Are you trying to argue that these suicides make up enough of a difference that it would have been less costly to confront Iraq with 1800's-era tactics? Or 1940's era bombing runs?
I'm sorry, I just don't see the relation from your suicide numbers.
You haven't made much of a case, really. I don't really think it's ethically and morally wrong to perform research like this. I don't understand your problem with it.
Sure, it'll be used for weapons. It'll also be used by NASA and the private sector. Why is it better to send a human into battle than a robot? I really don't feel that it's better to have an imperfect human instead of an imperfect robot.
Sure, it's research into how to make war more effectively. But I think we can accept that war does happen, and the U.S. fights a lot of wars. Maybe it shouldn't, but I don't think it's wrong to give our boys in the field the best support money can buy.
I think you should also consider that as technology has advanced, the wars have gotten cleaner. Do you have any idea of the brutality of the American Civil War? Or the number of people killed in our carpet-bombing runs of World War II?
Do you know the number of people killed when we used smartbombs to take out the specific buildings (we used to be happy just finding the right city!) that we targeted in Afghanistan?
I am for anything that lets our military be more effective. It directly protects American citizens around the world.
It's not important that Linus controls it. What is important is that someone highly capable controls it. Many projects have changed hands successfully. If Linus dissapears, one of his lieutenants will take up the position.
This is true for most any project with lieutenants, but unfortunatly most projects are one man bands, with a huge single point of failure (right between the eyes).
Because MUDs are great! Sure, it's not the same as Everquest, but who said it had to be? MUDs have many advantages over graphical systems, and vice versa. They simply are not competing. What *is* happening is that the new generation of youngins' just doesn't have the mental capacity to work a MUD.
Bullshit. We just did that with Afghanistan and Iraq, and all the rest of the world did was run to mommie (the UN), who did nothing but tsk tsk us. And besides, we kept a huge number of the islands we took in the Pacific as protectorates.
But I think you dismiss the nukes as a unilaterally bad idea. I don't want to go so far as to say that it is good that we nuked them, but perhaps that was the lesser of two evils. Another poster goes into that, so I won't.
Instead, I'd like to consider history. Not as an argument for the nuke, but just to put it in perspective.
Fuedal times: if there was a peasant uprising, you rode in with knights and cavalry and killed everyone. Men, women, and children. Well, maybe you raped the women first.
Rome had some great tactics. The practice of decimating: to take every tenth man and execute him. This wasn't done during battle; it was purely an intimidation tactic. And then poisoning the well: the Romans *loved* poisoning the well.
Consider even Japan: they commited some atrocities against the Chinese when they attacked the mainland.
Hitler provides some examples I needn't spell out.
Again, I'm not saying it's morally correct to nuke cities, but your statements are overblown and one-sided. Nuked two cities without warning? Honestly, the first city is warning for the second.
Also, I think one needs to consider after the war: we gave a whole pile of money to the nations that started the war to get them back on their feet, as opposed to forcing them to pay reparations, like the victors of the first World War did. Putting the nations back together has probably averted WW3.
Honestly, have you read the crap that most people write? You write far and away better than 95% of college students. And that's just because you can spell and puncuate.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there. One, people don't write docs enough:) That's why there's a need for a man page project.
Two, info has cross-references. A lot of things are easier to read in a format with links, like HTML, which texinfo can output to. Now, this doesn't mean that texinfo is the optimal format, but I think man is certainly *not* the optimal format.
A device doesn't cause stress. People cause stress. A phone won't stress you out if you don't let it. Why does it annoy you? Because you are on call? If you're on call, that's the job, not the cell phone. If you're not supposed to be on call, tell your boss to fsck off. If it can't wait until tomorrow, it's important enough to be paid for.
What the hell kind of name is the "Crew Exploration Vehicle"? At least the shuttle didn't have some crazy name; it was the shuttle. And it is a shuttle, so that was an OK name.
Then you had the Apollo landers. The name of a *god* who rode through the heavens in a flaming chariot. Now *there*'s an appropriate name. Or the "Saturn V". Named after another god (or a planet, but whatever). Still better than C.E.V.
