No, you can never beat Carnot efficiency for a given set of source/sink temperatures no matter if you have an infinite supply of river water, or an infinite number of rounds. The efficiency of the series you describe converges to the Carnot efficiency, not to 1.
Carnot's efficiency itself quickly approaches 1 as the core's temperature rises to thousands, while the river's water remains at under 25C. And none of the existing reactors are anywhere above 50% anyway.
The efficiency of the series you describe converges to the Carnot efficiency, not to 1.
Uhm, can you share the formulas? Carnot's limit applies to closed systems only, which a plant is not (because the infinite source of cold is external).
The "fundamental limit of thermodynamics" for a heat engine is not 1, but rather 1 - T_c/T_h, where T_c and T_h are the absolute temperatures of the cold and hot sinks, respectively.
The cold sink is river's water. Even if it is at the boiling point, T_c is under 300. T_h is the temperature of the nuclear reaction, which could be in the thousands. It is not there because of the engineering limits. The T_c/T_h ratio can thus be well under 10% allowing for over 90% efficiency.
None of the existing reactors are close, of course — because there remain many engineering problems to be solved. That's if look at the plant as a closed system, whose entropy can only grow.
any more efficient, and the second law of thermodynamics would be violated.
That formula (of the Carnot cycle's efficiency) applies to closed systems, which a power plant is not. Because the "supply of cold" is external and endless (a river), the limit does not apply. For example, the high-temperature steam/water ("waste heat") can be used as the heat source for another heat engine (of lesser efficiency)...
Assume the reactor produces steam at a temperature of 500 fahrenheit (530 kelvin). [...] Now if the temperature of your cooling medium rises to 90 fahrenheit, then you are stuck below 42%.
A nuclear reaction can produce much higher temperatures than that. Finding a good medium, and a good way to contain/control the reaction is an engineering problem.
Thermodynamics not only says that the ratio must be below 1, it also says exactly by how much it must be below 1.
Uhm, no, it does not. The equation you are referring to is an engineering one. It applies to a single round heat/work conversion. As the "spent" medium is hotter than fresh (and it always is), its heat could be used again in another cycle. And so on (assuming "endless" supply of fresh medium, which river provides), until the difference in temperatures make another cycle impractical. This is how efficiency can — in theory — be brought all the way up to 1 but not quite.
I don't think, the existing plants do even one more cycle because of all the engineering problems involved. Some use the "spent" hot water to heat up nearby buildings and/or orchards... Making these uses (of heat) more efficient is another problem — a lot of the heat-derived electricity is converted back to heat by, uhm, electric heaters, as well as grills and other cooking machinery. But that's a subject for another flame-war...
You misspelled "fundamental limit of thermodynamics"
No, dear, I did not. You are struggling with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which — in the form most applicable to the situation — is spelled as "It is impossible to convert heat completely into work."
My point was, that a better-engineered reactor would convert more energy into work. This increase of the work/heat ratio is a purely engineering problem — the only "fundamental limit of thermodynamics" is that the ratio be below 1...
I visited Israel thrice. On the first visit everyone was searched — in a remote terminal in El Al's exclusive use in a German transfer-point. It was rather annoyed by having to drag my checked-in luggage (which I planned not to see until Tel Aviv) and re-check it in again.
On the second flight, I went through a detailed search both ways — in and out of the country. Somehow these experts read my body-language as suspicious... First, at JFK, they took me to a special room, where they even took my shoes away for X-raying...
On the way back in Tel Aviv, I was also flagged, and the searchers' zeal went even further as they took a test-shot with my camera (to see, if it was real).
Only on the third flight, which was not by El Al did I escape the scrutiny. Either because Continental is not as paranoid (much to the annoyance of some of the Israelis on the flight), or because I was flying with my (very) significant other — a couple is always perceived to be of lower risk.
Now, here why I was not offended. First and foremost, because the Israeli searchers were always extremely polite, well-mannered, and respectful — unlike a typical TSA asshole. (I don't know, why that is. Maybe, because America's low unemployment forces TSA to hire and keep lower quality people...) When they asked for my shoes, for example, they pulled me a chair, so I would not have to stand on the floor bare-feet. After the search, one of them escorted me all the way to the plane chatting and apologizing continuously and handed me over to the stewardess (cutting the line of the boarding passengers), who apologized once more.
