Oooh, forgot all about that. I guess it's the first scare that you remember, but yes, the predator was 10 times scarier, because there I was, thinking I'm a bad ass mo'fo, armed to the teeth when right next to me, I heard that whisper... Awesome! Forget the maps, I think I'll just fire it up.
I had the exact same thought when I heard that. The Challenger disaster was a case study we covered in one of my courses in college. One thing the professor stessed over and over was that just because something happens one way a number of times, until you understand why and how, you can't take it for granted that it will continue to happen. The engineers knew that there had been blow-by of gases in the o-ring seals, but because the shuttle had completed the mission successfully, it was considered ok, despite the fact that they didn't understand when and how such blowbys were happening. Even a quick statistical analysis of the blowby incidents would have revealed an incredibly strong correlation with low launch temperatures.
Another thing which contributed to the Challenger disaster was the increased weight of politics and appearances and the desire not to make waves in the decision making process instead of sound engineering and science. The phrase "take off your engineering hat and put on your managers hat" still makes my skin crawl.
I suspect that an honest and hard hitting investigation will find that, once again, sound engineering and science was lost in an organization as publicity, complacency and managerial harmony increasingly dominated the decision making process. Assuming that we can get such a investigation.
I actually recently went on ebay to buy a jaguar to play AvP and T2K. T2K still kicked ass, especially piped through my sound system ('awesome') and bigger screen TV ('yes! yes! yes!'). However, AvP had aged a bit and just wasn't as much fun. Anybody else wake up their roommate with shouts (screams?) after being ambushed by a bunch of aliens? I wonder where my old AvP maps are.
I got more than my money's worth out of the Jaguar. It was a flop but if it had been easier to program, it might have had a chance of making money.
Yeah, and due to the "open source" nature of the tires, consumers could FIX that "vulnerability" without waiting for Ford to issue "new tires". Think of what would have happened if the tires+wheels were bolted on with secret locked nuts unlockable only by Ford. All the Exploreres would have had to have been garaged until Ford modified the design of the tires and sent them to service centers where the Explorers would go to have new tires put on. This is essentially the deal with closed source security software.
What happened instead was, as soon as consumers heard about the vulnerability, they had the option of patching it themselves, namely, going to Tires-R-Us and getting a new set of tires. The argument was not "study => security" but "secrecy != security" and "easy fix => security"
I disassemble, keep the interesting peices (uber strong magnets, brackets and servos), and then take some 100 grit sand paper to the platters. Making recovery economically unviable and (hopefully) operationally impossible. Of course, I'm such a pack rat, the last harddrives I threw out were a 80MB and a 20MB drive from one of my Macs.
Good post. I will add one note, Disney DOES have control of Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse is trademarked. The only thing that would go out of copyright is "Steamboat Willie" and other early works. Without this extension, people would have been able to reproduce Steamboat Willie without Disney's permission. They could sell a DVD of it, but without using Mickey Mouse on the cover.
How much money Disney is making off of Steamboat Willie, I have no idea, but I don't think it's worth extending the copyright forever.
Except, of course, for my favorite WWII fighter plane, the P-38 lightning with two engines which counter-rotated. Thus, during a "my-plane-is-better-than-your-plane" dogfight (standing start) between a P-51 Mustang and a P-38 Lightning, the P-38 took off under full power and made two passes on the P-51 before the P-51 could get enough speed to manuever properly. Of course, then the P-51 beat the P-38 but not too badly, I think.
Of course the exception was the Brits, who purchased a few P-38 (C's?), but didn't want to bother with two different engines per plane, and ordered them with the same engines on both wings. They had a real problem flying them because of the torque problem.
BTW, with any axially mounted engine, when you have lots of power, torque can become a problem. Old BMW K motorcycles were notorious for their torque lash.
Another advantage of the P-38 was with its four.50 M2's and two 20mm cannon in its nose pointed straight ahead it had the ability to absolutely hammer an apponent out to the effective range of its guns. Other planes with wing-mounted.50's had to arrange their guns to "merge and spread" at some approximate point (70 yards?). Don't know if any modern simulations account for that though.
Don't sweat it. Heck, you aren't a geographic surveyor, are you? Yeah, and I would NEVER EVER drive in Korea, except perhaps on cheju island, or for a jaunt to the country. L.A.? Manhattan? Hah! I laugh at their wimpy traffic. Seoul traffic puts hair on a man's chest (and leaves him bald because he's torn all of his head hair out). Subways (during non-rush hours) aren't bad though.
And yes, the smog is pretty bad. In fact, I think the air is better in the subways than above ground in Seoul.
Seoul is flat? Uhmm. NO. Seoul is COVERED wit and SURROUNDED by hills. And not "rolling hills" with low gradients, but steep hills. Would you call San Francisco flat just because the highest point (Twin Peaks) is less than 1000 feet? Seoul is way more mountainous than most major U.S. cities (New York, Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles etc.) Like I said, just because the peaks aren't high doesn't mean that the gradients aren't steep. Did you look at the map? Here's a sample contour map. This place has another click through sample on this
page.
