Speak for yourself, then. I do work, and I do use my texts as reference. Maybe because I work with a manager who doesn't like meetings, doesn't like reports, and does a good job of shielding us from anyone else seeking to obtain those from us. I've had maybe 3 meetings in the past 3 months, and spent most of that time in the lab writing prototype code and tampering with my design. So for me, one day of meetings works out to about 4 weeks of design.
Specifically, in the past year I've hauled down my books on control systems, linear systems theory, DSP, C, MATLAB, acoustics, various calc textbooks, and borrowed books on power supply design, neural nets, and even my probability book (once). I use my books a lot. Dad's an engineer (civil). He uses his too, though maybe less than me since he runs his business, which means he spends a lot more time in meetings. Maybe its because I do get to do Real Engineering with a good portion of my time, and most of it isn't The Same Thing over and over. But I do use my books, a lot.
It's always nice to have a rational discussion with someone that doesn't descend into name-calling, straw-man arguments, or any of the other crap that infests/. (and the internet in general). So, thanks.
I understand your argument about wisest vs. biggest, but you can't argue that the US isn't a relatively good country to act as a figurative leader. We may not be quite as free as Denmark or Sweden, but we're certainly towards the top tier in terms of freedom.
Also, we were, to some extent, forced into the 'world's policeman' role by history - NATO, mostly. Its a far shorter step for us to go from "We have troops overseas to protect ourselves and friends" to Iraq than it is for Germany or France or other NATO members, whose troops were always closer to home during the Cold War. The necessary political will to move troops far abroad has been built in our country over the last 60 years. You could argue that history, and European politics, have actually led our country towards a doctrine of force projection. However, we were (usually) invited in these Cold War misadventures; Iraq is bad solely because of the pre-emptive nature of the war.
Election fraud accusations happen everywhere, was my point. In the US, due to the peculiarities of our electoral system, and the finely divided electorate at this time, election fraud even in small amounts can be enough to tip the presidency one way or another. In a parliamentary country, where a coalition government is the norm (even if its a coalition of like-minded parties - I choose coalition to mean multi-party, not the other meaning, of liberal-conservative jointly), its much harder to tip the balance in quite the same way. As a result, we had one massively publicized piece of electoral chaos, whereas other countries own voting failures received less publicity, both due to not being as important and not being in the US. Not to come off as arrogant, but the spotlight does fall heavier over here, simply because we are the heavy on the block.
And I wouldn't say Italy under Berlusconi - Italy, for pretty much its entire history as a political unit, has had severe issues with corruption. Berlusconi is merely the latest in a long line.
Up until Iraq, the US had, for the most part, not engaged in pre-emptive warfare. Bay of Pigs is arguable as a pre-emptive situation, is why I qualified the statement. I would argue that saying "The US engages in pre-emptive war" based on a single instance (Afghanistan was *not* pre-emptive, but reactive) is like saying that Denmark engages in pre-emptive war based on the Swedish wars in the 17th century; a single instance doesn't mean that the country will always behave that way.
Further, I believe the only reason Bush *could* engage in pre-emptive war was due to the extraordinarily high support he had after 9-11. I would argue that in a normal climate, minus the political capital given him by that event, he wouldn't have been able to successfully prosecute a pre-emptive strike. Were he to try to prosecute another war today, he would almost certainly lose the election, and would likely have the move blocked and tied up by the rest of the political apparatus. And if another terrorist strike were to occur on a 9-11 scale, it would probably *not* have the same effect as 9-11 did. PNAC made one move, but the conditions that made that move possible were unique, and probably not possible to repeat.
Voter turnout is dropping across the developed world; it isn't a solely US problem, our numbers are just lower. They always have been, by the way - throughout the 20th century, American vote percentages have hovered in the 50-65% range. So, while this is a uniquely American problem, it isn't a *new* American problem.