Or, maybe, because they weren't looking for bullshit like scissors and other implements, which no terrorist will ever use on a plane again, because it just would not work any more... Because now that we learned, that some hijackers may not be interested in ever landing the hijacked vessel — the passengers and crew will fight them head on (as they did the Shoe Bomber).
Seems like an inherent design flaw, if the reactor meant to produce energy has a problem throwing some of the energy away.
In theory, it should be possible to have no "waste heat". In practice this is an engineering problem — as the energy is converted from heat to electricity, some of the heat "escapes". The newer designs should either eliminate the leak completely or reduce it significantly... Maybe, by using a significantly cooler gas, than the currently employed steam?..
The poor get government help, the rich don't (or aren't supposed to).
"All men are created equal," — and if they aren't, we'll try to equalize them. This is not neccessarily bad — if all you do is helping the disadvantaged. But when you start hurting the successfull — such as by excessive taxation or, indeed, neglecting the gifted kids, there could, indeed, be a problem there.
You can't make everyone equally rich, but if you try — and (dare I risk a "flaimbait" raiting) KDawson's buddies at PeriodKos can be seen trying — you can make everyone equally poor.
Those same people never liked the "No Child Left Behind" — the only plausible reasons for the dislike are a) it was introduced by the nemesis-court-appointed-dictator (long before he also became the war-monger-torturer, BTW); b) it made teachers accountable. Funny how they now accuse it of the failings, that their own proposals in other areas of life usually involve.
But no, I don't think the fears are justified in the realms of education. Because although you can make someone poor by taxing them out of business, you can not make someone stupid by not spending enough money on them. Or can you? It is not like these (smart) kids are getting totally deprived of education, the competition for good colleges remains very high...
I honestly don't think ANY serious scientist is saying that global warming is ALL due to humans.
There is a significant fraction of population — in the law-abiding America — where the belief is strong enough to justify crimes against Property (although, hopefully, not yet against Person). According to the article, about 20% of the passers-by agreed with the perpetrators' sentiment...
Maybe, they did not think, the Hummers are the only thing to blame for the global warming, but they obviously thought, the machines are to blame for a major chunk of the problem.
Great. Now what about the rest of the people, as in all the people who live in Africa and Asia? Not everyone lives in the west.
He is saying, the machines — as we employ them — are bad, because they are being introduced without a safety net for the displaced workers. He can not be talking about the people "in Africa and Asia" because those (largely agrarian) societies never had the "workers" before.
You misunderstood the parent. He's not saying machines are bad, he's saying the way the benefit of machines has been divided up is bad.
This — your own is crap too. The benefits may be divided unevenly, but everybody benefits anyway, even it is only a little for some. And "the rich" sometimes benefit less, actually, because, for example, they could afford (hand-made!) comforts before, but the poor could not. And now they can...
But what we got instead was robots taking our jobs without a safety net for the displaced workers.
What a dumb lamentation! There aren't enough workers. America's unemployment is very low and filling a position with a capable worker is rather difficult. Besides, there are jobs, at which humans are simply incredibly bad, whereas a machine is incredibly good. Comparing two texts, for example, or waking you up at the specified time...
Here is an illustration from an earlier era. Rich people used to have staff, who would do all sorts of routine work for them — now even the poorest can have fast and efficient transportation, clean tea-making implements, fast way to wash their clothes and beddings.
You are lamenting the fate of all those poor maids, who lost their jobs to dishwashers and electric kettles. The right approach is to celebrate their having their dishes and tea done for them by machines and the freeing of sentient beings from having to perform these mind-numbing chores.
No, those displaced workers ceased to be humans and became consumers, feeders of the machines.
A false dichotomy (human vs. consumer). Ok...
We fight wars so that we don't have to fight them again.
Oh, boy, please do run for office, lose, and stop repeating this sort of bullshit demagoguery...
