Re:New addition to the Patriot Act?
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 1
Others have already ripped you for NRFA, which you richly deserve, in this case.
Here's something else to remember in the future: Posting on Slashdot does not automatically make you smarter than the smarty men who come up with the ideas in the first place. Whether it's NASA's space probe design, new ideas for nuclear batteries, or innovations in lingerie design, ask yourself this: Is it really possible that the experts in this field have overlooked the simple and obvious problems that occurred to such a useless amateur as myself?
Maybe it's just a clever way of saying, "Nine thousand people have died in Nepal, since Amnesty International took up their cause. So what's AI good for, anyway?"
And if Republican operatives were seeding the Indymedia site with this info, and then trying to scapegoat alleged Indymedia asshats, a review of the logs would provide valuable clues regarding Republican perfidy in this matter.
But hey, let's nobody try to get to the bottom of this!
Sadly, your thoughtful analysis of Fox News is identical to a thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction to anything of which you are ignorant or which you do not really understand.
Has it really never occurred to you that your remarks are a perfect example of the cliched rhetoric dragged out by every asshat ever to dismiss their critics and opponents?
Where's the substance? Where's the positive statements that showcase the benefits of your chosen "liberal" approach?
Where, in fact, is anything other than the empty ranting common to asshats throughout human history?
I'll readily agree that "all the thinking" requires effort. Seeing as how you've come to Slashdot with... nothing to say, I'll also readily agree that you haven't actually made the effort to do any of that thinking.
Here, try this: Instead of trotting out cookie-cutter silliness about The Other Side, how about throwing down a substantial example of a news story or media source that really delivered for you--research, credible sources, opposing viewpoints presented, etc.
But I will take this opportunity to point out that a response can be "disproportional" without being "excessive" or "indiscriminate".
For obvious reasons, "excessive" and "indiscriminate" responses are undesireable.
The ultimate goal is to provide a desireable response to the attack. When dealing with one's own citizens in a free society, the desireable response may actually be less severe than the action that provoked it.
A response policy that seeks only sufficient and discriminate responses is a good policy, and will probably include disproportional responses from time to time. A response policy that categorically rejects disproportional responses regardless of context and ultimate goals, probably won't ever solve any of the problems it responds to.
The only problem with the idea of "proportional response" is that it's functionally equivalent to the idea of "fair trade".
That is, it's the idea that if you do A to me, then I do B to you, and after all the gains and losses are tallied up, we'll both be about even with each other.
Proportional response is an invitation to anybody who thinks the trade is fair. That losing one of their own will be a worthwhile sacrifice for taking one fo your own. That destroying your house is a goal worth giving up their own house to achieve.
Proportional response leads neither to effective deterrence nor to conclusive victory. It leads to an ongoing tit-for-tat conflict that may be costly, but is ultimately affordable--by design!--to both parties in the conflict.
The only way to put a stop to this sort of thing is either through a sincerely negotiated compromise, or through escalation to disproportional responses.
Disproportional responses set the cost of shenanigans to high to be worthwhile to any prospective opponent, and in the event that they are employed, do real, lasting, and often final damage to the opponent's capacity to make attacks of their own in the future.
In the interest of ending conflicts conclusively and quickly, disproportional responses are necessary and good.
What, exactly, is the imperative here? What valuable, vital insight into this discussion about finding alien life have you contributed by bringing up Bin Laden?
What next? "We may be close to finding an AIDS vaccine, but please keep in mind that we haven't found Bin Laden yet, so don't get your hopes up!"
Thanks for putting everything into perspective, Captain Insight. Now, please, explain what exactly that perspective is.
Because to an engineer of Scotty's obvious intelligence and talent, understanding the basic principles and usage of a qwerty keyboard is a trivial problem, easily solved with a quick glance and a moment's thought.
Note that "best intel apparatus currently available" is not nearly the same thing as "best intel apparatus currently possible", "best intel apparatus currently affordable", or "best intel apparatus currently cost-effective".
Nor does your objection take into account factors like political will and competence.
9/11 didn't happen because it just wasn't possible to get the necessary intel. 9/11 happened because of 20+ years of just not caring enough to look into it.
Actually, that's what SGI and Cray get, when SGI and Cray spend R&D dollars to solve cluster problems.
And let's not forget that Cray is the canonical supercomputer company. It's probably unwise to look to Cray as a yardstick or guideline for the direction and success of future cluster R&D.
