>>Some problems simply cannot be resolved absolutely.
Did I say CS can solve "all problems"? No. There's quite a big difference between computer science having insights for some philosophical problems and "all" philosophical problems, which you'd realize if you didn't constantly try to reduce my statements to an incorrect absolute.
>>How would you make a decision in that instance which ends the debate?
Personally, and this has nothing to do with CS, in this case (if it's the one I remember about a veteran writing to him about) I agree with Sartre. Both taking care of one's dying mother and loyalty to one's comrades in arms are commendable actions, and he can freely choose either of them.
While I can see that an absolutist like you might have trouble dealing with truth values other than true or false, these concepts have only passing applicability in the real world. "It's hot outside" - tell me if that statement is true or not, AmiMoJo.
>Why don't you put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and give an example of an important open problem in philosophy that can be solved with insights from CS? A concrete, complete example.
Fine.
Hard Determinism as a theory can be formulated as such (http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/FREE.HTM): PD1: No action is free if it must occur. PD2: For any event X there are antecedent causes that ensure the occurrence of X in accordance with impersonal, mechanical causal laws. CD: No action is free.
My proof of free will via the Halting Thesis: PF1: Free Will is defined as being true if Hard Determinism is false. PF2: If an action must occur via impersonal, mechanical, causal, laws, then this implies it is possible to calculate the state of the universe U1 at time interval T1 = T0+1 via the function U1 = simulate(U0).
For example, we have a toy robot on a billiard table that either has a LED lit or unlit at any particular time interval. Via the simulate() function, we can determine if the robot will have the LED lit or not for any time interval T > T0.
PF3: The robot also runs the simulate() function, and sets the LED to be the opposite of the returned result for the given time interval. (LED = !simulate(U0))
CF1: Therefore it is not possible to calculate the state of the universe at any time in the future. CF2: Therefore no action "must occur" (i.e. PD1 is false). CF3: Therefore Hard Determinism is false. CF4: Therefore Free Will is True (via PF1).
The philosophers are way ahead of you. The trouble with your method is that it only shows whether something is possible or not under one particular model of reality, the object-hierarchical model. If you show that it's possible under that model then fine, job done: it's possible. But if you show that it's impossible under that model you've not shown that it's impossible in general. And frankly the most likely outcome is that you can't work out how to do it but can't prove that it's impossible without sitting down with the philosophers and listening to their arguments.
It depends on the philosophical argument being made. If they assume certain object relationships cannot exist, and one can show how those relationships are possible in compilable code, odd as it sounds, it explodes the argument.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre assumes there are only two types of objects: beings-in-themselves - things like rocks and trees - and beings-for-themselves... conscious entities, which essentially need other objects to think about in order to create themselves out of nothingness, recognize nothingness, and rely on other beings-for-themselves to establish identity. If you look at it from the point of view of a computer scientist, it takes on a really quite implementable model, which you can then discuss concretely without the froofery and meaninglessness of philosophical debate that so turned Wittgenstein off on the field.
>>That is a problem with your school. You can get a BA or a BS in computer science by selecting your school.
Hmm, well, fair enough. I went to UC San Diego: it only offers BAs in Math (http://www.ucsd.edu/current-students/academics/majors-minors/undergraduate-majors.html#m), but a BA or BS in Math/Computer Science (and imilar applied fields) (http://math.ucsd.edu/programs/undergraduate/bs_math_sci_comp.php).
>>The BA school had a rather complicated and involved system of eight categories of knowledge and you needed a class in each, making you pretty well rounded
The college system at UCSD is there for your "well roundedness" education. A friend of mine went to Reveille because they studied the classics (the Iliad, the Koran, the Bible, etc.) and even though he was a CS geek he always loved that kind of stuff. Roosevelt makes you take two years of history, etc. My school required "areas of study" (a bit easier than a minor) in two fields outside your major: I chose communications and writing.
Anyhow, the point isn't really over the value of a BA vs. a BS, but rather how we apply those labels to subjects that I find suspect.
