Things become declassified some time after it no longer serves any purpose to keep those things secret. There is no magical automatic expiration date on sensitive information. 50 years is probably quite long enough for most information to become irrelevant, but it would certainly be "ridiculous" to claim that all information should be declassified after fifty years.
So long as the government has the authority to keep some things secret, it's well within that authority to keep things secret for fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years.
You may believe that fifty-year-old secrets are "ridiculous", but you can't justify that belief without knowing exactly what the secret is.
On the other hand, it's possible that the time of national governments spending huge amounts of money just to complete proof-of-concept space projects is over.
It's possible that entrepenurial private entities will lead the way in future space-based tech advances.
It's entirely possible that if there were money in space, private companies would probably be there already.
Finally, if by some freakish good fortune the Chinese government does find money in space, it's entirely possible that private companies will rapidly catch up to and then surpass whatever the Chinese government manages to do about it.
Seriously, China is going into space? What do they know that Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA don't?
Sounds like the Post Office would have a much easier time being efficient if it weren't for greedy and short-sighted Union regs.
So, um, thank you, Unions, for creating slackers instead of workers once again! Way to promote progress, asshats.
I'd be interested to see how closely reality matches this unbelievable hypthetical scenario. Is the practice widespread? Are there mail carriers and Post Office managers on record saying that this is the way it works?
Anybody saying "no, it's not like that"?
Anybody saying, "well, it is like that, and here's what we're doing to fix it"?
Anybody saying "it's like that, and here's why our hands are tied on the matter"?
Anybody saying "here's the tradeoffs we had to consider, and here's how we determined that this is the lesser of two evils"?
I mean, it goes without saying that governments are usually bureaucratic and inefficient, but that doesn't give you a "get out of substantiation free" card when bagging on the Post Office.
The Post Office which, has my thirty years of experience, been overwhelmingly reliable and timely in delivering my mail.
Insurance is just highly organized gambling, which translates to organized crime.
So gambling is a crime? Maybe in the sense that it's illegal in some places. But it's not illegal everywhere, and anyway I get the impression that's not what you mean.
So you're saying that gambling is some kind of universal moral wrong--a "crime against humanity", perhaps?
Does this mean that all forms of risk-taking are morally wrong, or criminal acts, or whatever?
The differences are not necessarily theological. The edition of the NIV that I have was translated by an interdenominational team, that also included non-religious scholars. This was but one of the special efforts made to prevent bias in the final work.
Also, wherever there was significant disagreement among the translators, the most commonly accepted version of the passage is included in the main text, with the alternative version(s) footnoted. Both primary and secondary sources of each Book are documented, and the source of alternative versions are always specified in the footnotes.
Compare this process to, say, the Jehova's Witness translation: undertaken by one man, who was neither a linguist nor a biblical scholar. His version is radically different from the NIV--much more so than the differences between the NIV and other "scholarly" translations.
The methodology of the translation work can be evaluated and validated independently of the actual content being translated. There is an actual science to translation, and it can be applied just as well to the Bible as any other work, with equally valid results.
Except, of course, that it'd be much harder to give the poor sods in Iraq a top-notch Constitution (like, say the U.S. one) if all you're bringing to the table is a crappy Constitution--or no Constitution at all.
I mean, you can't really tell the Iraqis that the best way to govern their country with compassion and justice is to rely on centuries of tradition, can you?
Ask a bar owner in NYC, CA, or Lexington KY if we don't have a bunch of central planners running things in this country.
I assume you're talking about the no-smoking laws right? One, (in California, at least) the law was passed by the duly elected representatives of the people, not by a central committee of unelected bureaucrats. Two, these laws are being passed at the state level, not the federal level--a textbook example of how non-centralized government is supposed to work in this country. Three, no-smoking laws aren't really "economic planning" issues, are they? Four, "six out of seven owners agree" is not a very compelling analysis. People say all sorts of stupid things all the time. Why should bartenders have any better idea of what's going on that I do? And if you dont' think I know what's going on, back it up with authoritative opinions--political scientists, reputable sociologists, &c.
