The MiGs would takeoff with JATO rockets fixed and fire them off at 50,000ft for a single chance at hitting the U-2.
The problem with IFF is trust... if it isn't 100% reliable, it isn't very useful. If an aircraft is coming in on the wrong vector and a strange altitude and speed, the SAM battery will be ordered to fire, IFF or no.
You haven't given a reason why this is a bad thing though. If the "fringe" candidate is such a whacko, he won't get voted in.
Fringe candidates do not need to win elections to "win". 3rd party candidates are usually a one horse show, with specific stances on specific issues. That's what puts them on the fringe -- they're primary supporters are zealots focused on one issue.
Giving fringe candiates more votes and more exposure gives their narrow agenda more weight. The result will be that unresolvable issues that people are passionate about like abortion and immigration will dominate the political scene and paralyze government.
The other problem is that the size and diversity of the US makes a "fringe" candiate a dangerous choice.
Two reasons for this:
1. These candiates are typically charismatic demagouges. 2. You need a "least common demominator" candidate to satisfy the whole country. Demagouges beat controversial issues to death.
Consider someone who could garner alot of votes from left-of-center states like California, New York and the DC area, yet alienate the rest of the country.
The flip scenario would be a charismatic pro-life candidate. Such a candidate, without being moderated by a larger political party, would energize rural, southern and religous voters and alienate another huge slice of the population.
Politics is about compromise. You cannot have compromise with zealots setting the agenda.... if you try, the result is usually unrest.
I think that we agree on things more than we disagree. I believe that the rise of the ubiquitous, trivial to create corporation is responsible for much of the opacity of the present system.
I also don't believe that anything will change that anytime soon. The best solution, IMHO, is full disclosure of all contributions, including contributions to shadow organizations like MoveOn.org
In the late 1700's, the Bank of New York, founded by Alexander Hamilton (who was the archictect of the Federal system) was the bank of the Federalists. In the days before "equal opportunity" laws in banking, Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans had alot of difficulty getting access to capital, since British banks no longer did business in the colonies. Hamilton took full advantage of his influence to push for and establish institutions that built a single American nation. (ie the Treasury and free-market government debt)
In the 19th and 20th Centuries, we witnessed the rise of the polictical machine. That was the ultimate corruption on an industrial scale.
Read this book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail /-/1881 324028/qid=1090951860/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl 14/104-8192737-3067954?v=glance&s=books&n=5078 46
It describes the Albany Democratic Machine and it's greatest Mayor, who served for over 50 years. Albany was one of the last great political machine cities.
Ever read about the Gary Powers when he was shot down over the Soviet Union in a U-2?
Soviet SAM batteries shot down 3-4 MiG fighters that were unsuccessfully trying to intercept Powers and his U-2.
SAMs have never been able to reliably discern between friend and foe well. Standard Operating Procedure in all air forces is to steer friendly aircraft well away from SAM batteries.
That's why there are checks and balances: so no one person can gain too much power. But big coporations have bypassed the checks and balances by owning everyone involved.
The problem is the legal status of the modern corporation; not democracy.
But you have very little control over whether your friend gets elected. If your friend refuses to do your bidding, there's little you can do to punish him for it. A candidate whose campaign is financed by a big corporation, on the other hand, can suddenly find his funds drying up if he fails to perform to their satisfaction. So while there is corruption is both cases, treating both as equally dangerous is very simplistic.
Sure I do. I can engage in an active campaign to get him elected. For local office, you put signs on lawns, talk to neighbors and pass out swag.
If my buddy pisses me off, however, I pull my support from him, rip my signs down and stop helping him.
There are varying levels of corruption. The system we have now favors the most corrupt: those that are willing to sell the power the office gives them to the highest bidder.
You have no idea how bad it can be. 18th and 19th Century American politics made today's scandals look tame by comparison.
The people who vote for sideshow candidates like Nader or Perot are a fringe vote.
Implementing a system that encourages fringe candidates is a bad practice over time, because it gives fringe candidates more clout. In a country as large and diverse as the US, this encourages exteme groups and will ultimately lead to unrest.
Just think of what a disaster a 2nd choice vote would have been in the South during the 50's and 60's. Segregationist party enrollment would have surged and would feel disenfranchised by Federal Civil Rights legislation. Moderating voices like LBJ would have fell silent uner that sort of pressure.