I've never met a European who could actually understand what race tension in the US is like. It isn't your fault; you don't live with it. Detroit was absolutely *destroyed* as a city by racial tension. Its a huge part of politics in every major city, and
I buy my books new because I like my books to be in good shape, and I don't trust other people to keep them in that kind of shape. This is the same reason I buy very few used CDs/records and even fewer used paperbacks these days. I got the side benefit of having the problems in my book for classes that used the newest edition for problem sets, rather than having to copy them. Also, I didn't have to work around or do without. And the whole point of a reference library is the ability to go through a book without going "Oh, I guess I have to order that" - when I'm looking up a filter topology or a control system methodology, I don't want to wait a week for it to show up, I want to thumb through a book then and there.
If you don't care about the shape they're in, buy them in whatever condition you want, I won't stop you. Make a friend and copy the problems from their book if that's an issue for the class you're concerned with.
I don't mind having spent on the order of $3000 to build up a good engineering reference library, in condition that will last me a long time. Considering that the knowledge gained from those books (I didn't go to class much, so I mostly learned from my books) is now worth around 60k a year to me, $3000 over 4 years was cheap.
It's a limited market. $100 for a textbook isn't unreasonable - Schneier's crypto book, softbound, is $60, so a hardbound book of similar heft for $100 is about right. Is it silly that they force new editions on people every couple years to minimize the used book market? Yeah. But if you want it for knowledge, you don't have to buy new. If you just need the problem sets, someone in your class will be like me and have the new book. Copy from them.
What cringing were you referring to, specifically? The one where you hide beyond an anonymous name?
I tolerated it because I planned to keep those books as my reference library. It might not be true for some professions, but I always cringed when I saw science and engineering students selling their books back - when you start working, you *will* want those books to refer to.
Seriously though, it might be interesting to have all of my IM history searchable, but I mostly use it for one-off conversations about things of limited importance.
Use a client with logging enabled.
Grep.
(Note: I use this exact combination with iChat on OS X. It works great on those rare occasions I go "Hmm... She sent me her address in an IM a month ago, let me go find the correct log now.")
Google could just as easily write a client for an existing network, in co-operation with that network, and integrate the logs and whatever other features they want that way.
There's no real reason for Google to go about setting up their own IM network.
Remember that a common view among the (generally more liberal) urban population is "Let the hicks rot." They don't know what's going on outside their cities, and they don't want to; and frankly, why should they? The US has such a huge disparity across political units; I've lived in cities where we had council members who advocated drug legalization and some fairly socialist ideas (not just for the US, for anywhere) sitting alongside gun-toting farmers. In a city of around 70,000. European countries generally don't deal with that kind of disparity, which makes it a lot easier for you to criticize, but we have to try to make both sides happy.
I don't even know that it's "doesn't know/doesn't want to know/doesn't care". I think its more "knows/doesn't think anything can be done/isn't willing to waste time trying." With the possible exception of the insulated ultra-rich, most of America has a pretty good idea of just what kind of walking freaks inhabit our cities and our countryside. We just have no idea how anyone could go about making them less freakish, and (personally, at least) don't necessarily want to. I mean, yes the anti-profanity Jesus freaks are *crazy*, but at least they believe in something, no matter how ridiculous. Ennui and apathy are bigger enemies than Jesus any day.
Also, I wouldn't chracterize the US as bonkers. No more so than most of the world, at any rate. If you think the Bush admin is doing what they're doing because they're crazy, you're not looking deep enough. They aren't crazy, and they aren't idiots - they know what they're doing. You should be scared, but not because they're crazy - because they do it knowingly, and its *exactly what they want to do*.
That said, we've got a pretty good record on democracy, freedom, and human rights. We aren't perfect, but no one is. Our elections are probably about as accurate as European elections - I note that in 2002, there were several accusations of vote fraud in Germany, the Italians have had a corrupted electorate for a *century* now, and the British have worries about 2004 just like the US does. However, when you're head of the class, everyone is going to pick on your flaws, they're just going to be more visible.
The voting turnout, well, I wish I could explain it. I feel like its less an issue of education than an issue of emotion - we know how to vote, we know we can vote, we just don't feel like it will matter. But that's just my opinion, and isn't backed up by anything.
