If they could have rebuilt the WTC in a week for minimal cost, do you really think that Al Queda would have gone after it?
Yes.
Since killing a few thousand Americans in front of all the TV cameras is something they consider worth their while. Tall building make for a high density of people who can't quickly run away.
If the damn carbon tube would fall as powder then of course it wouldn't be such a great target, unless VIPs were in it at the time.
I'm dissapointed that Perth won't be obliterated this way, back to the drawing board I guess... Maybe the bottom kilometer or so would survive to crush some of the place?
The ease of replacement, more than anything, is what is going to keep the thing off any terrorist's a-list of targets.
If it would do enough damage to the stuff below it if you could make (the bottom section of) it fall, then the fact that you can reuse the attack plan after it's rebuilt might make it a good target...
I think it was Dick Armey's proposal from a few years ago that income under $30k not be taxed, and everything over that be taxed at 10% (or maybe 15%?)
That's not a flat tax. That's a two level progressive tax, one level has a 0% tax rate and one level a 10% (or 15%) rate.
A more progressive system would have more levels, but the justification for that is very much a take from the rich and give to the poor, which is porbably not what capitalists like...
I really don't see how 'the rich' (great label there) would pay *less* than they do now. Not much to hide behind when it's basic math that a 10 year old should be able to do.
I had 'middle class' at first, but since I used the term 'poor' I thought 'rich' was a better opposite term so I changed it.
If you switch from a progressive tax to a flat tax, then people whose income was at an effective tax rate below the new flat rate pay more tax, and those whose was above it pay less. Hence those at the bottom end up paying more, and those at the top less (and those in the middle the same). That's assumming you want tax revenue to stay the same (and that people aren't evading tax...).
Of course in reality we have tax deductions and credits and so forth which if removed would increase tax revenue and hence allow a smaller tax rate for the same revenue. But that's a different issue, you can remove those with a non-flat tax as well.
Personally I would prefer a progressive tax system with more than two levels but more importantly I would prefer if all the exemptions and encouragements from the government to do certain things (by giving a tax break) were removed. I would much prefer a flat tax with tax free threshold (the simpest progressive tax) with no deductions and rebates then the current system we have in Australia, a progessive system with huge numbers of rules and regulations to do with deducations, etc.
Yes I won't be able to pay less tax by claiming some of the money I spent on the computer I do work from home on, so my employer will have to pay me enough so I can afford it. Same with uniforms, etc. There'd be no financial incentive to give to charity, so hopefully people are actually nice and not just in it to save some tax.
Of course things get complicated anyway, by fringe benefits (how much tax do I pay if my employer pays me $50,000 a year, but also provides me with rent free accomodation and a company car?) but that complication could be moved to the employer easily enough.
A "flat tax" would not make the entire problem go away, it would just mean that the poor would pay even more tax (or the rich pay less, or both).
A flat tax is no simpler than a progressive tax. Both take a few seconds to work out on a calculator or with pen and paper for the brave (forgetting to carry that 1 could be an expensive exercise:).
The problem is tax credits, rebates, exemptions, etc, etc. Of course each little exemption or rebate looks simple on its own (and benefits someone), but taken together it's a pain.
Of course charities wouldn't like the idea of doing away with the tax deductions that go with donations.
The system in the middle ages was pretty simple too. The tax collector just looks at your stuff and tells you how much you owe and the big guys with swords take it from you...
So you'd just have to secure a whole bunch of patents and use them in everything you produce (even if they aren't needed) so that 95% of the patents touched are yours. Hence you get to pay yourself most of that 5%, leaving 0.25% of the total for others.
Of course you'd make sure to infringe on all your friends stuff as well (and them on yours). You could probably get it down to less than the cost of mailing the cheque given enough stupid patents.
Note, that where I'm from (Australia) we vote with a pencil and paper so I guess I might be a bit of a luddite.
The only benefit of electronic voting is speed of determining the results (ignoring vote from home over the telephone or internet for the moment).
Currently the US seems to use machines for voting which punch holes, etc. That gives a paper trail, but makes the counting a bit error prone (as we've seen in the past:) due to machines being a little faulty sometimes.
