It seems there is alot more details about the F-22 before it was in service. Is that because there is more communication with the taxpayers nowadays, or because they don't want you to ask whats in the left hand?
No, it's because building modern fighters involves multiple countries in order to keep costs down as much as possible. Nobody but us ever had the F-117 (or the B2), so they could be kept secret, but every *real* fighter plane we've built in the past 40 years has been fairly well publicized ahead of production because we involve the UK and other allies (and pseudo-allies like Saudi Arabia) in the spec and bidding process. Of course we make slightly different versions of the planes for our use and for export, and our versions do certainly have stuff that you won't hear about for another decade or two.
Like others, I'm baffled at your dismissal of the eDonkey/Kad network. There is none better for finding old or slightly obscure material. Torrents are great for brand new material like a TV show the same day it's broadcast, but finding episodes of some 1960s TV show that was never released on DVD is pretty much impossible unless you know of a dedicated repository to that type of material on some network.
Just to echo this comment, Monster does seem to make the best FM transmitters. I've tried virtually every FM transmitter made for iPods over the years, and the $60 (ack!) Monster charger/transmitter is by far the best.
The distinction is obvious. If spammers can't control the contents of the bounces, the bounces won't get them paid.
Nobody is claiming spammers are getting paid for the backscatter. Backscatter is just collateral damage to the original spam. Spammers don't care because it doesn't cost them anything, but they aren't doing it on purpose. That's why it is the responsibility of the mail administrator to ensure that THEY don't involve third parties in their spam by generating completely new messages and sending them to everyone whose domain was used in a forged address (note these are not bounces, this is Google "helpfully" making a new message and sending it out).
I thought we were done with this idiocy years ago when antivirus programs finally stopped spamming innocent third parties with incorrect notifications that they sent someone a virus.
if it's not an advertisement of some kind, then it's not spam.
Again, to most people, there is no difference. If you're getting thousands of unwanted and unnecessary messages, it's spam regardless of the content. The meaning of spam, remember, is that it drowns the message in a sea of useless messages. It isn't unsolicited commercial email, but it is certainly spam in the original digital sense.
It's irritating, sure, and perhaps Google could mitigate the problem you describe (thousands of messages sent to one forged sender) by rate-limiting bounces, but I don't think the problem you're suggesting is the problem reported by the original poster.
I don't think you're understanding the problem at all. The issue is not sending lots of messages to a single address, or the necessity of rate-limiting. The problem is that Google's mail server automatically generates and sends a new mail message to each individual invalid address, even though there is no reason whatsoever to trust the "from" address on a message. *That* fundamental problem is made even worse because in aggregate you usually wind up with tens of thousands of those messages hitting certain domains at a time because spammers generally use a dictionary list on a random valid domain as the return address of their messages.
if it's not an advertisement of some kind, then it's not spam.
Again, to most people, there is no difference. If you're getting thousands of unwanted and unnecessary messages, it's spam regardless of the content. The meaning of spam, remember, is that it drowns the message in a sea of useless messages. It isn't unsolicited commercial email, but it is certainly spam in the original digital sense.
It's irritating, sure, and perhaps Google could mitigate the problem you describe (thousands of messages sent to one forged sender) by rate-limiting bounces, but I don't think the problem you're suggesting is the problem reported by the original poster.
I don't think you're understanding the problem at all. The issue is not sending lots of messages to a single address, or the necessity of rate-limiting. The problem is that Google's mail server automatically generates and sends a new mail message to each individual invalid address, even though there is no reason whatsoever to trust the "from" address on a message. *That* fundamental problem is made even worse because in aggregate you usually wind up with tens of thousands of those messages hitting certain domains at a time because spammers generally use a dictionary list on a random valid domain as the return address of their messages.
You're being either overly literal, or trying to create a distinction where there isn't much of one.
No, the responses don't contain an original message, nor are they commercial or anything like that, but the spammy thing about this form of backscatter is about the VOLUME and indiscriminate nature of the mail, not the content.
This isn't being blown out of proportion at all. It's nothing like a mailing list sending a confirmation. No spammer is going to send a million messages with different forged addresses to a single email address (the subscribe address) -- that defeats the whole purpose of spamming, which is to contact DIFFERENT addresses!