You seem to be confused as to the relation between altitude and gradient. If you have a steep slope that goes up and down over 10 miles (In Korea), it's going to be alot shorter in overall height than one that goes up and down over 200 miles (the Rockies). That still doesn't mean that the first mountain is less steep (and rough) than the second. And plus, how many cities in the U.S. have 14,000 foot peaks "nearby" (less than 2 hours drive).
Didn't you have to go through tunnels in Seoul (There's quite a few). Did you go to Namsan Tower? How much did you drive in Seoul? How about this quote from a 5th grade study outline "A physical relief map will reveal that the north and east parts of Korea are very mountainous while the south and west have more fields. It is said that you can see a mountain from everywhere in Korea. Have students speculate on the amount of land that would be available for agriculture in such a mountainous country. (Only about one fourth of the land comprising the Republic of Korea is arable)." (source. Or how about this page. Don't you think they would know?
Look, obviously, you have experienced Korea (and you have my sympathies if you chose to drive). What I'm saying is that the perceptions which remain from your experience are flawed. Are you saying that all these sources have a distorted view of the terrain of Korea and your view is correct? Ask your guide in Korea. Ask anyone who has done more than "visit" Korea. Trust me: No one (especially not a cable or antenna engineer) is going to call much of South Korea "flat". Not even Seoul or Busan.
Uhm, "mostly flat country"? You haven't been there have you? Yes, the western and southern EDGES of the country are "flat" but the middle to eastern part is pretty rough terrain. The maximum heights aren't high because the area is small, but the terrain is incredibly rough. Heck, there were guerillas hiding out in some mountains 10 fucking years after the Korean War. To quote from the CIA World Book entry "Terrain: mostly hills and mountains; wide coastal plains in west and south". Or how about another source with a map
and description:"Around 80% of the Korean Peninsula is covered by mountains while South Korea has a rugged and mountainous terrain... Only 15% of the land area is covered by plains, which are mostly located along the coast."
The reason its cheap to set up cells is simple population density. Also makes it cheap to run Broadband to every house in the country. AFAIK, South Korea put down fiber optic (I think 6 or 10 fibers) alongside every single power line over the last 10 years (new and retrofit). The power company then leases out those lines in a relatively non-discriminatory manner. Makes for a very cost effective high speed network.
I was initially distraught with Bush's reluctance to engage North Korea in any kind of meaningful dialogue, but their recent actions lead me to believe that Bush was right.
Before I went to Korea, I didn't know how much tension still existed there. Several cross-DMZ firefights, tunnel discoveries, small naval skirmishes, and the commando mini-sub incident really opened my eyes. After hearing Kim Hyun Hee talk, I realized what cold, heartless bastards the North Korean rulers are.
For a while, I almost believed that Kim Dae Chung's "sunshine policy" was working, and they were slowly opening up. But it was all a facade. They tricked Jimmy Carter into the now defunct 1994 agreement.
There is a good essay [msnbc.com] by George Will that squarely fixes the blame for the current crisis on Clinton and Carter, in their naive view that they were dealing with a rational government.
Find me a single non-Republican (or even anyone in Europe or Asia) who thinks that Bush's policy towards N.K. has either been effective or worthwhile. George Will may be good at analyzing national politics but in the international relations game, he sticks to his ideology, not reality. Also, Clinton negotiated the 1994 agreement, defusing a potentially dangerous situation.
Just because they are "cold, heartless bastards" doesn't mean that if we ignore them, we win. Or that we shouldn't talk to them. Did we not negotiate with the U.S.S.R. at the height of the cold war? They may not have many cards, but they do border China, Russia, South Korea and Japan (effectively).
They're independent only in the sense that no foreign power is ruling over them. They're still wholly dependent on us, South Korea, and Japan for food.
They are independent in the sense that no one controls their actions and policies.
The current situation would have never occurred had we continued a dialogue with N.K. Now, due to neglect, we are faced with three choices: bomb N.K.'s nuclear refinenment center, let N.K. make a nuclear bomb, or negotiate with N.K. The first will effectively destroy South Korea, and destroy any trust China and Japan have in the U.S. to keep the peace in the region. The second will force Japan to go nuclear and totally destabilize the region. And the third is something that Bush said we'd never do. Let's see what Bush does in the next month and then we'll talk. If we end up at the negotiating table, it will prove to me that Bush's policies has been a complete failure.
This will be my last post so if you want to continue, email me at moc tod oohay ta eelsnad if you want to continue the discussion.
And methinks that there is a mistake in the reference. It was not benzol. It was nitrobenzol if I recall correctly. Which is also an explosive. All 35 tons of it. In barrels on the deck. They are actually what caught fire after the other ship (forgot the name) collided with the MonBlan. In other words there was not a single item of cargo on the manifest that was not explosive.
