Should Kerry win, expect to see at least John Paul Stevens and maybe Ruth Bader Ginsberg retire.
Should Bush win, expect to see William Rehnquist retire.
There's a slim chance that Sandra Day O'Connor would retire in either case, but since she's the key swing vote in a lot of cases, and she realizes what she means, she may well decide to sit until a more moderate president comes along.
As for where the Court leans, it would do well to review the cases that have been decided in the last half-century. The Supreme Court, even when seemingly stacked to the left or to the right, tends to run a very middle course. As an institution, the Court really dislikes upsetting precedent unless it's really called for, which is why, despite the generally conservative leanings of the current Justices, things like school prayer have been repeatedly slapped down. They also dislike getting involved in political decisions, hence the recent dismissal on technical grounds of the Pledge case, and the unwillingness to delve much into the Second Amendment cases brought to the Court's attention in the last couple of years.
Linus has mentioned that the way "Linux" is pronounced depends largely on how a given country pronounces his name. In varying places, his name is pronounced "Lie-nus," "Li-nus," or "Lee-nus," and so local conventions for "Linux" vary accordingly.
One of the other ideas that is often thrown in is a "loser pays" aspect. I'm of mixed feelings on this one, though the idea seems pretty common in other countries. Any thoughts on it?
The US consumes 3.6 trillion kW-hours/year, and you're concerned about adding 120 million to that? Think about the potential *savings* of not having those full-blown computers online instead.
Arnold's pay is more than Vin Diesel's, and Vin Diesel's is more than The Rock's. I'd say that Vin is the poor-man's Arnold, and The Rock is the poor-man's Vin.
Technology works well, but it has to be properly used. Some examples of technology that is useless or difficult to properly in urban warfare:
* Motion radar/ladar: Too many targets to track, not enough information passed back about targets. * Heavy explosives: Collateral damage is bad -- it pisses off the locals. You may also compromise integrity of structures that you need to be able to take. * Jamming equipment: If the enemy relies on passed notes, hand signals, and other subtle methods, you're just wasting batteries.
Technologies that work well, or at least have the potential to work well:
* Sniper-detecting/retaliation gear: A gun on a rapid-motion mount that detects the bullet passing, coordinates with gear on other vehicles or even soldiers, and automatically returns fire, or at least points out the likely location. If it's fast enough, the first shots are out before the sniper can fully remove himself from his position. * Low-grade explosives: One of the items that may move out to the field soon is essentially a small FAE round capable of taking out a small room, but not harming much outside of it. * Interpreters: Not computers. Just someone who speaks the damned language -- and does so fluently. Either a soldier or a trusted local works fine for this purpose.
Eavesdropping gear most certainly does have a use in urban warfare. The ability to point a laser at a window where a meeting may be taking place, or, if you *know* something will be happening, to place a bug in the room, may save lives on both sides if you can deal with something before it can happen. It's worth looking into what the CIA has done in such cases -- they're on hostile gound more often than you might think.
Each of those 10,000 men costs several hundred thousand dollars to train, feed, equip, clothe, shelter, and move around. The reason you see drones going up and precision weapons being developed is so that combat is safer (fewer sorties means fewer chances to get shot down, and drones don't cost the life of a trained pilot). The old laser-guided bombs could be defeated by smoke or even clouds; any aerosol screwed up the targeting mechanism. They were expensive, too. A single Mk 82 500-pound bomb costs the military less than $300 (according to FAS). Adding a laser seeker onto that adds another $19,000, but as I mentioned it's not terribly hard to mess with their accuracy. Turning it into a satellite-guided JDAM costs $18,000, and is much harder to jam, and it can be dropped from further out, sometimes even using a parabolic launch from 20+ miles away.
It's the Army that's getting more expensive, with their desire to wire up the soldiers, but generally speaking, the Air Force and to a lesser exent the Navy are there to soften things up a bit first.
Look at it from the other direction. War against the West is difficult, as has been proven in Kuwait/Iraq in 1991, and in the fragments of former Yugoslavia in the 90s. Even the Somalis know that a relatively small force of Western soldiers can leave behind hundreds of bodies even in defeat.
of course, when the market rebounds, they won't lower the rates. they'll get the profits back, AND the 'pubs will block people from suing the insurance companies. win-win-BIG win.