What google has done is open a wildcard on some domains so that anyone launching a dictionary attack on googlegroups.com will send a million messages TO a million different addresses FROM a million different forged addresses. Google then sends a million bounces back to a million different addresses, and if you run a domain that the spammer used as their "from", you suddenly get tens or hundreds of thousands of identical bounce messages from Google. THAT is backscatter spam -- thousands of useless messages sent to forged addresses on your domain, regardless of content. And no mail server in 2008, much less one run by a major tech company, should make that possible.
To be fair to the AC, the issue has been a number of vendors for some inexplicable reason inventing their own proprietary mini connectors that are sometimes only fractionally smaller than the official minis. I've got a couple of cables I *have* to hang on to because they're the only ones with that particular connector.
But it doesn't compare at all to the SCSI issue, since the proprietary USB connectors are intended to be 1-way connections -- ie, you'll only ever use the special cable to plug the special device into the computer, there is no necessity to ever chain the weird connections because USB doesn't support chaining in that way, and even if it did, there wouldn't be any meaningful way to chain the often tiny portable devices that use the crazy connectors. I've never seen a normal desktop-bound USB device that bothered to use anything other than official USB spec connectors.
Indeed, the success of the USB connector standardization has meant that even non-computer devices are now using them as simple power connections, since they are familiar to users and its easy to find chargers for any situation.
Oh, come on. SCSI will *always* be fun, termination or not. Just the act of putting an adaptor on an adaptor on another adaptor so that you can connect a controller to a disk is an adventure. Just calculating the minimum number of adaptors you need to own to be able to connect any two arbitrary SCSI devices could keep Stephen Hawking busy for an afternoon.
SCSI is one of those technologies where you inevitably wonder "how can engineers be so brilliant, and yet so colossally stupid, at the same time?"
No, you're right, the Mach cards were good, they built up ATI enough that I guess they thought they could slack off on stability for the latter half of the decade. And Trident was indeed the bargain basement graphics in terms of performance, though I recall the drivers being just fine.
Though to be fair, only those of us over a certain age really remember first-hand the crimes against humanity that were ATI drivers in the 1990s. NVidia wasn't even around when ATI was at their lowest, they were facing off against the likes of Matrox (who made great 2d hardware and drivers at premium prices) and 3Dfx (who made great 3d hardware and glide drivers). ATI was practically the Intel onboard video of the era.
Any time I installed an ATI card I half expected it to ask if I wanted to double down before the first boot.
The SDK hasn't even been released yet (we've seen two betas only), and yet people are criticizing it as if this is already the last version of the SDK that will ever be released and no new features or APIs will ever be added.
Christ, the hardware itself is still on its first version (!!) and critics are already acting like the development environment has been neglected since Reagan was in office.
I suppose it's marginally entertaining for tech writers to have a new variation on the old "Apple is Doomed" story that they can use to generate page views. "Recently released handheld battery-powered device doesn't yet replicate all advanced features of a desktop computer! Also, world hunger not eliminated. Apple is doomed!"
Are they serious? They make it sound like a Pandora's Box that could destroy the whole planet, or solar system.
Well, it's not dramatically different from the concerns of some physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project (except that they didn't speak publicly until afterwards, due to the military secrecy).
The truth is, for all the theory and math we work out ahead of time, nobody can guarantee that we actually know what we're doing when we throw the switch for the first time.
So the question becomes, are we willing to risk the.000000000001% chance that we're starting some sort of irreversible chain reaction? Or does the knowledge we gain from the experiment (and the near certainty that such an experiment will be performed by someone else anyways, regardless of our decision here today) outweigh that miniscule risk? Certainly in the case of the Manhattan Project, we knew every other world power was working on the same thing, and it wasn't a question of whether to risk it or not, it was a question of who would risk it first and gain the overwhelming military advantage.
Similarly, I built a Palm OS census application a couple years back that was to be used by doctors and nurses when traveling to third-world countries. We'd gather data on several thousand patients per week. It almost seems like you'd have to go out of your way to make something as simple as a tablet whose sole purpose is collecting census data in any way too complicated. It's a bunch of fields, you fill them out, it synchs up at the end of the day (or hell, they can do it over cell networks in real time if they feel fancy). Sure, you should have good security which adds expense, but beyond that...WTF?