I suppose the counter-argument would go something like this:
It's true that supercomputers aren't really all that useful or necessary these days. However, it may be that a future computing problem shall arise, which requires a next-generation supercomputer to solve. So we'd be well-served to have a next-generation supercomputer fresh from R&D, to apply to the problem.
We may only encounter one or two more supercomputer-class problems, but they might be important ones. We should be prepared.
On the other hand, we may encounter a problem that can only be solved by horses. But we don't see a lot of buggy-whip subsidies these days...
Since clusters are so much cheaper than mainframes, it's often the case that clusters still offer better performance for the money spent than a mainframe would, even if the cluster isn't really optimized the way the mainframe is, for the task at hand.
That being the case, wouldn't it make more sense to invest heavily in R&D to solve the cluster's problems and remove its limitations, than to invest heavily in R&D into next-gen mainframes?
... because there's just no way the whole disagreement--and its resolution--could possibly based on the mathematics of black holes, or anything, right?
We care about who was right and who was wrong because we look to these people to be our guides and priests in their chose areas of expertise. Reports on who was right and who was wrong are important to us when we make decisions about who to trust, and who to respect in matters of physics.
One advantage to monocultures is interoperability. Having a bunch of heterogenous computers all working at the same time is neat, but introduces additional headaches when it comes time to network them all together.
Another advantage to monocultures is the low overhead for infrastructure support. Your IT guy only needs to be familiar with one hardware standard, one set of quirky behaviors, one OS/GUI metaphor, &c.
Neither of these benefits are trivial.
It's true that monocultures are also easier to attack, but it's for the same exact reasons they're easier to interconnect and easier to maintain. As far as I can tell, the choice for or against monocultures in computing occurs at the point where the potential gains (ease of interoperability, support, and training) intersect with the potential losses (ease of attack, epidemic failure). Depending on the value you assign to your work product, and the risks you associate with loss of your computing environment, you may very easily and very properly choose a monoculture.
I'd think that in public computer labs in schools, where budget constraints are a real problem, the value of the work product is low, and the risks to the school from loss of the environment are minimal, a monoculture consisting of cheaper hardware and familiar operating systems makes some sense.
Schools should be responsible enough to provide a variety of hardware/software/operating systems to properly prepare it's students.
I call shenanigans! You should be so responsible! How much of your after-tax income are you donating to your local public school system, in order to insure that the funds are there to buy all the different kinds of hardware and OSes you think the modern student needs to learn? How often have you voted for tax increases at your municipal, county, and state level, to provide extra funding for all these things you want your local public school system to provide?
You want the school to provide a variety of computers, it's going to cost money. You tell me, where are you going to get that money from? Raise your taxes? Raise tuition? Funge it from some other budget item you don't find important?
Schools have budgets. Most of them have limited budgets. Public schools have budgets that are limited by you. In reality, it is you who "should be responsible enough to provide a variety of hardware/software/operating systems to properly prepare [your] students".
Oh no! We voted for an incumbent! Clearly, we are ruled by tyrants, and violent revolt is the only way to free ourselves from the iron fist of oppression!
Please. Don't make me laugh. That's almost as funny as my other respondent's reference to "occasional elections".
As for your other points, what can I say?
The first of them is irrelevant. I'm not claiming that a self-governed people are always a good people. Two democracies may easily go to war against each other, and the loser may well be overthrown. That by itself signifies nothing. Whatever evil the U.S. has done, it is to our shame, but it is also hardly to the point.
Do you remember the point? Maybe I should repeat it: U.S. citizens have the power to change their own government on a regular basis, without resorting to violence. Also, every time we vote, we exercise that power.
You've done an excellent job of answering my question, about how many other nations also grant this power to their citizens. You seem to think I should feel ashamed that American citizens make up such a small fraction of the world's free peoples. Far from it! I'm proud and optimistic to know how much company I have. Get down off the high horse? I'd rather the rest of the world join me up here as quickly as they can!
Incidentally, who did you vote for in your most recent municipal elections, and why?
I think I see what your problem is. You're not getting what you want, therefore the system must be broken, and violence is the only way to fix it.
Could you be convinced that elections are identical to overthrow of the government? I doubt it. My arguments are strong, but your dissatisfaction is stronger.
For you, only violent overthrow and anarchy is the "true" revolution. As if killing your political opponents, and doing harm to those of your neighbors who disagree with your views, will give you the satisfaction you can't find in peaceful elections.