>>In computing there are correct and incorrect answers, the right way and the wrong way. Philosophers moved beyond that centuries ago
Sigh... this is not a good thing.
The fundamental problem with philosophy are that the debates never really end, whereas in computer science, when you actually get to see what pointers, references, objects, properties, etc., look like and *do* a lot of the masturbatory problems that philosophers have spent centuries wrangling over seem trivial.
>>I'm thinking of writing a book called "Why do so many students of Computer Science think they have solved all the riddles of the universe because they know how to write a sorting algorithm?"
All the riddles? Did I say that?
No.
But certainly some of the great debates in philosophical history can be resolved by computer science, especially the is-a vs has-a, object property, and equivalence stuff.
And I wasn't being entirely facetious - I do actually want to write such a paper, mainly because some of the philosophical debates seem entirely a product of the field never having to actually implement a class hierarchy that will compile, say.
Eh, kinda. Advanced logic is the foundation for a lot of modern philosophy, but Wittgenstein and the rest of the 20th century analytics were just responding to the tremendous success of physics at figuring shit out, and wanted to smear some of that patina on themselves. Well, logic has always been a part of philosophy (think Socrates and his syllogisms) but reading the Tractatus is like reading a modern computer science proof.
Which isn't surprising, either, given that computer science is essentially applied philosophy in a lot of ways. (cf Bertrand Russell, etc.) If you've ever sat through a class where philosophers have sat there talking themselves in circles about how an object can't both be is-a and has-a at the same time, you (if you're like me) feel like leaping up and just telling them to fucking encode whatever paradox they're trying to create in a object hierarchy, and be done with it. I've long longed to write a book called "Computer Science has figured a lot of your shit out in practice, Philosophers".
It does kind of bug me though, that a person who graduates with a degree in mathematics (which is a fairly difficult, hard-nosed subject) gets a wishy-washy BA degree, whereas a hippie with a degree in "environmental engineering" gets a BS, but ultimately I think there's a lot of problems with our current conception with categorizing things into "science" and "not-science". Economics and Climatology are very analogous in terms of what they do - gathering tons of data, running analyses on it, and projecting things out into the future, and both are essentially "empirical studies of the world about us" (i.e. a sort of base level of science, though with the testing, replication and confirmation bits left out), but we consider one to be a social science and another to be hard science. There's also a huge debate now over Anthropology, after the American Anthropology Association dropped "science" from its official bits.
>>You're dropping it because four players on a split screen are playing off one $60 copy of the game. Four players playing online need four copies ($240).
At the $240 price point, it is zero players playing it.
I primarily play co-op games these days with my friends, and I have noticed how little selection there is nowadays when I go into my local Gamestop. I had a bunch of friends over tonight for video games and pizza, and we tried to get a good 4 player game going. Played PS Move "Sports" (4 player mode involves 4 people taking turns in front of the TV), Time Crisis (four player mode involves people taking turns), then to the Kinect with Dance Central (requires you to take turns in front of the TV) and Kinect Adventures (two people can go at once, but at the risk of fatal injuries), and then finally back to the 90s-era-looking Wii, with lots of four-player-simultaneous games with Mario Kart, Wii Sports (tennis is still fun), and Mario Party (which isn't especially great, but whatever).
It's really annoying how many games promise couch coop and then just lame out on it. There's no reason why the new Time Crisis couldn't support four players at once in its sentry mode - just lazy, I guess.
Anyone out there know any good four player simultaneous games?
>>the earth itself is being drained of nutrients due to unhealthy mono-culture and non-stop farming each and every year.
Don't worry. I'm sure that when all the materia has been drained out of the earth, gaia herself will arise and summon a meteor to strike down the unholy Shinra-Corp farmers.
There's an entire set of people, too stupid to think, that believe that McDonalds in France is a sign of American imperialism, not even knowing what the fuck imperialism actually is.
Just like how they'll scream "fascist pig" at the police and then go whine to their lawyers and march in the streets, not knowing that in an actual fascist state, the lawyers and protests would have no effect whatsoever.
You'd know this if you knew anything about the subject, instead of just copy/pasting screeds from Chomsky.
