well, to be fair, i see nothing wrong with what tommy did. If joey is harassing him, hes gotta do what hes gotta do. if that means instilling fear in his bully (because thats what joey is, in your story, a bully) to keep him from harassing him, good for tommy! Fuck joey, why do we care if joey is hurt by the actions of the person that he was being a bully to?
Well, you didn't know that little Joey had been bullied by Tommy for some time. Last week, Joey had enough and punched Tommy. Tommy got laughed at by all the kids, and Joey was feeling pretty righteous about fighting off the class bully. But bullies don't give up so easily. Tommy went and got his daddy's gun.
You still think it's all Joey's fault? Regardless, you've missed the point, which is that laws are invariably not a perfect fit. You don't ever have all the facts. So to jump back to the original point: laws are fundamentally based on assumptions. When they're made, they usually make sense, but as you know society is not static. It is in a constant state of change, and the laws don't always keep up. Even when they're brand new, they may already be out of date. And even when they're new, the assumptions are all correct, and everybody and their mother agrees it's a good law... there are unintended consequences.
This is why I say the life of the law is not logic, but experience. Let me be perfectly clear here: The law is not logical. It's not supposed to be. The law is about experience. It is only experience. There is nothing outside the law, but experience. It cannot look forward. The law is in the past. The law looks backwards. The law begins only after something has happened. So it will always be a few steps behind where society is. Always.
If you read the Wikipedia page I linked, you will see that the Navy is planning to use a combination of diesel generators and gas turbines.
Wikipedia is the Fox News of the citation world. I read it when I want to have a good laugh over how a bunch of marginally-educated people have managed to pool their ignorance together to create something that merely looks factual. Okay, a few things from The World Outside Wikipedia: power requirements -- 105 kilowatt minimum laser power. The actual amount of power required, "to run a laser typically requires about four to five times more energy than what the system emits as light", according to Sir Not Appearing In Wikipedia. So right there, for a single gun, we're talking about 472.5kW average (105 x 4.5). the 100kW minimum for a laser weapon platform is cited in numerous other sites besides this, many ending in.mil or.gov. That's not a small amount of electricity, but yes, it could be done with diesel and gas.
But here's the thing. Doing it with diesel and gas means hauling around the diesel and gas needed to do it. Diesel gets you 38.1 KWH/gallon, roughly. The bottom half of most of these ships is already fuel. And you're talking about making them even more thirsty. And diesel is slow to move, so you need a steady supply line now not just to get to the war, but now to stay in the war as well.
How sure are you about the enemy not having any submarines to torpedo your supertanker you've got in tow behind your fleet to keep all these thirsty energy-weapon fitted ships? And more to the point... what happens to your fleet if the fuel is late (or exploded) ?
Nuclear power suffers from none of these problems. That's why I think your wikipedia cite is bogus: Logistics. Wikipedia is great at being a database, but it sucks donkey balls at analysis. Keep your citations... I much prefer to actually research the problem and think about it.
Would somebody please find the marketers/editors that wrote this and shoot them? THXBYE
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Do you understand that this isn't an example of war? Unless you agree with Bush's definition of the "War on Terror."
Do you understand that this is a specific example, hypothetical in nature, and may or may not be part of a broader military initiative that could be called a war? There are plenty of examples for any definition of war you care to crack out and throw up on the internet where proportional response and non-lethal tactics would be preferred over straight up destruction. You're splitting hairs.
"will it be enough to revive HP's server fleet?"
on
HP Launches Moonshot
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· Score: 1
Whenever slashdot asks "Will it be enough?" what do we say everybody? NO! We say N-O. No.
HP has been attracting fail like it's a government project with unlimited funding and no congressional oversight. I mean seriously, we may be breaking into new physics here with the strong attractive force that all things HP have to all things Fail. And no technology is going to fix that, because the ultimate source of the bogon radiation is (wait for it) HP senior management. They'll figure out a way to screw this up, trust me. They could have just discovered the Holy Grail and they'd still somehow figure a way to botch it so instead of getting eternal youth, we're stuck with an endless series of ever more-expensive drinking glasses that can only hold certain types of beverages and occasionally explode for no reason.
Yeah but you kind of invented that he's a sociopath w/ an anger problem. He's probably a normal dude that just posted something dumb on the internet.
Okay, a normal dude posting something dumb on the internet. Let's start there. We don't know if he's normal. I'm not even sure normal exists, except in some abstract statistical way. But regardless, his normalness can't be argued one way or another because even if we had an iron-clad definition of normal, we have no way of grabbing Sir Normal Maybe and subjecting him to humiliating tests to verify the claim. So we have to fall back on an evaluation based on what he said, which we can both agree was (a) on the internet and (b) really dumb. Now you're absolutely correct that I have no way of knowing if Sir Normal Maybe is a sociopath with anger management issues, but if a sociopath with anger management issues did post something dumb on the internet, it would look very much like what we just read, now wouldn't it? So if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, thinks like a duck... what is it? A cheeseburger of course! This is the internet afterall.