The parent poster claimed that citizens with guns have never changed things in this country. I claim that this is not so--citizens change things in this country all the time, and they don't even need the guns. But let's stipulate, for the sake of argument, that you're correct: peaceful elections and violent revolt are not equivalent methods of regime change.
Name one thing that would be better solved in this country, by violent revolution rather than by peaceful elections.
How did Wikipedia suddenly become an authoritative source? Can we see some quotes from the original documents, please? Perhaps some discussion of the Wikpedia entry author's credentials? Something other than "this is my opinion based on what appears to me to be the case"? Please?
OK, I'm game, please point to too all the succesful rebellions where non-military Americans with guns stopped the federal government from abusing the population.
Trivial. We have a regime change every four years. We toss the bums out of Congress every two years. We hand our Senators their marching papers every six years.
We remove sheriffs, mayors, and school board superintendents from power on a regular basis. Some of us even got a rare and exciting opportunity to throw a state governor out on his sorry ass for no other reason than that we suddenly decided we didn't like him.
We overthrow our government all the time. We even have a schedule for it! And it happens without shooting, violence, coups d'etat...
How many nations throughout history can boast the same power we Americans take for granted? The power to overthrow our government on a regular basis, without violence, without guns, without military might?
How many nations, even today, don't grant their citizens this much power? The Tibetans don't have it. Their conquerors, the Chinese, don't have it. The Iranians don't have it. The Sudanese don't have it. The Iraqis are only beginning to wake up to the idea that for the first time in their history, they do have this power: the power to play politics, instead of waging war.
You say you want a revolution? Vote against the incumbent in your home town's mayoral election. It's free, it's easy, and you don't even need to shoot anybody. Welcome to civilization!
Slashdot Mirror
Others have already ripped you for NRFA, which you richly deserve, in this case.
Here's something else to remember in the future: Posting on Slashdot does not automatically make you smarter than the smarty men who come up with the ideas in the first place. Whether it's NASA's space probe design, new ideas for nuclear batteries, or innovations in lingerie design, ask yourself this: Is it really possible that the experts in this field have overlooked the simple and obvious problems that occurred to such a useless amateur as myself?
The answer is always "no".
Why exactly should you have a right to privacy anywhere?
Maybe it's just a clever way of saying, "Nine thousand people have died in Nepal, since Amnesty International took up their cause. So what's AI good for, anyway?"
I think it has something to do with whether or not "ask.com" is a memorable site...
What I want to know is, why would people doing ad-hoc, spur of the moment, impulse searches care about server-side tools that remember their searches?
And why would people who care to make a permanent record of their search results not simply bookmark the sites they like, once they find them?
I don't see much room for server-side rememberance tools to catapult Jeeves into first place over Google.
Fair enough.
And if Republican operatives were seeding the Indymedia site with this info, and then trying to scapegoat alleged Indymedia asshats, a review of the logs would provide valuable clues regarding Republican perfidy in this matter.
But hey, let's nobody try to get to the bottom of this!
Sadly, your thoughtful analysis of Fox News is identical to a thoughtless, knee-jerk reaction to anything of which you are ignorant or which you do not really understand.
Has it really never occurred to you that your remarks are a perfect example of the cliched rhetoric dragged out by every asshat ever to dismiss their critics and opponents?
Where's the substance? Where's the positive statements that showcase the benefits of your chosen "liberal" approach?
Where, in fact, is anything other than the empty ranting common to asshats throughout human history?
I'll readily agree that "all the thinking" requires effort. Seeing as how you've come to Slashdot with... nothing to say, I'll also readily agree that you haven't actually made the effort to do any of that thinking.
Here, try this: Instead of trotting out cookie-cutter silliness about The Other Side, how about throwing down a substantial example of a news story or media source that really delivered for you--research, credible sources, opposing viewpoints presented, etc.
HTH. HAND!
Indeed. I don't dispute anything you say.
But I will take this opportunity to point out that a response can be "disproportional" without being "excessive" or "indiscriminate".
For obvious reasons, "excessive" and "indiscriminate" responses are undesireable.
The ultimate goal is to provide a desireable response to the attack. When dealing with one's own citizens in a free society, the desireable response may actually be less severe than the action that provoked it.
A response policy that seeks only sufficient and discriminate responses is a good policy, and will probably include disproportional responses from time to time. A response policy that categorically rejects disproportional responses regardless of context and ultimate goals, probably won't ever solve any of the problems it responds to.
The only problem with the idea of "proportional response" is that it's functionally equivalent to the idea of "fair trade".