Yes, the standard imperialist soup of the tie-died college airhead who screams "fascist pig!" at the police while calling his lawyer when they take away his marijuana.
>>my opposition to US imperialism shouldn't lead you to that conclusion. There is a big difference between opposing a system of government and its military apparatus that has been used for conquest and hegemony for centuries
US imperialism? Centuries?
Our ill-advised imperialist phase started in the 1890s with Cleveland, McKinley (and General Funston especially), who wanted the US to be "more like Europe" against the wishes of a significant portion of the country, who considered imperialism to be anti-American. The phase kinda-sorta lasted for about 40 years, though during this time, we gave Cuba independence, the Philippines later, and so forth. If you actually study American history instead of reading head-up-ass anarchist writers, especially the writing of contemporary Americans, you'll see how odd it is for America to actually subjugate a foreign country. I suppose you could make an argument for the Native Americans, but really what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now is much more typical for our country.
When the Barbary pirates caused trouble for America, we sent troops over there, burned some stuff down, and negotiated a more lasting peace. That's much more our MO than McKinley-style imperialism.
And while you might bitch and moan about cultural hegemony, well. Who gives a shit?
>>Enlisted and Enlisted is referred to as "Unprofessional Relationship". Read AFI 36-2909 for more specifics.
IIRC, dating is prohibited, but marriage is allowed. Even between officer and enlisted. Or it was back in the '90s when I was in AFRO TC.
I can see this being another quandry with gay soldiers, as the whole gay marriage at overseas bases issue is something the military is entirely unprepared to deal with.
yes, that should be the first thing to cut money from indeed ! because, then, texas education board can claim that jefferson was a godless whore, and instead put the name of an obscure preacher in front of him as a founding father. of course, right after approving school curriculum books that say 'world has been created in 6 days' is a valid theory...
At long last, the Fox network can successfully document and store (some of) the enormous amounts of spin generated by its commentators. What I want to know is when will the spin^2 ram be ready so we can start working on the O'Reilly spin/spin found in his "spin* free zone"
Well, a spin-free (spin 0) particle would obviously be a Higgs Boson.
Therefore O'Reilly is the source of inertia, and has yet to be found in France or Switzerland.
>>Exactly, I just willingly paid $50 more at a brick-and-mortar plumbing supply place for a specific toilet that was cheaper online.
Ditto. I've put together several computers piecemeal from parts ordered from Newegg, and from Frys. Almost without exception, one part of the system is broken or not working right. With a Frys down the street, I can replace the part and have the box rebuilt and operational within the hour. With Newegg, you have to go through a week-long RMA process.
I willingly pay a surcharge to buy locally any product I care enough about returns on.
>>Support the creation of a geologically stable waste containment facility if you want to engage in the type of responsible nuclear advocacy that may one day lead to an IFR.
Which is one of the most irrational stances a person can take on the issue. While you sound like you've read a little bit about nuclear, if you think that the waste problem is anything but a politician made canard, you're lying to yourself.
If you don't understand why, let me break it down for you: 1) If something has a long half-life, it's not very radioactive. You either need a lot of it to pose a hazard, or you can just ignore it. It's not like the uranium ore is contained in any way before it gets mined. 2) If something has a short half-life, or you have a lot of long half-life waste, it's not waste, it's fuel. The problem with nuclear waste isn't the radiation, it's the heat it generates. Which is why India is looking to use all the waste heat it produces to drive a turbine and generate power.
Or you can just put the MOX or whatever other products you get out of a reactor into a different reactor (ideally on the same site) that burns the 'waste', closing the fuel cycle. If you burnup 99.5% of your fuel, as the IFR does, then you put the remainder in a coffee can and throw it into a cooling pool on site.
>>It kind of makes me ill that you used the word 'cool' in that sentence
Yeah, how flippant of me to think that it's cool to dispose of the DU we have lying around. Looking at your other post (which again, is rather uninformed), you seem fixated on the illusory problems surrounding waste, so I'm puzzled why you don't think it's cool also to transmute the fuel into a form that is either entirely non-radioactive or with a shortish (100-200y) half-life.