The example you cite, "open warfare to determine who owns which oil field", is an example of a specific motivation that is debatably wrong (I think--it's not entirely clear what motivation you have in mind). One can certainly be against wars of conquest and greed, and still not be a pacifist.
Then, you define pacifism as "The belief that disputes between nations should and can be settled peacefully." But you promptly go on to acknowledge your firm conviction that personal disputes can sometimes be appropriately settled only through violence.
If I toss out a few "war" scenarios, would you be so kind as to explain not only how they should have been resolved peacefully, but also how you believe they could have been so resolved?
Nazi Germany invades France. Resolve peacefully, please.
Imperial Japan invades China. Resolve peacefully, please.
Somali warlords hijack international food shipments by force of arms. Resolve peacefully, please.
So you think it's perfectly moral to take up arms against someone invading your home, but never moral to take up arms against someone invading your country? (Obviously, if this is the case, you'd also never see any reason to take up arms to defend somebody else's country against invasion, either.) Why, exactly, not?
It was already proven that he asked for time off and received it, then served the remainder of his time later.
One less embarassing "fact" I can't explain away whenever the Bush-haters come out to play.
I keep thinking "okay, now things have gone too far; I'll have to switch sides over this one", but then somebody comes along and debunks it.
So far, my policy of sticking my fingers in my ears and singing "la la la I can't hear you" is actually working out pretty well. Sooner or later, every ugly little accusation gets washed away.
When are all the anti-Clinton lies going to be debunked anyway? And am I the only one that's noticed that the people attacking Bush are the same people who stood by Clinton? Kinda hard to imagine they know much about the truth, isn't it?
Better let those Naval smarty men know that they should seriously consider figuring out how many missiles each potential enemy could conceivably launch at a single time, against a single carrier group.
Also, you may want to suggest that they track the military spending of other nations, so that they can properly revise their estimates as these arsenals grow.
And remind them that they'll probably want to develop some kind of "office of naval intelligence" to make sure they know where the missile launch platforms are, at any given moment.
Ooh! Ooh! Don't forget to tell them to develop antimissile systems adequate to the task of defending against all these missile launches. And weapons systems that can take out the missile launch platforms before they launch, of course.
Because I'm pretty sure nobody in the Navy is smart enough to figure any of this out on their own.
And if they're that stupid, it's a safe bet they're waaay too stupid to come over here to Slashdot for the benefit of your military wisdom.
So put down your crack pipe and call the Navy right now! It's a matter of national security!
That's a really neat story, except for the part where the French solved their "9/11" problem not because they had some sort of mythical "bonus experience with terrorism", but because the terrorists were incompetent enough to blow their cover before their plane even made it off the ground.
What, exactly do you suppose the French would have been able to do, had the terrorists actually kept their cool until the plane was in the air?
I don't believe the Clinton Administration had any idea that the Internet (and the technologies related to it) would become such a powerful and pervasive force in our society.
What is wrong with you? Al Gore invented the Internet!
And don't forget that the Cold War was largely an economic war. The U.S. had a stronger economy (without even trying--no centralized economic planning over here, after all), and so was able to throw much more money at escalating the arms race. The USSR couldn't keep up, and ultimately collapsed through trying. As I understand it, Star Wars was just Reagan's chosen method of giving the Soviets something to spend money on. Then, the disparities between capitalism and communism did the rest.
Nukes aren't necessary. An enemy advanced enough to use EMP would promptly find the U.S. air force bombing the shit out of any unauthenticated RF transmitter.
Naturally, the enemy would keep a lot of EMP devices silent until the last minute, hoping to disrupt and counter an infantry rush, but again with the bombing. Plus, figure that every squad is going to be packing those nifty new assault weapons, and anti-EMP grenades. The moment the point team drops off the net, the squad digs in, lobs some explosives at the nearest enemy RF sources, and waits a few seconds for air and artillery backup to clear the way.