So.. you must then advocate that people shouldn't be allowed to change the temperature of their car then, because looking at the dash is distracting? Or change the radio? Or eat? Or even look at their odometer since they have to take their eyes off the road. Or for that matter, their mirrors???
This argument isn't unlike saying that we should coat everything in foam rubber and ban liquor, cigarettes, sugary food, etc., because kids could be hurt. The thing that is missing in your argument is reasonableness (totally a word). Radios have been in cars for a long time, and while every now and then a police report comes up that says "and while they were distracted with the radio, they plowed through a bunch of nuns in the crosswalk", it happens far, far less often than "was using a cell phone."
And if so, why can't I use that same amount of time to look at a GPS?
Because your GPS needs you to focus and concentrate on it. Using your car's accessories can often be done without taking your eyes off the road, and if you do, it's only for a moment (such as looking at the odometer, rearview mirror, etc.) There is a certain threshold of attention at which a person's level of distraction reaches the point where the risk of an accident balloons. Cell phones (and GPS) clearly are on the wrong side of that threshold, unlike looking at your odometer.
It is possible to make sure that if someone does not use good judgement, they are held responsible for their actions. Rules like you suggest are the same ones that get kids suspended from school because they point their fingers and say 'bang'.
Sure, but then there's the reverse. Last week, little Tommy took his dad's gun and went outside where little Joey was playing on the swings, pulled it out, and said "If you ever give me a wedgie again, I'll use this!"... and then he ran home and put it back. Now every day at school, little Tommy smiles and does a finger-gun at little Joey. Little Joey is terrified and pees his pants several times, but won't tell anyone why because he's afraid Tommy will shoot him. Doesn't seem like such an unreasonable rule now, does it?
You're beating around the bush; Let's cut the crap. The truth is, the laws are imperfect, but lines have to be drawn somewhere. And there will always be a debate about where to draw that line. But you're being intellectually dishonest here by only using the 'reasonableness' of a response when it supports your position, and not considering whether it could be reasonable to not have it go your way.
The life of the law is not knowledge, but experience. If there's a "stupid" law about finger-gunning getting kids suspended, it's because something happened that made the law seem like a good idea at the time. The law is necessarily reactive in nature, and does not immediately self-correct. It must learn from mistakes and failures, not by some enlightened intellectual process. If that seems terribly inconvenient, I'd have to agree. But it is what it is.
That's an absolutely massive strawman you've set up there.
Actually this is a reductio ad absurdum, not a straw man. But you were very close. I'm trying to demonstrate the absurdity of saying that every military engagement (war) necessarily leads to loss of life. I'm mocking the original poster's assertion that "war = murder". And it is a legitimate argumentation strategy, though it requires a certain degree of finesse that I often lack, since I prefer to go for a snarky shock and awe campaign when I post here over the coldly academic approach.
Well, I bring you over to their house and you have a play date with them. And when you're done playing dress up and house, I drive you back home. And afterwords you're best friends.
how do I break into their web of trust to find a competent journal?
I suppose the same way you find a competent anything: Ask around.
It never ceases to amaze me how seemingly intelligent people can come up with inordinately complex solutions to everyday problems... it's like guys who insist on not stopping for directions... they'll drive in circles for hours when all it would have taken was to walk into a gas station and ask where to go. Of course, how do we trust the gas station attendant? He could be handing out disinformation and fake maps...
Was the defendant using a device to write, send or read a text-based communication? No. Therefore, he cannot be guilty of violation of this section of the law. Period. End of consideration.
Was he reading something on the screen? Communication. Does his phone need a network connection to get the route to take? Communication. Is there text on the screen? Well then. Period. End of consideration. Sorry... but your interpretation is not the only interpretation here. Also, you're not a judge or a lawyer, you're just some guy on the internet with delusions that the world is fair and sane.
Was he communicating with a person? No. He does not meet the definition of "text-based communication". Not guilty.
You think a person is a squishy meat bag under the law, and nothing else? I've got some bad news...
Now I know you didn't read the law. It was amended effective Jan. 1, 2013. That's three months ago, plus a few days. That's what you call "out of date"?
I got some milk in the fridge from January of this year. I'm sure it's still good. Oh wait... "out of date" may be context-sensitive, like my curdled and foul milk in the fridge. For example, the "out of date" part may refer to the thinking behind the law, not the "use by" date stamped on it.
You don't think they had "modern phones" four months ago?
I try really hard not to make assumptions regarding my elected officials and their proficiency with modern technology. It tends to end in frequent disappointment.
I know, it is California, but I think they have reasonably modern technology available there.
Availability doesn't mean use. If that were the case, we'd all be using Windows 8 right now.
When a judge says "well, text-based communication is against the law because it is distracting, and using a GPS is distracting too, so this law clearly covers using a GPS..." he's flat out wrong.
Which is some fine and dandy logic on your part, and it's not as though I'm disagreeing on any of the particulars, your conclusion is totally whack. Look at it another way: If I'm texting an automated service to get today's lottery numbers and run over a bunch of nuns in the street, am I any less guilty of a crime than if I were texting my imaginary boyfriend? Of course not. Common sense goes both ways -- your steadfast refusal to acknowledge that there is some wiggle room to both sides, not just your side, is somewhat disappointing in this regard.