I have to take issue with you on the gun thing, though. It *is* freedom. Its like the German ban against Nazi speech/items. Whether or not you feel its a good a restriction, it *is* a restriction, and all restrictions by definition make us less free. The US has set its gun-freedom bar significantly higher than most of the world. While I don't necessarily agree with the choice, it is a valid issue, and trivializing it by saying "Only dumb hicks want guns" is a typically European viewpoint - many intelligent people (I've worked with more than a few - engineers seem to get a kick out of guns, for some reason) like shooting. I personally don't, but I don't think banning them will accomplish much social good either. Better to mandate things like trigger locks, improved safeties, etc. in order to minimize gun accidents, than to create a situation where only criminals have guns. I've been robbed at gunpoint. It wouldn't have gone any differently if guns had been illegal.
The same with 'distributing wealth'. Its fine that most of Europe has chosen to go for a social welfare state. That's a perfectly acceptable choice. The US hasn't made that choice. While I'm a supporter of some level of social support, I don't want the US to become Europe. Again, while we aren't perfect, neither are we wrong in not pursuing wealth redistribution. If you earn it, you should be able to keep most of it, minus a reasonable percentage used to fund public health and welfare programs. The US and Europe more or less agree on that poin
I probably don't, because I tend to avoid the Americans who hold views like those - you have to understand, most of the country thinks those fuckers are crazy. A lot of the rest of the US are just quieter about it than I am. I'm not really annoyed by it, I just feel it shouldn't be hidden. Its like PC. People will express themselves one way or another; try to take a word out of circulation and people will simply invest that meaning into another word. This is why both the PC trend to remove a word from use, and the newer trend of a group trying to reclaim a word by using it themselves, are doomed to failure.
The SATs are pretty meaningless, to tell the truth. Especially as a measure of intelligence. I scored 1570 on the SAT and 800,790,780 on the GRE. But there are much, much smarter people than me out there. I just test well. GWB has problems speaking. Is he an idiot? No. But he ain't no Rhodes scholar either. I'm pretty sure I'm better at math than Clinton, but I'm not at all sure I'm smarter than he is. I'm damn sure I'm better at math than GWB, and I'm damn sure I'm smarter than he is.
(Seriously - either swear, or don't. Don't try to cover it up. No one thinks its funny, intelligent, proper, or any other positive virtue. We just think its fucking dumb.)
Cutting a song purely based on length isn't censorship.
Censorship implies cutting based on content; trimming to fit available programming time is certainly not based on content.
That said, MTV hasn't played good music in years. I'm not even sure they've played music in the last year; hasn't it basically been colonized by reality TV shows, Cribs, and Pimp My Ride?
PuTTY. No need to install cygwin for SSH. And since you just download the executable and run it, no install needed, only the most locked down machines will prevent its use.
But don't worry, I'm sure your gmail account is just filled with offers from people who can help you make your system tray bigger for just $19.95, shipped!
Once upon a time, in downtown SF, there was a major financial company's wireless network. Completely open. COMPLETELY. Upon looking them up, they were on the 39th floor of a tower, which they must have thought would protect them against people sitting in the park across the street.
They were wrong. Luckily, we weren't malicious (OK, so we *were* going to send a 1000-copy job of a Word document saying "SECURE YOUR WIRELESS" in big black letters to their printer, but we didn't have the right drivers on hand).
This was a large, Fortune 500 finance company. This was in 2002.
People are *dumb*.
Re:Fighting for us ? really ?
on
Semper WiFi
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· Score: 2, Insightful
That has nothing to do with the troops. The troops, if you ask them, are fighting for their countrymen.
They didn't go over there to make money for someone, they went over there because they were told it would make the US safer.
Now, you can argue whether or not that's true, and you can certainly accuse the top of the chain of command of betraying the country, but don't blame the troops for it. They still want to believe they're doing it for us.
Embedded PowerPC is doing pretty well these days, as the cost comes down. Somewhere else in the thread I mentioned working on a program that was using a couple million mid-high end embedded PPCs; there's definitely a place for them. OTOH, I just saw an article on a micro that, while it runs at 4 MHz and can't do much, costs 50c. Retail. On-chip crystal, too, so it really is single-chip, add power and ground. I think it has something like 256 bytes of flash and 64 bytes of RAM.
That's just neat. It's a 4 MIPS processor, and it costs about as much as the postage to mail it.
