Exactly, a perspective. Let me explain what that means:
In this huge world with 7 billion people, every 3 minutes, about 600 die. (On average about 3 per second). And our population growth is so fast that the 600 dead had been replaced (sorry for the dry factual choice of words) before the floods even hit the news.... But the harddrive problem affects the world, albeit in a modest way, for months.
So yeah, it seems the editors really do have a sense of perspective. Maybe you prefer a more emotional perspective... but if you want to mourn every couple of hundred people that die, you'd better empty your agenda. It's a full time job.
If you want to get away from the Solar system, then ultimately the velocity relative to the sun is what matters.
True, you first need to get off the earth. And the speed relatively to the earth matters. But as you reach the right speed (11 km/s), soon enough the velocity relative to the sun starts to matter more. And then it was nice if our rocket took off in the direction of the motion of the earth, using all the earth's forward motion as a bonus.
It's fine to do some anti-cyclic economy... and I understand the merits.
But wasn't it the idea that you reduce expenses in boon times, and go anti-cyclic, and thereby spend more in bad times? But the last decade, the USA has clearly acted cyclic, not anti-cyclic. The US has spent money like its life depended on it (and many thought it really did, with terrorists lurking in every corner of the world, all aiming to bomb the US back into the Middle Ages).
It's surprising to see that there is even more money available... and it makes me wonder who will go down first in economic terms: the EU, or the USA.
Why couldn't they just send one upwards out of the plane of the solar system? Wouldn't that be quicker?
Costs. And time.
We already have a certain velocity in the plane (earth is going around the sun, and we have to escape the sun's gravity well). We have practically zero velocity in the upwards direction. This is also who rockets are launched from near the equator.
Add to that possible slingshots around other planets, and you have your whole answer.
If you do it yourself, you also take the risk. Publishers can pay a some money up front, and then a certain crappy percentage per book later... if it sells bad, that's a good idea for the author, and if it sells well the publishers win. If you're an author, do you want to take the risk?
In addition, the authors often wish to see their books in book stores. And guess what? The publishers have contracts with those.
The problem has become that publishers+stores+the whole industry has become quite large. They simply cost a lot more money than strictly necessary, which means that the authors get less.
It's like a giant overhead cost: the production line is the author writing the book, and the printing shop, and the product is a book. And everything else (except transportation) is overhead. If you look carefully, it is scary how much overhead our world has got. Not so strange then that we're in a crisis. (Yes, I am going off topic quickly).
I get so sick of the people who say that "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care about my privacy". Time and time again, this crappy argument shows up again in a different form.
My point was (a sarcastic remark) about the EU's desire to check on its own citizens. I did not condone torture or dictatorships, and I said nothing about any comparison. The fact that there are worse regimes out there than the EU does not mean that we're doing a good job in the EU.
Funny that you are British, and you say you never asked for a Unites States of Europe.
With statements such as Winston Churchill's 1946 call for a "United States of Europe" becoming louder, in 1949 the Council of Europe was established as the first pan-European organisation. In the year following, on 9 May 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed a community to integrate the coal and steel industries of Europe - these being the two elements necessary to make weapons of war. (See: Schuman declaration).
Why sell it to the evil regimes of the world when you can much better use all those pretty toys at home to check what your own citizens are doing?
In all fairness, some of the countries in the EU (esp. the UK) have the highest density of surveillance cameras and other equipment in the world - both per capita and per surface area. It's sad that the EU don't see a need to stop doing that, but wish the situation in dictatorships to improve.
But from the military's point of view, you cannot declare War on Asteroids, but you can declare War on Aliens. So, it's way more useful to find the aliens than to find the asteroids.
Explore, conquer, colonize. We are humans. Resistance is futile.
There's intelligent life on our planet, and we are happily killing it into extinction for our own expansion. Looking at the way we behave at our own planet, I think it is extremely likely that we would inhabit every planet we can reach if it is inhabitable. And then take over sooner or later, with or without a struggle.