I find your notion that a reactor has to last 1000 years to be a rather novel notion. What threat assumption are you acting under, here?
>>The other networks squelched the story? I think your memory is flawed friend.
My memory could be flawed. But doing a cursory look back at the news stories at the time, yep, I was basically right. Fox ran a lot of "WMD Found!" stories and the others ran "Why did our intelligence fail on the WMD question?" stories.
Yeah, used cars tend to dominate any real numbers comparison. Even if you have an unreliable car, a new engine is only the cost of 3-5 months lease on a new car, so you're still ahead for the year, even if you have a lot of problems.
For most people, buying new isn't done because the numbers look good, it's because they want a new car. Status, keeping up with the Joneses, etc. I could give a shit.
But for me, the cost analysis was a bit different. I own my own company, and am on the road all the time for trips to other cities to have meetings conduct tech workshops, etc. So when a car is a business expense, it mixes everything up. Off the top of my head (and I'm not an accountant, so I could be very wrong), the main differences are: 1) You don't get mileage for your commute, but you do get them for business trips. So your average worker is kind of screwed over by the IRS, but for people that have multiple workshops every month in other cities, you get a pretty large tax write off for mileage. 2) The mileage write off includes maintenance. So if you have an old car, you can't write repairs off as a business expense. 3) However, new cars as a business expense get depreciated over 5 years (or 1 year in 2010, woot) so you get to apply the cost of the new car against your taxes - call it a third the price of the car back into your pocket. 4) If your old car breaks down en route to give a workshop, you look unprofessional, and also don't get paid. My old car had 170,000+ miles on it from all my work driving. 5) Certain new cars qualify for stimulus tax credits, which you don't get if you lease or buy used. The Altima Hybrid and Leaf both get these to make them more attractive, economically.
So when I ran the numbers, the old car was still more economical - unless I missed a workshop. And then the Hybrid started looking pretty damn good.
>>Several of the items clearly demonstrate belief in incorrect information (the last four items listed are good examples), but there were several that aren't so simple, two in particular:
Indeed, and the previous poll was likewise flawed. It asked, "Were WMDs found in Iraq?" Fox News viewers answered yes (which was the "wrong" answer) because they saw a dozen stories on the air about the (old) chemical weapon stockpiles found. People watching the other networks were kept ignorant about it, because the other outlets squelched the story because it contradicted their narrative of the Iraq War.
In other words, if you want to run a poll and story about people being ignorant, you should really make sure you're not wrong yourself. Technically, yes, WMDs were found in Iraq. Usable ones? Well, that's not what was asked.
>>You are confusing two different types of *FAST* reactors technology, breeder and burner.
Well, good point. You need both, and most modern reactors do both. Reprocessing reduces the overall waste, but produces a Plutonium stream. If you don't have reactors that can burn them, then that's an issue.
But the TWR and IFR that I was talking about does both, and without really much risk regarding the Plutonium stream. If you think that terrorists are going to break into a nuclear power plant, you probably haven't been paying much attention to the world around you.
>>Iran is light years away from producing a Breeder reactor - if that is what you are getting at
No, rather that the assumption was based on the notion that having excess Plutonium lying around would lead to nuclear proliferation, somehow, and yet Iran is chugging right along with their own nuclear program. Think about what Stuxnet was targeting for a second.
Proliferation doesn't mean the USSR or First World countries get nuclear capabilities - it means people like Iran.
>>This is un-acceptable collateral damage when even US soldiers are warning locals to stay away from tank wrecks destroyed by DU ordinance.
Man, wouldn't it be cool then if we had a reactor like the IFR that could burn the massive stockpiles of DU we have lying around?
In conclusion, if you think that Carter's ban on breeder reactors and Clinton's ban on the IFR didn't set our technology back by decades, and lock us into the fucked up cycle we have right now, with the largely politician-created nuclear waste problem, you're crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
>>Some problems simply cannot be resolved absolutely.
Did I say CS can solve "all problems"? No. There's quite a big difference between computer science having insights for some philosophical problems and "all" philosophical problems, which you'd realize if you didn't constantly try to reduce my statements to an incorrect absolute.