And the most interesting of it all. The cretinous idiot in the military who OKed the manifest for loading as well as the cretinous idiot who OKed bringing the ship into harbour were not ever considered at fault. The criminal procedings concentrated on the captain of the ship (who survived the incident by running like hell the moment it went on fire).
I kinda doubt if it was nitrobenzol (german for nitrobenzene) rather than benzene. (mono) nitrobenzene is volatile and VERY poisonous and can kill by being absorbed through the skin. It's sometimes used as a component of some explosives, but usually as a raw material of the preparation of other organic compounds. There would be practically no point in shipping it across the ocean. It may have been trinitrobenzene (or TNB) but then it would have been called TNB. Anyway, 35 tons of TNB is peanuts compared to 2300 tons of picric acid. In one ship. [shudder] On fire. [cringe] If the captain had had any idea of the explosive force on that ship, he would have steered her out of port under full power and then abandoned ship. He probably just thought that the ship and ajacent ships would get blown up, not the whole f'ing city.
Your points regarding the criminal incompetence of the persons in charge of shipping are spot on. They should have been taken out, had 2 pounds each of picric acid wrapped around various points of their bodies and had them detonated at suitably random amounts of time.
Good link. And the reason is that the whole project will be feature driven, code will be written and implemented before the final design is complete, problems will be fixed by adding hacks instead of refactoring, more problems will be fixed by adding hacks on top of the original hacks, resulting in a cobbled together half assed, inconsistent, unusable, crappy design. Oh and junior level programmers will be making design decisions on the fly. It'll also break complex scripts with each new release. I'll pass.
Small correction. Picric acid IS an explosive, used in bombs and artillery shells mixed with parraffin to produce a stable effective mixture. picric acid by itself is very reactive and explosive. From a source:
Picric acid is a yellow crystalline, high explosive bursting charge. It is initiated by lead azide or mercury fulminate. Picric acid has the same effectiveness as TNT.... Picric acid in contact with lead produces lead picrate, a sensitive and violent explosive.
The idea of 2300 tons of this stuff on any one ship give me the willies. If it all went up at once, which by the descriptions it did, it would be the equivalent of a modern day medium sized tactical nuke.
Good examples BTW. Looks like just another crackpot theory filtering through the memepool. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
I won't claim to be an expert on North Korea, but I'm sure I know more than your average/.er: I speak some Korean, was stationed in South Korea for two years in the Air Force, try to keep up with the news from there, and I still have friends there.
I wouldn't be so sure of Kim Jong Il's sanity. Their latest tactics don't seem too likely to lengthen their time in power.
I'm no expert either, not having spent my life studying the political history of the region (and neither is George Bush or Condi Rice). However, I read, write and speak Korean fluently, lived in Korea for 11 years from '76 to '87. I regularly read two Korean newspapers via the internet and also the Japanese and Hong Kong newspapers. And I feel that the complete lack of strategy (long or short term) taken by Bush Jr. with regard to North Korea has been an utter and complete failure.
Don't be fooled by Kim Jong Il's supposed craziness. North Korea is one of only two cold war Marxists states still maintaining their independence and the only one of real strategic importance. North Korea has managed to keep Russia, China and the U.S. from controlling them for close to 50 years by playing the fear and greed of each against the other. They didn't do that by being stupid or reckless. Just because their actions are extreme doesn't mean that they are acting without calculation.
Sure the anthrax came from our own labs, but most likely as a result of sloppy handling, not malicious intent. Several universities around the country have been supplied with anthrax samples from the government. Hopefully they've woken up to the possible consequences of their lax security and fixed it by now.
No malicious intent huh? You can't just walk out with a tinful of the stuff, or at least without it leaking all over the place. The anthrax that was mailed wasn't just "samples", it was extremely sophisticated, "aerosol capable" highly refined anthrax spores. This kind of stuff doesn't occur natuarally (and is NOT used for typical research). The stuff that occurs naturally isn't as concentrated, isn't as pure and is much "wetter" for want of a better word. The kind of stuff that was mailed is only needed to make high efficiency warheads, not to test cures. In fact, I seem to recall many experts saying that only the U.S. has the capability to refine anthrax to the degree used in the terrorist attacks. And in the U.S., there's probably only one or two laboratories that know how to do it. From genetic analysis, we probably know where it came from and probably have a (very) short list of suspects. But arresting those responsible would mean revealing where and how they learned to refine anthrax to that degree. So another terrorist is no longer on the top list of suspects. Wonderful how selective our "War on Terrorism" is.
I don't think Bin Laden had any such grand strategy in mind when the attacks were planned. Ever since they first bombed the WTC in 1993, they kept escalating the attacks. When we didn't retaliate with enough force or resolve, he saw that as weakness. He probably never expected us to actually put our troops in danger, on the ground.