EMP sounds nifty, but it's really just an suicidally efficient way to say "here I am, please kill me now".
Meanhwile, now that the U.S. military has phased in frequency-hopping radios, tracking the squads by their emissions isn't as easy for the enemy as tracking a blanket EMP blast would be for the U.S. forces.
Finally, likely locations for EMP emplacements would be prebombed, and the more difficult ones would probably get a visit from special forces teams trained to work "off the leash" if necessary, to clear the way of EMP weapons for the regular troops.
In the end, any army advanced enough to worry about EMPs would already be advanced enough to trivially neutralize them.
What reputation are you talking about? Do you really think that wherever you go, online, people say "there goes nhavar, I heard he's a stupid Microsoft shill"? Trust me, you're not suffering from negative public opinion. The vast majority of the public has no idea who you are, or what you stand for. Want a reputation worth complaining about? Get your ideas published in a national newspaper or magazine. Which is, of course, the point of the article.
But I think part of the unique nature of the internet is that much of an online businesses reputation will be made online, and through various discussion communities (slashdot, newsgroups, etc), rather than the mainstream media.
So... you're flatly contradicting one of the central theses of the article, which is that the mainstream media conveys a more coherent opinion, consistently, to more people, than any website can--or probably ever will--do.
Do you have any particular reason for holding this opinion? Have you noticed that people's opinions of Microsoft vary not with the opinion of Slashdot, but with the opinion of the mainstream media? Have you noticed that both Ebay and Yahoo, the purely online nature of their business notwithstanding, rely heavily on advertisements in the mainstream media, and enjoy extensive mainstream news coverage? Can you name any Internet-based company with a reputation that has been built without recourse to mainstream opinion-building?
Google, maybe, but without a proper statistical survey, I don't know. Do you?
Fair enough, but the article talks about a change in how microprocessors are manufactured, in the fabs. Might as well say that the adoption of rubidium-arc lasers in the manufacturing process has gotten us closer to Gaia.
Slashdot Mirror
So long as the government has the authority to keep some things secret, it's well within that authority to keep things secret for fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand years.
You may believe that fifty-year-old secrets are "ridiculous", but you can't justify that belief without knowing exactly what the secret is.
On the other hand, it's possible that the time of national governments spending huge amounts of money just to complete proof-of-concept space projects is over.
It's possible that entrepenurial private entities will lead the way in future space-based tech advances.
It's entirely possible that if there were money in space, private companies would probably be there already.
Finally, if by some freakish good fortune the Chinese government does find money in space, it's entirely possible that private companies will rapidly catch up to and then surpass whatever the Chinese government manages to do about it.
Seriously, China is going into space? What do they know that Boeing, Lockheed, and NASA don't?
Answer: Probably nothing.
Sounds like the Post Office would have a much easier time being efficient if it weren't for greedy and short-sighted Union regs.
So, um, thank you, Unions, for creating slackers instead of workers once again! Way to promote progress, asshats.
I'd be interested to see how closely reality matches this unbelievable hypthetical scenario. Is the practice widespread? Are there mail carriers and Post Office managers on record saying that this is the way it works?
Anybody saying "no, it's not like that"?
Anybody saying, "well, it is like that, and here's what we're doing to fix it"?
Anybody saying "it's like that, and here's why our hands are tied on the matter"?
Anybody saying "here's the tradeoffs we had to consider, and here's how we determined that this is the lesser of two evils"?
I mean, it goes without saying that governments are usually bureaucratic and inefficient, but that doesn't give you a "get out of substantiation free" card when bagging on the Post Office.
The Post Office which, has my thirty years of experience, been overwhelmingly reliable and timely in delivering my mail.
Ah. That makes more sense.
So gambling is a crime? Maybe in the sense that it's illegal in some places. But it's not illegal everywhere, and anyway I get the impression that's not what you mean.
So you're saying that gambling is some kind of universal moral wrong--a "crime against humanity", perhaps?
