We used to play a version of chess whereby the purpose was to lose the game. You played in reverse where you were trying to get yourself to lose your king. The wrinkle on playing is that you have to have the rule that if a piece CAN be captured during a players turn then the piece MUST be captured. If there is more than one option to capture the player being forced to capture has choice unless the King is one of the options. (can be played King capture optional too) If your King is captured, you win (by losing).
It's kind of an interesting mental exercise to play this way because it makes you think about the game very differently.
Interesting, how would you prove a review is fake, written with no experience of the product?
Doesn't really matter if it is fake or not if it is paid. If the review is a paid review then it is by definition written with at least a secondary motive and therefore by definition cannot be considered unbiased. Buying reviews arguably harms the reputation of Amazon and could affect their sales and thus would potentially constitute tortious interference with their business.
If you set a goal of what you expect from the offspring and then choose the parents accordingly, you are doing selective breeding.
The goal does not have to be intentional or explicit. Artificial selection can occur simply because the environment is controlled but no attempt is made to influence the outcome beyond the environmental constraints. Humans have controlled the environment for ourselves but we (generally) have not set a specific selection outcome. It's some times called controlled natural selection because it kind of shares traits of both natural and artificial selection. Selective breeding does not require a goal to occur.
The difference is a lot smaller when you can move the camera (and other instruments) around, zoom in on any details that the human could see, and you have a team of experts deciding where to look.
The difference is vast between standing somewhere and looking through a webcam and it will never become otherwise. It doesn't matter how good your camera is. You seriously are pretending that you know what the ocean is like because you looked at it through a camera? It's not even close to the same thing. What does it smell like? What does the breeze feel like? How does it feel?
No robot can tell you everything you will learn by standing there yourself. There are biological questions that remote robotics simply cannot answer. There are economic benefits that robotics cannot contribute to.
The environment of Mars limits what you can make.
It's a planet with all the resources a planet has. Once you get a sufficient amount of technology to the location you are exploring there is very little that couldn't be done.
Humans operate it either way, the only major difference between a robot and a physical presence is higher latency for robots, and orders of magnitude greater cost for humans.
That is not the only major difference. Humans can create new tools and are vastly more flexible in what they can do than any robot. It's more than mere latency. Furthermore there are some bits of information that simply cannot be obtained by a robot. There is a huge difference between looking through a webcam at an ocean and actually standing at the shore yourself. There is information about humans that can only be obtained by sending humans. There are economic benefits to developing the technology to send humans that go far beyond the mission itself.
Going to other planets isn't just a geology project. There are some things we will only learn if we are there ourselves.
As long as a company is obeying the law and not hurting anyone, they are legally and morally in the right.
Fact is that these companies ARE hurting people. Specifically the taxpayer. By avoiding substantial tax burdens these companies are forcing the government to either borrow more money to cover the shortfall or raise taxes on everyone else. That borrowing costs interest and that affects everyone else who pays taxes.
So they ARE hurting others by their actions and trying to justify it by pointing out that they haven't technically broken any laws is letting them off on a technicality. If you want to argue that the tax code should be changed I would agree 100% but the fact is that they are using obscure loopholes to avoid taxes which hurts you and me in a very clear and measurable way. So yes I have a BIG problem with that.
Mis-reporting income and expenses is fraud last time I looked.
They aren't mis-reporting their earnings. They simply are taking advantage of loopholes in the law. It's almost always perfectly legal. Morally dubious but quite legal.
Frankly when you can afford literally hundreds of staff specifically for the purpose of avoiding taxes by exploiting obscure loopholes in the law, you are engaging in something that is ethically on the edge. I'm an accountant and I find the tax avoidance practices of these companies to be reprehensible. I'm particularly disgusted by my colleagues who facilitate this sort of activity.
Don't confuse legality with morality. It may be legal but I think you'll find more people than not think it is very much NOT ok. I happen to be one of them. I'm an accountant so I understand very clearly what they are doing and I think it is as shady as hollywood accounting. I very much hope that our government closes these loopholes. I don't really care if we charge corporations taxes or not but I do care about companies using "creative accounting" to the detriment of the larger society.