Perhaps. Nevertheless, our perceived weakness was only a part of the calculations of Bin Laden, IMO. (Part of that weakness was also caused by Congress baying for Clinton's blood at any hint of our armed force's blood. Somalia was as much a phenomenon of Clinton as the Republican Congress.) Do the Palestinians think the Israelies lack will? Again, just because their goals seem ridiculous to us doesn't mean that they are simply acting with no underlying plan. From what I have read, the object of Bin Laden was to create a fresh new Jihad and reestablish independence from perceived U.S. influence for Saudi Arabia and unite all of Islam (under himself of course). Of course, he may have been hoping for a resultant miracle from Allah. Although I doubt it.
North Korea may not want to take over the world, but they definitely have plans to invade South Korea and Japan. Their quasi-Marxist, central-planning philosophy of "self-sufficiency" has led to massive famine and economic stagnation. The only reason they have any food to eat is South Korean and US aid.
And who made you the expert on North Korea? They may still squak about reuniting the peninsula, but N.K. isn't insane, they know the can't invade South Korea. Japan? Don't make me laugh. What makes you think that given their current situation they aren't more concentrated on simple survival? This most recent ploy is an effort to obtain guarantees of their regime's safety.
Are you kidding, or just ignorant? Russia has more nukes than us, and the only biological and chemical weapons we have left are used for training and research only, not research into new weapons mind you, but how to defend against them.
Yes, we are still the only country to use nuclear weapons in war. However, it probably saved the lives of 5 million American and Japanese soldiers who would've died in an invasion, and it ended the war.
As the others have pointed out, we still have more nukes than russia. (We also have far more nukes in workable condition, in addition to a decisive first strike capability in our nuclear armed submarines, still deployed through out the deep oceans of the world). We signed a treaty not to develop chemical and biological weapons. But we did anyway using a loophole claiming that we were trying to figure out to "fight against" bio-chem weapons. Where do you think the Anthrax used in the post 9/11 mail attacks came from? From our own research programs.
You also have a severe misunderstanding of the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists' mindset. The reason they even attempted 9/11 is they thought the US was a "paper tiger." Throughout the 90s they kept escalating their attacks, but Bill Clinton never retaliated quickly or decisively enough. The most he ever did was lob a few cruise missiles at empty training camps and pharmeceutical factories.
Nice bullshit analysis. Al Qaeda (and not Iraq mind you) attacked on 9/11 in an attempt to cause the U.S. to overreact against Afghanistan so OSB could unite the radical elements in the middle east against the U.S., overthrow the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia and gain a strangle hold over the oil vital to the U.S. economy. OSB thought that Al Qaeda could mire the U.S. in a prolonged Vietnam-like war in Afghanistan, as the USSR had been caught in the 80's. Fortunately, the technological advances of the last two decades and the general unpopularity of the Taliban created a different outcome in Afghanistan. Also the 9/11 attack proved to be less "popular" than anticipated.
This is the same administration which when initially asked the question concerning global warming, wanted "more research" to verify that the phenomenon was real. Now that it has been proven to be real, they want "more research" to clarify the extent of the phenomenon. Essentially, after insisting that smoking wasn't harmful to your health, upon being shown that smoking is harmful to one's health, they now want more research to figure out "the degree of damage" caused by smoking.
This administration is one of the most idealogically fixated administrations in recent history. Ideology always trumps reality in the decision making of this administration. Consider their positions on Iraq vs. North Korea. Consider their positions regarding our signed commitments and treaties vs. our Oil interests (Kyoto treaty). Or "Free Trade" vs. the interests of our Steel and Lumber producers. Or contraception vs. AIDS.
From what I can tell, the basic ideology of this administration seems to be: The interests of the United States of America lie with the interests of it's big companies, it's religious right, and it's rich and powerful.
Of course, now I can expect friendly clicks on my telephone and strange delays to the delivery of my email.
Yeah, but the characters are still trademarked. As such it is illegal to publish new stories, make games, create movies, etc. starring Tarzan without obtaining approval from (and usually paying) the Burroughs estate. Check out the credits to Disney's Tarzan movie.
Of course, there are better examples, I just couldn't think of them at the time. How about these: the somewhat recent Gone With The Wind vs. The Wind Done Gone controversy, or just the more recent Cage "silence" composition crapola.
In his comments, Klawans makes reference to old Jazz 78 rpm records that he has transfered to CD, AND which he says record companies will not reissue because they are not profitable.
This argument is strongly flawed. First, the preservation of art form has little to do with profitability and everything to do with art lover's willingness to preserve those forms. History is full of examples of obscure books, art, and music that have been preserved while more popular (profitable) works fell by the wayside.
You're missing the point. To use your analogy regarding 78rpm records, clauses in the DMCA would make it legal for a manufacturer to put a time bomb in all 78 record players AND make it illegal for you to repair 78rpm record players or even research how these record players work. Audio and video recordings, unlike text, are inherently coupled to the playing mechanism (record player, CD player, VCR, DVD player) and the DMCA can be interpreted in such a way as to prevent the preservation (through research and repair) or the players themselves. With audio and video records, copying to new formats is a neccessary and vital means of preservation.