>>How would you make a decision in that instance which ends the debate?
Personally, and this has nothing to do with CS, in this case (if it's the one I remember about a veteran writing to him about) I agree with Sartre. Both taking care of one's dying mother and loyalty to one's comrades in arms are commendable actions, and he can freely choose either of them.
While I can see that an absolutist like you might have trouble dealing with truth values other than true or false, these concepts have only passing applicability in the real world. "It's hot outside" - tell me if that statement is true or not, AmiMoJo.
>Why don't you put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, and give an example of an important open problem in philosophy that can be solved with insights from CS? A concrete, complete example.
Fine.
Hard Determinism as a theory can be formulated as such (http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/FREE.HTM):
PD1: No action is free if it must occur.
PD2: For any event X there are antecedent causes that ensure the occurrence of X in accordance with impersonal, mechanical causal laws.
CD: No action is free.
My proof of free will via the Halting Thesis:
PF1: Free Will is defined as being true if Hard Determinism is false.
PF2: If an action must occur via impersonal, mechanical, causal, laws, then this implies it is possible to calculate the state of the universe U1 at time interval T1 = T0+1 via the function U1 = simulate(U0).
For example, we have a toy robot on a billiard table that either has a LED lit or unlit at any particular time interval. Via the simulate() function, we can determine if the robot will have the LED lit or not for any time interval T > T0.
PF3: The robot also runs the simulate() function, and sets the LED to be the opposite of the returned result for the given time interval. (LED = !simulate(U0))
CF1: Therefore it is not possible to calculate the state of the universe at any time in the future.
CF2: Therefore no action "must occur" (i.e. PD1 is false).
CF3: Therefore Hard Determinism is false.
CF4: Therefore Free Will is True (via PF1).
It depends on the philosophical argument being made. If they assume certain object relationships cannot exist, and one can show how those relationships are possible in compilable code, odd as it sounds, it explodes the argument.
In Being and Nothingness, Sartre assumes there are only two types of objects: beings-in-themselves - things like rocks and trees - and beings-for-themselves... conscious entities, which essentially need other objects to think about in order to create themselves out of nothingness, recognize nothingness, and rely on other beings-for-themselves to establish identity. If you look at it from the point of view of a computer scientist, it takes on a really quite implementable model, which you can then discuss concretely without the froofery and meaninglessness of philosophical debate that so turned Wittgenstein off on the field.
>>That is a problem with your school. You can get a BA or a BS in computer science by selecting your school.
Hmm, well, fair enough. I went to UC San Diego: it only offers BAs in Math (http://www.ucsd.edu/current-students/academics/majors-minors/undergraduate-majors.html#m), but a BA or BS in Math/Computer Science (and imilar applied fields) (http://math.ucsd.edu/programs/undergraduate/bs_math_sci_comp.php).
>>The BA school had a rather complicated and involved system of eight categories of knowledge and you needed a class in each, making you pretty well rounded
The college system at UCSD is there for your "well roundedness" education. A friend of mine went to Reveille because they studied the classics (the Iliad, the Koran, the Bible, etc.) and even though he was a CS geek he always loved that kind of stuff. Roosevelt makes you take two years of history, etc. My school required "areas of study" (a bit easier than a minor) in two fields outside your major: I chose communications and writing.
Anyhow, the point isn't really over the value of a BA vs. a BS, but rather how we apply those labels to subjects that I find suspect.
>>In computing there are correct and incorrect answers, the right way and the wrong way. Philosophers moved beyond that centuries ago
Sigh... this is not a good thing.
The fundamental problem with philosophy are that the debates never really end, whereas in computer science, when you actually get to see what pointers, references, objects, properties, etc., look like and *do* a lot of the masturbatory problems that philosophers have spent centuries wrangling over seem trivial.
No, they debate fundamental questions (phrased in CS-speak): "Is a pointer to an object the same thing as the object?"
From a CS perspective, the answer is obvious, as is the relationship between a pointer and an object. But philosophers fill up books on this subject.
