No, it isn't better than Health.gov. It's a glorified frontend. Good work kids.
It isn't even a full-blown front end - just an info site. I certainly can't be critical of what these guys did, and I can't be anything but critical about healthcare.gov, but the excessive hype from the media annoys me. Three days is damn good, but it's the sort of stuff you get from prototyping contests (or whatever you call them) and what not. I suppose it's helpful if you want to see how people respond to the look-and-feel, but the first thing you (hopefully) do when you get a go-ahead for a real design is to throw everything you've written into the trash. That's not a bad thing, and it doesn't necessarily mean you wasted your time, but it is a necessary step. Any decent programmer knows that the worst thing you can do with a big design is to just start coding.
Sometimes I think the main product of Silicon Valley these days is hype. The media laps it up with phrases like "a small group of experts, steeped in Silicon Valley's anything-is-possible mentality". In all fairness the guys who created the site describe it realistically, and give appropriate credit elsewhere, but the media doesn't care. People go "ooh" and "ahh" over outfits like Facebook, whose idea of reliability is that it's ok if the whole thing goes down for a few hours. Compare that to things like banking and trading networks, which were working well many years ago, get little hype, and an unreliable system doesn't mean you get fired - it means you get executed (any your programs don't). I don't mean this as an anti-SV rant per se. Other firms like Netflix get little hype, and manage to keep networks running that account for a third or more of the Internet's bandwidth. Now that's impressive. My real complaint is about the triumph of hype over technology.
20 is an old fart that is no longer very agile at learning.
True, but 20 is also older and wiser - wise enough to know that programming is nothing more than a child's hobby. Be smart, and become a PHB. Me? Some of us are eternally juvenile, but at least I'm not proud of it.
Offshore wind would be very suitable for the Mid-Atlantic Bight. BTW, that's a term I'd never heard before, despite living by it my entire life. It's roughly Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras. Apparently it has strong consistent offshore winds that are ideal. Watch out Midwest, you may not be the country's wind power capital for long.
Very well. A few miles off the coast, a tsunami wave is so low that you'd be lucky to recognize it. They're only destructive when they hit the coast. OTOH, typhoons are another matter.
Some people are turned on by the strangest things. But, since the only harm is to the English language, which is already about as pure as a cribhouse whore, it's not my place to criticize.
Pop quiz: Who sold the Nazis fuel and metal so that they could run around killing
Pop quiz: were all 150 millions Americans of a like mind and did they act in perfect concert during WWII?
As for for FDR's cynical, but perhaps justified, treatment of such actions during the war, perhaps you'd like to read the descriptions of the very people whose research uncovered this treason. You can start here. Should the "business people" responsible been tried for treason after the war? Hell yes.
We fueled the war deliberately
You mean by things like the Lend Lease Act? Ask the British if they objected to US aid prior to our entry into the war.
then entered the war
You mean an America with a strong isolationist sentiment, and a desire not to get hundreds of thousands of her own people killed, didn't enter the war until after we were attacked by Japan, and then a few days later, Nazi Germany declared war on us? That's true.
It permitted us to reduce a bunch of our excess population
You mean the population that people were concerned had a declining birth rate, due to the Great Depression? At any rate, it wasn't a very effective policy for reducing our population. As horrific as our losses of over 400,000 Americans were, it reduced the population by only 0.27%. Then the whole thing was undone by the millions born in the post-war baby boom. A seriously failed policy.
One other minor problem: there is absolutely no evidence for the absurd notion that we wanted to "reduce a bunch of our excess population".
You always have a choice.
Technically that's true. If somebody puts a gun to your head and tells you to either join the military or be shot now, and you choose the bullet now, your heirs will be free to praise you morality. Until and unless that happens to you, shove your sanctimony.
Just curious, what is your opinion about those killed in 9/11? I'm pretty sure many Taliban were attacking the US due to people killed by the US in the middle east.
The Taliban didn't plan or execute the 9/11 attack.
For that matter, how do you know that the Taliban even gave a rat's ass about the Middle East? The Taliban were Pashtun, and it's questionable whether they cared about anyone in Afghanistan outside their tribe, let alone Arabs in the Middle East. OBL was tolerated by the Taliban in large part because of the money he gave them.
If you believe that 9/11 was in retaliation for American actions in the Middle East, you should also believe that the US invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. One is as plausible as the other.