No, but even in moderate Islamic nations, they won't consider non-muslims as friends but instead people they should educate and convince to give up their religion...Ask most moderate or 'peaceful' Islamists how they feel about the Americans or Danes getting killed, and they'll typically have a look of satisfaction.
I don't think I've ever had a Muslim, in over a decade of international travel throughout majority Muslim nations, attempt to convert me or anyone I've ever worked with or spoken to, or proselytize their faith. Which is not to say they aren't thrilled to talk about it, given that it's such a major part of their daily lives in a way that Christianity is not for most westerners.
Of course I don't exactly hang out in the caves of Afghanistan, but I go to far more remote (and religiously strict) places than most people with my skin tone. I've been preached at plenty of times in America, though.
It is an utterly disgusting piece of work and every Christian and non-Christian that didn't riot over it should be ashamed of themselves.
There's a difference between something being offensive or unpleasing to you, and something that everyone no matter their beliefs should riot over.
It's actually a lovely photograph (from a technical and aesthetic point of view), though I certainly understand why people would be offended by the subject matter and be royally upset at the notion of public funding for an award going to the creator of something so controversial.
I would humbly suggest that if you think the density of an emulsion on fiber is more worthy of rioting than, say, the sexual abuse of children in foster care, you might need to reread your Bible. Of course, there's no reason you can't riot over both, but who has the time?
I don't think you can say the same about the leading Christian leaders....
You should probably pay more attention to Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc. They were more than happy to lay the blame of September 11th at the feet of the gays, feminists, abortionists, etc. No, they don't explicitly call for violent action (the ones who do don't become very prominent, they tend to go to jail rather than build major colleges and political institutions), but they explicitly accept and celebrate it as a sign of God's justice on secular America.
There are plenty of passages in the Bible that can be, if so desired, interpreted to mean that those acting contrary to the will of God can and should be killed. There is no greater or lesser ambiguity in any of the holy books, they all can be interpreted through the lens of love or the lens of hate if someone wants to do so.
And I'm pretty sure both Judaism and Christianity require submission to God. Unless you have a completely different copy of the scriptures than the rest of us have access to, all the Abrahamic religions mean submission.
I didn't demonize anyone, I can introduce you to many muslim friends in many moderate islamic countries that want to see Irealis wiped out and express satisfaction when a Dane or American is hurt or killed.
Maybe you should stop seeking out friends who enjoy the demonization and death of anyone who disagrees with them.
From my purely anecdotal evidence of the most heavily Muslim populated countries on earth (the Middle East, Egypt, Malaysia, etc), the vast majority of folks I've interacted with over the years have a very positive attitude towards the West, Americans, the Dutch, and don't revel in the death of anyone, though they have quite a bit of antagonism towards our governments and military actions. 99% of people in the world just want to go to work in the morning and spend the evening and weekends hanging out with their family and friends. Anyone who wakes up in the morning and thinks "gosh, I'd sure like to see some group dead today" is pretty unusual.
Really? You have a "right" to know the Military GO Codes, etc?
Absolutely, just not while they are still valid. As a matter of historical record, they should be preserved and the citizens should have every right to see them so they can judge how well the military and administration did their job during a specific period. I'd be pretty disappointed to find out that anyone with access to a particular console in 1962 could have initiated a first strike on the Soviet Union because all they had to do was guess the code "123456".
You can find out all sorts of incredibly sensitive military operation details after the fact. Anyone with a library card can tell you exactly how many troops were in a specific location on a specific date in 1942, even though ON THAT DATE it would have been a gross violation of national security for them to know.
Everything the government does certainly should be a part of the record, and not destroyed just because partisans feel it will make them look bad, or it is more convenient. Strangely enough, that's exactly what the law says, the White House just didn't care.
the consumer lock down is much worse than I imagined it would be (and I was expecting bad.)
Huh? Anybody who has read more than twenty words about the Touch/iPhone should know you can't load arbitrary applications on it without jailbreaking it. I don't know what else about it is "locked down", would you care to elaborate?
These kind of devices are very much experimental, and pop up in the news every couple of months...but quite far away from any sort of typical use.