I stand by my original assessment: The judge is interpreting the law within reasonable parameters. You may disagree with the conclusion, but your argument is using logic that the law does not recognize and cannot consider. I happen to agree with your conclusion -- that this is something that should be fixed. I simply differ on my opinion of where the problem lays -- which is not with the judge, but with the legislators.
Really? Because in cryptography, we solved this a long time ago: It's called a web of trust. If you find a journal that is reputable and like it, then "sign it". Except instead of using crypto in this sense, give your readers a list of trusted peers on the back page.
It's just like what we already do: We trust our educated friends to separate bullshit from genuine science... why not formalize this process?
I should probably clarify my earlier statement: Unit names and ship names are cool. Everything else is boring. Of course, in some cases, the names are also comedy gold. Take for example the British... they named a WWI ship the HMS Cockchafer. Yeah. A testament to miserable Britain if there ever was.
War is about murdering the other people and breaking their equipment before they use their equipment to murder you.
No it isn't, you nitwit. War is about achieving specific objectives by force. The force doesn't have to be lethal, and very often it isn't. As even Sun Tzu wrote, "Preserving the enemies army is best, destroying it second best." Your myopic, sociopathic way of looking at war is disturbing in the extreme. Thankfully, the modern military has no use for poorly-adjusted rambos like yourself.
If you're using a laser, or a bullet, or a missile, or any of a myriad of weapons against a boat or an airplane, then it had damn well better pose enough of a threat to you that you are perfectly okay with everyone on it dying, and perhaps maybe even want to kill them.
Terrorists have just taken control of an oil tanker in San Francisco's bay. They have over a hundred hostages and have threatened to blow holes in the hull and scuttle the ship, causing a massive environmental disaster, unless a dozen of their copatriots from Guantanamo Bay are released. You have twenty four hours to comply. Do you:
a) Blow up the tanker with your orbital ion cannon because war is about murdering other people, and thus causing a massive ecological disaster and billions of dollars in economic damages, or; b) Sneak a small team of Navy SEALS on board, neutralize the terrorists, and retake the ship with minimal casualties.
As anyone who doesn't have a serious screw loose in their brain can see, there are military options that don't involve going all murder-happy... because, you know, the military, unlike you, doesn't have some deep-seated anger management issues.
If you don't think something's important enough to kill anyone who gets in the way of it, it's not worth going to war over, since that's what war is.
What disturbs me about your logic here is that murdering people is 'Plan A' in your world, and 'Plan B' isn't. The military isn't some gun-ho institution where people get to freely kill others. There are rules of engagement and a whole host of other things designed specifically to limit the loss of life whenever possible. And despite us having nuclear weapons, for example, we still rely on less damaging weapons all the way down to rubber bullets and tear gas. The military wouldn't need any of these options if it didn't make saving lives a priority. That's ultimately what our soldiers do: They don't take lives, they save them. Ours, to be precise. War is often about protecting what we value most, not just kicking sand in other people's faces.
The judge over-stepped in this case & is legislating from the bench.
No. The judge isn't allowed to consider those other pieces of legislation and non-legislation that you provided. The judge is only allowed to look at the relevant law, and decide whether a given set of circumstances meets that or not. In this case, the judge is not over-stepping. The law, as written, doesn't account for other uses of a phone, possibly owing to the fact that the people who wrote it didn't have the modern phone in mind when they wrote it. The law is out of date, but the judge is correct in his interpretation. You can't blame the judge for this: It's on your elected representatives (you did vote, right?) to keep the laws current and relevant. The judge is only there to apply those laws, not question their sanity, relevance, or modernity. Remember, there's still laws on the book about horses on the freeway... even though a horse can't run as fast as the minimum posted speed. But should such a horse ever spawn, there are laws to cover it.
Because, while distracted driving is a problem, navigation aids do more good than harm. It is easier to defend them than eating, applying makeup, listening to music, etc. that we permit.
Here again you're trying to talk about the merits and drawbacks of the law using comparisons. The judge wasn't allowed that luxury. The judge can only consider the law and the legislative intent in making the law (within some parameters). If the law says you can't wash your horse in your driveway on sundays, it may be a stupid law, but if the police find a wet horse in your driveway, you still broke it.
Basically, they want the ship to have a huge amount of electrical generation capacity onboard, then multiple redundant busses to route the power all over.
Only one technology can deliver that: Nuclear power.
If they have multiple generators as well as multiple redundant busses the ships might not have any single spot where damage could put the ship out of commission.
No, but the ship now has a whole lot of places that, if hit, would cause radiation to spew out. Carriers are themselves small floating towns, and in a combat situation may only be a hundred miles or so from a major population center. You're now in a situation where, if one of the reactors was exposed, you may have to scuttle the ship in order to prevent an even greater ecological catastrophe.
Railguns and lasers also have the nice property that they don't explode when hit.
The gun itself, perhaps not. But the equipment it's attached to can go off like a bomb if it shorts out.