500 year old books can be read and can last for another 500 years. 200 year old pictures can be seen and will probably last that much longer. 100 year old films have deteriorated to the point where most are unviewable and need to be TRANSFERRED to be viewed and preserved. The same will deterioration will happen to CD's eventually. If you couldn't make copies of your CD's, how will your children listen to them if they didn't have any working CD players? What if they didn't know the format that the CD's are in? What if it were illegal for them to fix CD players, figure out how CD players work, and if the CD format were a "trade secret?". The DMCA makes all of that legal for media companies to do.
Putting these recordings on P2P networks for anyone to download just denies descendants of the original artists of those recordings their rightful royalties.
Unsanctioned distribution of works under copyright is illegal and not neccessary to exercise fair use. Can you say straw man.?
As long as you mention descendants, let me rant on that subject for a short moment: <rant>just because the decendants of Edgar Rice Burroughs et al, are still making millions off of what their grandparents created, doesn't mean that that is what our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" clause into Article I of the Constitution. Note that it says "limited Times" and "Authors and Inventors" and not "forever" and "Authors, Inventors, their heirs and their investors"</rant>
the $14.2 billion is EBITDA or "Earnings Before Interest, Tax and Depreciation Accumulated." quoted from yahoo's financial profile of microsoft.
Hey, I'm not arguing that Microsoft is charging prices that some people aren't willing to spend. I am arguing that as a monopoly with the ability to set market prices for what has become an essential resource for PC OEM's, Microsoft should not be free to compete in other emerging markets by selling products below cost to gain market share. Microsoft should not be free to bundle software into their OS in order to dominate new software markets.
Uhmm, even after that $5.4 billion in R&D they still enjoyed $14.2 billion in profits last fiscal year (EBITDA). That's on $30 billion in sales. Find me another company with $30 billion in sales enjoying a 44% operating margin. Heck find me another company with more than $1 billion in sales enjoying a 44% operating margin. For more than 5 consecutive years. Find me a company who is holding 1.3 times their annual sales IN CASH. BTW these figures are AFTER the expenses of research have been taken out.
The research that Microsoft does is not the issue. The jobs and software that Microsoft creates is not the issue. At issue is the fact that Microsoft is abusing its monopoly position to charge excessively in markets which it holds dominance (namely operating systems for the main OEM manufacturers of PCs and office suites). At issue is the fact that Microsoft is using the profits it gains from this abuse to extend its monopoly to other markets. At issue is the fact that Microsoft is effectively DUMPING their products in markets in order to gain market share. (This of course does not touch on their other abuses: API abuses, forced upgrades, fake deals, stealing trade secrets, coersion, forced bundling etc etc etc).
MS has priced their product (successfully, I'm sure) to maximise their profit - which is NOT the cheapest price they could charge, any more than the same is true for Coca-Cola. This is a feature of our modern "capitalist" society; competition only goes so far in the face of advertising and consumer apathy. It has nothing to do with being a monopoly.
You're missing the point. The fact that Microsoft is attempting to make a profit is not at issue here. What is being presented is the fact the Microsoft enjoys abnormally high profit margins from their core products of Windows and Office. Under normal market conditions, if a manufacturer is able to enjoy such high margins, competition soon sprouts up with the aim of underselling the unusually high prices of the original manufacturer. What the paper is pointing out is that Microsoft both enjoys extraordinarily high profit margins and is not worried about competition. Classic signs of a monopoly and abuse of that monopoly.
Again, having a monopoly is not illegal. Abuse of a monopoly, either through anti-competitive behavior or through price gouging, is illegal. Why? Because it makes for inefficient markets and lowers the excess utility for everyone (except the monopolist of course). And it looks like Microsoft has been screwing the market in more ways than one.
There's no reason why you couldn't simulate the actions of neurons with sufficient numbers of transistors.
Uhmmm. Not neccessarily. There's also no reason why you couldn't simulate the weather of the earth with a sufficient number of transistors. That doesn't mean that this "sufficient number of transistors" will be able to fit into the know universe. Until we learn a heck of alot more on the how the brain works, both at a low level and at a high level (how do you recognize it when you smell it again?) conjecture about the "computability" of the brain is just that, conjecture. This, of course, is discounting the non-deterministic (possibly quantum) nature of our brains which may be impossible to duplicate with deterministic transistors. Penrose makes some interesting points in his book, "The Emperor's New Mind", which I don't completely agree with, but seems more reasonable some other books about the future of computing and AI.
The one thing we are sure of is that Kramnik doesn't process a chess board in the same why that Deep Fritz does. And we really don't have any idea what is happening inside of Kramnik's brain. Yet.
WRONG! You are confusing free as in speech with free as in beer. GPL is concerned with free as in speech not beer. GPL ensures that ALL users of a derived work will have access to the source code to modify.
GPL allows derivative works to be sold. GPL allows derivative works to be sold without redistribution rights. GPL simply ensures that derivative works, however they are distributed, keep access to the source code available to all users. When I buy any GPL derived work, I can demand and get the original source code to tweak and modify at will.