Though why anyone thinks the world will be a better place if governments have yet more billions of dollars to waste is beyond me.
The vast majority of the US budget (around 75%) is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Defense. Every one of those items is wildly popular with voters. So you can call it a waste if you want but the fact is that we the voters are demanding our government provide services that cost substantial amounts of money but then aren't willing to pay the taxes that are necessary to support those programs. Government waste? The government is doing EXACTLY what the voters want. Spending a lot and pretending it doesn't cost a lot of money.
Corporations avoiding taxes (legal or not) results in the government having to borrow money to cover the shortfall. If you prefer that we cut Defense spending by the amount they are avoiding then that is a fine solution but until that notion becomes popular (good luck with that), it makes a lot more sense to try to collect the taxes. Close the loopholes and have an adult discussion about whether having corporate taxes actually make sense and there are rational points to be made both for and against.
Oh, you think that if big corporations pay their 'fair share', the government will cut your taxes, right?
Nope. I think it would merely cover a portion of the deficit and frankly everyone's taxes (at least in the US) will have to go up at some point in part because of these weasels who think they shouldn't have to pay taxes because they found some clever loophole.
I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.
While GP seems confused about mercenaries, you seem confused about the relative quality of training in the U.S. military.
I'm not confused in the slightest about the quality of training in the US military.
I only have anecdotal evidence due to never bothering to compare in detail, but I have quite a few American friends here... what they related to me about "boot camp" sounded rather shoddy and rushed, no offense meant.
Boot camp is merely the first introductory training and it isn't very long. There is a considerable amount of training after boot camp.
Here in Switzerland the majority of males undergo 43 weeks of mandatory military training
Those who enlist in the US military regularly receive more training than that by the time they complete their Advanced Individual Training. Boot lasts 8 weeks and the length of AIT varies but can be as long as 84 weeks. Training doesn't end after boot camp except in rare circumstances.
Not sure what to make of it, could bring up the "we were successfully invaded only once in the last 700 years" yada yada... but at least I guess that solves your "name one..." challenge?
Which has more to do with the terrain and lack of any strategic value to Switzerland than it does to the quality of their military, though I'll freely admit that the Swiss seem to have a quality armed forces and have rigged their country to be one giant death trap to invaders. However the USA hasn't been successfully invaded in over 200 years (not since the War of 1812) so I'm not really sure what your point is.
There are other militaries with excellent training but there isn't one with meaningfully better training. Comparable? Yes. Better? Not that I can tell.
As a pilot, I would never fly an aircraft which has a remote capability to take control away from me.
Fair enough, why? What specific objective reason(s) causes you to oppose the idea completely? I'm not for or against the idea but I'd like to hear why it is a good or bad idea. I understand the issue of situational awareness by the remote operator could be an issue. What else?
To suddenly decide that we can't trust the crew despite the fantastic safety record aviation has is just ludicrous.
Agreed though that also doesn't mean we shouldn't analyze the situation thoroughly to see if anything can practically be done. I generally share your sentiment that the safety record of aviation is great but it got that way by carefully examining disasters to see if any improvements could be made. Maybe there is an opportunity of some sort here to introduce improvements.
So instead of having two pilots, why not have a computer monitoring system that actively monitors airplanes with only 1 pilot in it. Any weird actions by the pilot would trigger a warning allowing ground operators to override it. Boom, no more missing planes, or suicidal pilots.
Ok, Define "weird actions". What specific circumstances does the computer take over? How do you plan to have a computer program with adequate situational awareness to never make a mistake when overriding the controls? Remember, you are by definition working with weird corner cases here.
Just saying "let the computer override" is a nice notion that isn't really reasonable when you actually think about the details of what is occurring. Computers cannot generally deal with situations that were not considered in advance nor are they very good at certain types of situational awareness.
We get the government we deserve. Until we stop electing candidates (from either party) who promise pork, we will continue to get pork, and waste, and a society that is steadily going bankrupt.