That depends somewhat on where. Rates are regularly reviewed in some states, and I know that in California, rates periodically do go down when the Insurance Commissioner has determined that the rates are excessive. Occasionally, there are also market pressures. I know that the cost of my health insurance (a PPO) is dropping by $60 a month to me (I'll be paying about $50 a month) because of some changes made by the company to reduce costs and streamline processes. It's not that the company is picking up more of it -- the majority of the coverages are going up, including my dental and vision coverage, though only by a couple of dollars each.
As for the lawsuits, you might be interested to know that Democrat-laden California has had caps on lawsuits for a long time now, and it doesn't affect things other than to help keep insurance costs down. FAR too many people think that caps are on total awards, when they are nothing of the kind. They apply to damage awards other than actual injuries (which include lost past or future pay, medical coverage for as long as it takes even if that means until death, and other direct damages, which can go out to millions of dollars, depending on the circumstances). Pain and suffering doesn't mean someone should be a millionaire automatically.
My apartment hovers in the 23C-24C range, though my office can get much warmer. Since I get up much earlier than my girlfriend on the weekends (she gets up between 11am and noon, whereas anything past 8:30 is late for me), I often tend to various computer maintenance or updates while she sleeps. Because I sometimes play music, I close the office door, and because the apartment faces a freeway, I keep the window closed.
Result: she sometimes comes in close to noon, when the thermometer reads 32C or 33C. In one case this summer, it was showing almost 38C. She said it was like a blast furnace when she opened the door. I simply hadn't noticed, as I was too busy working on things (I often forget to eat during such times as well). Even when she said something about it, I didn't find it all that warm until I felt a bead of sweat run down my temple.
Aside from the relative rarity of Ducatis in the US, the two companies cater to completely different markets. Ducati generally goes for the rider who wants performance with a European style. Harley has its American styling and concentrates mostly on cruising bikes. Both companies have some cross-over, but their particular specialties are pretty clear.
Coming from a biker family, that's one reason often cited, but really it's because we like the sound of it. Up until Honda started in with their own heavy cruiser with a similar architecture, the Harley had a signature sound, and when you heard it, you knew what it was. Contrast this with the high-pitched noises that come from other (mostly foreign) bikes. I used to be able to hear my dad's bike when he was more than a half-mile away when he accelerated hard.
I live near a freeway, and I still will run to the window when I hear a large group of bikes going by. The rumble of dozens (sometimes hundreds and occasionally even thousands) of bikes going by is comforting (and quite different from the rapid slap of a hard acceleration), especially in the larger cases, when the rides are often for charity.
A lot of people have seen bikers as rebels. My own experience isn't that they're so much rebellious (though plenty of them have a streak of that, too) as independent. There's something about announcing their presence in spite of society's desire to quiet everything down that they find appealing. It's just the rest of society that finds it annoying.
I stopped reading Tom's after the nVidia bias issue. nVidia ads were plastered all over the site, and suddenly reviews that showed nVidia edging out its competitors in the benchmarks were showing that nVidia was 'clearly far ahead' and were 'the best cards available' even as Tom professed to have no bias. While eventually nVidia was head and shoulders above the rest (for a little while, at least), I just couldn't deal with Tom's blatant ignorance of his own bias at best, or outright lying at worst. I went looking around, and settled down with Anand, ArsTechnica, and HardOCP, with the occasional other thrown in. I still visit Sharky on occasion, who doesn't seem to have ever lost the principle, even if the site's not as informative as the others.
Indeed. AMD's designs didn't scale as well speed-wise, so they had to get more creative to get better performance out of their chips. Improving their branch prediction, boosting FPU speeds, enlarging the cache, and improving the data bus were all methods that Intel would go back to from time to time, but usually with some reluctance.
I had a feeling there was some double-speak in there. I favor getting the package with the DVD, because I'm sick of multi-CD installations, I want to encourage DVD releases, and because I don't care for downloaded installations when I can avoid them. It turns out that I'll probably be able to pull this all off with little delay over what the rest of the people are getting.
Hell, maybe even less delay. Lots of people will be installing their copies because of shipping time differences before it can be played on Steam. Doom 3 was arriving sometimes three or four days before official store release time. Steam buyers are gonna be pissed.
Slashdot Mirror
What's so important about the 6008th birthday?
No meetings. :)
Should Kerry win, expect to see at least John Paul Stevens and maybe Ruth Bader Ginsberg retire.
Should Bush win, expect to see William Rehnquist retire.
There's a slim chance that Sandra Day O'Connor would retire in either case, but since she's the key swing vote in a lot of cases, and she realizes what she means, she may well decide to sit until a more moderate president comes along.