That is, it's the idea that if you do A to me, then I do B to you, and after all the gains and losses are tallied up, we'll both be about even with each other.
Proportional response is an invitation to anybody who thinks the trade is fair. That losing one of their own will be a worthwhile sacrifice for taking one fo your own. That destroying your house is a goal worth giving up their own house to achieve.
Proportional response leads neither to effective deterrence nor to conclusive victory. It leads to an ongoing tit-for-tat conflict that may be costly, but is ultimately affordable--by design!--to both parties in the conflict.
The only way to put a stop to this sort of thing is either through a sincerely negotiated compromise, or through escalation to disproportional responses.
Disproportional responses set the cost of shenanigans to high to be worthwhile to any prospective opponent, and in the event that they are employed, do real, lasting, and often final damage to the opponent's capacity to make attacks of their own in the future.
In the interest of ending conflicts conclusively and quickly, disproportional responses are necessary and good.
Which may go a long way towards explaining why we haven't heard back from anybody: we keep poking them in the eye with lasers.
Reminds me of the old proverb: The reason we know there's intelligent life out there is the fact that none of it has tried to contact us.
Why on earth does this "have to be said"?
What, exactly, is the imperative here? What valuable, vital insight into this discussion about finding alien life have you contributed by bringing up Bin Laden?
What next? "We may be close to finding an AIDS vaccine, but please keep in mind that we haven't found Bin Laden yet, so don't get your hopes up!"
Thanks for putting everything into perspective, Captain Insight. Now, please, explain what exactly that perspective is.
Thanks.
Because to an engineer of Scotty's obvious intelligence and talent, understanding the basic principles and usage of a qwerty keyboard is a trivial problem, easily solved with a quick glance and a moment's thought.
Note that "best intel apparatus currently available" is not nearly the same thing as "best intel apparatus currently possible", "best intel apparatus currently affordable", or "best intel apparatus currently cost-effective".
Nor does your objection take into account factors like political will and competence.
9/11 didn't happen because it just wasn't possible to get the necessary intel. 9/11 happened because of 20+ years of just not caring enough to look into it.
Actually, that's what SGI and Cray get, when SGI and Cray spend R&D dollars to solve cluster problems.
And let's not forget that Cray is the canonical supercomputer company. It's probably unwise to look to Cray as a yardstick or guideline for the direction and success of future cluster R&D.
I suppose the counter-argument would go something like this:
It's true that supercomputers aren't really all that useful or necessary these days. However, it may be that a future computing problem shall arise, which requires a next-generation supercomputer to solve. So we'd be well-served to have a next-generation supercomputer fresh from R&D, to apply to the problem.
We may only encounter one or two more supercomputer-class problems, but they might be important ones. We should be prepared.
On the other hand, we may encounter a problem that can only be solved by horses. But we don't see a lot of buggy-whip subsidies these days...
Since clusters are so much cheaper than mainframes, it's often the case that clusters still offer better performance for the money spent than a mainframe would, even if the cluster isn't really optimized the way the mainframe is, for the task at hand.
That being the case, wouldn't it make more sense to invest heavily in R&D to solve the cluster's problems and remove its limitations, than to invest heavily in R&D into next-gen mainframes?
... because there's just no way the whole disagreement--and its resolution--could possibly based on the mathematics of black holes, or anything, right?
The bet is an interesting story in its own right.
We care about who was right and who was wrong because we look to these people to be our guides and priests in their chose areas of expertise. Reports on who was right and who was wrong are important to us when we make decisions about who to trust, and who to respect in matters of physics.
One advantage to monocultures is interoperability. Having a bunch of heterogenous computers all working at the same time is neat, but introduces additional headaches when it comes time to network them all together.
Another advantage to monocultures is the low overhead for infrastructure support. Your IT guy only needs to be familiar with one hardware standard, one set of quirky behaviors, one OS/GUI metaphor, &c.
Neither of these benefits are trivial.
It's true that monocultures are also easier to attack, but it's for the same exact reasons they're easier to interconnect and easier to maintain. As far as I can tell, the choice for or against monocultures in computing occurs at the point where the potential gains (ease of interoperability, support, and training) intersect with the potential losses (ease of attack, epidemic failure). Depending on the value you assign to your work product, and the risks you associate with loss of your computing environment, you may very easily and very properly choose a monoculture.