The job of an elected representative is to look out for the interests of his constituents. By definition that includes trying to bring projects and economic benefit to their district/state. The notion that voters will stop electing representatives that seek to bring those same voters economic benefits is absurdly naive.
Some amount of pork is fine and to be expected. What you have to worry about is when it gets big, expensive projects spread out among a lot of districts so that even a boondoggle cannot be killed. See the Space Shuttle for a good example. Basically you cannot realistically eliminate pork spending but you can work to keep it under control.
Frankly however $10 billion, while a lot of money is a rounding error in a $3 trillion + federal budget. I'm MUCH more concerned about the imbalance between our spending priorities (Medicare + Military specifically) and our unwillingness to fund those priorities with an adequate tax base. Either the spending needs to be cut or the taxes need to go up or both. But currently we just borrow and pretend that we can sustain this imbalance to this absurd spending level without adequate tax revenue indefinitely.
Here's an idea for how to spend the next 1 trillion in USA military better: just fucking educate your troops better, make the grunts have 3 year training.
I defy you to find a national army with meaningfully better training than the US military. Seriously. I have many criticisms of the US military but their training of troops is not one of them. They take it very seriously and for the business of war-fighting they do an outstanding job overall. Nobody wants to go toe to toe with the US military in a conventional war and training is a huge part of that.
frigging conscript armies have longer training and they don't even expect to go to war.
Name one conscript army with meaningfully better or longer training than the US military.
where as your grunts basically get just bootcamp and then it's to another culture to act effectively in the role of police, so it's rather ridiculous that the training hasn't been geared towards that.
If you think troops are sent overseas right out of boot then you know nothing about how the US military functions. They get quite a lot more training than that before they are sent in harms way.
it's rather ridiculous that your mercenary grunts have such short and shoddy training(yeah it's a mercenary army, they're all getting paid and benefits and none of them were forced to be there at the moment).
The US military is by definition not a mercenary unit. They are the military arm of the US government. They do not fight battles in exchange for private financial gain. The French Foreign Legion is a mercenary unit. The US Army is unequivocally not a mercenary unit.
I suppose. However, I'd say that if your life choices make this a question you find yourself asking regularly, you might want to think about why that is... Just sayin'
Lovely example of blaming the victim. People go to bars because they like to drink and socialize. Nothing wrong with that and people aren't making poor life choices because of it.
Molecular analyser: what could possibly be the use case?
My company manufactures wire harnesses and wire products. Sometimes the materials we are shipped are not what is on the label, particularly materials coming from parts of China. It would be super helpful to have way to check whether a cable jacket is made of PVC or nylon or polyethylene right on the receiving dock without having to send it to a lab. Same for wire composition. A company I know that deals in somewhat unusual types of steel and other metals had to buy an expensive spectroscope because sometimes the material they are shipped is simply not what the manufacturer claims it is. It's not unusual to see a crooked manufacturer try to pass off a low grade steel for a more expensive high grade one. You need a means to check.
There are innumerable research and industrial uses for a simple spectroscope. I can even think of uses in the home. Looking for certain allergens perhaps? (not sure of the feasibility of that) Checking for presence of toxins. Checking to see if the vitamins you bought actually have the ingredients on the label. Etc.
The problem is that the spectroscopic techniques capable amenable to implemention on a small device can only give some general information about a material or mixture
It doesn't have to do everything to be super useful. There is this tendency by a lot of people here on slashdot to think that something has to be a perfect replacement for existing technology to be viable. I could use something that could tell the difference between PVC and nylon right now. If it could do more that would be nice but even basic uses could be hugely beneficial.
However, it is not going to identify the presence of a toxin in a bowl of soup or tell you that your gold watch is only gold-plated.
That is a limitation but it's like saying that the camera in my cellphone is useless because it doesn't have a telephoto lens. There are a huge number of applications for a rudimentary spectroscope. I could use one in my factory today to check wire jacketing composition or conductor composition. (Brass or Bronze-Phosphor or Copper, etc)
Right now the chemical analytical techniques to figure out what the composition of a substance require huge machines and significant training in spectroscopy and there's no way of miniaturizing those techniques and automating the interpretation of the data.