Has anyone tried to *say* CEV? Chev? Chevy? How are we supposed to pronounce it? I swear, it sounds like a suppository.
This is a sign of bad leadership somewhere. It has to be. No one but a comittee would call a Mars craft the "Crew Exploration Vehicle". I don't want to explore the crew! Eck!
Oh well, I guess some old-timer there has some strange fetish... it is the end of all hope.
I am referring to transform and lighting. And yes, a GeForce 1 will run it. If BF1942 won't run on a GeForce, it's because of other reasons.
The GeForce 1 *does* have hardware T&L, and your link doesn't even say that it doesn't. Stating that the successor has it doesn't mean the original doesn't;)
As for BF1942, you'll note that it uses DirectX. I'm not saying that DirectX needs more horsepower, only that the BF1942 renderer is massively different from the D3 renderer.
It's worth considering that the segway was initially created for the disabled, who can't use a bike. I think it's succeeded admirably in that regard, actually.
The game will run on anything down to a GeForce 1. It won't look as good, but that'll do. Basically, any card on the market with some basic T&L capabilities will do *fine*. This has been stated by id and id has a very good history of making games with low requirements. Consider Quake 3, which ran on essentially any computer with any hardware accel at all (i.e. ATI Rage Pro). I'm not upgrading for Doom3, and it'll look great on my system.
This particular situation was interesting. My bud, James, is a third degree black belt, so one of our more eccentric teachers was going to let him bring in some weapons for a demonstration. He had written permission. I don't know why he was going to do this, but he was. The dean decided that he didn't like the idea though. This is the sort of shit that pisses me off about schools.
I agree with you totally. Action against the student is necessary, but I believe that three days is excessive compared to other offenses. Consider my buddy who brought weapons (nunchucks, as I recall. Probably also some caltrops and throwing stars, I imagine) to school. That got him 3 days also, and he was suspended as a danger to other students. A nuisance and a danger are two differenct categories entirely.
Now if that school has different standards, i.e. expulsion for the above offense, then perhaps it is in the correct scale. But I don't believe that is the case.
This is exactly how this situation ought to have been handled. You find a hole, someone notices it, closes the hole. This is a vastly better solution than suspension, which will only publicize the openings and the ignorance of the district.
It certainly warrant some action, though most here would argue against it. After all, it does affect every computer on the network, and you and I would hang the kid if the message was spam.
But a suspension? A three day suspension? Friends of mine have been suspended for less for bringing weapons to school. That one was bullshit too, but at least was a bit more understandable. Now this, a kid is suspended for doing something not forbidden (oh, they have rules against 'hacking'? Then it's their responsibility to understand the term).
And as for that teacher, she's right. Most people have no idea what the inside of a classroom is right. Of course, it seems she doesn't either. Any competent teacher should recognize that experimentation leads to the most learning.
Second, it doesn't sound like he did it during a class. It may warrant a detention if the child habitually ignored the teacher for his own experimentation, however this doesn't seem to be the case.
The primary problem I see with education is that it is nearly impossible to evaluate teachers. If good teachers (and there are a lot of them) could be supported and not interfered with by others, it would be great. But this isn't the case. The good teachers out there are more than offset by ignorant policies, moronic teachers, incompetant administrators, and yuppie families.
If I were only looking at education, the future would look really bleak. Fortunately, kids seem pretty good at surviving their schooling.
Slashdot Mirror
We're called GEEKS 8-}
Yes, but the parent should be drawn and quartered before he is allowed to sue. The remaining parts should be keel-hauled.
I don't understand your point, I'm afraid.
Are you trying to argue that these suicides make up enough of a difference that it would have been less costly to confront Iraq with 1800's-era tactics? Or 1940's era bombing runs?
I'm sorry, I just don't see the relation from your suicide numbers.
You haven't made much of a case, really. I don't really think it's ethically and morally wrong to perform research like this. I don't understand your problem with it.