They are used somewhat routinely in many hospitals across the US, Canada and Europe. It's been several years since they were research-only. The only reason they aren't used more frequently is simply the cost and size, even the places that use them regularly only have one OR set up with the equipment, while they may be running two dozen ORs on a daily basis.
You're right that they require some training, which is why they've been embraced more quickly by experienced laparoscopic surgeons, since they are used to working on patients with that built-in degree of separation. We've been able to train experienced surgeons to use several different systems in an afternoon, they're not only incredibly capable, they're nearly doctor-proof (because let's face it, even a doctor can outdo the greatest fool when it comes time to screw something up:P ).
Most of your listed issues have long been dealt with. In terms of testing, the robots are far more consistent and predictable than any doctor. They have built-in safety systems on a number of different levels that vary from convenient to life-saving. I don't know of any issues that have arisen in the decades such research has been going on -- the FDA (and other governments around the world) has been satisfied, and what stats I've seen so far indicate lower incidences of complications and mistakes with robotic assistance than without (which should come as no surprise given that it's pretty much their entire purpose).
In terms of education, you're right that it requires training, but nothing as extensive as you seem to be imagining. Sure, many of the tricks and techniques of a specific procedure may change, but the overall surgical experience is pretty familiar. The big difference is that, in many ways, you can slow down the whole process, take your time and examine things in a way you couldn't before. And in terms of new surgical education, you couldn't ask for a better teaching tool than being able to switch the controls between a mentor and trainee with the flip of a switch.
Feedback will be the biggest change, definitely. There are pretty impressive haptics built into the current systems, which will only get better, along with visual overlays of real-time scans of the surgical area. This is kind of a half-dozen of one, six of another issue. You'll always think looking with your own eyeballs and running your finger along something is the best way, but in thirty years your residents will be snickering behind your back because that little change in density you're straining to find is about as subtle as Mount Everest on fire to the operator of the robot. Eventually the tactile surgical skills of the 20th century will be as useful to medical care as knowing how to shoe a horse is to modern transportation.
Cost is the biggest single issue right now, but the systems are getting cheaper while surgical teams are getting more expensive. It won't be long before malpractice insurance companies start offering discounts for procedures to be done with robotic assistance, and that will probably be what opens the floodgates.
that ignorant comment of yours, both about the time it takes to install Windows and how you'll have to track down "every single last driver" is nothing but trolling.
I'm not the poster you're replying to, but I'm not sure what exactly you're disagreeing with. Windows (9x-XP) takes a ridiculously long time to install, in part because it keeps stopping to ask you questions rather than just asking everything first or at the end, so you either have to babysit it, drop by periodically, or create an installer script and burn a disc. Vista is better since it installs a default setup mostly in one go, but it takes a crazy long time to write a few gigs of data. I could install Ubuntu or OS X two or three times in the time it takes XP or Vista to install once on the exact same hardware.
Installing Windows on any laptop with a retail or generic OEM Windows disc (which is what the poster you're disagreeing with is talking about) is an exercise in frustration, unless you've planned ahead and downloaded and burned your specific laptop drivers to a disc (and God help you if you're installing anything before Vista on a SATA boot drive -- either hope the BIOS lets you turn on IDE compatibility mode, or break out the floppy drive for a 1990s retro experience!).
My laptop is actually a Sony (one of the picturebooks, which is why I put up with it) and Sony only provides drivers for about half the hardware on their web site. If you don't have (and use) their specific Windows install CD (which of course does a format and image install with all the crapware), you're in for a wild ride trying to get it to work. It's especially entertaining because the video driver they have on their web site won't even install on the computer, and NeoMagic doesn't provide generic drivers for their chipsets. Thankfully IBM has some Thinkpads that use the same chips, and their drivers don't check what computer you're installing on.
note I did say *permanent* global population collapse -- of course you never know what disasters will crop up next week, but eventually even a new plague or full-scale nuclear war would be overcome. The notion that the "optimists" are pushing is that we're so close to our resource caps right now that it would be literally impossible with any conceivable technology or resource management to feed and clothe another one or two billion people, that there's simply no way that many could exist on Earth at once. But we heard the same kinds of alarm when the population was half of what it is today, and we still don't have even the beginnings of a global shortage of food or living space (what we do have, unfortunately, is a lot of economic issues that make food a problem in specific areas).