"No way"? There are lots of things that used to require huge machines and significant training that don't anymore. While I don't think we're going to see a mass market pocket spectroscope in the next few years, but I would never say it cannot be done just because we can't do it yet. I've seen cell phones used for infrared imaging already. I see no reason why they couldn't perform some rudimentary spectroscopy tasks. Sure it won't match the professional lab equipment but I doubt anyone expects it to.
The whole idea behind keeping such divisive topics in the forefront (ie abortion, immigration, gay rights, etc) is to keep the country divided.
So you think that discrimination and bigotry will magically go away if we decide to not talk about them anymore and pretend everything is alright? These are important topics that need to be discussed.
While I am not entirely sure about how discriminatory the Indiana law is
I think it is clearly an attempt to allow people to act in bigoted ways against unprotected minority groups under the aegis of protecting their "religious" rights. It allows religious people to impose their religious morals on others while limiting the government's ability to protect others from those impositions. Personally I think it is a gross violation of separation of church and state cleverly disguised to appear to support that very same principle. It seems most targeted at LGBT individuals but I have little doubt it will be used against atheists and probably various non-protected minorities as well.
Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of the bill. Frankly there is very little I've seen to suggest it is anything other than an attempt by religious conservatives to codify their right to discriminate against others into law.
You agree with pandering? You think that Cook should support bigoted laws? You think that a corporate CEO shouldn't speak out against a law that is plainly discriminatory in his own country? You think that Apple should stop doing business any place that has a law that the CEO personally disagrees with? You think that HP ever changed where they did business based on Fiorina's personal moral compass? What exactly in her sentiments do you think is anything positive?
On the other hand, she said all of this on Hannity, and he is not known to be the bastion of logic
She's pandering to the conservative base of her party because she hopes to run for office. Hannity is a great place for conservatives to do that. Logic has nothing to do with his show and never did.
Carly Fiorina called out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite for criticizing Indiana and Arkansas over their Religious Freedom Restoration Acts while at the same time doing business in countries where gay rights are non-existent.
First off, since Fiorina has run a large multinational, she know damn well that the CEO's personal morality on an issue matters very little regarding where the company does businesses. This is just pandering to conservatives by someone who hopes to run for office. Did HP stop doing business in China because of Fiorina's personal sense of morality? Didn't think so.
Last time I checked, Tim Cook was a US citizen so it hardly seems inappropriate to hold your own country to a higher standard than places where you don't actually get a vote. Furthermore it's a little hard to criticize a foreign country for something that your own country is doing. Fix your home first and then you can hold the moral high ground. These "religious freedom" laws are nothing more than attempts to codify bigotry and circumvent parts of the constitution.
I find it offensive that Hillary Clinton travels the Silicon Valley, a place where I worked for a long time, and lectures Silicon Valley companies on women's rights in technology, and yet sees nothing wrong with taking money from the Algerian government, which really denies women the most basic human rights.
Aaaannnd now we get to what is really going on. Any republican presidential hopeful for the 2016 election is going to engage in a huge amount of Hillary bashing. Anyone who has actually dealt with foreign countries would (or should) know that progress in human rights sometimes comes in slow, painful, incremental steps. Someone who has been Secretary of State would know this well. The US had slavery and jim crow laws and huge civil rights abuses for most of its history. Problems we are still dealing with today. Anyone who thinks the US is in a position to lecture on human rights hasn't read a history book lately. Fiorina knows or ought to know this so she's just pandering to idiots who lack the ability to grasp nuance. Sad thing is that it works.
Slashdot Mirror
We used to play a version of chess whereby the purpose was to lose the game. You played in reverse where you were trying to get yourself to lose your king. The wrinkle on playing is that you have to have the rule that if a piece CAN be captured during a players turn then the piece MUST be captured. If there is more than one option to capture the player being forced to capture has choice unless the King is one of the options. (can be played King capture optional too) If your King is captured, you win (by losing).
It's kind of an interesting mental exercise to play this way because it makes you think about the game very differently.
Interesting, how would you prove a review is fake, written with no experience of the product?