To me a good enough system would be a machine which you make your vote (via a touch screen for example) and it prints out a paper vote that you put in a box (just like with a normal pencil and paper vote) while also storing the vote on its hard drive or whatever.
Then at the end of the election you can get a quick vote tally by getting vote counts from each machine and adding them up (that would be automated as well I assume, plug the machines into a (private) network and have them report their votes to a 'master' machine which tallies them).
You make sure the tally is recorded seperately for each machine (maybe even split it up by conveniant time slots as well). The boxes into which paper votes went are also seperated the same way. Then you can manually tally the votes in a box to confirm the electronic count on the machine. Depending on your level of paranioa you could make that the official count, and the machine reported count just an "early estimate". Or you could randomly select boxes for hand counting and then comparison with the machine tally. Or you could select 'suspicious' or 'close' counts for the manual recount.
I see no reason why the voter should get a receipt so they can check their vote - currently that doesn't happen (at least in Australia) and it would remove the anonymity that is essential to not getting your legs broken and kids murdered when your slip doesn't match the vote those big men with baseball bats told you to make.
In my opinion, you might as well use machines to do fast counting. But since machines break, hard drives crash, coding errors are made, etc., you better make a paper copy of each vote for manual counting as well (heck, a powerout might make manual counting via candle light faster:)
It's not fool proof. People can still cheat the system, but it doesn't add any additional ways that don't already exist.
Of course we have a state election here (NSW) coming up in which the winner will be either the fascist police state Labor party who are planning on restrospectively overturning double jeopardy. Or the fascist police state Liberals (and Nationals in coalition) who want to extend the current police 'anti-terrorism' powers because the searching of premises and people without a warrant at the whim of the police officer isn't enough. So I might be easily convinced that voting doesn't matter anyway...
I was surpised at having to do the copy. The risk you take when you tell the machine to only ask questions equal in magnitude to "should I launch the nuclear weapons?":)
Yes if you are going to compile stuff yourself you need to be prepared to make sure you actually configure things correctly. So that various software parts agree on where things are located.
If you just want to use the damn software on the other hand you simply do:
$ su root # apt-get install unixodbc libmyodbc openoffice.org unixodbc-bin # cp/usr/share/libmyodbc/odbcinst.ini/etc/. # exit $ ODBCConfig
- use GUI to configure database info
- note you could skip that 'cp' command and
- config the whole thing here, but that seems
- like extra effort to me when a perfectly good
- MySQL config exists already:) $ oowriter
- Tools->Data Sources
- New Data Source
- pick ODBC and the name you set up above
- Do your database stuff...
Not exactly rocket science.
The article author is simply an idiot, who wants to make life difficult by compiling software himself without bothering to configure it properly.
What they should really do is figure out how much it really costs to provide the level of service needed to serve that amount of bandwidth and charge the customer accordingly. If that means charging me $200/month for my 1.5Mbps DSL, then so be it. Don't give me this "You can download as fast as you want, but only 1GB a month."
I suspect most of their customers would much rather a bandwidth limit of one form or another (shaping, cap, or extra cost).
I want a connection that is as fast as possible for my money, and transfer limits are fine. I use less than 3000MB a month (which is the point at which extra charges start) since I'm not into downloading music and file sharing apps. I read my mail, I update my website, I browse the web, I run apt-get, etc.
I want them to be fast. Yes the bandwidth limit on the ADSL means I could get more bandwidth using a 24x7 modem connection constantly downloading stuff. But that isn't my usage pattern.
My usage pattern is short bursts and a trickle the rest of the time. I don't want to pay $200 for 1.5Mbs with no transfer limit. I'd prefer $50 a month for 1.5Mbs and a trasfer limit which means they can sell 5 for the same bandwidth cost at their end. Suits my usage pattern, makes them more money. As long as my short bursts don't slow down too much when there's contention with other customers I'm happy with it.
I suspect there is a bigger market for people wanting email and web browsing at a cheap price with a limit, then there is for people wanting large downloads all the time for a much higher price.