It's in the line of expectations that the military get involved early on. Humans have never explored anything unarmed.
Smart meters control the power going to electrical devices... logically, these are part of the electric grid, and are connected to powerlines. Why not add another wire to carry the signal, if you need to build a bunch of powerlines anyway?
The smiley suggests you think you're making a joke... but it's actually true: it will train the bacteria to become alcoholics, and build up a tolerance. But there are good reasons to expect the bugs to need a lot longer to develop a resistance against alcohol. They will need to reinvent their cell walls for example, which is quite a dramatic change.
Agreed. The primary function of weapons is to discourage the opponents, not to harm. But in order to be scary enough to discourage the other guys, it actually has to be able to cause harm. And lots of it.
And in fact, it works even better if your message to the leaders of the bad guys is that you can get a bomb into their supposedly safe bunkers, and get personal on them. That's a pretty good deterrent, and will probably ensure that you never have to use that bomb.
And secondly, this bomb will make you Yankees look less of an a** when some Afghan guys are hiding in a mountain. Mountains turned out to be pretty awesome bunkers.
Brussels gets more control, and more power, and the member states all have to walk in line. It is less and less possible to have large differences in laws and regulations between the member states. That's what I meant to say. Sorry if you didn't understand me straight away.
Participating countries are often put under enormous pressure to sign some new laws that they are against (but that the majority is in favor of). In addition, the EU has grabbed a bucketload of power with the Lisbon treaty.
Nearly every time I read about the EU doing something that doesn't outright fuck over its citizens, I think to myself, "Man, they must have heard about how we're all about freedom and citizens rights and just ran with it." Is it a bad thing when a foreign entity better represents your home country's ideals than your actual home country does? I think that may be the case here.
Are you American? And are you claiming that freedom and citizens rights are an American invention? Because I am European, and we had such Freedom when you were just a couple of tiny villages we like to call colonies, and when the majority of the native Americans were still alive and thriving.
I'll give an example: the Dutch fight for freedom in the 16th/17th century. Already in the 15th century, the Dutch were free. Amsterdam was rules by citizens, not by a nobleman or clergyman. Citizens. And America hadn't even been discovered. And this idea spread throughout the entire country, which rebelled against the religious oppressive Spanish and became free.
Or how about the French revolution? English parliament? You do know that democracy was already in use in the ancient Greek times, do you?
If you're not American, then all the above is still true, but I should have used a different tone.
In the USA, you can't just protest everywhere. They have no real free speech. You only have real free speech in the "Free Speech Zones". Usually, the free speech zones are hidden in places where the sun doesn't shine a lot.
In between ceizing all the power from the individual member states, and destroying all our economies by pumping the money into the bottomless pits of high interest, sometimes they do something right. Thanks EU:-)
Shall we also allow everyone to bring a bottle of water onto the airplane? There's a lot of money to be saved by reducing the silly safety measures.
Umm... if you can prove that a poppy seed bagel can cause a positive test result, doesn't that mean that you're still innocent until proven guilty otherwise? I mean, that leaves enough room for doubt, right?
You would start walking at every red traffic light, and only stop when you see a really impressive deeper red light: ("that's deep, dude... whoa... I think I'll stop now").
So what are you doing about it, other than moaning in an old irrelevant forum?
Did you think that/. is a place where activists meet? Not really.
We just get here to complain about a lack of poll options, and to tell each other what is wrong about TFA this time. If you call that moaning, then sure, we moan. But don't get the impression that we don't like that, and that the moaning isn't a goal in itself. Because we totally do, and it totally is.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly, a perspective. Let me explain what that means:
In this huge world with 7 billion people, every 3 minutes, about 600 die. (On average about 3 per second). And our population growth is so fast that the 600 dead had been replaced (sorry for the dry factual choice of words) before the floods even hit the news. ... But the harddrive problem affects the world, albeit in a modest way, for months.