I'd think that in public computer labs in schools, where budget constraints are a real problem, the value of the work product is low, and the risks to the school from loss of the environment are minimal, a monoculture consisting of cheaper hardware and familiar operating systems makes some sense.
I call shenanigans! You should be so responsible! How much of your after-tax income are you donating to your local public school system, in order to insure that the funds are there to buy all the different kinds of hardware and OSes you think the modern student needs to learn? How often have you voted for tax increases at your municipal, county, and state level, to provide extra funding for all these things you want your local public school system to provide?
You want the school to provide a variety of computers, it's going to cost money. You tell me, where are you going to get that money from? Raise your taxes? Raise tuition? Funge it from some other budget item you don't find important?
Schools have budgets. Most of them have limited budgets. Public schools have budgets that are limited by you. In reality, it is you who "should be responsible enough to provide a variety of hardware/software/operating systems to properly prepare [your] students".One indicator of paranoid delusions is the subject's wilful extension of the delusion to cover new evidence that the subject is, in fact, delusional.
E.g.,
"There's a conspiracy to turn this country into Nazi Germany!" [Never mind that this theory is laughable on its face, by the way.]
"But if there really were a conspiracy, then they'd never allow something like this. It looks like things aren't as bad as you thought."
"On the contrary, this simply means the conspiracy is even bigger than I originally imagined!"
Which is exactly what is going on in the parent exchange.
Lighten up a little. Contemplate the possibility that you're wrong.
Oh no! We voted for an incumbent! Clearly, we are ruled by tyrants, and violent revolt is the only way to free ourselves from the iron fist of oppression!
Please. Don't make me laugh. That's almost as funny as my other respondent's reference to "occasional elections".
As for your other points, what can I say?
The first of them is irrelevant. I'm not claiming that a self-governed people are always a good people. Two democracies may easily go to war against each other, and the loser may well be overthrown. That by itself signifies nothing. Whatever evil the U.S. has done, it is to our shame, but it is also hardly to the point.
Do you remember the point? Maybe I should repeat it: U.S. citizens have the power to change their own government on a regular basis, without resorting to violence. Also, every time we vote, we exercise that power.
You've done an excellent job of answering my question, about how many other nations also grant this power to their citizens. You seem to think I should feel ashamed that American citizens make up such a small fraction of the world's free peoples. Far from it! I'm proud and optimistic to know how much company I have. Get down off the high horse? I'd rather the rest of the world join me up here as quickly as they can!
Incidentally, who did you vote for in your most recent municipal elections, and why?
I think I see what your problem is. You're not getting what you want, therefore the system must be broken, and violence is the only way to fix it.
Could you be convinced that elections are identical to overthrow of the government? I doubt it. My arguments are strong, but your dissatisfaction is stronger.
For you, only violent overthrow and anarchy is the "true" revolution. As if killing your political opponents, and doing harm to those of your neighbors who disagree with your views, will give you the satisfaction you can't find in peaceful elections.
The parent poster claimed that citizens with guns have never changed things in this country. I claim that this is not so--citizens change things in this country all the time, and they don't even need the guns. But let's stipulate, for the sake of argument, that you're correct: peaceful elections and violent revolt are not equivalent methods of regime change.
Name one thing that would be better solved in this country, by violent revolution rather than by peaceful elections.
Power grab for what?
How did Wikipedia suddenly become an authoritative source? Can we see some quotes from the original documents, please? Perhaps some discussion of the Wikpedia entry author's credentials? Something other than "this is my opinion based on what appears to me to be the case"? Please?
Trivial. We have a regime change every four years. We toss the bums out of Congress every two years. We hand our Senators their marching papers every six years.
We remove sheriffs, mayors, and school board superintendents from power on a regular basis. Some of us even got a rare and exciting opportunity to throw a state governor out on his sorry ass for no other reason than that we suddenly decided we didn't like him.
We overthrow our government all the time. We even have a schedule for it! And it happens without shooting, violence, coups d'etat...
How many nations throughout history can boast the same power we Americans take for granted? The power to overthrow our government on a regular basis, without violence, without guns, without military might?
How many nations, even today, don't grant their citizens this much power? The Tibetans don't have it. Their conquerors, the Chinese, don't have it. The Iranians don't have it. The Sudanese don't have it. The Iraqis are only beginning to wake up to the idea that for the first time in their history, they do have this power: the power to play politics, instead of waging war.
You say you want a revolution? Vote against the incumbent in your home town's mayoral election. It's free, it's easy, and you don't even need to shoot anybody. Welcome to civilization!