>>I'm thinking of writing a book called "Why do so many students of Computer Science think they have solved all the riddles of the universe because they know how to write a sorting algorithm?"
All the riddles? Did I say that?
No.
But certainly some of the great debates in philosophical history can be resolved by computer science, especially the is-a vs has-a, object property, and equivalence stuff.
And I wasn't being entirely facetious - I do actually want to write such a paper, mainly because some of the philosophical debates seem entirely a product of the field never having to actually implement a class hierarchy that will compile, say.
>>Mathematics is the foundation for philosophy
Eh, kinda. Advanced logic is the foundation for a lot of modern philosophy, but Wittgenstein and the rest of the 20th century analytics were just responding to the tremendous success of physics at figuring shit out, and wanted to smear some of that patina on themselves. Well, logic has always been a part of philosophy (think Socrates and his syllogisms) but reading the Tractatus is like reading a modern computer science proof.
Which isn't surprising, either, given that computer science is essentially applied philosophy in a lot of ways. (cf Bertrand Russell, etc.) If you've ever sat through a class where philosophers have sat there talking themselves in circles about how an object can't both be is-a and has-a at the same time, you (if you're like me) feel like leaping up and just telling them to fucking encode whatever paradox they're trying to create in a object hierarchy, and be done with it. I've long longed to write a book called "Computer Science has figured a lot of your shit out in practice, Philosophers".
It does kind of bug me though, that a person who graduates with a degree in mathematics (which is a fairly difficult, hard-nosed subject) gets a wishy-washy BA degree, whereas a hippie with a degree in "environmental engineering" gets a BS, but ultimately I think there's a lot of problems with our current conception with categorizing things into "science" and "not-science". Economics and Climatology are very analogous in terms of what they do - gathering tons of data, running analyses on it, and projecting things out into the future, and both are essentially "empirical studies of the world about us" (i.e. a sort of base level of science, though with the testing, replication and confirmation bits left out), but we consider one to be a social science and another to be hard science. There's also a huge debate now over Anthropology, after the American Anthropology Association dropped "science" from its official bits.
>>any competently put together "net neutrality" policy will necessarily be very complex
Is that so? How about this:
"Common carrier laws apply to internet carriers as well."
Seems easy enough to me.
>>You're dropping it because four players on a split screen are playing off one $60 copy of the game. Four players playing online need four copies ($240).
At the $240 price point, it is zero players playing it.
I primarily play co-op games these days with my friends, and I have noticed how little selection there is nowadays when I go into my local Gamestop. I had a bunch of friends over tonight for video games and pizza, and we tried to get a good 4 player game going. Played PS Move "Sports" (4 player mode involves 4 people taking turns in front of the TV), Time Crisis (four player mode involves people taking turns), then to the Kinect with Dance Central (requires you to take turns in front of the TV) and Kinect Adventures (two people can go at once, but at the risk of fatal injuries), and then finally back to the 90s-era-looking Wii, with lots of four-player-simultaneous games with Mario Kart, Wii Sports (tennis is still fun), and Mario Party (which isn't especially great, but whatever).
It's really annoying how many games promise couch coop and then just lame out on it. There's no reason why the new Time Crisis couldn't support four players at once in its sentry mode - just lazy, I guess.
Anyone out there know any good four player simultaneous games?
>>the earth itself is being drained of nutrients due to unhealthy mono-culture and non-stop farming each and every year.
Don't worry. I'm sure that when all the materia has been drained out of the earth, gaia herself will arise and summon a meteor to strike down the unholy Shinra-Corp farmers.
There's an entire set of people, too stupid to think, that believe that McDonalds in France is a sign of American imperialism, not even knowing what the fuck imperialism actually is.
Just like how they'll scream "fascist pig" at the police and then go whine to their lawyers and march in the streets, not knowing that in an actual fascist state, the lawyers and protests would have no effect whatsoever.
You'd know this if you knew anything about the subject, instead of just copy/pasting screeds from Chomsky.