Let's just hope they don't use Windows 8 for the power management computers.
They use Windows NT. No, I'm serious. Many of our nuclear-power facilities on these ships are still running old versions of windows. However, with only one notable exception during a shakedown cruise, its use hasn't caused any operational difficulties.
The reason why they want large amounts of power and energy weapons is not because they're worried about running out of ammo. It's because it makes logistical sense given that the carrier is developing into its own mobile, floating, military base. The aircraft launching systems and amount of electronics equipment requires staggering amounts of electricity. Because of this, it's natural to simply extend that capability and develop laser and railgun systems because there's already a huge need for electricity so from a logistical standpoint, there are benefits.
But these weapons are no less dangerous than a room full of conventional ammunition -- large amounts of electrical equipment failing in a contained area can wreak devastation far in excess of what a torpedo could do.
What makes you think they won't name the series of Laser gunboats after sharks?
Because the only cool names in the military are on the unit patches the soldiers wear. Everything else is an acronym for something that sounds like a Terminator T-1000 accessory.
(We never did like that particular autoclave anyway.)
You need to completely disassemble something so every surface is visible in an autoclave. If you don't do that, you don't kill all the bacteria. Which means, you failed at your job -- with potentially lethal results. If you ever put something in that had a battery compartment to begin with, that tells me before you even close the door that you should be ejected out of the fourth floor window in a firey blob as a lesson to other technicians to not mess around with safety procedures.
...capable of obliterating small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles with a blast of infrared energy.
And what will it do to people on those small boats, or if fired at a manned aerial vehicle? What kind of horrific injuries will occur that I won't be seeing on CNN, who's still convinced Tazers are perfectly non-lethal and have no long-term effects? It's like these crowd-control devices that use microwave radiation to create searing heat and pain in protesters -- that's all fine and dandy but it's just like water cannons: You assume that a blob of several thousand people can just up and run away in a few moments. If you've ever seen actual footage of these devices in use, you know that people are hurt and killed by them either due to being unable to get away (and drowning, or getting severe skin burns and blindness), or they get trampled to death.
So... the "unintended" consequences of ship-mounted lasers? You know, the ones the popular media doesn't report on? I'm all ears.
Mistakes with this level of both fail and visibility are invariably due to politics rather than technology. I'm guessing some mid-level manager decided their department was special and severely under-estimated the amount of resources required, and tried to in-house the migration for a political reason that now is obviously stupid but at the time seemed really smart, or at least said manager wasn't told it was doomed to failure.
What dialogs are you using to shut down? I go to the start menu and click "shut down."
And yet people here still think PCs are intuitive to use for the average person. How is it common sense to look for the off switch under the label "start" ?
I'm no IT professional and don't know the logistics of it all but when I upgraded it was like day and night.
Hi. I am. I am right now on a team migrating a 140,000 desktops and laptops from XP to Windows 7. I do know the logistics. Those logistics is what is holding up the switch over, not the arguments for upgrading from XP. As it turns out, a lot of businesses don't have the deployment infrastructure to do this quickly. Despite tools having been on the market capable of this for a decade, it turns out that it's not a simple matter of "flip the switch. Eat bacon."
With our own rollout at about 56% and about 38 weeks minimum to completion, even corporations with a lot of extra cash (I work for a financial company. A big one.) have run into significant logistical problems switching to the new operating system. Internal meetings are already being held in board rooms about how to manage the switch from 7 to "another" operating system; Reluctant to jump to Windows 8, but cognizant of the fact that this process will have to be repeatable and successful. We aren't even done with this project yet.
This right here is the real story about the "End of XP"; It simply can't be switched off that fast by corporations. The technology, shockingly, moves faster than bureaucratic change. And that's all it is. That's what's keeping XP sitting in your rearview mirror with it's middle finger stuck out like it's an upset teenager in mom's minivan. Logistics. Pure, simple, logistics.
"We here in IT know you love Windows 7. I apologize for the delay. As soon as I'm done taking the burned out husk of my last attempt to get this to you on a shoestring budget out of the oven, I'll get right on to the next one." Meanwhile, at Microsoft Headquarters...
Since what you seem to be dealing with is someone who's incompetent, because the attacks are not only totally ineffective, but high profile as well. I suggest you trace back the IP address, do some digging, and come up with a name.
And then do something innocent like editing that person's host file so all his attacks and scans are redirected to 127.0.0.1. I have found when dealing with corporate stupidity that going through official channels will get you nowhere. You need to make a statement, but it needs to be about as harmful as dropping a dummy bomb 50 miles from the border of an upstart country that thinks its being cool. I'm sure you can come up with other things to do to this person to get the message across that your systems need to be left alone.
Slashdot Mirror
But in all seriousness, this is a great idea for crowd sourcing.
It was a joke... the idea of someone taking it seriously is rather chilling. That it's been up-modded doubly-so.
well, to be fair, i see nothing wrong with what tommy did. If joey is harassing him, hes gotta do what hes gotta do. if that means instilling fear in his bully (because thats what joey is, in your story, a bully) to keep him from harassing him, good for tommy! Fuck joey, why do we care if joey is hurt by the actions of the person that he was being a bully to?