So yeah, it seems the editors really do have a sense of perspective. Maybe you prefer a more emotional perspective... but if you want to mourn every couple of hundred people that die, you'd better empty your agenda. It's a full time job.
Where's the edit button? Sorry about the all italics.
If you want to get away from the Solar system, then ultimately the velocity relative to the sun is what matters.
True, you first need to get off the earth. And the speed relatively to the earth matters. But as you reach the right speed (11 km/s), soon enough the velocity relative to the sun starts to matter more. And then it was nice if our rocket took off in the direction of the motion of the earth, using all the earth's forward motion as a bonus.
It's fine to do some anti-cyclic economy... and I understand the merits.
But wasn't it the idea that you reduce expenses in boon times, and go anti-cyclic, and thereby spend more in bad times?
But the last decade, the USA has clearly acted cyclic, not anti-cyclic. The US has spent money like its life depended on it (and many thought it really did, with terrorists lurking in every corner of the world, all aiming to bomb the US back into the Middle Ages).
It's surprising to see that there is even more money available... and it makes me wonder who will go down first in economic terms: the EU, or the USA.
Why couldn't they just send one upwards out of the plane of the solar system? Wouldn't that be quicker?
Costs. And time.
We already have a certain velocity in the plane (earth is going around the sun, and we have to escape the sun's gravity well). We have practically zero velocity in the upwards direction. This is also who rockets are launched from near the equator.
Add to that possible slingshots around other planets, and you have your whole answer.
Drag a huge comet towards the earth... what could possibly go wrong?
If you do it yourself, you also take the risk.
Publishers can pay a some money up front, and then a certain crappy percentage per book later... if it sells bad, that's a good idea for the author, and if it sells well the publishers win. If you're an author, do you want to take the risk?
In addition, the authors often wish to see their books in book stores. And guess what? The publishers have contracts with those.
The problem has become that publishers+stores+the whole industry has become quite large. They simply cost a lot more money than strictly necessary, which means that the authors get less.
It's like a giant overhead cost: the production line is the author writing the book, and the printing shop, and the product is a book. And everything else (except transportation) is overhead. If you look carefully, it is scary how much overhead our world has got. Not so strange then that we're in a crisis. (Yes, I am going off topic quickly).
I get so sick of the people who say that "I have nothing to hide, so I don't care about my privacy".
Time and time again, this crappy argument shows up again in a different form.
My point was (a sarcastic remark) about the EU's desire to check on its own citizens. I did not condone torture or dictatorships, and I said nothing about any comparison. The fact that there are worse regimes out there than the EU does not mean that we're doing a good job in the EU.
Yeah, it's not so lonely at the top when it comes to having the most surveillance.
Funny that you are British, and you say you never asked for a Unites States of Europe.
With statements such as Winston Churchill's 1946 call for a "United States of Europe" becoming louder, in 1949 the Council of Europe was established as the first pan-European organisation. In the year following, on 9 May 1950, the French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman proposed a community to integrate the coal and steel industries of Europe - these being the two elements necessary to make weapons of war. (See: Schuman declaration).
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_European_Union#1945.E2.80.931957:_peace_forged_from_cold_steel
I believe Winston Churchill was the democratically elected representative of the British people at the time?
Why sell it to the evil regimes of the world when you can much better use all those pretty toys at home to check what your own citizens are doing?
In all fairness, some of the countries in the EU (esp. the UK) have the highest density of surveillance cameras and other equipment in the world - both per capita and per surface area. It's sad that the EU don't see a need to stop doing that, but wish the situation in dictatorships to improve.
I'm not American, you insensitive clod!
Of course.
But from the military's point of view, you cannot declare War on Asteroids, but you can declare War on Aliens. So, it's way more useful to find the aliens than to find the asteroids.
Explore, conquer, colonize. We are humans. Resistance is futile.