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No, it's because building modern fighters involves multiple countries in order to keep costs down as much as possible. Nobody but us ever had the F-117 (or the B2), so they could be kept secret, but every *real* fighter plane we've built in the past 40 years has been fairly well publicized ahead of production because we involve the UK and other allies (and pseudo-allies like Saudi Arabia) in the spec and bidding process. Of course we make slightly different versions of the planes for our use and for export, and our versions do certainly have stuff that you won't hear about for another decade or two.
Like others, I'm baffled at your dismissal of the eDonkey/Kad network. There is none better for finding old or slightly obscure material. Torrents are great for brand new material like a TV show the same day it's broadcast, but finding episodes of some 1960s TV show that was never released on DVD is pretty much impossible unless you know of a dedicated repository to that type of material on some network.
LOL, I hadn't even thought about that. I'm totally stealing that line any time I recommend their transmitter in the future, though :)
Just to echo this comment, Monster does seem to make the best FM transmitters. I've tried virtually every FM transmitter made for iPods over the years, and the $60 (ack!) Monster charger/transmitter is by far the best.
The distinction is obvious. If spammers can't control the contents of the bounces, the bounces won't get them paid.
Nobody is claiming spammers are getting paid for the backscatter. Backscatter is just collateral damage to the original spam. Spammers don't care because it doesn't cost them anything, but they aren't doing it on purpose. That's why it is the responsibility of the mail administrator to ensure that THEY don't involve third parties in their spam by generating completely new messages and sending them to everyone whose domain was used in a forged address (note these are not bounces, this is Google "helpfully" making a new message and sending it out).
I thought we were done with this idiocy years ago when antivirus programs finally stopped spamming innocent third parties with incorrect notifications that they sent someone a virus.
damn formatting! :(
if it's not an advertisement of some kind, then it's not spam.
Again, to most people, there is no difference. If you're getting thousands of unwanted and unnecessary messages, it's spam regardless of the content. The meaning of spam, remember, is that it drowns the message in a sea of useless messages. It isn't unsolicited commercial email, but it is certainly spam in the original digital sense.
It's irritating, sure, and perhaps Google could mitigate the problem you describe (thousands of messages sent to one forged sender) by rate-limiting bounces, but I don't think the problem you're suggesting is the problem reported by the original poster.
I don't think you're understanding the problem at all. The issue is not sending lots of messages to a single address, or the necessity of rate-limiting. The problem is that Google's mail server automatically generates and sends a new mail message to each individual invalid address, even though there is no reason whatsoever to trust the "from" address on a message. *That* fundamental problem is made even worse because in aggregate you usually wind up with tens of thousands of those messages hitting certain domains at a time because spammers generally use a dictionary list on a random valid domain as the return address of their messages.
if it's not an advertisement of some kind, then it's not spam.
Again, to most people, there is no difference. If you're getting thousands of unwanted and unnecessary messages, it's spam regardless of the content. The meaning of spam, remember, is that it drowns the message in a sea of useless messages. It isn't unsolicited commercial email, but it is certainly spam in the original digital sense.
It's irritating, sure, and perhaps Google could mitigate the problem you describe (thousands of messages sent to one forged sender) by rate-limiting bounces, but I don't think the problem you're suggesting is the problem reported by the original poster.
I don't think you're understanding the problem at all. The issue is not sending lots of messages to a single address, or the necessity of rate-limiting. The problem is that Google's mail server automatically generates and sends a new mail message to each individual invalid address, even though there is no reason whatsoever to trust the "from" address on a message. *That* fundamental problem is made even worse because in aggregate you usually wind up with tens of thousands of those messages hitting certain domains at a time because spammers generally use a dictionary list on a random valid domain as the return address of their messages.
You're being either overly literal, or trying to create a distinction where there isn't much of one.
No, the responses don't contain an original message, nor are they commercial or anything like that, but the spammy thing about this form of backscatter is about the VOLUME and indiscriminate nature of the mail, not the content.
This isn't being blown out of proportion at all. It's nothing like a mailing list sending a confirmation. No spammer is going to send a million messages with different forged addresses to a single email address (the subscribe address) -- that defeats the whole purpose of spamming, which is to contact DIFFERENT addresses!