Dead people have little need for food. If we went about wiping Germany off the map, the Germans wouldn't have had to rely on the Soviets or anyone else for food.
nobody should feel too bad if the USA gets wiped off the map
Like the way that Japan and Germany were wiped off the map? And if our goal was to wipe them off the map, why did we send food and other aid after victory?
I'm not sure your comment even deserves a response, but are you saying that only Americans commemorate their veterans? Today is Remembrance Day in the UK and throughout the Commonwealth. Wave to those folks over our northern border - they were fighting WWII before we were. Do you think Russia fails to commemorate its veterans of the Great Patriotic War? (don't forget to thank them, because otherwise Nazi Germany would likely still be around). Should I go on listing the specifics for most of the Allies, or do you get the point?
Would it have lessened his contribution if he had? His service is far more important than any religious differences you may have with him. Interestingly, there are few "Jesus Saves" postings on Slashdot, presumably because it's an inappropriate forum. For some reason, Evangelical Atheists think themselves different.
The Japanese government was installed by the United States after WWII
To their benefit, and I don't give a damn about complaints of paternalism. The US occupation of Japan was one of the most beneficent occupations of a vanquished enemy in history, and whether the motivation was genuine beneficence, ensuring that Japan never threatened us again, or a bulwark against the communists, doesn't change the fact.
Furthermore, the Japanese are free to to change their Constitution, but have chosen not to do so. The "under our direct control" may have been true in the 50's, or arguably the 60's, but certainly not in the 40+ years since. Do you think we'd invade Japan if, for example, they told us to close our bases there? We didn't invade the Philippines when they did so, or France, or New Zealand when they broke the ANZUS agreement.
You make an excellent point. I would be interested in a cite about the number of Chinese killed, not because I doubt you, but out of historical interest. We should also remember that the Chinese provided great support and assistance to the survivors of the Doolittle raid.
May the Japanese casualties rest in peace as well.
Quoting the PP not because I agree with him, but because moderating him to -1 is censorship. That's ironic considering that one of the freedoms veterans fought to defend is freedom of speech. Don't bother me with "Slashdot is a privately owned forum, it's not the government censoring it", blah, blah, blah. This case isn't going to the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, modding down somebody who made a controversial, but not needlessly inflammatory or insulting remark, is stifling debate. That isn't how things are supposed to work in this country.
I don't agree. For all that I've no use for people who don't realize that, unlike many recent ventures, the US fought WWII for very good reasons, and probably saved millions of lives by doing so, I'm not completely averse to the Japanese remembering their civilians lost in the war. Personally I have little use for Japanese sanctimony about the use of the A-bombs, but commemorating the dead is another matter. Even remembering, if not commemorating, their rank-and-file war dead, while a touchy subject, doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me. Many of the rank-and-file had little choice but to "serve".
I don't know why you mention chemical weapons and atom bombs, since the Doolittle Raid involved neither. Nevertheless HE and incendiaries do kill people. They're not celebrating the violence of the mission, but the value of, and the the sacrifices made by, the men who flew that mission. That's what Veteran's Day is about. Considering the idiocy of getting into many of the wars we've gotten into, or started, in recent decades, you may forget that WWII was fought for very good reasons, and that the US was attacked by Japan. The US fight in the Pacific probably saved many lives elsewhere in Asia, the surrounding archipelagos, and Australia. We were allied with just about every other country fighting Japan. The penchant of the Imperial Japanese Forces for mass slaughter was not just propaganda. Good news though: we won, and have been at peace with Japan for 68 years. None of the Doolittle Raiders have complained about that.
The kinds of stoves and fireplaces that the EPA is banning are the bullcrap kinds that builders put in new homes. These are not serious devices for heating homes, they are purely entertainment, so people can watch the pretty flames. Some fireplaces are so poor that they actually have negative efficiency. The house would stay warmer if the fireplace was not used.
Even the best fireplaces are inefficient crap compared to a stove. Ben Franklin realized that. The German settlers mostly used stoves, but the English settlers stuck with fireplaces. He tried to get them to switch because the stoves were 2x as efficient.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it isn't better than Health.gov. It's a glorified frontend. Good work kids.
It isn't even a full-blown front end - just an info site. I certainly can't be critical of what these guys did, and I can't be anything but critical about healthcare.gov, but the excessive hype from the media annoys me. Three days is damn good, but it's the sort of stuff you get from prototyping contests (or whatever you call them) and what not. I suppose it's helpful if you want to see how people respond to the look-and-feel, but the first thing you (hopefully) do when you get a go-ahead for a real design is to throw everything you've written into the trash. That's not a bad thing, and it doesn't necessarily mean you wasted your time, but it is a necessary step. Any decent programmer knows that the worst thing you can do with a big design is to just start coding.