Doesn't really matter if it is fake or not if it is paid. If the review is a paid review then it is by definition written with at least a secondary motive and therefore by definition cannot be considered unbiased. Buying reviews arguably harms the reputation of Amazon and could affect their sales and thus would potentially constitute tortious interference with their business.
If you set a goal of what you expect from the offspring and then choose the parents accordingly, you are doing selective breeding.
The goal does not have to be intentional or explicit. Artificial selection can occur simply because the environment is controlled but no attempt is made to influence the outcome beyond the environmental constraints. Humans have controlled the environment for ourselves but we (generally) have not set a specific selection outcome. It's some times called controlled natural selection because it kind of shares traits of both natural and artificial selection. Selective breeding does not require a goal to occur.
maybe something about modern technology, medicine, government and religion all somehow interfere and render evolution no longer applicable?
That just changes the evolutionary pressures. It does not eliminate them altogether.
The difference is a lot smaller when you can move the camera (and other instruments) around, zoom in on any details that the human could see, and you have a team of experts deciding where to look.
The difference is vast between standing somewhere and looking through a webcam and it will never become otherwise. It doesn't matter how good your camera is. You seriously are pretending that you know what the ocean is like because you looked at it through a camera? It's not even close to the same thing. What does it smell like? What does the breeze feel like? How does it feel?
No robot can tell you everything you will learn by standing there yourself. There are biological questions that remote robotics simply cannot answer. There are economic benefits that robotics cannot contribute to.
The environment of Mars limits what you can make.
It's a planet with all the resources a planet has. Once you get a sufficient amount of technology to the location you are exploring there is very little that couldn't be done.
Humans operate it either way, the only major difference between a robot and a physical presence is higher latency for robots, and orders of magnitude greater cost for humans.
That is not the only major difference. Humans can create new tools and are vastly more flexible in what they can do than any robot. It's more than mere latency. Furthermore there are some bits of information that simply cannot be obtained by a robot. There is a huge difference between looking through a webcam at an ocean and actually standing at the shore yourself. There is information about humans that can only be obtained by sending humans. There are economic benefits to developing the technology to send humans that go far beyond the mission itself.
Going to other planets isn't just a geology project. There are some things we will only learn if we are there ourselves.
As long as a company is obeying the law and not hurting anyone, they are legally and morally in the right.
Fact is that these companies ARE hurting people. Specifically the taxpayer. By avoiding substantial tax burdens these companies are forcing the government to either borrow more money to cover the shortfall or raise taxes on everyone else. That borrowing costs interest and that affects everyone else who pays taxes.
So they ARE hurting others by their actions and trying to justify it by pointing out that they haven't technically broken any laws is letting them off on a technicality. If you want to argue that the tax code should be changed I would agree 100% but the fact is that they are using obscure loopholes to avoid taxes which hurts you and me in a very clear and measurable way. So yes I have a BIG problem with that.
Mis-reporting income and expenses is fraud last time I looked.
They aren't mis-reporting their earnings. They simply are taking advantage of loopholes in the law. It's almost always perfectly legal. Morally dubious but quite legal.
Frankly when you can afford literally hundreds of staff specifically for the purpose of avoiding taxes by exploiting obscure loopholes in the law, you are engaging in something that is ethically on the edge. I'm an accountant and I find the tax avoidance practices of these companies to be reprehensible. I'm particularly disgusted by my colleagues who facilitate this sort of activity.
No, the fact that it's legal makes it OK
Don't confuse legality with morality. It may be legal but I think you'll find more people than not think it is very much NOT ok. I happen to be one of them. I'm an accountant so I understand very clearly what they are doing and I think it is as shady as hollywood accounting. I very much hope that our government closes these loopholes. I don't really care if we charge corporations taxes or not but I do care about companies using "creative accounting" to the detriment of the larger society.
Though why anyone thinks the world will be a better place if governments have yet more billions of dollars to waste is beyond me.