In fact, I've been looking around for a new ADSL provider (since the current one is a housemate's, who recently moved out and will I expect one day want it back...) one company offers unlimited plans and limited transfer plans. I'm choosing a limited one, since for the same money I can get a faster service which suits my usage pattern. Choice is a wonderful thing.
AI is merely working on a problem that has no known solution (in reasonable time). As soon as the problem becomes 'easy' and solved it's no longer AI and becomes a mere algorithm...
So once natural language processing becomes 'easy' it won't be AI any more, but will be just another algorithm.
At least that's what my AI lecturer used to claim:)
Part of that would be because Programmer Bob does some work that requires say SQL server and IIS. He installs/activates them on his desktop machine and goes about his work. Then he moves onto the next project and forgets that he is still running SQL server, and a year later gets hit by a worm...
Of course windows developers have an advantage in this area, since they have to reinstall their OS at regular intervals to stop it playing up. Though maybe XP has fixed that, and they'll be stuffed like those poor linux developers who still have junk installed from 1997...;)
Such keyboards would be great with PDAs and other portable devices.
But I suspect that using one constantly (such as for you desktop machine at work) would produce lots of pain and suffering. Banging your fingers on the probably hard solid no-give surface of a desk all day probably wouldn't be great fun. Stopping your fingers before they hit the desk would be a quick route to RSI land... I guess you could put somethign soft where your fingers will hit, but then why not just use a nice clickity-clackity keyboard...
On the plus side, it'd make those old games where you have to push two keys in quick succession over and over again (Summer Games for example) much easier.
On that note, did anyone else build a 'joystick' for the C64 out of 2 nails some wire and a screw driver, just so they could get really fast times in the 100 meter sprint on that game?
It is not "about a British Columbian pig farmer who murdered...".
It is about a British Columbian pig farmer who *IS ACCUSED* of murdering...
There's a big difference between the two statements, the article you linked used the correct one, you ignored the assumption of innocence, which is probably the most important concept in a fair justice system.
They are "radio waves", a more precise term that "electromagnetic waves", since the later includes microwaves, visible light, x-rays and others, while the former only includes wavelengths of over about a meter.
Unless you also believe that "technically speaking" this message was posted on "a web site" is more correct than on "slashdot".
Assumming you wrote your own 9700 BIOS implementation and didn't violate copyright to get it. You could buy a 9700 to get a legal copy of the BIOS, but then you don't need to buy the 9500 and fsck with it anyway...
And the client product, which does have an amplifier (although at only 15W a channel, and only two channels), is significantly smaller. Less than half the size...
Of course half the size in the wrong dimension if you want to stack it with your other audio components...
Which has nothing to do with SMP, it's simply how many jobs make will run simultaneously, which of course is a wise thing to use in a multi processor environment, but also a good thing to use in places where the CPU waits for IO (ie. if your code and output is stored on a disk).....
in the case of copyright, without intent to distribute, you'll do pretty OK under the umbrella of fair use.
That might apply in your country, but not in Australia. Recording a TV show on your VCR for you and you only to watch just once at a more conveniant time, is a copyright violation in Australia.
It's OK to tape, say the live broadcast of the cricket, to watch at a time when I'm actually home. But it's not OK to tape the ads, that occur after every over...
So I can tape it to view later, but I have to be there to press pause all the time:)
<FilesMatch "\.php~$"> if you want to be more modern. Note that the stand alone ~ turns on regular expressions, and has nothing to do with matching ~s in file names.
It's almost certain you apache configuration has a similar rule for.htaccess files, which you should be able to copy-n-paste...
Of course you might want to be more restrictive than just.php~, anything ending in ~ is fair game to be disallowed to me...
Substitute for.inc, if that's what you were actuallyasking...
I'm afraid you're too dumb to realize that allocating non-determinant AI to the client is stupid, prone to abuse that no "trusted environment" can remove, and more or less self-defeating for the purposes of providing increased realism to a game.