The fuel inventory is not going to be inside of the containment vessel. That's a *stupid* design. You feed in only enough fuel to keep the reaction going; otherwise, you can have runaways. Storage is external.
Also, think about what you just said - storing, and then releasing, energy. It's conservation of energy - knowing your fuel supply, you have a pretty good idea what your energy output should be. If your energy output diverges from planned, you have a pretty good idea your reactor is malfunctioning and can be brought offline, or can have fuel input reduced, or any number of things.
And yes, it does have to be self-sustaining for it to matter. The minimal amount of additional fusion that could happen before reaction ceases should be something easily containable by current containment systems. You're not talking about something suddenly becoming a fusion warhead. You're talking about, at worst, a few nanoseconds of significantly higher output. 50 TW is easy to contain, if you only have to contain a femtosecond pulse - even a nanosecond pulse at 50 TW output is only 50 kilojoules of energy.
50 kilojoules is 12 calories. Not exactly worrying.
50 TW for a full second, far longer than a reaction is likely to continue in absence of control and containment, is 50 terajoules. This energy, for the record, is equivalent to the detonation of 216 tons of TNT. Which, while a sizable explosion by any measure, isn't even comparable to a tactical nuclear weapon.
I think you're being a bit paranoid. Do the math and see if I'm not right.
PPC isn't just desktop. PPC is, in fact, barely at all desktop. PPC sees a ton of use as the main embedded micro in systems ranging from network computing to automotive to scientific equipment.
And yes, I am going to be that way about it, because its the truth. There are a lot of people employed making designs using and programming those smaller CPUs; just because you don't, don't assume no one cares about them. People say "Intel has 90% CPU market share" all the time; if they want to, they damn well better define the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Java is being worked on to deliver stable guaranteed time to interrupt? That being the chief characteristic making a "hard" realtime system useful.
I'll believe that when I see it.
Speak for yourself, then. I do work, and I do use my texts as reference. Maybe because I work with a manager who doesn't like meetings, doesn't like reports, and does a good job of shielding us from anyone else seeking to obtain those from us. I've had maybe 3 meetings in the past 3 months, and spent most of that time in the lab writing prototype code and tampering with my design. So for me, one day of meetings works out to about 4 weeks of design.
Specifically, in the past year I've hauled down my books on control systems, linear systems theory, DSP, C, MATLAB, acoustics, various calc textbooks, and borrowed books on power supply design, neural nets, and even my probability book (once). I use my books a lot. Dad's an engineer (civil). He uses his too, though maybe less than me since he runs his business, which means he spends a lot more time in meetings. Maybe its because I do get to do Real Engineering with a good portion of my time, and most of it isn't The Same Thing over and over. But I do use my books, a lot.
It's always nice to have a rational discussion with someone that doesn't descend into name-calling, straw-man arguments, or any of the other crap that infests /. (and the internet in general). So, thanks.
I understand your argument about wisest vs. biggest, but you can't argue that the US isn't a relatively good country to act as a figurative leader. We may not be quite as free as Denmark or Sweden, but we're certainly towards the top tier in terms of freedom.
Also, we were, to some extent, forced into the 'world's policeman' role by history - NATO, mostly. Its a far shorter step for us to go from "We have troops overseas to protect ourselves and friends" to Iraq than it is for Germany or France or other NATO members, whose troops were always closer to home during the Cold War. The necessary political will to move troops far abroad has been built in our country over the last 60 years. You could argue that history, and European politics, have actually led our country towards a doctrine of force projection. However, we were (usually) invited in these Cold War misadventures; Iraq is bad solely because of the pre-emptive nature of the war.
Election fraud accusations happen everywhere, was my point. In the US, due to the peculiarities of our electoral system, and the finely divided electorate at this time, election fraud even in small amounts can be enough to tip the presidency one way or another. In a parliamentary country, where a coalition government is the norm (even if its a coalition of like-minded parties - I choose coalition to mean multi-party, not the other meaning, of liberal-conservative jointly), its much harder to tip the balance in quite the same way. As a result, we had one massively publicized piece of electoral chaos, whereas other countries own voting failures received less publicity, both due to not being as important and not being in the US. Not to come off as arrogant, but the spotlight does fall heavier over here, simply because we are the heavy on the block.