What google has done is open a wildcard on some domains so that anyone launching a dictionary attack on googlegroups.com will send a million messages TO a million different addresses FROM a million different forged addresses. Google then sends a million bounces back to a million different addresses, and if you run a domain that the spammer used as their "from", you suddenly get tens or hundreds of thousands of identical bounce messages from Google. THAT is backscatter spam -- thousands of useless messages sent to forged addresses on your domain, regardless of content. And no mail server in 2008, much less one run by a major tech company, should make that possible.
To be fair to the AC, the issue has been a number of vendors for some inexplicable reason inventing their own proprietary mini connectors that are sometimes only fractionally smaller than the official minis. I've got a couple of cables I *have* to hang on to because they're the only ones with that particular connector.
But it doesn't compare at all to the SCSI issue, since the proprietary USB connectors are intended to be 1-way connections -- ie, you'll only ever use the special cable to plug the special device into the computer, there is no necessity to ever chain the weird connections because USB doesn't support chaining in that way, and even if it did, there wouldn't be any meaningful way to chain the often tiny portable devices that use the crazy connectors. I've never seen a normal desktop-bound USB device that bothered to use anything other than official USB spec connectors.
Indeed, the success of the USB connector standardization has meant that even non-computer devices are now using them as simple power connections, since they are familiar to users and its easy to find chargers for any situation.
Oh, come on. SCSI will *always* be fun, termination or not. Just the act of putting an adaptor on an adaptor on another adaptor so that you can connect a controller to a disk is an adventure. Just calculating the minimum number of adaptors you need to own to be able to connect any two arbitrary SCSI devices could keep Stephen Hawking busy for an afternoon.
SCSI is one of those technologies where you inevitably wonder "how can engineers be so brilliant, and yet so colossally stupid, at the same time?"
No, you're right, the Mach cards were good, they built up ATI enough that I guess they thought they could slack off on stability for the latter half of the decade. And Trident was indeed the bargain basement graphics in terms of performance, though I recall the drivers being just fine.
Though to be fair, only those of us over a certain age really remember first-hand the crimes against humanity that were ATI drivers in the 1990s. NVidia wasn't even around when ATI was at their lowest, they were facing off against the likes of Matrox (who made great 2d hardware and drivers at premium prices) and 3Dfx (who made great 3d hardware and glide drivers). ATI was practically the Intel onboard video of the era.
Any time I installed an ATI card I half expected it to ask if I wanted to double down before the first boot.
The SDK hasn't even been released yet (we've seen two betas only), and yet people are criticizing it as if this is already the last version of the SDK that will ever be released and no new features or APIs will ever be added.
Christ, the hardware itself is still on its first version (!!) and critics are already acting like the development environment has been neglected since Reagan was in office.
I suppose it's marginally entertaining for tech writers to have a new variation on the old "Apple is Doomed" story that they can use to generate page views. "Recently released handheld battery-powered device doesn't yet replicate all advanced features of a desktop computer! Also, world hunger not eliminated. Apple is doomed!"
Are they serious? They make it sound like a Pandora's Box that could destroy the whole planet, or solar system.
.000000000001% chance that we're starting some sort of irreversible chain reaction? Or does the knowledge we gain from the experiment (and the near certainty that such an experiment will be performed by someone else anyways, regardless of our decision here today) outweigh that miniscule risk? Certainly in the case of the Manhattan Project, we knew every other world power was working on the same thing, and it wasn't a question of whether to risk it or not, it was a question of who would risk it first and gain the overwhelming military advantage.
Well, it's not dramatically different from the concerns of some physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project (except that they didn't speak publicly until afterwards, due to the military secrecy).
The truth is, for all the theory and math we work out ahead of time, nobody can guarantee that we actually know what we're doing when we throw the switch for the first time.
So the question becomes, are we willing to risk the
Similarly, I built a Palm OS census application a couple years back that was to be used by doctors and nurses when traveling to third-world countries. We'd gather data on several thousand patients per week. It almost seems like you'd have to go out of your way to make something as simple as a tablet whose sole purpose is collecting census data in any way too complicated. It's a bunch of fields, you fill them out, it synchs up at the end of the day (or hell, they can do it over cell networks in real time if they feel fancy). Sure, you should have good security which adds expense, but beyond that...WTF?