Well, you didn't know that little Joey had been bullied by Tommy for some time. Last week, Joey had enough and punched Tommy. Tommy got laughed at by all the kids, and Joey was feeling pretty righteous about fighting off the class bully. But bullies don't give up so easily. Tommy went and got his daddy's gun.
You still think it's all Joey's fault? Regardless, you've missed the point, which is that laws are invariably not a perfect fit. You don't ever have all the facts. So to jump back to the original point: laws are fundamentally based on assumptions. When they're made, they usually make sense, but as you know society is not static. It is in a constant state of change, and the laws don't always keep up. Even when they're brand new, they may already be out of date. And even when they're new, the assumptions are all correct, and everybody and their mother agrees it's a good law... there are unintended consequences.
This is why I say the life of the law is not logic, but experience. Let me be perfectly clear here: The law is not logical. It's not supposed to be. The law is about experience. It is only experience. There is nothing outside the law, but experience. It cannot look forward. The law is in the past. The law looks backwards. The law begins only after something has happened. So it will always be a few steps behind where society is. Always.
If you read the Wikipedia page I linked, you will see that the Navy is planning to use a combination of diesel generators and gas turbines.
Wikipedia is the Fox News of the citation world. I read it when I want to have a good laugh over how a bunch of marginally-educated people have managed to pool their ignorance together to create something that merely looks factual. Okay, a few things from The World Outside Wikipedia: power requirements -- 105 kilowatt minimum laser power. The actual amount of power required, "to run a laser typically requires about four to five times more energy than what the system emits as light", according to Sir Not Appearing In Wikipedia. So right there, for a single gun, we're talking about 472.5kW average (105 x 4.5). the 100kW minimum for a laser weapon platform is cited in numerous other sites besides this, many ending in .mil or .gov. That's not a small amount of electricity, but yes, it could be done with diesel and gas.
But here's the thing. Doing it with diesel and gas means hauling around the diesel and gas needed to do it. Diesel gets you 38.1 KWH/gallon, roughly. The bottom half of most of these ships is already fuel. And you're talking about making them even more thirsty. And diesel is slow to move, so you need a steady supply line now not just to get to the war, but now to stay in the war as well.
How sure are you about the enemy not having any submarines to torpedo your supertanker you've got in tow behind your fleet to keep all these thirsty energy-weapon fitted ships? And more to the point... what happens to your fleet if the fuel is late (or exploded) ?
Nuclear power suffers from none of these problems. That's why I think your wikipedia cite is bogus: Logistics. Wikipedia is great at being a database, but it sucks donkey balls at analysis. Keep your citations... I much prefer to actually research the problem and think about it.
Would somebody please find the marketers/editors that wrote this and shoot them? THXBYE
Hi. I'm part of the engineering team tasked with tracking down and eliminating people upon request, who have managed to slight someone else on the internet. We've logged your request and will get to it as quickly as possible. However, due to our limited budget and the unexpected popularity of our service, the high volume of requests will delay our response time. We currently estimate that we'll be able to service your request on October 27th, 2238, at 8:00 pm.
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Do you understand that this isn't an example of war? Unless you agree with Bush's definition of the "War on Terror."
Do you understand that this is a specific example, hypothetical in nature, and may or may not be part of a broader military initiative that could be called a war? There are plenty of examples for any definition of war you care to crack out and throw up on the internet where proportional response and non-lethal tactics would be preferred over straight up destruction. You're splitting hairs.
Whenever slashdot asks "Will it be enough?" what do we say everybody? NO! We say N-O. No.
HP has been attracting fail like it's a government project with unlimited funding and no congressional oversight. I mean seriously, we may be breaking into new physics here with the strong attractive force that all things HP have to all things Fail. And no technology is going to fix that, because the ultimate source of the bogon radiation is (wait for it) HP senior management. They'll figure out a way to screw this up, trust me. They could have just discovered the Holy Grail and they'd still somehow figure a way to botch it so instead of getting eternal youth, we're stuck with an endless series of ever more-expensive drinking glasses that can only hold certain types of beverages and occasionally explode for no reason.
Yeah but you kind of invented that he's a sociopath w/ an anger problem. He's probably a normal dude that just posted something dumb on the internet.
Okay, a normal dude posting something dumb on the internet. Let's start there. We don't know if he's normal. I'm not even sure normal exists, except in some abstract statistical way. But regardless, his normalness can't be argued one way or another because even if we had an iron-clad definition of normal, we have no way of grabbing Sir Normal Maybe and subjecting him to humiliating tests to verify the claim. So we have to fall back on an evaluation based on what he said, which we can both agree was (a) on the internet and (b) really dumb. Now you're absolutely correct that I have no way of knowing if Sir Normal Maybe is a sociopath with anger management issues, but if a sociopath with anger management issues did post something dumb on the internet, it would look very much like what we just read, now wouldn't it? So if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, thinks like a duck... what is it? A cheeseburger of course! This is the internet afterall.