Third parties in America have always served to shake up the ranks of the Republican and Democratic parties. One of the major parties tends to absorb the key issues of third parties and run with them. The best example of this was the Progressive movment in the early 20th century, whose influence was felt well beyond that party's demise.
Friendly fire is a fact of life for surface based anti-aircraft weaponry. Creating a spoof-proof friend or foe anti-aircraft system is a non-trivial problem.
That's one of the reasons why the US has always focused on fighter aircraft at the expense of anti-air artillery and SAM systems.
If my friend is elected to office, I have an advantage over the general public because I have more access to my friend than you do. If I am unethical, I can leverage that friendship while bidding for government contracts or influencing legislation.
Often times politicans can be completely clean; President Grant was about as honest as you could be, but the people surrounding him took advantage of their association with the president to run all sorts of scams.
Corruption exists in any government. Find me an honest dictatorship and monarchy and I'll sell you a bridge witha great view of Brooklyn.
We get corrupt leaders because people are corrupt.
If that's how you vote, you're an idiot. Vote your conscience, period.
Part of decision making is compromise. We often take jobs we like for less money or take jobs we hate for more money. You need to decide what works for you.
European-style runoff elections and 2nd choice votes do not make sense in a country as large and diverse as the US. A nation that spans a continent where states differ in demographics, economy and other factors need blander national candidates.
This is true of any democracy, apart from the U.S, where people apparently feel that they must simply vote for either the guy most likely to win, or the other guy because they don't like one candidate. It's totally braindead. How often do you hear "I don't like candidate X but I'm going to vote for him because at least he isn't candidate Y!" How fucking stupid is that?
Other than on/., I have never heard someone say that. If you are so dumb as to make that choice, that's your problem.
Asbestos isn't a big deal until it becomes airborne. Most of the victims of asbestos-induced cancer are mechanics who were exposed to brake dust over a couple of decades.
Depending on where your grandfather worked, it's unlikely that he was exposed to much friable asbestos at all.
As the other poster said, your complaint mostly applies to the XSLT transform engines.
But keep in mind that the industry heavyweights who back these standards are all in the business of selling you hardware.
IBM, Sun, etc see a slow app as an opportunity to sell computers. If you can lower the cost to produce applications significantly by using XML, you can afford to buy more computers from IBM, HP, Dell, Sunc, etc.
Everything is hunky-dory, provided that you can recompile.
So yeah, I can probably run Linux binaries from 10 years ago if I needed to.
Try running a commercial database released 18 months ago and an NPTL machine. It won't work.
Secondly, the concept of what "linux" is has never been clearer. It is the Linux kernel. If you can't grasp that then you should be back at special-school.
The market sees Linux as an operating system. That's reality.
I'm not a glibc library programmer and am not familiar with how it works. But Microsoft has apparently figured out how to achieve backward compatability. So has Sun; So has IBM; So has HP.
Alot of desktop software written today still works fine on almost decade old Windows 95 systems.
Time travel back to 1991 when the Unix wars were in full swing. Linux is going down that road right now.
It's already a pain in the ass to deal with different kernels, threading models and c library revisions. As the kernels start to diverge, the concept of what "linux" is becomes less and less clear.
Meanwhile, I can run code compiled for Windows NT 3.5 in 1992 on my Windows XP box with little fuss.
Releases of iTunes often include subtle changes in the licensing model for music that you purchased in the past.
Thus far, the changes have been trivial; but since nobody called Apple to task for arbitrarily changing licensing terms ex post facto, they'll feel free to do so again in the future.
I have two completely different names... and it became a problem here because some HR dorks didn't believe that I was me because my phone directory listing has my nickname instead of my legal name.
It also became a problem in college when a professor who knew me personally by my nickname removed me from the class rolls by accident. I had to appeal to get re-added afterwards.
Use the legal name everywhere. It will be a big pain in the ass otherwise.
I might have confused a suburban water supply with Boston's. Boston is so sprawled out that its hard for a visitor to say what is Boston proper and what isnt'. I can say that I drank tap water in Dedham, Needham and Newton and thought that it was gross.
Slashdot Mirror
Windows wasn't production ready for version 2003!
Sorry... couldn't resist.
The MiGs would takeoff with JATO rockets fixed and fire them off at 50,000ft for a single chance at hitting the U-2.