>>conquest/hegemony/manipulation/institutional soup
Yes, the standard imperialist soup of the tie-died college airhead who screams "fascist pig!" at the police while calling his lawyer when they take away his marijuana.
>>my opposition to US imperialism shouldn't lead you to that conclusion. There is a big difference between opposing a system of government and its military apparatus that has been used for conquest and hegemony for centuries
US imperialism? Centuries?
Our ill-advised imperialist phase started in the 1890s with Cleveland, McKinley (and General Funston especially), who wanted the US to be "more like Europe" against the wishes of a significant portion of the country, who considered imperialism to be anti-American. The phase kinda-sorta lasted for about 40 years, though during this time, we gave Cuba independence, the Philippines later, and so forth. If you actually study American history instead of reading head-up-ass anarchist writers, especially the writing of contemporary Americans, you'll see how odd it is for America to actually subjugate a foreign country. I suppose you could make an argument for the Native Americans, but really what we're doing in Iraq and Afghanistan right now is much more typical for our country.
When the Barbary pirates caused trouble for America, we sent troops over there, burned some stuff down, and negotiated a more lasting peace. That's much more our MO than McKinley-style imperialism.
And while you might bitch and moan about cultural hegemony, well. Who gives a shit?
>>Enlisted and Enlisted is referred to as "Unprofessional Relationship". Read AFI 36-2909 for more specifics.
IIRC, dating is prohibited, but marriage is allowed. Even between officer and enlisted. Or it was back in the '90s when I was in AFRO TC.
I can see this being another quandry with gay soldiers, as the whole gay marriage at overseas bases issue is something the military is entirely unprepared to deal with.
>>that is exactly what happened, and what has been discussed in slashdot, fool. just the godless whore phrase was not used.
If you think "discussed on Slashdot" means "actually happened", then yeah, you're a moron.
You should probably actually try to read the primary sources on the issue, not the retarded commentary on here.
Yes, because that's exactly what happened.
Moron.
>>They just weren't considered WMDS in the clips.
Well, there you are.
Well, a spin-free (spin 0) particle would obviously be a Higgs Boson.
Therefore O'Reilly is the source of inertia, and has yet to be found in France or Switzerland.
>>Exactly, I just willingly paid $50 more at a brick-and-mortar plumbing supply place for a specific toilet that was cheaper online.
Ditto. I've put together several computers piecemeal from parts ordered from Newegg, and from Frys. Almost without exception, one part of the system is broken or not working right. With a Frys down the street, I can replace the part and have the box rebuilt and operational within the hour. With Newegg, you have to go through a week-long RMA process.
I willingly pay a surcharge to buy locally any product I care enough about returns on.
>>Stuxnet targets their Nuclear reactor. If it was to target any weapons capability it would have to target an enrichment facility
It (very probably) targeted their centrifuges. Think for a second about what centrifuges do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet#Speculations_about_the_target_and_origin
>>Support the creation of a geologically stable waste containment facility if you want to engage in the type of responsible nuclear advocacy that may one day lead to an IFR.
Which is one of the most irrational stances a person can take on the issue. While you sound like you've read a little bit about nuclear, if you think that the waste problem is anything but a politician made canard, you're lying to yourself.
If you don't understand why, let me break it down for you:
1) If something has a long half-life, it's not very radioactive. You either need a lot of it to pose a hazard, or you can just ignore it. It's not like the uranium ore is contained in any way before it gets mined.
2) If something has a short half-life, or you have a lot of long half-life waste, it's not waste, it's fuel. The problem with nuclear waste isn't the radiation, it's the heat it generates. Which is why India is looking to use all the waste heat it produces to drive a turbine and generate power.
Or you can just put the MOX or whatever other products you get out of a reactor into a different reactor (ideally on the same site) that burns the 'waste', closing the fuel cycle. If you burnup 99.5% of your fuel, as the IFR does, then you put the remainder in a coffee can and throw it into a cooling pool on site.