And I wouldn't say Italy under Berlusconi - Italy, for pretty much its entire history as a political unit, has had severe issues with corruption. Berlusconi is merely the latest in a long line.
Up until Iraq, the US had, for the most part, not engaged in pre-emptive warfare. Bay of Pigs is arguable as a pre-emptive situation, is why I qualified the statement. I would argue that saying "The US engages in pre-emptive war" based on a single instance (Afghanistan was *not* pre-emptive, but reactive) is like saying that Denmark engages in pre-emptive war based on the Swedish wars in the 17th century; a single instance doesn't mean that the country will always behave that way.
Further, I believe the only reason Bush *could* engage in pre-emptive war was due to the extraordinarily high support he had after 9-11. I would argue that in a normal climate, minus the political capital given him by that event, he wouldn't have been able to successfully prosecute a pre-emptive strike. Were he to try to prosecute another war today, he would almost certainly lose the election, and would likely have the move blocked and tied up by the rest of the political apparatus. And if another terrorist strike were to occur on a 9-11 scale, it would probably *not* have the same effect as 9-11 did. PNAC made one move, but the conditions that made that move possible were unique, and probably not possible to repeat.
Voter turnout is dropping across the developed world; it isn't a solely US problem, our numbers are just lower. They always have been, by the way - throughout the 20th century, American vote percentages have hovered in the 50-65% range. So, while this is a uniquely American problem, it isn't a *new* American problem.
I've never met a European who could actually understand what race tension in the US is like. It isn't your fault; you don't live with it. Detroit was absolutely *destroyed* as a city by racial tension. Its a huge part of politics in every major city, and
I buy my books new because I like my books to be in good shape, and I don't trust other people to keep them in that kind of shape. This is the same reason I buy very few used CDs/records and even fewer used paperbacks these days. I got the side benefit of having the problems in my book for classes that used the newest edition for problem sets, rather than having to copy them. Also, I didn't have to work around or do without. And the whole point of a reference library is the ability to go through a book without going "Oh, I guess I have to order that" - when I'm looking up a filter topology or a control system methodology, I don't want to wait a week for it to show up, I want to thumb through a book then and there.
If you don't care about the shape they're in, buy them in whatever condition you want, I won't stop you. Make a friend and copy the problems from their book if that's an issue for the class you're concerned with.
I don't mind having spent on the order of $3000 to build up a good engineering reference library, in condition that will last me a long time. Considering that the knowledge gained from those books (I didn't go to class much, so I mostly learned from my books) is now worth around 60k a year to me, $3000 over 4 years was cheap.
It's a limited market. $100 for a textbook isn't unreasonable - Schneier's crypto book, softbound, is $60, so a hardbound book of similar heft for $100 is about right. Is it silly that they force new editions on people every couple years to minimize the used book market? Yeah. But if you want it for knowledge, you don't have to buy new. If you just need the problem sets, someone in your class will be like me and have the new book. Copy from them.
What cringing were you referring to, specifically? The one where you hide beyond an anonymous name?
I tolerated it because I planned to keep those books as my reference library. It might not be true for some professions, but I always cringed when I saw science and engineering students selling their books back - when you start working, you *will* want those books to refer to.
Seriously though, it might be interesting to have all of my IM history searchable, but I mostly use it for one-off conversations about things of limited importance.
Use a client with logging enabled.
Grep.
(Note: I use this exact combination with iChat on OS X. It works great on those rare occasions I go "Hmm... She sent me her address in an IM a month ago, let me go find the correct log now.")
Google could just as easily write a client for an existing network, in co-operation with that network, and integrate the logs and whatever other features they want that way.
There's no real reason for Google to go about setting up their own IM network.
Remember that a common view among the (generally more liberal) urban population is "Let the hicks rot." They don't know what's going on outside their cities, and they don't want to; and frankly, why should they? The US has such a huge disparity across political units; I've lived in cities where we had council members who advocated drug legalization and some fairly socialist ideas (not just for the US, for anywhere) sitting alongside gun-toting farmers. In a city of around 70,000. European countries generally don't deal with that kind of disparity, which makes it a lot easier for you to criticize, but we have to try to make both sides happy.