As for where the Court leans, it would do well to review the cases that have been decided in the last half-century. The Supreme Court, even when seemingly stacked to the left or to the right, tends to run a very middle course. As an institution, the Court really dislikes upsetting precedent unless it's really called for, which is why, despite the generally conservative leanings of the current Justices, things like school prayer have been repeatedly slapped down. They also dislike getting involved in political decisions, hence the recent dismissal on technical grounds of the Pledge case, and the unwillingness to delve much into the Second Amendment cases brought to the Court's attention in the last couple of years.
Linus has mentioned that the way "Linux" is pronounced depends largely on how a given country pronounces his name. In varying places, his name is pronounced "Lie-nus," "Li-nus," or "Lee-nus," and so local conventions for "Linux" vary accordingly.
One of the other ideas that is often thrown in is a "loser pays" aspect. I'm of mixed feelings on this one, though the idea seems pretty common in other countries. Any thoughts on it?
Urban legend.
The US consumes 3.6 trillion kW-hours/year, and you're concerned about adding 120 million to that? Think about the potential *savings* of not having those full-blown computers online instead.
Since they never do anything like that on their own...
No, no... They WANT this. Don't you remember that the impact was a lucky sign?
Arnold's pay is more than Vin Diesel's, and Vin Diesel's is more than The Rock's. I'd say that Vin is the poor-man's Arnold, and The Rock is the poor-man's Vin.
One of the videodiscs in Doom3 actually attempts to put an explanation on the BFG. It's not a particularly good one, but it's at least a try.
At least Half-Life has a decent plot and storyline.
But then, Doom will be starring The Rock. Exclusion of a plot line for his movies is mandatory.
Technology works well, but it has to be properly used. Some examples of technology that is useless or difficult to properly in urban warfare:
* Motion radar/ladar: Too many targets to track, not enough information passed back about targets.
* Heavy explosives: Collateral damage is bad -- it pisses off the locals. You may also compromise integrity of structures that you need to be able to take.
* Jamming equipment: If the enemy relies on passed notes, hand signals, and other subtle methods, you're just wasting batteries.
Technologies that work well, or at least have the potential to work well:
* Sniper-detecting/retaliation gear: A gun on a rapid-motion mount that detects the bullet passing, coordinates with gear on other vehicles or even soldiers, and automatically returns fire, or at least points out the likely location. If it's fast enough, the first shots are out before the sniper can fully remove himself from his position.
* Low-grade explosives: One of the items that may move out to the field soon is essentially a small FAE round capable of taking out a small room, but not harming much outside of it.
* Interpreters: Not computers. Just someone who speaks the damned language -- and does so fluently. Either a soldier or a trusted local works fine for this purpose.
Eavesdropping gear most certainly does have a use in urban warfare. The ability to point a laser at a window where a meeting may be taking place, or, if you *know* something will be happening, to place a bug in the room, may save lives on both sides if you can deal with something before it can happen. It's worth looking into what the CIA has done in such cases -- they're on hostile gound more often than you might think.
Each of those 10,000 men costs several hundred thousand dollars to train, feed, equip, clothe, shelter, and move around. The reason you see drones going up and precision weapons being developed is so that combat is safer (fewer sorties means fewer chances to get shot down, and drones don't cost the life of a trained pilot). The old laser-guided bombs could be defeated by smoke or even clouds; any aerosol screwed up the targeting mechanism. They were expensive, too. A single Mk 82 500-pound bomb costs the military less than $300 (according to FAS). Adding a laser seeker onto that adds another $19,000, but as I mentioned it's not terribly hard to mess with their accuracy. Turning it into a satellite-guided JDAM costs $18,000, and is much harder to jam, and it can be dropped from further out, sometimes even using a parabolic launch from 20+ miles away.
It's the Army that's getting more expensive, with their desire to wire up the soldiers, but generally speaking, the Air Force and to a lesser exent the Navy are there to soften things up a bit first.
Look at it from the other direction. War against the West is difficult, as has been proven in Kuwait/Iraq in 1991, and in the fragments of former Yugoslavia in the 90s. Even the Somalis know that a relatively small force of Western soldiers can leave behind hundreds of bodies even in defeat.
of course, when the market rebounds, they won't lower the rates. they'll get the profits back, AND the 'pubs will block people from suing the insurance companies. win-win-BIG win.