So .. you must then advocate that people shouldn't be allowed to change the temperature of their car then, because looking at the dash is distracting? Or change the radio? Or eat? Or even look at their odometer since they have to take their eyes off the road. Or for that matter, their mirrors???
This argument isn't unlike saying that we should coat everything in foam rubber and ban liquor, cigarettes, sugary food, etc., because kids could be hurt. The thing that is missing in your argument is reasonableness (totally a word). Radios have been in cars for a long time, and while every now and then a police report comes up that says "and while they were distracted with the radio, they plowed through a bunch of nuns in the crosswalk", it happens far, far less often than "was using a cell phone."
And if so, why can't I use that same amount of time to look at a GPS?
Because your GPS needs you to focus and concentrate on it. Using your car's accessories can often be done without taking your eyes off the road, and if you do, it's only for a moment (such as looking at the odometer, rearview mirror, etc.) There is a certain threshold of attention at which a person's level of distraction reaches the point where the risk of an accident balloons. Cell phones (and GPS) clearly are on the wrong side of that threshold, unlike looking at your odometer.
It is possible to make sure that if someone does not use good judgement, they are held responsible for their actions. Rules like you suggest are the same ones that get kids suspended from school because they point their fingers and say 'bang'.
Sure, but then there's the reverse. Last week, little Tommy took his dad's gun and went outside where little Joey was playing on the swings, pulled it out, and said "If you ever give me a wedgie again, I'll use this!" ... and then he ran home and put it back. Now every day at school, little Tommy smiles and does a finger-gun at little Joey. Little Joey is terrified and pees his pants several times, but won't tell anyone why because he's afraid Tommy will shoot him. Doesn't seem like such an unreasonable rule now, does it?
You're beating around the bush; Let's cut the crap. The truth is, the laws are imperfect, but lines have to be drawn somewhere. And there will always be a debate about where to draw that line. But you're being intellectually dishonest here by only using the 'reasonableness' of a response when it supports your position, and not considering whether it could be reasonable to not have it go your way.
The life of the law is not knowledge, but experience. If there's a "stupid" law about finger-gunning getting kids suspended, it's because something happened that made the law seem like a good idea at the time. The law is necessarily reactive in nature, and does not immediately self-correct. It must learn from mistakes and failures, not by some enlightened intellectual process. If that seems terribly inconvenient, I'd have to agree. But it is what it is.
Let's ban driving. That'll decrease car accident risk.
Holy straw man argument, Batman!
That's an absolutely massive strawman you've set up there.
Actually this is a reductio ad absurdum, not a straw man. But you were very close. I'm trying to demonstrate the absurdity of saying that every military engagement (war) necessarily leads to loss of life. I'm mocking the original poster's assertion that "war = murder". And it is a legitimate argumentation strategy, though it requires a certain degree of finesse that I often lack, since I prefer to go for a snarky shock and awe campaign when I post here over the coldly academic approach.
How do I trust YOUR 'educated friends'?
Well, I bring you over to their house and you have a play date with them. And when you're done playing dress up and house, I drive you back home. And afterwords you're best friends.
how do I break into their web of trust to find a competent journal?
I suppose the same way you find a competent anything: Ask around.
It never ceases to amaze me how seemingly intelligent people can come up with inordinately complex solutions to everyday problems... it's like guys who insist on not stopping for directions... they'll drive in circles for hours when all it would have taken was to walk into a gas station and ask where to go. Of course, how do we trust the gas station attendant? He could be handing out disinformation and fake maps...
Was the defendant using a device to write, send or read a text-based communication? No. Therefore, he cannot be guilty of violation of this section of the law. Period. End of consideration.
Was he reading something on the screen? Communication. Does his phone need a network connection to get the route to take? Communication. Is there text on the screen? Well then. Period. End of consideration. Sorry... but your interpretation is not the only interpretation here. Also, you're not a judge or a lawyer, you're just some guy on the internet with delusions that the world is fair and sane.
Was he communicating with a person? No. He does not meet the definition of "text-based communication". Not guilty.
You think a person is a squishy meat bag under the law, and nothing else? I've got some bad news...
Now I know you didn't read the law. It was amended effective Jan. 1, 2013. That's three months ago, plus a few days. That's what you call "out of date"?
I got some milk in the fridge from January of this year. I'm sure it's still good. Oh wait... "out of date" may be context-sensitive, like my curdled and foul milk in the fridge. For example, the "out of date" part may refer to the thinking behind the law, not the "use by" date stamped on it.
You don't think they had "modern phones" four months ago?
I try really hard not to make assumptions regarding my elected officials and their proficiency with modern technology. It tends to end in frequent disappointment.
I know, it is California, but I think they have reasonably modern technology available there.
Availability doesn't mean use. If that were the case, we'd all be using Windows 8 right now.
When a judge says "well, text-based communication is against the law because it is distracting, and using a GPS is distracting too, so this law clearly covers using a GPS..." he's flat out wrong.