The vast majority of the US budget (around 75%) is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and Defense. Every one of those items is wildly popular with voters. So you can call it a waste if you want but the fact is that we the voters are demanding our government provide services that cost substantial amounts of money but then aren't willing to pay the taxes that are necessary to support those programs. Government waste? The government is doing EXACTLY what the voters want. Spending a lot and pretending it doesn't cost a lot of money.
Corporations avoiding taxes (legal or not) results in the government having to borrow money to cover the shortfall. If you prefer that we cut Defense spending by the amount they are avoiding then that is a fine solution but until that notion becomes popular (good luck with that), it makes a lot more sense to try to collect the taxes. Close the loopholes and have an adult discussion about whether having corporate taxes actually make sense and there are rational points to be made both for and against.
Oh, you think that if big corporations pay their 'fair share', the government will cut your taxes, right?
Nope. I think it would merely cover a portion of the deficit and frankly everyone's taxes (at least in the US) will have to go up at some point in part because of these weasels who think they shouldn't have to pay taxes because they found some clever loophole.
I think we're going to have strong indications of life beyond Earth within a decade, and I think we're going to have definitive evidence within 20 to 30 years.
Obligatory XKCD translating what that means
While GP seems confused about mercenaries, you seem confused about the relative quality of training in the U.S. military.
I'm not confused in the slightest about the quality of training in the US military.
I only have anecdotal evidence due to never bothering to compare in detail, but I have quite a few American friends here... what they related to me about "boot camp" sounded rather shoddy and rushed, no offense meant.
Boot camp is merely the first introductory training and it isn't very long. There is a considerable amount of training after boot camp.
Here in Switzerland the majority of males undergo 43 weeks of mandatory military training
Those who enlist in the US military regularly receive more training than that by the time they complete their Advanced Individual Training. Boot lasts 8 weeks and the length of AIT varies but can be as long as 84 weeks. Training doesn't end after boot camp except in rare circumstances.
Not sure what to make of it, could bring up the "we were successfully invaded only once in the last 700 years" yada yada... but at least I guess that solves your "name one ..." challenge?
Which has more to do with the terrain and lack of any strategic value to Switzerland than it does to the quality of their military, though I'll freely admit that the Swiss seem to have a quality armed forces and have rigged their country to be one giant death trap to invaders. However the USA hasn't been successfully invaded in over 200 years (not since the War of 1812) so I'm not really sure what your point is.
There are other militaries with excellent training but there isn't one with meaningfully better training. Comparable? Yes. Better? Not that I can tell.
We don't even have automated trains and they run on freaking tracks
We absolutely do have automated trains in service today. Automated trains are actually fairly easy to do.
honestly it's not a huge technical issue to get rid of the pilot
Not even remotely true. It's achievable but hardly trivial.
at any moment there are many UAVs flying around autonomously
Most are not generally autonomous though there are some. Most are remotely piloted
As a pilot, I would never fly an aircraft which has a remote capability to take control away from me.
Fair enough, why? What specific objective reason(s) causes you to oppose the idea completely? I'm not for or against the idea but I'd like to hear why it is a good or bad idea. I understand the issue of situational awareness by the remote operator could be an issue. What else?
To suddenly decide that we can't trust the crew despite the fantastic safety record aviation has is just ludicrous.
Agreed though that also doesn't mean we shouldn't analyze the situation thoroughly to see if anything can practically be done. I generally share your sentiment that the safety record of aviation is great but it got that way by carefully examining disasters to see if any improvements could be made. Maybe there is an opportunity of some sort here to introduce improvements.
So instead of having two pilots, why not have a computer monitoring system that actively monitors airplanes with only 1 pilot in it. Any weird actions by the pilot would trigger a warning allowing ground operators to override it. Boom, no more missing planes, or suicidal pilots.
Ok, Define "weird actions". What specific circumstances does the computer take over? How do you plan to have a computer program with adequate situational awareness to never make a mistake when overriding the controls? Remember, you are by definition working with weird corner cases here.
Just saying "let the computer override" is a nice notion that isn't really reasonable when you actually think about the details of what is occurring. Computers cannot generally deal with situations that were not considered in advance nor are they very good at certain types of situational awareness.