The problem with IFF is trust... if it isn't 100% reliable, it isn't very useful. If an aircraft is coming in on the wrong vector and a strange altitude and speed, the SAM battery will be ordered to fire, IFF or no.
Do it. After spending alot of time being dissatisfied with alot of local issues, my brother ran for and won a seat on the town council.
His experience was pretty enlightening, and brought home the notion that there are 3 sides to every story and 12 sides to every law.
You haven't given a reason why this is a bad thing though. If the "fringe" candidate is such a whacko, he won't get voted in.
Fringe candidates do not need to win elections to "win". 3rd party candidates are usually a one horse show, with specific stances on specific issues. That's what puts them on the fringe -- they're primary supporters are zealots focused on one issue.
Giving fringe candiates more votes and more exposure gives their narrow agenda more weight. The result will be that unresolvable issues that people are passionate about like abortion and immigration will dominate the political scene and paralyze government.
The other problem is that the size and diversity of the US makes a "fringe" candiate a dangerous choice.
Two reasons for this:
1. These candiates are typically charismatic demagouges.
2. You need a "least common demominator" candidate to satisfy the whole country. Demagouges beat controversial issues to death.
Consider someone who could garner alot of votes from left-of-center states like California, New York and the DC area, yet alienate the rest of the country.
The flip scenario would be a charismatic pro-life candidate. Such a candidate, without being moderated by a larger political party, would energize rural, southern and religous voters and alienate another huge slice of the population.
Politics is about compromise. You cannot have compromise with zealots setting the agenda.... if you try, the result is usually unrest.
I think that we agree on things more than we disagree. I believe that the rise of the ubiquitous, trivial to create corporation is responsible for much of the opacity of the present system.
l /-/1881 324028/qid=1090951860/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl 14/104-8192737-3067954?v=glance&s=books&n=5078 46
I also don't believe that anything will change that anytime soon. The best solution, IMHO, is full disclosure of all contributions, including contributions to shadow organizations like MoveOn.org
In the late 1700's, the Bank of New York, founded by Alexander Hamilton (who was the archictect of the Federal system) was the bank of the Federalists. In the days before "equal opportunity" laws in banking, Jeffersonian Democratic-Republicans had alot of difficulty getting access to capital, since British banks no longer did business in the colonies. Hamilton took full advantage of his influence to push for and establish institutions that built a single American nation. (ie the Treasury and free-market government debt)
In the 19th and 20th Centuries, we witnessed the rise of the polictical machine. That was the ultimate corruption on an industrial scale.
Read this book:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai
It describes the Albany Democratic Machine and it's greatest Mayor, who served for over 50 years. Albany was one of the last great political machine cities.
Ever read about the Gary Powers when he was shot down over the Soviet Union in a U-2?
Soviet SAM batteries shot down 3-4 MiG fighters that were unsuccessfully trying to intercept Powers and his U-2.
SAMs have never been able to reliably discern between friend and foe well. Standard Operating Procedure in all air forces is to steer friendly aircraft well away from SAM batteries.
That's why there are checks and balances: so no one person can gain too much power. But big coporations have bypassed the checks and balances by owning everyone involved.
The problem is the legal status of the modern corporation; not democracy.
But you have very little control over whether your friend gets elected. If your friend refuses to do your bidding, there's little you can do to punish him for it. A candidate whose campaign is financed by a big corporation, on the other hand, can suddenly find his funds drying up if he fails to perform to their satisfaction. So while there is corruption is both cases, treating both as equally dangerous is very simplistic.
Sure I do. I can engage in an active campaign to get him elected. For local office, you put signs on lawns, talk to neighbors and pass out swag.
If my buddy pisses me off, however, I pull my support from him, rip my signs down and stop helping him.
There are varying levels of corruption. The system we have now favors the most corrupt: those that are willing to sell the power the office gives them to the highest bidder.
You have no idea how bad it can be. 18th and 19th Century American politics made today's scandals look tame by comparison.
The people who vote for sideshow candidates like Nader or Perot are a fringe vote.
Implementing a system that encourages fringe candidates is a bad practice over time, because it gives fringe candidates more clout. In a country as large and diverse as the US, this encourages exteme groups and will ultimately lead to unrest.