I don't even know that it's "doesn't know/doesn't want to know/doesn't care". I think its more "knows/doesn't think anything can be done/isn't willing to waste time trying." With the possible exception of the insulated ultra-rich, most of America has a pretty good idea of just what kind of walking freaks inhabit our cities and our countryside. We just have no idea how anyone could go about making them less freakish, and (personally, at least) don't necessarily want to. I mean, yes the anti-profanity Jesus freaks are *crazy*, but at least they believe in something, no matter how ridiculous. Ennui and apathy are bigger enemies than Jesus any day.
Also, I wouldn't chracterize the US as bonkers. No more so than most of the world, at any rate. If you think the Bush admin is doing what they're doing because they're crazy, you're not looking deep enough. They aren't crazy, and they aren't idiots - they know what they're doing. You should be scared, but not because they're crazy - because they do it knowingly, and its *exactly what they want to do*.
That said, we've got a pretty good record on democracy, freedom, and human rights. We aren't perfect, but no one is. Our elections are probably about as accurate as European elections - I note that in 2002, there were several accusations of vote fraud in Germany, the Italians have had a corrupted electorate for a *century* now, and the British have worries about 2004 just like the US does. However, when you're head of the class, everyone is going to pick on your flaws, they're just going to be more visible.
The voting turnout, well, I wish I could explain it. I feel like its less an issue of education than an issue of emotion - we know how to vote, we know we can vote, we just don't feel like it will matter. But that's just my opinion, and isn't backed up by anything.
I have to take issue with you on the gun thing, though. It *is* freedom. Its like the German ban against Nazi speech/items. Whether or not you feel its a good a restriction, it *is* a restriction, and all restrictions by definition make us less free. The US has set its gun-freedom bar significantly higher than most of the world. While I don't necessarily agree with the choice, it is a valid issue, and trivializing it by saying "Only dumb hicks want guns" is a typically European viewpoint - many intelligent people (I've worked with more than a few - engineers seem to get a kick out of guns, for some reason) like shooting. I personally don't, but I don't think banning them will accomplish much social good either. Better to mandate things like trigger locks, improved safeties, etc. in order to minimize gun accidents, than to create a situation where only criminals have guns. I've been robbed at gunpoint. It wouldn't have gone any differently if guns had been illegal.
The same with 'distributing wealth'. Its fine that most of Europe has chosen to go for a social welfare state. That's a perfectly acceptable choice. The US hasn't made that choice. While I'm a supporter of some level of social support, I don't want the US to become Europe. Again, while we aren't perfect, neither are we wrong in not pursuing wealth redistribution. If you earn it, you should be able to keep most of it, minus a reasonable percentage used to fund public health and welfare programs. The US and Europe more or less agree on that poin
People buy DVDs.
So I would have to say that the market says "Yes".
You know, I browse with sigs turned off, so I don't even know whats in mine anymore.
Hopefully, something very, very offensive.
I probably don't, because I tend to avoid the Americans who hold views like those - you have to understand, most of the country thinks those fuckers are crazy. A lot of the rest of the US are just quieter about it than I am. I'm not really annoyed by it, I just feel it shouldn't be hidden. Its like PC. People will express themselves one way or another; try to take a word out of circulation and people will simply invest that meaning into another word. This is why both the PC trend to remove a word from use, and the newer trend of a group trying to reclaim a word by using it themselves, are doomed to failure.
The SATs are pretty meaningless, to tell the truth. Especially as a measure of intelligence. I scored 1570 on the SAT and 800,790,780 on the GRE. But there are much, much smarter people than me out there. I just test well. GWB has problems speaking. Is he an idiot? No. But he ain't no Rhodes scholar either. I'm pretty sure I'm better at math than Clinton, but I'm not at all sure I'm smarter than he is. I'm damn sure I'm better at math than GWB, and I'm damn sure I'm smarter than he is.
I've met very, very few people in the US that have a problem spelling or saying 'fuck'. Most of them, in fact, have problems not saying it.
Libertarians lack an amygdala at all. They make decisions based on cold hard facts and reasoning, unclouded by emotions or extraneous influences.
All three of them.
Well, he can probably spell 'fuck' correctly.