No, but even in moderate Islamic nations, they won't consider non-muslims as friends but instead people they should educate and convince to give up their religion...Ask most moderate or 'peaceful' Islamists how they feel about the Americans or Danes getting killed, and they'll typically have a look of satisfaction.
I don't think I've ever had a Muslim, in over a decade of international travel throughout majority Muslim nations, attempt to convert me or anyone I've ever worked with or spoken to, or proselytize their faith. Which is not to say they aren't thrilled to talk about it, given that it's such a major part of their daily lives in a way that Christianity is not for most westerners.
Of course I don't exactly hang out in the caves of Afghanistan, but I go to far more remote (and religiously strict) places than most people with my skin tone. I've been preached at plenty of times in America, though.
It is an utterly disgusting piece of work and every Christian and non-Christian that didn't riot over it should be ashamed of themselves.
There's a difference between something being offensive or unpleasing to you, and something that everyone no matter their beliefs should riot over.
It's actually a lovely photograph (from a technical and aesthetic point of view), though I certainly understand why people would be offended by the subject matter and be royally upset at the notion of public funding for an award going to the creator of something so controversial.
I would humbly suggest that if you think the density of an emulsion on fiber is more worthy of rioting than, say, the sexual abuse of children in foster care, you might need to reread your Bible. Of course, there's no reason you can't riot over both, but who has the time?
I don't think you can say the same about the leading Christian leaders....
You should probably pay more attention to Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, etc. They were more than happy to lay the blame of September 11th at the feet of the gays, feminists, abortionists, etc. No, they don't explicitly call for violent action (the ones who do don't become very prominent, they tend to go to jail rather than build major colleges and political institutions), but they explicitly accept and celebrate it as a sign of God's justice on secular America.
There are plenty of passages in the Bible that can be, if so desired, interpreted to mean that those acting contrary to the will of God can and should be killed. There is no greater or lesser ambiguity in any of the holy books, they all can be interpreted through the lens of love or the lens of hate if someone wants to do so.
And I'm pretty sure both Judaism and Christianity require submission to God. Unless you have a completely different copy of the scriptures than the rest of us have access to, all the Abrahamic religions mean submission.
I didn't demonize anyone, I can introduce you to many muslim friends in many moderate islamic countries that want to see Irealis wiped out and express satisfaction when a Dane or American is hurt or killed.
Maybe you should stop seeking out friends who enjoy the demonization and death of anyone who disagrees with them.
From my purely anecdotal evidence of the most heavily Muslim populated countries on earth (the Middle East, Egypt, Malaysia, etc), the vast majority of folks I've interacted with over the years have a very positive attitude towards the West, Americans, the Dutch, and don't revel in the death of anyone, though they have quite a bit of antagonism towards our governments and military actions. 99% of people in the world just want to go to work in the morning and spend the evening and weekends hanging out with their family and friends. Anyone who wakes up in the morning and thinks "gosh, I'd sure like to see some group dead today" is pretty unusual.
Really? You have a "right" to know the Military GO Codes, etc?
Absolutely, just not while they are still valid. As a matter of historical record, they should be preserved and the citizens should have every right to see them so they can judge how well the military and administration did their job during a specific period. I'd be pretty disappointed to find out that anyone with access to a particular console in 1962 could have initiated a first strike on the Soviet Union because all they had to do was guess the code "123456".
You can find out all sorts of incredibly sensitive military operation details after the fact. Anyone with a library card can tell you exactly how many troops were in a specific location on a specific date in 1942, even though ON THAT DATE it would have been a gross violation of national security for them to know.
Everything the government does certainly should be a part of the record, and not destroyed just because partisans feel it will make them look bad, or it is more convenient. Strangely enough, that's exactly what the law says, the White House just didn't care.
the consumer lock down is much worse than I imagined it would be (and I was expecting bad.)
Huh? Anybody who has read more than twenty words about the Touch/iPhone should know you can't load arbitrary applications on it without jailbreaking it. I don't know what else about it is "locked down", would you care to elaborate?
These kind of devices are very much experimental, and pop up in the news every couple of months...but quite far away from any sort of typical use.
:P ).