There's intelligent life on our planet, and we are happily killing it into extinction for our own expansion. Looking at the way we behave at our own planet, I think it is extremely likely that we would inhabit every planet we can reach if it is inhabitable. And then take over sooner or later, with or without a struggle.
It's in the line of expectations that the military get involved early on. Humans have never explored anything unarmed.
Smart meters control the power going to electrical devices... logically, these are part of the electric grid, and are connected to powerlines. Why not add another wire to carry the signal, if you need to build a bunch of powerlines anyway?
The smiley suggests you think you're making a joke... but it's actually true: it will train the bacteria to become alcoholics, and build up a tolerance.
But there are good reasons to expect the bugs to need a lot longer to develop a resistance against alcohol. They will need to reinvent their cell walls for example, which is quite a dramatic change.
Agreed. The primary function of weapons is to discourage the opponents, not to harm.
But in order to be scary enough to discourage the other guys, it actually has to be able to cause harm. And lots of it.
And in fact, it works even better if your message to the leaders of the bad guys is that you can get a bomb into their supposedly safe bunkers, and get personal on them. That's a pretty good deterrent, and will probably ensure that you never have to use that bomb.
And secondly, this bomb will make you Yankees look less of an a** when some Afghan guys are hiding in a mountain. Mountains turned out to be pretty awesome bunkers.
Brussels gets more control, and more power, and the member states all have to walk in line. It is less and less possible to have large differences in laws and regulations between the member states. That's what I meant to say. Sorry if you didn't understand me straight away.
Participating countries are often put under enormous pressure to sign some new laws that they are against (but that the majority is in favor of). In addition, the EU has grabbed a bucketload of power with the Lisbon treaty.
Nearly every time I read about the EU doing something that doesn't outright fuck over its citizens, I think to myself, "Man, they must have heard about how we're all about freedom and citizens rights and just ran with it." Is it a bad thing when a foreign entity better represents your home country's ideals than your actual home country does? I think that may be the case here.
Are you American? And are you claiming that freedom and citizens rights are an American invention? Because I am European, and we had such Freedom when you were just a couple of tiny villages we like to call colonies, and when the majority of the native Americans were still alive and thriving.
I'll give an example: the Dutch fight for freedom in the 16th/17th century. Already in the 15th century, the Dutch were free. Amsterdam was rules by citizens, not by a nobleman or clergyman. Citizens. And America hadn't even been discovered. And this idea spread throughout the entire country, which rebelled against the religious oppressive Spanish and became free.
Or how about the French revolution? English parliament? You do know that democracy was already in use in the ancient Greek times, do you?
If you're not American, then all the above is still true, but I should have used a different tone.
In the USA, you can't just protest everywhere. They have no real free speech. You only have real free speech in the "Free Speech Zones". Usually, the free speech zones are hidden in places where the sun doesn't shine a lot.
Wikipedia about free speech zones: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone
In between ceizing all the power from the individual member states, and destroying all our economies by pumping the money into the bottomless pits of high interest, sometimes they do something right. Thanks EU :-)
Shall we also allow everyone to bring a bottle of water onto the airplane? There's a lot of money to be saved by reducing the silly safety measures.
Umm... if you can prove that a poppy seed bagel can cause a positive test result, doesn't that mean that you're still innocent until proven guilty otherwise? I mean, that leaves enough room for doubt, right?
You would start walking at every red traffic light, and only stop when you see a really impressive deeper red light: ("that's deep, dude... whoa... I think I'll stop now").
... and start making those 20 MB harddrives again! If they screw up overseas, you might as well do it yourselves.
-- I sell floppy disks on eBay for $ 20 each.
So what are you doing about it, other than moaning in an old irrelevant forum?
Did you think that /. is a place where activists meet? Not really.
We just get here to complain about a lack of poll options, and to tell each other what is wrong about TFA this time. If you call that moaning, then sure, we moan. But don't get the impression that we don't like that, and that the moaning isn't a goal in itself. Because we totally do, and it totally is.