Just think of what a disaster a 2nd choice vote would have been in the South during the 50's and 60's. Segregationist party enrollment would have surged and would feel disenfranchised by Federal Civil Rights legislation. Moderating voices like LBJ would have fell silent uner that sort of pressure.
Third parties in America have always served to shake up the ranks of the Republican and Democratic parties. One of the major parties tends to absorb the key issues of third parties and run with them. The best example of this was the Progressive movment in the early 20th century, whose influence was felt well beyond that party's demise.
Friendly fire is a fact of life for surface based anti-aircraft weaponry. Creating a spoof-proof friend or foe anti-aircraft system is a non-trivial problem.
That's one of the reasons why the US has always focused on fighter aircraft at the expense of anti-air artillery and SAM systems.
That's a people problem.
If my friend is elected to office, I have an advantage over the general public because I have more access to my friend than you do. If I am unethical, I can leverage that friendship while bidding for government contracts or influencing legislation.
Often times politicans can be completely clean; President Grant was about as honest as you could be, but the people surrounding him took advantage of their association with the president to run all sorts of scams.
Corruption exists in any government. Find me an honest dictatorship and monarchy and I'll sell you a bridge witha great view of Brooklyn.
We get corrupt leaders because people are corrupt.
If that's how you vote, you're an idiot. Vote your conscience, period.
Part of decision making is compromise. We often take jobs we like for less money or take jobs we hate for more money. You need to decide what works for you.
European-style runoff elections and 2nd choice votes do not make sense in a country as large and diverse as the US. A nation that spans a continent where states differ in demographics, economy and other factors need blander national candidates.
Other than on
Europe is no panacea.
Asbestos isn't a big deal until it becomes airborne. Most of the victims of asbestos-induced cancer are mechanics who were exposed to brake dust over a couple of decades.
Depending on where your grandfather worked, it's unlikely that he was exposed to much friable asbestos at all.
As the other poster said, your complaint mostly applies to the XSLT transform engines.
But keep in mind that the industry heavyweights who back these standards are all in the business of selling you hardware.
IBM, Sun, etc see a slow app as an opportunity to sell computers. If you can lower the cost to produce applications significantly by using XML, you can afford to buy more computers from IBM, HP, Dell, Sunc, etc.
Try running a commercial database released 18 months ago and an NPTL machine. It won't work.
The market sees Linux as an operating system. That's reality.
I'm not a glibc library programmer and am not familiar with how it works. But Microsoft has apparently figured out how to achieve backward compatability. So has Sun; So has IBM; So has HP.
Alot of desktop software written today still works fine on almost decade old Windows 95 systems.
Time travel back to 1991 when the Unix wars were in full swing. Linux is going down that road right now.
It's already a pain in the ass to deal with different kernels, threading models and c library revisions. As the kernels start to diverge, the concept of what "linux" is becomes less and less clear.
Meanwhile, I can run code compiled for Windows NT 3.5 in 1992 on my Windows XP box with little fuss.
Why is that a leap?
The license agreement allows Apple to modify the terms of the agreement with subsequent releases of iTunes.
You CAN stave off licensing changes by not upgrading, of course, but you may lose functionality in the future by not doing so.
Once is enough.
Releases of iTunes often include subtle changes in the licensing model for music that you purchased in the past.
Thus far, the changes have been trivial; but since nobody called Apple to task for arbitrarily changing licensing terms ex post facto, they'll feel free to do so again in the future.
Apple will have no qualms arbitrarily altering the current iTunes DRM scheme to suit Macrovision's desires.
Only worse.
I have two completely different names... and it became a problem here because some HR dorks didn't believe that I was me because my phone directory listing has my nickname instead of my legal name.
It also became a problem in college when a professor who knew me personally by my nickname removed me from the class rolls by accident. I had to appeal to get re-added afterwards.
Use the legal name everywhere. It will be a big pain in the ass otherwise.
Well then, it's time for your shell corporation to pay it's fair share.
Corporate executives like yourself are getting rich on the backs of children!
Have you ever been to Mexico, China or India?
If you haven't, you don't know what corruption is.
It's 2004, so if yo games don't have street cred, some punk will pop a cap in yo ass.
I might have confused a suburban water supply with Boston's. Boston is so sprawled out that its hard for a visitor to say what is Boston proper and what isnt'. I can say that I drank tap water in Dedham, Needham and Newton and thought that it was gross.