Did I say non-determinant? The AI for a mob in a MMORPG can be determinate, since the game state will be so varied no one will notice... Of course that'd beside the point, since it'll work fine for non-dteerminate anyway.
As for prone to abuse, the whole dicussion is about why a trusted client might be useful to the user. Hence the assumption is the trusted client is truly trusted. Arguing it isn't is pointless because the topic is "IF 'trusted clients' existed, what benefit could they have".
It was a very simple example of how processing can be moved to some other client...
If you want to do with a MMORPG you (as I said, but you were too dumb to read I guess) could farm off AI computation for the mobs.
Effectively instead of having the mobs be executed in the server you treat them like players, running as seperate processes which can be moved to other machines, communicating with the server like players do.
Slashdot Mirror
Suffocate some people when it covers them in a light blanket of powder?
There must be some way this thing can get rid of that aweful place known as Perth...
Since killing a few thousand Americans in front of all the TV cameras is something they consider worth their while. Tall building make for a high density of people who can't quickly run away.
If the damn carbon tube would fall as powder then of course it wouldn't be such a great target, unless VIPs were in it at the time.
I'm dissapointed that Perth won't be obliterated this way, back to the drawing board I guess... Maybe the bottom kilometer or so would survive to crush some of the place?
Of course it's not like anyone would miss Perth
That's not a flat tax. That's a two level progressive tax, one level has a 0% tax rate and one level a 10% (or 15%) rate.
A more progressive system would have more levels, but the justification for that is very much a take from the rich and give to the poor, which is porbably not what capitalists like...
I had 'middle class' at first, but since I used the term 'poor' I thought 'rich' was a better opposite term so I changed it.
If you switch from a progressive tax to a flat tax, then people whose income was at an effective tax rate below the new flat rate pay more tax, and those whose was above it pay less. Hence those at the bottom end up paying more, and those at the top less (and those in the middle the same). That's assumming you want tax revenue to stay the same (and that people aren't evading tax...).
Of course in reality we have tax deductions and credits and so forth which if removed would increase tax revenue and hence allow a smaller tax rate for the same revenue. But that's a different issue, you can remove those with a non-flat tax as well.
Personally I would prefer a progressive tax system with more than two levels but more importantly I would prefer if all the exemptions and encouragements from the government to do certain things (by giving a tax break) were removed. I would much prefer a flat tax with tax free threshold (the simpest progressive tax) with no deductions and rebates then the current system we have in Australia, a progessive system with huge numbers of rules and regulations to do with deducations, etc.
Yes I won't be able to pay less tax by claiming some of the money I spent on the computer I do work from home on, so my employer will have to pay me enough so I can afford it. Same with uniforms, etc. There'd be no financial incentive to give to charity, so hopefully people are actually nice and not just in it to save some tax.
Of course things get complicated anyway, by fringe benefits (how much tax do I pay if my employer pays me $50,000 a year, but also provides me with rent free accomodation and a company car?) but that complication could be moved to the employer easily enough.
A "flat tax" would not make the entire problem go away, it would just mean that the poor would pay even more tax (or the rich pay less, or both).
:).
A flat tax is no simpler than a progressive tax. Both take a few seconds to work out on a calculator or with pen and paper for the brave (forgetting to carry that 1 could be an expensive exercise
The problem is tax credits, rebates, exemptions, etc, etc. Of course each little exemption or rebate looks simple on its own (and benefits someone), but taken together it's a pain.
Of course charities wouldn't like the idea of doing away with the tax deductions that go with donations.
The system in the middle ages was pretty simple too. The tax collector just looks at your stuff and tells you how much you owe and the big guys with swords take it from you...
Of course you'd make sure to infringe on all your friends stuff as well (and them on yours). You could probably get it down to less than the cost of mailing the cheque given enough stupid patents.
Note, that where I'm from (Australia) we vote with a pencil and paper so I guess I might be a bit of a luddite.
:) due to machines being a little faulty sometimes.
:)
The only benefit of electronic voting is speed of determining the results (ignoring vote from home over the telephone or internet for the moment).