BSD does not do this. We know that Microsoft's code has large amounts of BSD licensed code int it. They have proabably made improvements to it and probably haven't improved other areas of the code. Can you see those improvements? Can you fix the flaws (that are probably fixed in other versions of the freely available code) in Microsoft's code? NO! I said this about a similar topic a while back:
Nothing prevents Microsoft from using GPL'ed code. Just make the source available to their customers. Oh, that prevents MS from screwing their customers and selling shitty software? Well, exxcccuuuusseee me. Don't steal my code then.
The software and property analogy doesn't really work because property can't be forked.
Slashdot Mirror
Oooh, forgot all about that. I guess it's the first scare that you remember, but yes, the predator was 10 times scarier, because there I was, thinking I'm a bad ass mo'fo, armed to the teeth when right next to me, I heard that whisper... Awesome! Forget the maps, I think I'll just fire it up.
Another thing which contributed to the Challenger disaster was the increased weight of politics and appearances and the desire not to make waves in the decision making process instead of sound engineering and science. The phrase "take off your engineering hat and put on your managers hat" still makes my skin crawl.
I suspect that an honest and hard hitting investigation will find that, once again, sound engineering and science was lost in an organization as publicity, complacency and managerial harmony increasingly dominated the decision making process. Assuming that we can get such a investigation.
I got more than my money's worth out of the Jaguar. It was a flop but if it had been easier to program, it might have had a chance of making money.
What happened instead was, as soon as consumers heard about the vulnerability, they had the option of patching it themselves, namely, going to Tires-R-Us and getting a new set of tires. The argument was not "study => security" but "secrecy != security" and "easy fix => security"
EnkiduEOT
EnkiduEOT
How much money Disney is making off of Steamboat Willie, I have no idea, but I don't think it's worth extending the copyright forever.
EnkiduEOT
Of course the exception was the Brits, who purchased a few P-38 (C's?), but didn't want to bother with two different engines per plane, and ordered them with the same engines on both wings. They had a real problem flying them because of the torque problem.
BTW, with any axially mounted engine, when you have lots of power, torque can become a problem. Old BMW K motorcycles were notorious for their torque lash.
Another advantage of the P-38 was with its four .50 M2's and two 20mm cannon in its nose pointed straight ahead it had the ability to absolutely hammer an apponent out to the effective range of its guns. Other planes with wing-mounted .50's had to arrange their guns to "merge and spread" at some approximate point (70 yards?). Don't know if any modern simulations account for that though.
EnkiduEOT
And yes, the smog is pretty bad. In fact, I think the air is better in the subways than above ground in Seoul.
Cheers. EnkiduEOT
You seem to be confused as to the relation between altitude and gradient. If you have a steep slope that goes up and down over 10 miles (In Korea), it's going to be alot shorter in overall height than one that goes up and down over 200 miles (the Rockies). That still doesn't mean that the first mountain is less steep (and rough) than the second. And plus, how many cities in the U.S. have 14,000 foot peaks "nearby" (less than 2 hours drive).
Didn't you have to go through tunnels in Seoul (There's quite a few). Did you go to Namsan Tower? How much did you drive in Seoul? How about this quote from a 5th grade study outline "A physical relief map will reveal that the north and east parts of Korea are very mountainous while the south and west have more fields. It is said that you can see a mountain from everywhere in Korea. Have students speculate on the amount of land that would be available for agriculture in such a mountainous country. (Only about one fourth of the land comprising the Republic of Korea is arable)." (source. Or how about this page. Don't you think they would know?
Look, obviously, you have experienced Korea (and you have my sympathies if you chose to drive). What I'm saying is that the perceptions which remain from your experience are flawed. Are you saying that all these sources have a distorted view of the terrain of Korea and your view is correct? Ask your guide in Korea. Ask anyone who has done more than "visit" Korea. Trust me: No one (especially not a cable or antenna engineer) is going to call much of South Korea "flat". Not even Seoul or Busan.
EnkiduEOT
The reason its cheap to set up cells is simple population density. Also makes it cheap to run Broadband to every house in the country. AFAIK, South Korea put down fiber optic (I think 6 or 10 fibers) alongside every single power line over the last 10 years (new and retrofit). The power company then leases out those lines in a relatively non-discriminatory manner. Makes for a very cost effective high speed network.
EnkiduEOT
Just because they are "cold, heartless bastards" doesn't mean that if we ignore them, we win. Or that we shouldn't talk to them. Did we not negotiate with the U.S.S.R. at the height of the cold war? They may not have many cards, but they do border China, Russia, South Korea and Japan (effectively).
They are independent in the sense that no one controls their actions and policies.The current situation would have never occurred had we continued a dialogue with N.K. Now, due to neglect, we are faced with three choices: bomb N.K.'s nuclear refinenment center, let N.K. make a nuclear bomb, or negotiate with N.K. The first will effectively destroy South Korea, and destroy any trust China and Japan have in the U.S. to keep the peace in the region. The second will force Japan to go nuclear and totally destabilize the region. And the third is something that Bush said we'd never do. Let's see what Bush does in the next month and then we'll talk. If we end up at the negotiating table, it will prove to me that Bush's policies has been a complete failure.