Which is some fine and dandy logic on your part, and it's not as though I'm disagreeing on any of the particulars, your conclusion is totally whack. Look at it another way: If I'm texting an automated service to get today's lottery numbers and run over a bunch of nuns in the street, am I any less guilty of a crime than if I were texting my imaginary boyfriend? Of course not. Common sense goes both ways -- your steadfast refusal to acknowledge that there is some wiggle room to both sides, not just your side, is somewhat disappointing in this regard.
I stand by my original assessment: The judge is interpreting the law within reasonable parameters. You may disagree with the conclusion, but your argument is using logic that the law does not recognize and cannot consider. I happen to agree with your conclusion -- that this is something that should be fixed. I simply differ on my opinion of where the problem lays -- which is not with the judge, but with the legislators.
They just don't know how to stop it."
Really? Because in cryptography, we solved this a long time ago: It's called a web of trust. If you find a journal that is reputable and like it, then "sign it". Except instead of using crypto in this sense, give your readers a list of trusted peers on the back page.
It's just like what we already do: We trust our educated friends to separate bullshit from genuine science... why not formalize this process?
Until you get deployed to the SS Flounder...
I should probably clarify my earlier statement: Unit names and ship names are cool. Everything else is boring. Of course, in some cases, the names are also comedy gold. Take for example the British... they named a WWI ship the HMS Cockchafer. Yeah. A testament to miserable Britain if there ever was.
War is about murdering the other people and breaking their equipment before they use their equipment to murder you.
No it isn't, you nitwit. War is about achieving specific objectives by force. The force doesn't have to be lethal, and very often it isn't. As even Sun Tzu wrote, "Preserving the enemies army is best, destroying it second best." Your myopic, sociopathic way of looking at war is disturbing in the extreme. Thankfully, the modern military has no use for poorly-adjusted rambos like yourself.
If you're using a laser, or a bullet, or a missile, or any of a myriad of weapons against a boat or an airplane, then it had damn well better pose enough of a threat to you that you are perfectly okay with everyone on it dying, and perhaps maybe even want to kill them.
Terrorists have just taken control of an oil tanker in San Francisco's bay. They have over a hundred hostages and have threatened to blow holes in the hull and scuttle the ship, causing a massive environmental disaster, unless a dozen of their copatriots from Guantanamo Bay are released. You have twenty four hours to comply. Do you:
a) Blow up the tanker with your orbital ion cannon because war is about murdering other people, and thus causing a massive ecological disaster and billions of dollars in economic damages, or;
b) Sneak a small team of Navy SEALS on board, neutralize the terrorists, and retake the ship with minimal casualties.
As anyone who doesn't have a serious screw loose in their brain can see, there are military options that don't involve going all murder-happy... because, you know, the military, unlike you, doesn't have some deep-seated anger management issues.
If you don't think something's important enough to kill anyone who gets in the way of it, it's not worth going to war over, since that's what war is.
What disturbs me about your logic here is that murdering people is 'Plan A' in your world, and 'Plan B' isn't. The military isn't some gun-ho institution where people get to freely kill others. There are rules of engagement and a whole host of other things designed specifically to limit the loss of life whenever possible. And despite us having nuclear weapons, for example, we still rely on less damaging weapons all the way down to rubber bullets and tear gas. The military wouldn't need any of these options if it didn't make saving lives a priority. That's ultimately what our soldiers do: They don't take lives, they save them. Ours, to be precise. War is often about protecting what we value most, not just kicking sand in other people's faces.
Too risky, let's go back to bullets and artillery shells.
It might be more humane than leaving them alive with all the skin on their face burned off.
The judge over-stepped in this case & is legislating from the bench.
No. The judge isn't allowed to consider those other pieces of legislation and non-legislation that you provided. The judge is only allowed to look at the relevant law, and decide whether a given set of circumstances meets that or not. In this case, the judge is not over-stepping. The law, as written, doesn't account for other uses of a phone, possibly owing to the fact that the people who wrote it didn't have the modern phone in mind when they wrote it. The law is out of date, but the judge is correct in his interpretation. You can't blame the judge for this: It's on your elected representatives (you did vote, right?) to keep the laws current and relevant. The judge is only there to apply those laws, not question their sanity, relevance, or modernity. Remember, there's still laws on the book about horses on the freeway... even though a horse can't run as fast as the minimum posted speed. But should such a horse ever spawn, there are laws to cover it.
Because, while distracted driving is a problem, navigation aids do more good than harm. It is easier to defend them than eating, applying makeup, listening to music, etc. that we permit.
Here again you're trying to talk about the merits and drawbacks of the law using comparisons. The judge wasn't allowed that luxury. The judge can only consider the law and the legislative intent in making the law (within some parameters). If the law says you can't wash your horse in your driveway on sundays, it may be a stupid law, but if the police find a wet horse in your driveway, you still broke it.
Basically, they want the ship to have a huge amount of electrical generation capacity onboard, then multiple redundant busses to route the power all over.
Only one technology can deliver that: Nuclear power.
If they have multiple generators as well as multiple redundant busses the ships might not have any single spot where damage could put the ship out of commission.