Currently the US seems to use machines for voting which punch holes, etc. That gives a paper trail, but makes the counting a bit error prone (as we've seen in the past
To me a good enough system would be a machine which you make your vote (via a touch screen for example) and it prints out a paper vote that you put in a box (just like with a normal pencil and paper vote) while also storing the vote on its hard drive or whatever.
Then at the end of the election you can get a quick vote tally by getting vote counts from each machine and adding them up (that would be automated as well I assume, plug the machines into a (private) network and have them report their votes to a 'master' machine which tallies them).
You make sure the tally is recorded seperately for each machine (maybe even split it up by conveniant time slots as well). The boxes into which paper votes went are also seperated the same way. Then you can manually tally the votes in a box to confirm the electronic count on the machine. Depending on your level of paranioa you could make that the official count, and the machine reported count just an "early estimate". Or you could randomly select boxes for hand counting and then comparison with the machine tally. Or you could select 'suspicious' or 'close' counts for the manual recount.
I see no reason why the voter should get a receipt so they can check their vote - currently that doesn't happen (at least in Australia) and it would remove the anonymity that is essential to not getting your legs broken and kids murdered when your slip doesn't match the vote those big men with baseball bats told you to make.
In my opinion, you might as well use machines to do fast counting. But since machines break, hard drives crash, coding errors are made, etc., you better make a paper copy of each vote for manual counting as well (heck, a powerout might make manual counting via candle light faster
It's not fool proof. People can still cheat the system, but it doesn't add any additional ways that don't already exist.
Of course we have a state election here (NSW) coming up in which the winner will be either the fascist police state Labor party who are planning on restrospectively overturning double jeopardy. Or the fascist police state Liberals (and Nationals in coalition) who want to extend the current police 'anti-terrorism' powers because the searching of premises and people without a warrant at the whim of the police officer isn't enough. So I might be easily convinced that voting doesn't matter anyway...
I was surpised at having to do the copy. The risk you take when you tell the machine to only ask questions equal in magnitude to "should I launch the nuclear weapons?" :)
Yes if you are going to compile stuff yourself you need to be prepared to make sure you actually configure things correctly. So that various software parts agree on where things are located.
/usr/share/libmyodbc/odbcinst.ini /etc/. :)
If you just want to use the damn software on the other hand you simply do:
$ su root
# apt-get install unixodbc libmyodbc openoffice.org unixodbc-bin
# cp
# exit
$ ODBCConfig
- use GUI to configure database info
- note you could skip that 'cp' command and
- config the whole thing here, but that seems
- like extra effort to me when a perfectly good
- MySQL config exists already
$ oowriter
- Tools->Data Sources
- New Data Source
- pick ODBC and the name you set up above
- Do your database stuff...
Not exactly rocket science.
The article author is simply an idiot, who wants to make life difficult by compiling software himself without bothering to configure it properly.
I want a connection that is as fast as possible for my money, and transfer limits are fine. I use less than 3000MB a month (which is the point at which extra charges start) since I'm not into downloading music and file sharing apps. I read my mail, I update my website, I browse the web, I run apt-get, etc.
I want them to be fast. Yes the bandwidth limit on the ADSL means I could get more bandwidth using a 24x7 modem connection constantly downloading stuff. But that isn't my usage pattern.
My usage pattern is short bursts and a trickle the rest of the time. I don't want to pay $200 for 1.5Mbs with no transfer limit. I'd prefer $50 a month for 1.5Mbs and a trasfer limit which means they can sell 5 for the same bandwidth cost at their end. Suits my usage pattern, makes them more money. As long as my short bursts don't slow down too much when there's contention with other customers I'm happy with it.
I suspect there is a bigger market for people wanting email and web browsing at a cheap price with a limit, then there is for people wanting large downloads all the time for a much higher price.
In fact, I've been looking around for a new ADSL provider (since the current one is a housemate's, who recently moved out and will I expect one day want it back...) one company offers unlimited plans and limited transfer plans. I'm choosing a limited one, since for the same money I can get a faster service which suits my usage pattern. Choice is a wonderful thing.