>>It kind of makes me ill that you used the word 'cool' in that sentence
Yeah, how flippant of me to think that it's cool to dispose of the DU we have lying around. Looking at your other post (which again, is rather uninformed), you seem fixated on the illusory problems surrounding waste, so I'm puzzled why you don't think it's cool also to transmute the fuel into a form that is either entirely non-radioactive or with a shortish (100-200y) half-life.
I find your notion that a reactor has to last 1000 years to be a rather novel notion. What threat assumption are you acting under, here?
>>The other networks squelched the story? I think your memory is flawed friend.
My memory could be flawed. But doing a cursory look back at the news stories at the time, yep, I was basically right. Fox ran a lot of "WMD Found!" stories and the others ran "Why did our intelligence fail on the WMD question?" stories.
Yeah, used cars tend to dominate any real numbers comparison. Even if you have an unreliable car, a new engine is only the cost of 3-5 months lease on a new car, so you're still ahead for the year, even if you have a lot of problems.
For most people, buying new isn't done because the numbers look good, it's because they want a new car. Status, keeping up with the Joneses, etc. I could give a shit.
But for me, the cost analysis was a bit different. I own my own company, and am on the road all the time for trips to other cities to have meetings conduct tech workshops, etc. So when a car is a business expense, it mixes everything up. Off the top of my head (and I'm not an accountant, so I could be very wrong), the main differences are:
1) You don't get mileage for your commute, but you do get them for business trips. So your average worker is kind of screwed over by the IRS, but for people that have multiple workshops every month in other cities, you get a pretty large tax write off for mileage.
2) The mileage write off includes maintenance. So if you have an old car, you can't write repairs off as a business expense.
3) However, new cars as a business expense get depreciated over 5 years (or 1 year in 2010, woot) so you get to apply the cost of the new car against your taxes - call it a third the price of the car back into your pocket.
4) If your old car breaks down en route to give a workshop, you look unprofessional, and also don't get paid. My old car had 170,000+ miles on it from all my work driving.
5) Certain new cars qualify for stimulus tax credits, which you don't get if you lease or buy used. The Altima Hybrid and Leaf both get these to make them more attractive, economically.
So when I ran the numbers, the old car was still more economical - unless I missed a workshop. And then the Hybrid started looking pretty damn good.
>>Several of the items clearly demonstrate belief in incorrect information (the last four items listed are good examples), but there were several that aren't so simple, two in particular:
Indeed, and the previous poll was likewise flawed. It asked, "Were WMDs found in Iraq?" Fox News viewers answered yes (which was the "wrong" answer) because they saw a dozen stories on the air about the (old) chemical weapon stockpiles found. People watching the other networks were kept ignorant about it, because the other outlets squelched the story because it contradicted their narrative of the Iraq War.
In other words, if you want to run a poll and story about people being ignorant, you should really make sure you're not wrong yourself. Technically, yes, WMDs were found in Iraq. Usable ones? Well, that's not what was asked.
>>You are confusing two different types of *FAST* reactors technology, breeder and burner.
Well, good point. You need both, and most modern reactors do both. Reprocessing reduces the overall waste, but produces a Plutonium stream. If you don't have reactors that can burn them, then that's an issue.
But the TWR and IFR that I was talking about does both, and without really much risk regarding the Plutonium stream. If you think that terrorists are going to break into a nuclear power plant, you probably haven't been paying much attention to the world around you.
>>Iran is light years away from producing a Breeder reactor - if that is what you are getting at
No, rather that the assumption was based on the notion that having excess Plutonium lying around would lead to nuclear proliferation, somehow, and yet Iran is chugging right along with their own nuclear program. Think about what Stuxnet was targeting for a second.
Proliferation doesn't mean the USSR or First World countries get nuclear capabilities - it means people like Iran.
>>This is un-acceptable collateral damage when even US soldiers are warning locals to stay away from tank wrecks destroyed by DU ordinance.
Man, wouldn't it be cool then if we had a reactor like the IFR that could burn the massive stockpiles of DU we have lying around?
In conclusion, if you think that Carter's ban on breeder reactors and Clinton's ban on the IFR didn't set our technology back by decades, and lock us into the fucked up cycle we have right now, with the largely politician-created nuclear waste problem, you're crazy.