This will be my last post so if you want to continue, email me at moc tod oohay ta eelsnad if you want to continue the discussion.
Your points regarding the criminal incompetence of the persons in charge of shipping are spot on. They should have been taken out, had 2 pounds each of picric acid wrapped around various points of their bodies and had them detonated at suitably random amounts of time.
EnkiduEOT
EnkiduEOT
Picric acid is a yellow crystalline, high explosive bursting charge. It is initiated by lead azide or mercury fulminate. Picric acid has the same effectiveness as TNT. ... Picric acid in contact with lead produces lead picrate, a sensitive and violent explosive.
The idea of 2300 tons of this stuff on any one ship give me the willies. If it all went up at once, which by the descriptions it did, it would be the equivalent of a modern day medium sized tactical nuke.
Good examples BTW. Looks like just another crackpot theory filtering through the memepool. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
EnkiduEOT
I'm no expert either, not having spent my life studying the political history of the region (and neither is George Bush or Condi Rice). However, I read, write and speak Korean fluently, lived in Korea for 11 years from '76 to '87. I regularly read two Korean newspapers via the internet and also the Japanese and Hong Kong newspapers. And I feel that the complete lack of strategy (long or short term) taken by Bush Jr. with regard to North Korea has been an utter and complete failure.
Don't be fooled by Kim Jong Il's supposed craziness. North Korea is one of only two cold war Marxists states still maintaining their independence and the only one of real strategic importance. North Korea has managed to keep Russia, China and the U.S. from controlling them for close to 50 years by playing the fear and greed of each against the other. They didn't do that by being stupid or reckless. Just because their actions are extreme doesn't mean that they are acting without calculation.
No malicious intent huh? You can't just walk out with a tinful of the stuff, or at least without it leaking all over the place. The anthrax that was mailed wasn't just "samples", it was extremely sophisticated, "aerosol capable" highly refined anthrax spores. This kind of stuff doesn't occur natuarally (and is NOT used for typical research). The stuff that occurs naturally isn't as concentrated, isn't as pure and is much "wetter" for want of a better word. The kind of stuff that was mailed is only needed to make high efficiency warheads, not to test cures. In fact, I seem to recall many experts saying that only the U.S. has the capability to refine anthrax to the degree used in the terrorist attacks. And in the U.S., there's probably only one or two laboratories that know how to do it. From genetic analysis, we probably know where it came from and probably have a (very) short list of suspects. But arresting those responsible would mean revealing where and how they learned to refine anthrax to that degree. So another terrorist is no longer on the top list of suspects. Wonderful how selective our "War on Terrorism" is.Perhaps. Nevertheless, our perceived weakness was only a part of the calculations of Bin Laden, IMO. (Part of that weakness was also caused by Congress baying for Clinton's blood at any hint of our armed force's blood. Somalia was as much a phenomenon of Clinton as the Republican Congress.) Do the Palestinians think the Israelies lack will? Again, just because their goals seem ridiculous to us doesn't mean that they are simply acting with no underlying plan. From what I have read, the object of Bin Laden was to create a fresh new Jihad and reestablish independence from perceived U.S. influence for Saudi Arabia and unite all of Islam (under himself of course). Of course, he may have been hoping for a resultant miracle from Allah. Although I doubt it.
EnkiduEOT
And who made you the expert on North Korea? They may still squak about reuniting the peninsula, but N.K. isn't insane, they know the can't invade South Korea. Japan? Don't make me laugh. What makes you think that given their current situation they aren't more concentrated on simple survival? This most recent ploy is an effort to obtain guarantees of their regime's safety.
As the others have pointed out, we still have more nukes than russia. (We also have far more nukes in workable condition, in addition to a decisive first strike capability in our nuclear armed submarines, still deployed through out the deep oceans of the world). We signed a treaty not to develop chemical and biological weapons. But we did anyway using a loophole claiming that we were trying to figure out to "fight against" bio-chem weapons. Where do you think the Anthrax used in the post 9/11 mail attacks came from? From our own research programs.
Nice bullshit analysis. Al Qaeda (and not Iraq mind you) attacked on 9/11 in an attempt to cause the U.S. to overreact against Afghanistan so OSB could unite the radical elements in the middle east against the U.S., overthrow the House of Saud in Saudi Arabia and gain a strangle hold over the oil vital to the U.S. economy. OSB thought that Al Qaeda could mire the U.S. in a prolonged Vietnam-like war in Afghanistan, as the USSR had been caught in the 80's. Fortunately, the technological advances of the last two decades and the general unpopularity of the Taliban created a different outcome in Afghanistan. Also the 9/11 attack proved to be less "popular" than anticipated.
EnkiduEOT
You also forgot a cabinet full of similar people except for poor Colin Powell trying to put out all the fires lit by Bush Jr. and Company.