Sometimes I think the main product of Silicon Valley these days is hype. The media laps it up with phrases like "a small group of experts, steeped in Silicon Valley's anything-is-possible mentality". In all fairness the guys who created the site describe it realistically, and give appropriate credit elsewhere, but the media doesn't care. People go "ooh" and "ahh" over outfits like Facebook, whose idea of reliability is that it's ok if the whole thing goes down for a few hours. Compare that to things like banking and trading networks, which were working well many years ago, get little hype, and an unreliable system doesn't mean you get fired - it means you get executed (any your programs don't). I don't mean this as an anti-SV rant per se. Other firms like Netflix get little hype, and manage to keep networks running that account for a third or more of the Internet's bandwidth. Now that's impressive. My real complaint is about the triumph of hype over technology.
20 is an old fart that is no longer very agile at learning.
True, but 20 is also older and wiser - wise enough to know that programming is nothing more than a child's hobby. Be smart, and become a PHB. Me? Some of us are eternally juvenile, but at least I'm not proud of it.
That's true but. but at least, unlike F-35's, F-16's can actually fly.
Offshore wind would be very suitable for the Mid-Atlantic Bight. BTW, that's a term I'd never heard before, despite living by it my entire life. It's roughly Cape Cod to Cape Hatteras. Apparently it has strong consistent offshore winds that are ideal. Watch out Midwest, you may not be the country's wind power capital for long.
I wish we would hurry up and crack cheap hot-fusion powerplants.
They're 20 years in the future.
Very well. A few miles off the coast, a tsunami wave is so low that you'd be lucky to recognize it. They're only destructive when they hit the coast. OTOH, typhoons are another matter.
To be picayune, F-16's are not carrier based planes. Try F/A-18's, and in the not so distant past, the vastly superior F-14's.
Some people are turned on by the strangest things. But, since the only harm is to the English language, which is already about as pure as a cribhouse whore, it's not my place to criticize.
Nice post. But....why did you waste such time and talent feeding a troll?
A compulsion is a terrible thing to waste.
Nabbing a few German scientists and engineers needn't have stopped us from wiping out the rest of Germany.
Pop quiz: Who sold the Nazis fuel and metal so that they could run around killing
Pop quiz: were all 150 millions Americans of a like mind and did they act in perfect concert during WWII?
As for for FDR's cynical, but perhaps justified, treatment of such actions during the war, perhaps you'd like to read the descriptions of the very people whose research uncovered this treason. You can start here. Should the "business people" responsible been tried for treason after the war? Hell yes.
We fueled the war deliberately
You mean by things like the Lend Lease Act? Ask the British if they objected to US aid prior to our entry into the war.
then entered the war
You mean an America with a strong isolationist sentiment, and a desire not to get hundreds of thousands of her own people killed, didn't enter the war until after we were attacked by Japan, and then a few days later, Nazi Germany declared war on us? That's true.
It permitted us to reduce a bunch of our excess population
You mean the population that people were concerned had a declining birth rate, due to the Great Depression? At any rate, it wasn't a very effective policy for reducing our population. As horrific as our losses of over 400,000 Americans were, it reduced the population by only 0.27%. Then the whole thing was undone by the millions born in the post-war baby boom. A seriously failed policy.
One other minor problem: there is absolutely no evidence for the absurd notion that we wanted to "reduce a bunch of our excess population".
You always have a choice.
Technically that's true. If somebody puts a gun to your head and tells you to either join the military or be shot now, and you choose the bullet now, your heirs will be free to praise you morality. Until and unless that happens to you, shove your sanctimony.
Just curious, what is your opinion about those killed in 9/11? I'm pretty sure many Taliban were attacking the US due to people killed by the US in the middle east.
The Taliban didn't plan or execute the 9/11 attack.
For that matter, how do you know that the Taliban even gave a rat's ass about the Middle East? The Taliban were Pashtun, and it's questionable whether they cared about anyone in Afghanistan outside their tribe, let alone Arabs in the Middle East. OBL was tolerated by the Taliban in large part because of the money he gave them.
If you believe that 9/11 was in retaliation for American actions in the Middle East, you should also believe that the US invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. One is as plausible as the other.