AI is merely working on a problem that has no known solution (in reasonable time). As soon as the problem becomes 'easy' and solved it's no longer AI and becomes a mere algorithm...
:)
So once natural language processing becomes 'easy' it won't be AI any more, but will be just another algorithm.
At least that's what my AI lecturer used to claim
Part of that would be because Programmer Bob does some work that requires say SQL server and IIS. He installs/activates them on his desktop machine and goes about his work. Then he moves onto the next project and forgets that he is still running SQL server, and a year later gets hit by a worm...
;)
Of course windows developers have an advantage in this area, since they have to reinstall their OS at regular intervals to stop it playing up. Though maybe XP has fixed that, and they'll be stuffed like those poor linux developers who still have junk installed from 1997...
Such keyboards would be great with PDAs and other portable devices.
But I suspect that using one constantly (such as for you desktop machine at work) would produce lots of pain and suffering. Banging your fingers on the probably hard solid no-give surface of a desk all day probably wouldn't be great fun. Stopping your fingers before they hit the desk would be a quick route to RSI land... I guess you could put somethign soft where your fingers will hit, but then why not just use a nice clickity-clackity keyboard...
On the plus side, it'd make those old games where you have to push two keys in quick succession over and over again (Summer Games for example) much easier.
On that note, did anyone else build a 'joystick' for the C64 out of 2 nails some wire and a screw driver, just so they could get really fast times in the 100 meter sprint on that game?
It is not "about a British Columbian pig farmer who murdered...".
It is about a British Columbian pig farmer who *IS ACCUSED* of murdering...
There's a big difference between the two statements, the article you linked used the correct one, you ignored the assumption of innocence, which is probably the most important concept in a fair justice system.
They are "radio waves", a more precise term that "electromagnetic waves", since the later includes microwaves, visible light, x-rays and others, while the former only includes wavelengths of over about a meter.
Unless you also believe that "technically speaking" this message was posted on "a web site" is more correct than on "slashdot".
Assumming you wrote your own 9700 BIOS implementation and didn't violate copyright to get it. You could buy a 9700 to get a legal copy of the BIOS, but then you don't need to buy the 9500 and fsck with it anyway...
And the client product, which does have an amplifier (although at only 15W a channel, and only two channels), is significantly smaller. Less than half the size...
Of course half the size in the wrong dimension if you want to stack it with your other audio components...
Gcc has no -j option. Make has a -j option.
Which has nothing to do with SMP, it's simply how many jobs make will run simultaneously, which of course is a wise thing to use in a multi processor environment, but also a good thing to use in places where the CPU waits for IO (ie. if your code and output is stored on a disk).....
Australia is not the USA.
I love my country.
:)
It's OK to tape, say the live broadcast of the cricket, to watch at a time when I'm actually home. But it's not OK to tape the ads, that occur after every over...
So I can tape it to view later, but I have to be there to press pause all the time
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
</Files>
<FilesMatch "\.php~$"> if you want to be more modern. Note that the stand alone ~ turns on regular expressions, and has nothing to do with matching ~s in file names.
It's almost certain you apache configuration has a similar rule for
Of course you might want to be more restrictive than just
Substitute for
Look up the words today and ever in a dictionary. You'll find they aren't synonyms.
How does buying say a linux distribution force an expension of their monopoly?
Since that would seem to come under : "any manufacturer's computer-related products and software."
Did I say non-determinant? The AI for a mob in a MMORPG can be determinate, since the game state will be so varied no one will notice... Of course that'd beside the point, since it'll work fine for non-dteerminate anyway.
As for prone to abuse, the whole dicussion is about why a trusted client might be useful to the user. Hence the assumption is the trusted client is truly trusted. Arguing it isn't is pointless because the topic is "IF 'trusted clients' existed, what benefit could they have".
It was a very simple example of how processing can be moved to some other client...
If you want to do with a MMORPG you (as I said, but you were too dumb to read I guess) could farm off AI computation for the mobs.
Effectively instead of having the mobs be executed in the server you treat them like players, running as seperate processes which can be moved to other machines, communicating with the server like players do.
Basically distributed computing of the game state