(Seriously - either swear, or don't. Don't try to cover it up. No one thinks its funny, intelligent, proper, or any other positive virtue. We just think its fucking dumb.)
Cutting a song purely based on length isn't censorship.
Censorship implies cutting based on content; trimming to fit available programming time is certainly not based on content.
That said, MTV hasn't played good music in years. I'm not even sure they've played music in the last year; hasn't it basically been colonized by reality TV shows, Cribs, and Pimp My Ride?
I've lived in more than a few places without a network-managed thermostat where my landlord controlled my heat.
It sucked, but that's nothing new.
Emit a virtual "Ow, you fucking vampire!" when the trainee screws up?
PuTTY. No need to install cygwin for SSH. And since you just download the executable and run it, no install needed, only the most locked down machines will prevent its use.
Well, that sounds like a personal problem to me.
But don't worry, I'm sure your gmail account is just filled with offers from people who can help you make your system tray bigger for just $19.95, shipped!
Once upon a time, in downtown SF, there was a major financial company's wireless network. Completely open. COMPLETELY. Upon looking them up, they were on the 39th floor of a tower, which they must have thought would protect them against people sitting in the park across the street.
They were wrong. Luckily, we weren't malicious (OK, so we *were* going to send a 1000-copy job of a Word document saying "SECURE YOUR WIRELESS" in big black letters to their printer, but we didn't have the right drivers on hand).
This was a large, Fortune 500 finance company. This was in 2002.
People are *dumb*.
That has nothing to do with the troops. The troops, if you ask them, are fighting for their countrymen.
They didn't go over there to make money for someone, they went over there because they were told it would make the US safer.
Now, you can argue whether or not that's true, and you can certainly accuse the top of the chain of command of betraying the country, but don't blame the troops for it. They still want to believe they're doing it for us.
Embedded PowerPC is doing pretty well these days, as the cost comes down. Somewhere else in the thread I mentioned working on a program that was using a couple million mid-high end embedded PPCs; there's definitely a place for them. OTOH, I just saw an article on a micro that, while it runs at 4 MHz and can't do much, costs 50c. Retail. On-chip crystal, too, so it really is single-chip, add power and ground. I think it has something like 256 bytes of flash and 64 bytes of RAM.
That's just neat. It's a 4 MIPS processor, and it costs about as much as the postage to mail it.
The fuel inventory is not going to be inside of the containment vessel. That's a *stupid* design. You feed in only enough fuel to keep the reaction going; otherwise, you can have runaways. Storage is external.
Also, think about what you just said - storing, and then releasing, energy. It's conservation of energy - knowing your fuel supply, you have a pretty good idea what your energy output should be. If your energy output diverges from planned, you have a pretty good idea your reactor is malfunctioning and can be brought offline, or can have fuel input reduced, or any number of things.
And yes, it does have to be self-sustaining for it to matter. The minimal amount of additional fusion that could happen before reaction ceases should be something easily containable by current containment systems. You're not talking about something suddenly becoming a fusion warhead. You're talking about, at worst, a few nanoseconds of significantly higher output. 50 TW is easy to contain, if you only have to contain a femtosecond pulse - even a nanosecond pulse at 50 TW output is only 50 kilojoules of energy.
50 kilojoules is 12 calories. Not exactly worrying.
50 TW for a full second, far longer than a reaction is likely to continue in absence of control and containment, is 50 terajoules. This energy, for the record, is equivalent to the detonation of 216 tons of TNT. Which, while a sizable explosion by any measure, isn't even comparable to a tactical nuclear weapon.
I think you're being a bit paranoid. Do the math and see if I'm not right.
PPC isn't just desktop. PPC is, in fact, barely at all desktop. PPC sees a ton of use as the main embedded micro in systems ranging from network computing to automotive to scientific equipment.
And yes, I am going to be that way about it, because its the truth. There are a lot of people employed making designs using and programming those smaller CPUs; just because you don't, don't assume no one cares about them. People say "Intel has 90% CPU market share" all the time; if they want to, they damn well better define the market.
The big 3 buy from the lowest quoting supplier, actually. They don't do much on their own anymore.
And Intel's offerings these days are not very good compared to the competitors.