No, but the ship now has a whole lot of places that, if hit, would cause radiation to spew out. Carriers are themselves small floating towns, and in a combat situation may only be a hundred miles or so from a major population center. You're now in a situation where, if one of the reactors was exposed, you may have to scuttle the ship in order to prevent an even greater ecological catastrophe.
Railguns and lasers also have the nice property that they don't explode when hit.
The gun itself, perhaps not. But the equipment it's attached to can go off like a bomb if it shorts out.
Let's just hope they don't use Windows 8 for the power management computers.
They use Windows NT. No, I'm serious. Many of our nuclear-power facilities on these ships are still running old versions of windows. However, with only one notable exception during a shakedown cruise, its use hasn't caused any operational difficulties.
The reason why they want large amounts of power and energy weapons is not because they're worried about running out of ammo. It's because it makes logistical sense given that the carrier is developing into its own mobile, floating, military base. The aircraft launching systems and amount of electronics equipment requires staggering amounts of electricity. Because of this, it's natural to simply extend that capability and develop laser and railgun systems because there's already a huge need for electricity so from a logistical standpoint, there are benefits.
But these weapons are no less dangerous than a room full of conventional ammunition -- large amounts of electrical equipment failing in a contained area can wreak devastation far in excess of what a torpedo could do.
What makes you think they won't name the series of Laser gunboats after sharks?
Because the only cool names in the military are on the unit patches the soldiers wear. Everything else is an acronym for something that sounds like a Terminator T-1000 accessory.
(We never did like that particular autoclave anyway.)
You need to completely disassemble something so every surface is visible in an autoclave. If you don't do that, you don't kill all the bacteria. Which means, you failed at your job -- with potentially lethal results. If you ever put something in that had a battery compartment to begin with, that tells me before you even close the door that you should be ejected out of the fourth floor window in a firey blob as a lesson to other technicians to not mess around with safety procedures.
...capable of obliterating small boats and unmanned aerial vehicles with a blast of infrared energy.
And what will it do to people on those small boats, or if fired at a manned aerial vehicle? What kind of horrific injuries will occur that I won't be seeing on CNN, who's still convinced Tazers are perfectly non-lethal and have no long-term effects? It's like these crowd-control devices that use microwave radiation to create searing heat and pain in protesters -- that's all fine and dandy but it's just like water cannons: You assume that a blob of several thousand people can just up and run away in a few moments. If you've ever seen actual footage of these devices in use, you know that people are hurt and killed by them either due to being unable to get away (and drowning, or getting severe skin burns and blindness), or they get trampled to death.
So... the "unintended" consequences of ship-mounted lasers? You know, the ones the popular media doesn't report on? I'm all ears.
Mistakes with this level of both fail and visibility are invariably due to politics rather than technology. I'm guessing some mid-level manager decided their department was special and severely under-estimated the amount of resources required, and tried to in-house the migration for a political reason that now is obviously stupid but at the time seemed really smart, or at least said manager wasn't told it was doomed to failure.
What dialogs are you using to shut down? I go to the start menu and click "shut down."
And yet people here still think PCs are intuitive to use for the average person. How is it common sense to look for the off switch under the label "start" ?
I'm no IT professional and don't know the logistics of it all but when I upgraded it was like day and night.
Hi. I am. I am right now on a team migrating a 140,000 desktops and laptops from XP to Windows 7. I do know the logistics. Those logistics is what is holding up the switch over, not the arguments for upgrading from XP. As it turns out, a lot of businesses don't have the deployment infrastructure to do this quickly. Despite tools having been on the market capable of this for a decade, it turns out that it's not a simple matter of "flip the switch. Eat bacon."
With our own rollout at about 56% and about 38 weeks minimum to completion, even corporations with a lot of extra cash (I work for a financial company. A big one.) have run into significant logistical problems switching to the new operating system. Internal meetings are already being held in board rooms about how to manage the switch from 7 to "another" operating system; Reluctant to jump to Windows 8, but cognizant of the fact that this process will have to be repeatable and successful. We aren't even done with this project yet.
This right here is the real story about the "End of XP"; It simply can't be switched off that fast by corporations. The technology, shockingly, moves faster than bureaucratic change. And that's all it is. That's what's keeping XP sitting in your rearview mirror with it's middle finger stuck out like it's an upset teenager in mom's minivan. Logistics. Pure, simple, logistics.
"We here in IT know you love Windows 7. I apologize for the delay. As soon as I'm done taking the burned out husk of my last attempt to get this to you on a shoestring budget out of the oven, I'll get right on to the next one." Meanwhile, at Microsoft Headquarters...
Since what you seem to be dealing with is someone who's incompetent, because the attacks are not only totally ineffective, but high profile as well. I suggest you trace back the IP address, do some digging, and come up with a name.
And then do something innocent like editing that person's host file so all his attacks and scans are redirected to 127.0.0.1. I have found when dealing with corporate stupidity that going through official channels will get you nowhere. You need to make a statement, but it needs to be about as harmful as dropping a dummy bomb 50 miles from the border of an upstart country that thinks its being cool. I'm sure you can come up with other things to do to this person to get the message across that your systems need to be left alone.