That depends somewhat on where. Rates are regularly reviewed in some states, and I know that in California, rates periodically do go down when the Insurance Commissioner has determined that the rates are excessive. Occasionally, there are also market pressures. I know that the cost of my health insurance (a PPO) is dropping by $60 a month to me (I'll be paying about $50 a month) because of some changes made by the company to reduce costs and streamline processes. It's not that the company is picking up more of it -- the majority of the coverages are going up, including my dental and vision coverage, though only by a couple of dollars each.
As for the lawsuits, you might be interested to know that Democrat-laden California has had caps on lawsuits for a long time now, and it doesn't affect things other than to help keep insurance costs down. FAR too many people think that caps are on total awards, when they are nothing of the kind. They apply to damage awards other than actual injuries (which include lost past or future pay, medical coverage for as long as it takes even if that means until death, and other direct damages, which can go out to millions of dollars, depending on the circumstances). Pain and suffering doesn't mean someone should be a millionaire automatically.
My apartment hovers in the 23C-24C range, though my office can get much warmer. Since I get up much earlier than my girlfriend on the weekends (she gets up between 11am and noon, whereas anything past 8:30 is late for me), I often tend to various computer maintenance or updates while she sleeps. Because I sometimes play music, I close the office door, and because the apartment faces a freeway, I keep the window closed.
Result: she sometimes comes in close to noon, when the thermometer reads 32C or 33C. In one case this summer, it was showing almost 38C. She said it was like a blast furnace when she opened the door. I simply hadn't noticed, as I was too busy working on things (I often forget to eat during such times as well). Even when she said something about it, I didn't find it all that warm until I felt a bead of sweat run down my temple.
Aside from the relative rarity of Ducatis in the US, the two companies cater to completely different markets. Ducati generally goes for the rider who wants performance with a European style. Harley has its American styling and concentrates mostly on cruising bikes. Both companies have some cross-over, but their particular specialties are pretty clear.
Coming from a biker family, that's one reason often cited, but really it's because we like the sound of it. Up until Honda started in with their own heavy cruiser with a similar architecture, the Harley had a signature sound, and when you heard it, you knew what it was. Contrast this with the high-pitched noises that come from other (mostly foreign) bikes. I used to be able to hear my dad's bike when he was more than a half-mile away when he accelerated hard.
I live near a freeway, and I still will run to the window when I hear a large group of bikes going by. The rumble of dozens (sometimes hundreds and occasionally even thousands) of bikes going by is comforting (and quite different from the rapid slap of a hard acceleration), especially in the larger cases, when the rides are often for charity.
A lot of people have seen bikers as rebels. My own experience isn't that they're so much rebellious (though plenty of them have a streak of that, too) as independent. There's something about announcing their presence in spite of society's desire to quiet everything down that they find appealing. It's just the rest of society that finds it annoying.
They also have a picture of a busted (or at least really seriously non-standard) keyboard. Your point?
Fewer pissed-off home users who don't have to pay an extra fee to use the second 'CPU,' I would imagine.
But why is this news? Microsoft confirmed this back when Hyperthreading first came out. They were charging on the basis of sockets, not cores.
I stopped reading Tom's after the nVidia bias issue. nVidia ads were plastered all over the site, and suddenly reviews that showed nVidia edging out its competitors in the benchmarks were showing that nVidia was 'clearly far ahead' and were 'the best cards available' even as Tom professed to have no bias. While eventually nVidia was head and shoulders above the rest (for a little while, at least), I just couldn't deal with Tom's blatant ignorance of his own bias at best, or outright lying at worst. I went looking around, and settled down with Anand, ArsTechnica, and HardOCP, with the occasional other thrown in. I still visit Sharky on occasion, who doesn't seem to have ever lost the principle, even if the site's not as informative as the others.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait....
You criticize Anand, and then use The Inquirer as your data source?
That's kind of like criticizing a game commentary by Al Michaels, and then pointing to the wino on the street corner as your proof.
Indeed. AMD's designs didn't scale as well speed-wise, so they had to get more creative to get better performance out of their chips. Improving their branch prediction, boosting FPU speeds, enlarging the cache, and improving the data bus were all methods that Intel would go back to from time to time, but usually with some reluctance.
The problem is that complete != available.
I had a feeling there was some double-speak in there. I favor getting the package with the DVD, because I'm sick of multi-CD installations, I want to encourage DVD releases, and because I don't care for downloaded installations when I can avoid them. It turns out that I'll probably be able to pull this all off with little delay over what the rest of the people are getting.
Hell, maybe even less delay. Lots of people will be installing their copies because of shipping time differences before it can be played on Steam. Doom 3 was arriving sometimes three or four days before official store release time. Steam buyers are gonna be pissed.