..."
Sweet. Now that's a decent Windows laptop.
I could add this club soda to my gin, or I could use this cool catalyst to turn the club soda into... stronger gin!
Kids will be turning Sprite into kamikaze shots in their bedrooms!
The liquor cabinet's locked, and yet the child is wasted....
Pbpbpbphhhh.... itza zience pppprrojeckt, Mommmm... A P Kem-isss-Tree!
Can I rig Call of Duty with an AI auto-pilot plug-in, and just sit back and watch it steam-roll over all the sucker humans in the game? If I play an online game like Overwatch and get smeered over and over by an opponent(s) with perfect aim and lightning-quick moves, will I just assume someone's introduced a bot into the game and I'm wasting my time with my hopelessly inferior carbon-based reflexes? Gaming may need its own version of the Butlerian Jihad.
NOT (quite) CORRECT. You can defer updates in the PRO version.
Settings-->Update & Security-->Windows Update--> Advanced options-->Defer Upgrades
Been working for me for months, whereas my one guinea-pig system that I didn't switch did upgrade eventually.
Security updates continued to come through.
Why they don't offer Defer Upgrades in the Home version is... I don't know. Cockiness. Force features on the Home-version Plebes.
Why they don't vet these updates better is... bizarre.
Apple pushed out five (I think) public betas before releasing Sierra, and the only thing I've noticed wrong is they yanked out PPTP VPN (they sent out warnings, but I didn't get the memo). Maybe the right thing to do, but it still messed me up. OTOH, I yelled at M$ through the Insider Program that their latest wasn't installing, and DID THEY LISTEN? If they'd only just do exactly what I tell them exactly when I say at all times... but noooooooooooo, 'cause we're Microsoft and we all went to Harvard we want to get into CELL PHONES 'cuz Uncle Pewterschmidt says that's where the money is!
Hey, Microsoft, if you that CEO position becomes vacant again, gimme a call. Fix everything, for 1/10 what you pay Satya. Maybe 1/3. We'll talk.
800K 3.5" drives worked fine with the Apple //c later //e's... it was called the UniDisk 3.5, and compared to a 140K 5.25" floppy it was practically a hard drive (well, a Zip Disk, if you remember those things). The //c+ had an 800K disk built-in. // line. External 800K disks for Macs, in contrast, wouldn't work on the //'s (except for the //gs).
The UniDisk was a little-bit smart, had it's own processor if I recall, which allowed it to be plug-n-play with the
Manhattan has three basic divisions, "uptown," "midtown," and "downtown." The financial district is contained within the geographic area of "downtown" (which starts at the Battery and has a nebulous northern border somewhere between the Village and 34th St).
The "Financial District" is not really "contained" in downtown anymore. The only major players left: Goldman, the NYSE, the AMEX. And Chase still has a building. The other major financial players have moved to midtown on Park Avenue, uptown from Grand Central and the Helmsley Building. For a while, they were building office parks in New Jersey. And what's taking their place? Residential. Yeah, those old office buildings have turned into luxury condos and co-ops.
For me, the upper limit of "Downtown" is the City Hall and Park Row where J&R used to be. Anything North of City Hall Park isn't proper Downtown. It's lower Chinatown, around Columbus Park where the old people do Tai Chi, whereas on the west side is TriBeCa.
Canal Street is the major dividing line running east-west, and hooks up with the Manhattan Bridge. North of that, you have more Chinatown, what's left of Little Italy, and SoHo to the West, and the Lower East Side to the East where you used to be able to get a cheap roach-filled apartment. Then you reach Houston Street, another major dividing line - North of it is Greenwich Village to the West, East Village to the East. The numbered streets start (Houston Street is essentially "0" street). It's all Village until you reach 14th Street.
It's kinda Midtown from there, 'cause it's no longer Village and damn-well ain't Downtown. But really it's Chelsea, Gramercy and Stuyvesant. Midtown, really, isn't until you get past Flat Iron to Nomad, Kips Bay and the Empire State Building at 34th Street. Then it's really Midtown, stretching up Northward until 59th Street which marks the lower end of Central Park... dividing the City between the Upper East Side to the East, and the Upper West Side to the, you get the idea. Get past the Park, you're in Harlem. North of that, Washington Heights and the GW Bridge to Chris Christie-land. Once you reach Inwood, there's nowhere else to go except across the Harlem River to the Bronx.
The town so nice, they named it twice. What I'd do for a slice.
Yes! Remove: lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, fire escapes, office chatter, chairs that recline, cat photos, plants that require watering, free will, and finally, humans in general.
Robot slave-drones = profits!
and also thanks for reminding us that Twitter is the place to memorialize things said before thinking. At least you followed-up to soften it a bit after reviewing the, you know, facts. Kudos for that; many Twitter-users who post something stupid would just as soon double-down on whatever idiocy they posted.
Like a fart in a Megachurch.
Not sure I get that one. If the service is jumping with all the music and outstretched hands, drool and what-not, not unlike an Metallica concert, a good fart should go completely unnoticed, particularly the silent-but-deadly kind likely to be mistaken for B.O., which from the looks of a typical mega-congregation should be intense. Megachurch services are not quiet, seance-like affairs.
Now, a fart in a confessional, that'll lead to a few Hail Mary's.