We get the government we deserve. Until we stop electing candidates (from either party) who promise pork, we will continue to get pork, and waste, and a society that is steadily going bankrupt.
The job of an elected representative is to look out for the interests of his constituents. By definition that includes trying to bring projects and economic benefit to their district/state. The notion that voters will stop electing representatives that seek to bring those same voters economic benefits is absurdly naive.
Some amount of pork is fine and to be expected. What you have to worry about is when it gets big, expensive projects spread out among a lot of districts so that even a boondoggle cannot be killed. See the Space Shuttle for a good example. Basically you cannot realistically eliminate pork spending but you can work to keep it under control.
Frankly however $10 billion, while a lot of money is a rounding error in a $3 trillion + federal budget. I'm MUCH more concerned about the imbalance between our spending priorities (Medicare + Military specifically) and our unwillingness to fund those priorities with an adequate tax base. Either the spending needs to be cut or the taxes need to go up or both. But currently we just borrow and pretend that we can sustain this imbalance to this absurd spending level without adequate tax revenue indefinitely.
Here's an idea for how to spend the next 1 trillion in USA military better: just fucking educate your troops better, make the grunts have 3 year training.
I defy you to find a national army with meaningfully better training than the US military. Seriously. I have many criticisms of the US military but their training of troops is not one of them. They take it very seriously and for the business of war-fighting they do an outstanding job overall. Nobody wants to go toe to toe with the US military in a conventional war and training is a huge part of that.
frigging conscript armies have longer training and they don't even expect to go to war.
Name one conscript army with meaningfully better or longer training than the US military.
where as your grunts basically get just bootcamp and then it's to another culture to act effectively in the role of police, so it's rather ridiculous that the training hasn't been geared towards that.
If you think troops are sent overseas right out of boot then you know nothing about how the US military functions. They get quite a lot more training than that before they are sent in harms way.
it's rather ridiculous that your mercenary grunts have such short and shoddy training(yeah it's a mercenary army, they're all getting paid and benefits and none of them were forced to be there at the moment).
The US military is by definition not a mercenary unit. They are the military arm of the US government. They do not fight battles in exchange for private financial gain. The French Foreign Legion is a mercenary unit. The US Army is unequivocally not a mercenary unit.
I suppose. However, I'd say that if your life choices make this a question you find yourself asking regularly, you might want to think about why that is... Just sayin'
Lovely example of blaming the victim. People go to bars because they like to drink and socialize. Nothing wrong with that and people aren't making poor life choices because of it.
Molecular analyser: what could possibly be the use case?
My company manufactures wire harnesses and wire products. Sometimes the materials we are shipped are not what is on the label, particularly materials coming from parts of China. It would be super helpful to have way to check whether a cable jacket is made of PVC or nylon or polyethylene right on the receiving dock without having to send it to a lab. Same for wire composition. A company I know that deals in somewhat unusual types of steel and other metals had to buy an expensive spectroscope because sometimes the material they are shipped is simply not what the manufacturer claims it is. It's not unusual to see a crooked manufacturer try to pass off a low grade steel for a more expensive high grade one. You need a means to check.
There are innumerable research and industrial uses for a simple spectroscope. I can even think of uses in the home. Looking for certain allergens perhaps? (not sure of the feasibility of that) Checking for presence of toxins. Checking to see if the vitamins you bought actually have the ingredients on the label. Etc.
The problem is that the spectroscopic techniques capable amenable to implemention on a small device can only give some general information about a material or mixture
It doesn't have to do everything to be super useful. There is this tendency by a lot of people here on slashdot to think that something has to be a perfect replacement for existing technology to be viable. I could use something that could tell the difference between PVC and nylon right now. If it could do more that would be nice but even basic uses could be hugely beneficial.
However, it is not going to identify the presence of a toxin in a bowl of soup or tell you that your gold watch is only gold-plated.
That is a limitation but it's like saying that the camera in my cellphone is useless because it doesn't have a telephoto lens. There are a huge number of applications for a rudimentary spectroscope. I could use one in my factory today to check wire jacketing composition or conductor composition. (Brass or Bronze-Phosphor or Copper, etc)
couldn't the output from the sensor be bandpass limited to have it act as a thermal camera as well? Cause I could actually use that.