Does this mean that all forms of risk-taking are morally wrong, or criminal acts, or whatever?
Please explain.
Just out of curiosity, are there any CEOs with $100 million per year salaries?
The differences are not necessarily theological. The edition of the NIV that I have was translated by an interdenominational team, that also included non-religious scholars. This was but one of the special efforts made to prevent bias in the final work.
Also, wherever there was significant disagreement among the translators, the most commonly accepted version of the passage is included in the main text, with the alternative version(s) footnoted. Both primary and secondary sources of each Book are documented, and the source of alternative versions are always specified in the footnotes.
Compare this process to, say, the Jehova's Witness translation: undertaken by one man, who was neither a linguist nor a biblical scholar. His version is radically different from the NIV--much more so than the differences between the NIV and other "scholarly" translations.
The methodology of the translation work can be evaluated and validated independently of the actual content being translated. There is an actual science to translation, and it can be applied just as well to the Bible as any other work, with equally valid results.
Except, of course, that it'd be much harder to give the poor sods in Iraq a top-notch Constitution (like, say the U.S. one) if all you're bringing to the table is a crappy Constitution--or no Constitution at all.
I mean, you can't really tell the Iraqis that the best way to govern their country with compassion and justice is to rely on centuries of tradition, can you?
I assume you're talking about the no-smoking laws right? One, (in California, at least) the law was passed by the duly elected representatives of the people, not by a central committee of unelected bureaucrats. Two, these laws are being passed at the state level, not the federal level--a textbook example of how non-centralized government is supposed to work in this country. Three, no-smoking laws aren't really "economic planning" issues, are they? Four, "six out of seven owners agree" is not a very compelling analysis. People say all sorts of stupid things all the time. Why should bartenders have any better idea of what's going on that I do? And if you dont' think I know what's going on, back it up with authoritative opinions--political scientists, reputable sociologists, &c.
This is so very bizarre.
The example you cite, "open warfare to determine who owns which oil field", is an example of a specific motivation that is debatably wrong (I think--it's not entirely clear what motivation you have in mind). One can certainly be against wars of conquest and greed, and still not be a pacifist.
Then, you define pacifism as "The belief that disputes between nations should and can be settled peacefully." But you promptly go on to acknowledge your firm conviction that personal disputes can sometimes be appropriately settled only through violence.
If I toss out a few "war" scenarios, would you be so kind as to explain not only how they should have been resolved peacefully, but also how you believe they could have been so resolved?
Nazi Germany invades France. Resolve peacefully, please.
Imperial Japan invades China. Resolve peacefully, please.
China invades Tibet. Resolve peacefully, please.
Persia invades Greece. Resolve peacefully, please.
Somali warlords hijack international food shipments by force of arms. Resolve peacefully, please.
So you think it's perfectly moral to take up arms against someone invading your home, but never moral to take up arms against someone invading your country? (Obviously, if this is the case, you'd also never see any reason to take up arms to defend somebody else's country against invasion, either.) Why, exactly, not?
What does your country's constitution say?
If my country gets much worse, I might want to do some comparison shopping.
I keep thinking "okay, now things have gone too far; I'll have to switch sides over this one", but then somebody comes along and debunks it.
So far, my policy of sticking my fingers in my ears and singing "la la la I can't hear you" is actually working out pretty well. Sooner or later, every ugly little accusation gets washed away.
When are all the anti-Clinton lies going to be debunked anyway? And am I the only one that's noticed that the people attacking Bush are the same people who stood by Clinton? Kinda hard to imagine they know much about the truth, isn't it?
What with all the other anti-bush lies in the queue, I imagine your second example is probably still awaiting it's well-deserved debunking.
Hahah! Owned by the wisdom and insight of someone who has chosen of their own free will to be called "Ars-Fartsica"!
What are you doing wasting your time here?
Better let those Naval smarty men know that they should seriously consider figuring out how many missiles each potential enemy could conceivably launch at a single time, against a single carrier group.