Sure, it'll be used for weapons. It'll also be used by NASA and the private sector. Why is it better to send a human into battle than a robot? I really don't feel that it's better to have an imperfect human instead of an imperfect robot.
Sure, it's research into how to make war more effectively. But I think we can accept that war does happen, and the U.S. fights a lot of wars. Maybe it shouldn't, but I don't think it's wrong to give our boys in the field the best support money can buy.
I think you should also consider that as technology has advanced, the wars have gotten cleaner. Do you have any idea of the brutality of the American Civil War? Or the number of people killed in our carpet-bombing runs of World War II?
Do you know the number of people killed when we used smartbombs to take out the specific buildings (we used to be happy just finding the right city!) that we targeted in Afghanistan?
I am for anything that lets our military be more effective. It directly protects American citizens around the world.
What's so unreadable about that? That trailing off is like tab-completion!
;)
Yeah, no one likes my scrawl either
Someone kills the bitch who done it!
It's not important that Linus controls it. What is important is that someone highly capable controls it. Many projects have changed hands successfully. If Linus dissapears, one of his lieutenants will take up the position.
This is true for most any project with lieutenants, but unfortunatly most projects are one man bands, with a huge single point of failure (right between the eyes).
What's so bad about masturbation? 8-}
> Good writers are not very likely to want to give their work away for free.
... open source software? Linux?
You're wrong. That's all there is to it; it is not the case that you are right. You're wrong. That simply isn't true.
You're just wrong. Plenty of skilled people in all fields give their work away.
Because MUDs are great! Sure, it's not the same as Everquest, but who said it had to be? MUDs have many advantages over graphical systems, and vice versa. They simply are not competing. What *is* happening is that the new generation of youngins' just doesn't have the mental capacity to work a MUD.
Damned kids these days.
Bullshit. We just did that with Afghanistan and Iraq, and all the rest of the world did was run to mommie (the UN), who did nothing but tsk tsk us. And besides, we kept a huge number of the islands we took in the Pacific as protectorates.
You are quite right, that isn't funny.
But I think you dismiss the nukes as a unilaterally bad idea. I don't want to go so far as to say that it is good that we nuked them, but perhaps that was the lesser of two evils. Another poster goes into that, so I won't.
Instead, I'd like to consider history. Not as an argument for the nuke, but just to put it in perspective.
Fuedal times: if there was a peasant uprising, you rode in with knights and cavalry and killed everyone. Men, women, and children. Well, maybe you raped the women first.
Rome had some great tactics. The practice of decimating: to take every tenth man and execute him. This wasn't done during battle; it was purely an intimidation tactic. And then poisoning the well: the Romans *loved* poisoning the well.
Consider even Japan: they commited some atrocities against the Chinese when they attacked the mainland.
Hitler provides some examples I needn't spell out.
Again, I'm not saying it's morally correct to nuke cities, but your statements are overblown and one-sided. Nuked two cities without warning? Honestly, the first city is warning for the second.
Also, I think one needs to consider after the war: we gave a whole pile of money to the nations that started the war to get them back on their feet, as opposed to forcing them to pay reparations, like the victors of the first World War did. Putting the nations back together has probably averted WW3.
A few thoughts to consider.
Honestly, have you read the crap that most people write? You write far and away better than 95% of college students. And that's just because you can spell and puncuate.
I'm going to have to disagree with you there. One, people don't write docs enough :) That's why there's a need for a man page project.
Two, info has cross-references. A lot of things are easier to read in a format with links, like HTML, which texinfo can output to. Now, this doesn't mean that texinfo is the optimal format, but I think man is certainly *not* the optimal format.
Perl without alphanum tokens? Yeah, that sounds like a pretty apt comparison :)
I see a lot of people bitching about how info sucks. Well, you know what? Maybe it does. But have you actually tried to write a man page?
The syntax for roff just sucks. Info, on the other hand, is a fairly reasonable way to write documentation.
A device doesn't cause stress. People cause stress. A phone won't stress you out if you don't let it. Why does it annoy you? Because you are on call? If you're on call, that's the job, not the cell phone. If you're not supposed to be on call, tell your boss to fsck off. If it can't wait until tomorrow, it's important enough to be paid for.