They are used somewhat routinely in many hospitals across the US, Canada and Europe. It's been several years since they were research-only. The only reason they aren't used more frequently is simply the cost and size, even the places that use them regularly only have one OR set up with the equipment, while they may be running two dozen ORs on a daily basis.
You're right that they require some training, which is why they've been embraced more quickly by experienced laparoscopic surgeons, since they are used to working on patients with that built-in degree of separation. We've been able to train experienced surgeons to use several different systems in an afternoon, they're not only incredibly capable, they're nearly doctor-proof (because let's face it, even a doctor can outdo the greatest fool when it comes time to screw something up
Most of your listed issues have long been dealt with. In terms of testing, the robots are far more consistent and predictable than any doctor. They have built-in safety systems on a number of different levels that vary from convenient to life-saving. I don't know of any issues that have arisen in the decades such research has been going on -- the FDA (and other governments around the world) has been satisfied, and what stats I've seen so far indicate lower incidences of complications and mistakes with robotic assistance than without (which should come as no surprise given that it's pretty much their entire purpose).
In terms of education, you're right that it requires training, but nothing as extensive as you seem to be imagining. Sure, many of the tricks and techniques of a specific procedure may change, but the overall surgical experience is pretty familiar. The big difference is that, in many ways, you can slow down the whole process, take your time and examine things in a way you couldn't before. And in terms of new surgical education, you couldn't ask for a better teaching tool than being able to switch the controls between a mentor and trainee with the flip of a switch.
Feedback will be the biggest change, definitely. There are pretty impressive haptics built into the current systems, which will only get better, along with visual overlays of real-time scans of the surgical area. This is kind of a half-dozen of one, six of another issue. You'll always think looking with your own eyeballs and running your finger along something is the best way, but in thirty years your residents will be snickering behind your back because that little change in density you're straining to find is about as subtle as Mount Everest on fire to the operator of the robot. Eventually the tactile surgical skills of the 20th century will be as useful to medical care as knowing how to shoe a horse is to modern transportation.
Cost is the biggest single issue right now, but the systems are getting cheaper while surgical teams are getting more expensive. It won't be long before malpractice insurance companies start offering discounts for procedures to be done with robotic assistance, and that will probably be what opens the floodgates.
that ignorant comment of yours, both about the time it takes to install Windows and how you'll have to track down "every single last driver" is nothing but trolling.
I'm not the poster you're replying to, but I'm not sure what exactly you're disagreeing with. Windows (9x-XP) takes a ridiculously long time to install, in part because it keeps stopping to ask you questions rather than just asking everything first or at the end, so you either have to babysit it, drop by periodically, or create an installer script and burn a disc. Vista is better since it installs a default setup mostly in one go, but it takes a crazy long time to write a few gigs of data. I could install Ubuntu or OS X two or three times in the time it takes XP or Vista to install once on the exact same hardware.
Installing Windows on any laptop with a retail or generic OEM Windows disc (which is what the poster you're disagreeing with is talking about) is an exercise in frustration, unless you've planned ahead and downloaded and burned your specific laptop drivers to a disc (and God help you if you're installing anything before Vista on a SATA boot drive -- either hope the BIOS lets you turn on IDE compatibility mode, or break out the floppy drive for a 1990s retro experience!).
My laptop is actually a Sony (one of the picturebooks, which is why I put up with it) and Sony only provides drivers for about half the hardware on their web site. If you don't have (and use) their specific Windows install CD (which of course does a format and image install with all the crapware), you're in for a wild ride trying to get it to work. It's especially entertaining because the video driver they have on their web site won't even install on the computer, and NeoMagic doesn't provide generic drivers for their chipsets. Thankfully IBM has some Thinkpads that use the same chips, and their drivers don't check what computer you're installing on.
note I did say *permanent* global population collapse -- of course you never know what disasters will crop up next week, but eventually even a new plague or full-scale nuclear war would be overcome. The notion that the "optimists" are pushing is that we're so close to our resource caps right now that it would be literally impossible with any conceivable technology or resource management to feed and clothe another one or two billion people, that there's simply no way that many could exist on Earth at once. But we heard the same kinds of alarm when the population was half of what it is today, and we still don't have even the beginnings of a global shortage of food or living space (what we do have, unfortunately, is a lot of economic issues that make food a problem in specific areas).