Also, you may want to suggest that they track the military spending of other nations, so that they can properly revise their estimates as these arsenals grow.
And remind them that they'll probably want to develop some kind of "office of naval intelligence" to make sure they know where the missile launch platforms are, at any given moment.
Ooh! Ooh! Don't forget to tell them to develop antimissile systems adequate to the task of defending against all these missile launches. And weapons systems that can take out the missile launch platforms before they launch, of course.
Because I'm pretty sure nobody in the Navy is smart enough to figure any of this out on their own.
And if they're that stupid, it's a safe bet they're waaay too stupid to come over here to Slashdot for the benefit of your military wisdom.
So put down your crack pipe and call the Navy right now! It's a matter of national security!
That's a really neat story, except for the part where the French solved their "9/11" problem not because they had some sort of mythical "bonus experience with terrorism", but because the terrorists were incompetent enough to blow their cover before their plane even made it off the ground.
What, exactly do you suppose the French would have been able to do, had the terrorists actually kept their cool until the plane was in the air?
What is wrong with you? Al Gore invented the Internet!
And don't forget that the Cold War was largely an economic war. The U.S. had a stronger economy (without even trying--no centralized economic planning over here, after all), and so was able to throw much more money at escalating the arms race. The USSR couldn't keep up, and ultimately collapsed through trying. As I understand it, Star Wars was just Reagan's chosen method of giving the Soviets something to spend money on. Then, the disparities between capitalism and communism did the rest.
Not to be rude or anything, but WTF? Which laws did they break? And how?
Nukes aren't necessary. An enemy advanced enough to use EMP would promptly find the U.S. air force bombing the shit out of any unauthenticated RF transmitter.
Naturally, the enemy would keep a lot of EMP devices silent until the last minute, hoping to disrupt and counter an infantry rush, but again with the bombing. Plus, figure that every squad is going to be packing those nifty new assault weapons, and anti-EMP grenades. The moment the point team drops off the net, the squad digs in, lobs some explosives at the nearest enemy RF sources, and waits a few seconds for air and artillery backup to clear the way.
EMP sounds nifty, but it's really just an suicidally efficient way to say "here I am, please kill me now".
Meanhwile, now that the U.S. military has phased in frequency-hopping radios, tracking the squads by their emissions isn't as easy for the enemy as tracking a blanket EMP blast would be for the U.S. forces.
Finally, likely locations for EMP emplacements would be prebombed, and the more difficult ones would probably get a visit from special forces teams trained to work "off the leash" if necessary, to clear the way of EMP weapons for the regular troops.
In the end, any army advanced enough to worry about EMPs would already be advanced enough to trivially neutralize them.
What reputation are you talking about? Do you really think that wherever you go, online, people say "there goes nhavar, I heard he's a stupid Microsoft shill"? Trust me, you're not suffering from negative public opinion. The vast majority of the public has no idea who you are, or what you stand for. Want a reputation worth complaining about? Get your ideas published in a national newspaper or magazine. Which is, of course, the point of the article.
So... you're flatly contradicting one of the central theses of the article, which is that the mainstream media conveys a more coherent opinion, consistently, to more people, than any website can--or probably ever will--do.
Do you have any particular reason for holding this opinion? Have you noticed that people's opinions of Microsoft vary not with the opinion of Slashdot, but with the opinion of the mainstream media? Have you noticed that both Ebay and Yahoo, the purely online nature of their business notwithstanding, rely heavily on advertisements in the mainstream media, and enjoy extensive mainstream news coverage? Can you name any Internet-based company with a reputation that has been built without recourse to mainstream opinion-building?
Google, maybe, but without a proper statistical survey, I don't know. Do you?
Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Oh, wait... you're serious, aren't you?
Could be. Doesn't make sense of the original post, though.
Fair enough, but the article talks about a change in how microprocessors are manufactured, in the fabs. Might as well say that the adoption of rubidium-arc lasers in the manufacturing process has gotten us closer to Gaia.