There already are thermal imaging cellphone cameras on the market today. Haven't gotten my hands on one yet but they're pretty reasonably priced.
Right now the chemical analytical techniques to figure out what the composition of a substance require huge machines and significant training in spectroscopy and there's no way of miniaturizing those techniques and automating the interpretation of the data.
"No way"? There are lots of things that used to require huge machines and significant training that don't anymore. While I don't think we're going to see a mass market pocket spectroscope in the next few years, but I would never say it cannot be done just because we can't do it yet. I've seen cell phones used for infrared imaging already. I see no reason why they couldn't perform some rudimentary spectroscopy tasks. Sure it won't match the professional lab equipment but I doubt anyone expects it to.
The whole idea behind keeping such divisive topics in the forefront (ie abortion, immigration, gay rights, etc) is to keep the country divided.
So you think that discrimination and bigotry will magically go away if we decide to not talk about them anymore and pretend everything is alright? These are important topics that need to be discussed.
While I am not entirely sure about how discriminatory the Indiana law is
I think it is clearly an attempt to allow people to act in bigoted ways against unprotected minority groups under the aegis of protecting their "religious" rights. It allows religious people to impose their religious morals on others while limiting the government's ability to protect others from those impositions. Personally I think it is a gross violation of separation of church and state cleverly disguised to appear to support that very same principle. It seems most targeted at LGBT individuals but I have little doubt it will be used against atheists and probably various non-protected minorities as well.
Wikipedia has a reasonable summary of the bill. Frankly there is very little I've seen to suggest it is anything other than an attempt by religious conservatives to codify their right to discriminate against others into law.
One one hand I agree with her sentiments.
You agree with pandering? You think that Cook should support bigoted laws? You think that a corporate CEO shouldn't speak out against a law that is plainly discriminatory in his own country? You think that Apple should stop doing business any place that has a law that the CEO personally disagrees with? You think that HP ever changed where they did business based on Fiorina's personal moral compass? What exactly in her sentiments do you think is anything positive?
On the other hand, she said all of this on Hannity, and he is not known to be the bastion of logic
She's pandering to the conservative base of her party because she hopes to run for office. Hannity is a great place for conservatives to do that. Logic has nothing to do with his show and never did.
Carly Fiorina called out Apple CEO Tim Cook as a hypocrite for criticizing Indiana and Arkansas over their Religious Freedom Restoration Acts while at the same time doing business in countries where gay rights are non-existent.
First off, since Fiorina has run a large multinational, she know damn well that the CEO's personal morality on an issue matters very little regarding where the company does businesses. This is just pandering to conservatives by someone who hopes to run for office. Did HP stop doing business in China because of Fiorina's personal sense of morality? Didn't think so.
Last time I checked, Tim Cook was a US citizen so it hardly seems inappropriate to hold your own country to a higher standard than places where you don't actually get a vote. Furthermore it's a little hard to criticize a foreign country for something that your own country is doing. Fix your home first and then you can hold the moral high ground. These "religious freedom" laws are nothing more than attempts to codify bigotry and circumvent parts of the constitution.
I find it offensive that Hillary Clinton travels the Silicon Valley, a place where I worked for a long time, and lectures Silicon Valley companies on women's rights in technology, and yet sees nothing wrong with taking money from the Algerian government, which really denies women the most basic human rights.
Aaaannnd now we get to what is really going on. Any republican presidential hopeful for the 2016 election is going to engage in a huge amount of Hillary bashing. Anyone who has actually dealt with foreign countries would (or should) know that progress in human rights sometimes comes in slow, painful, incremental steps. Someone who has been Secretary of State would know this well. The US had slavery and jim crow laws and huge civil rights abuses for most of its history. Problems we are still dealing with today. Anyone who thinks the US is in a position to lecture on human rights hasn't read a history book lately. Fiorina knows or ought to know this so she's just pandering to idiots who lack the ability to grasp nuance. Sad thing is that it works.