Thanks.
Dead people have little need for food. If we went about wiping Germany off the map, the Germans wouldn't have had to rely on the Soviets or anyone else for food.
nobody should feel too bad if the USA gets wiped off the map
Like the way that Japan and Germany were wiped off the map? And if our goal was to wipe them off the map, why did we send food and other aid after victory?
Hopefully you're right. Posting "why the hell did you mod him down" sometimes helps that. It does when I have mod points.
Americans. You are do [sic] full of it.
I'm not sure your comment even deserves a response, but are you saying that only Americans commemorate their veterans? Today is Remembrance Day in the UK and throughout the Commonwealth. Wave to those folks over our northern border - they were fighting WWII before we were. Do you think Russia fails to commemorate its veterans of the Great Patriotic War? (don't forget to thank them, because otherwise Nazi Germany would likely still be around). Should I go on listing the specifics for most of the Allies, or do you get the point?
Would it have lessened his contribution if he had? His service is far more important than any religious differences you may have with him. Interestingly, there are few "Jesus Saves" postings on Slashdot, presumably because it's an inappropriate forum. For some reason, Evangelical Atheists think themselves different.
The Japanese government was installed by the United States after WWII
To their benefit, and I don't give a damn about complaints of paternalism. The US occupation of Japan was one of the most beneficent occupations of a vanquished enemy in history, and whether the motivation was genuine beneficence, ensuring that Japan never threatened us again, or a bulwark against the communists, doesn't change the fact.
Furthermore, the Japanese are free to to change their Constitution, but have chosen not to do so. The "under our direct control" may have been true in the 50's, or arguably the 60's, but certainly not in the 40+ years since. Do you think we'd invade Japan if, for example, they told us to close our bases there? We didn't invade the Philippines when they did so, or France, or New Zealand when they broke the ANZUS agreement.
You make an excellent point. I would be interested in a cite about the number of Chinese killed, not because I doubt you, but out of historical interest. We should also remember that the Chinese provided great support and assistance to the survivors of the Doolittle raid.
May the Japanese casualties rest in peace as well.
Quoting the PP not because I agree with him, but because moderating him to -1 is censorship. That's ironic considering that one of the freedoms veterans fought to defend is freedom of speech. Don't bother me with "Slashdot is a privately owned forum, it's not the government censoring it", blah, blah, blah. This case isn't going to the Supreme Court. Nevertheless, modding down somebody who made a controversial, but not needlessly inflammatory or insulting remark, is stifling debate. That isn't how things are supposed to work in this country.
I don't agree. For all that I've no use for people who don't realize that, unlike many recent ventures, the US fought WWII for very good reasons, and probably saved millions of lives by doing so, I'm not completely averse to the Japanese remembering their civilians lost in the war. Personally I have little use for Japanese sanctimony about the use of the A-bombs, but commemorating the dead is another matter. Even remembering, if not commemorating, their rank-and-file war dead, while a touchy subject, doesn't seem completely unreasonable to me. Many of the rank-and-file had little choice but to "serve".
I don't know why you mention chemical weapons and atom bombs, since the Doolittle Raid involved neither. Nevertheless HE and incendiaries do kill people. They're not celebrating the violence of the mission, but the value of, and the the sacrifices made by, the men who flew that mission. That's what Veteran's Day is about. Considering the idiocy of getting into many of the wars we've gotten into, or started, in recent decades, you may forget that WWII was fought for very good reasons, and that the US was attacked by Japan. The US fight in the Pacific probably saved many lives elsewhere in Asia, the surrounding archipelagos, and Australia. We were allied with just about every other country fighting Japan. The penchant of the Imperial Japanese Forces for mass slaughter was not just propaganda. Good news though: we won, and have been at peace with Japan for 68 years. None of the Doolittle Raiders have complained about that.
The kinds of stoves and fireplaces that the EPA is banning are the bullcrap kinds that builders put in new homes. These are not serious devices for heating homes, they are purely entertainment, so people can watch the pretty flames. Some fireplaces are so poor that they actually have negative efficiency. The house would stay warmer if the fireplace was not used.
Even the best fireplaces are inefficient crap compared to a stove. Ben Franklin realized that. The German settlers mostly used stoves, but the English settlers stuck with fireplaces. He tried to get them to switch because the stoves were 2x as efficient.
A couple of cords? That's an awful lot of ambiance.