What the hell kind of name is the "Crew Exploration Vehicle"? At least the shuttle didn't have some crazy name; it was the shuttle. And it is a shuttle, so that was an OK name.
Then you had the Apollo landers. The name of a *god* who rode through the heavens in a flaming chariot. Now *there*'s an appropriate name. Or the "Saturn V". Named after another god (or a planet, but whatever). Still better than C.E.V.
Has anyone tried to *say* CEV? Chev? Chevy? How are we supposed to pronounce it? I swear, it sounds like a suppository.
This is a sign of bad leadership somewhere. It has to be. No one but a comittee would call a Mars craft the "Crew Exploration Vehicle". I don't want to explore the crew! Eck!
Oh well, I guess some old-timer there has some strange fetish... it is the end of all hope.
I am referring to transform and lighting. And yes, a GeForce 1 will run it. If BF1942 won't run on a GeForce, it's because of other reasons.
;)
The GeForce 1 *does* have hardware T&L, and your link doesn't even say that it doesn't. Stating that the successor has it doesn't mean the original doesn't
Check out this article for Doom3's requirements.
As for BF1942, you'll note that it uses DirectX. I'm not saying that DirectX needs more horsepower, only that the BF1942 renderer is massively different from the D3 renderer.
It's worth considering that the segway was initially created for the disabled, who can't use a bike. I think it's succeeded admirably in that regard, actually.
The game will run on anything down to a GeForce 1. It won't look as good, but that'll do. Basically, any card on the market with some basic T&L capabilities will do *fine*. This has been stated by id and id has a very good history of making games with low requirements. Consider Quake 3, which ran on essentially any computer with any hardware accel at all (i.e. ATI Rage Pro). I'm not upgrading for Doom3, and it'll look great on my system.
You're next ;)
/. and in the comments is about as terrorist-aiding as information gets. Time for them to run!
Some of the information and suggestions on
Hmm, now that I think of it, the NYTime had better hide too...
This particular situation was interesting. My bud, James, is a third degree black belt, so one of our more eccentric teachers was going to let him bring in some weapons for a demonstration. He had written permission. I don't know why he was going to do this, but he was. The dean decided that he didn't like the idea though. This is the sort of shit that pisses me off about schools.
I agree with you totally. Action against the student is necessary, but I believe that three days is excessive compared to other offenses. Consider my buddy who brought weapons (nunchucks, as I recall. Probably also some caltrops and throwing stars, I imagine) to school. That got him 3 days also, and he was suspended as a danger to other students. A nuisance and a danger are two differenct categories entirely.
Now if that school has different standards, i.e. expulsion for the above offense, then perhaps it is in the correct scale. But I don't believe that is the case.
This is exactly how this situation ought to have been handled. You find a hole, someone notices it, closes the hole. This is a vastly better solution than suspension, which will only publicize the openings and the ignorance of the district.
It certainly warrant some action, though most here would argue against it. After all, it does affect every computer on the network, and you and I would hang the kid if the message was spam.
But a suspension? A three day suspension? Friends of mine have been suspended for less for bringing weapons to school. That one was bullshit too, but at least was a bit more understandable. Now this, a kid is suspended for doing something not forbidden (oh, they have rules against 'hacking'? Then it's their responsibility to understand the term).
And as for that teacher, she's right. Most people have no idea what the inside of a classroom is right. Of course, it seems she doesn't either. Any competent teacher should recognize that experimentation leads to the most learning.
Second, it doesn't sound like he did it during a class. It may warrant a detention if the child habitually ignored the teacher for his own experimentation, however this doesn't seem to be the case.
The primary problem I see with education is that it is nearly impossible to evaluate teachers. If good teachers (and there are a lot of them) could be supported and not interfered with by others, it would be great. But this isn't the case. The good teachers out there are more than offset by ignorant policies, moronic teachers, incompetant administrators, and yuppie families.
If I were only looking at education, the future would look really bleak. Fortunately, kids seem pretty good at surviving their schooling.