This administration is one of the most idealogically fixated administrations in recent history. Ideology always trumps reality in the decision making of this administration. Consider their positions on Iraq vs. North Korea. Consider their positions regarding our signed commitments and treaties vs. our Oil interests (Kyoto treaty). Or "Free Trade" vs. the interests of our Steel and Lumber producers. Or contraception vs. AIDS.
From what I can tell, the basic ideology of this administration seems to be: The interests of the United States of America lie with the interests of it's big companies, it's religious right, and it's rich and powerful.
Of course, now I can expect friendly clicks on my telephone and strange delays to the delivery of my email.
EnkiduEOT ( bomb uranium plutonium smallpox anthrax sarin mustard )
Of course, there are better examples, I just couldn't think of them at the time. How about these: the somewhat recent Gone With The Wind vs. The Wind Done Gone controversy, or just the more recent Cage "silence" composition crapola.
EnkiduEOT
500 year old books can be read and can last for another 500 years. 200 year old pictures can be seen and will probably last that much longer. 100 year old films have deteriorated to the point where most are unviewable and need to be TRANSFERRED to be viewed and preserved. The same will deterioration will happen to CD's eventually. If you couldn't make copies of your CD's, how will your children listen to them if they didn't have any working CD players? What if they didn't know the format that the CD's are in? What if it were illegal for them to fix CD players, figure out how CD players work, and if the CD format were a "trade secret?". The DMCA makes all of that legal for media companies to do.
Unsanctioned distribution of works under copyright is illegal and not neccessary to exercise fair use. Can you say straw man.?
As long as you mention descendants, let me rant on that subject for a short moment: <rant>just because the decendants of Edgar Rice Burroughs et al, are still making millions off of what their grandparents created, doesn't mean that that is what our founding fathers had in mind when they wrote the "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" clause into Article I of the Constitution. Note that it says "limited Times" and "Authors and Inventors" and not "forever" and "Authors, Inventors, their heirs and their investors"</rant>
EnkiduEOT
the $14.2 billion is EBITDA or "Earnings Before Interest, Tax and Depreciation Accumulated." quoted from yahoo's financial profile of microsoft.
Hey, I'm not arguing that Microsoft is charging prices that some people aren't willing to spend. I am arguing that as a monopoly with the ability to set market prices for what has become an essential resource for PC OEM's, Microsoft should not be free to compete in other emerging markets by selling products below cost to gain market share. Microsoft should not be free to bundle software into their OS in order to dominate new software markets.
EnkiduEOT
The research that Microsoft does is not the issue. The jobs and software that Microsoft creates is not the issue. At issue is the fact that Microsoft is abusing its monopoly position to charge excessively in markets which it holds dominance (namely operating systems for the main OEM manufacturers of PCs and office suites). At issue is the fact that Microsoft is using the profits it gains from this abuse to extend its monopoly to other markets. At issue is the fact that Microsoft is effectively DUMPING their products in markets in order to gain market share. (This of course does not touch on their other abuses: API abuses, forced upgrades, fake deals, stealing trade secrets, coersion, forced bundling etc etc etc).
EnkiduEOT
Again, having a monopoly is not illegal. Abuse of a monopoly, either through anti-competitive behavior or through price gouging, is illegal. Why? Because it makes for inefficient markets and lowers the excess utility for everyone (except the monopolist of course). And it looks like Microsoft has been screwing the market in more ways than one.
Uhmmm. Not neccessarily. There's also no reason why you couldn't simulate the weather of the earth with a sufficient number of transistors. That doesn't mean that this "sufficient number of transistors" will be able to fit into the know universe. Until we learn a heck of alot more on the how the brain works, both at a low level and at a high level (how do you recognize it when you smell it again?) conjecture about the "computability" of the brain is just that, conjecture. This, of course, is discounting the non-deterministic (possibly quantum) nature of our brains which may be impossible to duplicate with deterministic transistors. Penrose makes some interesting points in his book, "The Emperor's New Mind", which I don't completely agree with, but seems more reasonable some other books about the future of computing and AI.
The one thing we are sure of is that Kramnik doesn't process a chess board in the same why that Deep Fritz does. And we really don't have any idea what is happening inside of Kramnik's brain. Yet.
EnkiduEOT
WRONG! You are confusing free as in speech with free as in beer. GPL is concerned with free as in speech not beer. GPL ensures that ALL users of a derived work will have access to the source code to modify.
GPL allows derivative works to be sold. GPL allows derivative works to be sold without redistribution rights. GPL simply ensures that derivative works, however they are distributed, keep access to the source code available to all users. When I buy any GPL derived work, I can demand and get the original source code to tweak and modify at will.
BSD does not do this. We know that Microsoft's code has large amounts of BSD licensed code int it. They have proabably made improvements to it and probably haven't improved other areas of the code. Can you see those improvements? Can you fix the flaws (that are probably fixed in other versions of the freely available code) in Microsoft's code? NO! I said this about a similar topic a while back:
The software and property analogy doesn't really work because property can't be forked.
EnkiduEOT