Automate the killing, and the workers will be out of their jobs. It is precisely those workers that we need to be there to tell us to try one more time at diplomacy
Very poetic and very idiotic. The worst atrocities in history were perpetrated with the perpetrators very much face-to-face with the victims. From the ancient Athens (415 BC - worlds first Democracy, ha-ha): > to Holocaust, to Rwanda and Darfur. The massacres all required a lot of manual labor, which did not prevent them from happening. At least, the robots aren't going to rape the women nor to hack off their breasts (so as to starve off their newborns).
... that the thing on the other side of the gun barrel is a human.
Yes, it is a human. A human, who would ram an explosives-filled truck through a wedding. A human, who wants us to either die or to change ourselves to be like him. We went through this with Communism in the 20th century, we are going through it with Caliphate in the 21st. Where they have fanatiques, we have the technology... We shall prevail — despite you holding us back.
But sometimes you need it... Whether it is to project your savings or to figure out, if a particular file was read within the last year.
My problem with atime is that it is not universal enough. For example, reading a file via mmap() or sending it directly to a socket via sendfile() (both methods widely used by web-servers) will not update its atime. The access-timestamp should be updated every time a file is opened for reading, rather than when a read() is issued on it...
So, when I wanted to report, when my little piece of software was last downloaded (via HTTP), I could not, unfortunately, rely on the file's atime...
who happily kill fellow Iraqis just to embarrass us
No, this isn't happening. Some Iraqis are being killed for collaborating, but the majority of the violence between Iraqis is political in nature.
Right, "political in nature". And these politics are aimed at embarassing the US.
Look it up. The Lancet report is pretty definitive.
Lancet's methods are what I described to you — they compare the actual population with that expected from the pre-war growth rates. They didn't count the actual casualties.
There are leaks everywhere in case you hadn't heard.
No, I have not. If you have a reference, post it. Telling me to "look it up" is not going to cut it. You've exaggerated a lot earlier and are trying to weasel out of it now, shifting the burden of proof onto me, and excusing some other crap as "a typo".
Typing "iraq shock awe power plant" into Google revealed numerous articles by major newspapers in which official military spokesmen and "anonymous officials" confirm they were targeted.
Power plants are a legitimate target. But you claimed, we deliberately targeted hospitals. So, post a few credible links, where the hospitals are said to have been explicitly targeted. What's stopping you? Oops...
However, I was able to find numerous references to the attack on Fallujah
Of course, you were. Fallujah was actually (re)taken by force, after giving the residents several days to get out. Once an enemy is using a building to fight, the building (even a hospital) becomes a legal target. For this reason our soldiers leave their weapons outside, when entering a hospital — so as not to give an enemy an excuse to target the facility.
There is power for 4 hours a day in Baghdad and one or hours outside (or not at all), down from 12 hours per day before "shock and awe". That's about it for infrastructure repair.
The power troubles plaguing Iraq now are mostly due to the insurgents' sabotage of the power lines: "15 of the 17 high voltage lines running into Baghdad have been sabotaged". Can't blame it on US weaponry...
Our superious technology allowed us to defeat Iraq's military in a matter of weeks (their being underarmed due to sanctions was useful, but not decisive, because the Chinese and the North Koreans were rather unequiped too during the Korean War). And with very little casualties from either side.
The subsequent troubles are due to the low-tech insurgency, which gladly attacks soft-targets like funerals, weddings, markets and other gatherings to maximize casualties, as well as power-lines and oil-pipes to maximize the misery. They are too low-tech to prevail, but high-tech enough to be a pain — mostly for Iraqis, though.
However, can't you see, how dangerously slippery this slope is?
With that privilege come certain restrictions on how it may spend the royalties it collects. Hiring lobbying firms and PR flacks is not on the list of approved expenditures.
How about an IRS rule, that you are supposed to pay 10% higher tax, unless you are willing to accept certain limitations. Such as your right to petition the government...
If this sounds far-fetched, it is not — there was no need to be registered "non-profit" less than a century ago. But now organizations face a choice between having to pay (high) taxes or accepting (severe) limitations on rights... Tested on corporations (evil, aren't they all?), it may come to citizens in some shape or form...
The Pirate Bay is breaking no laws it its country of origin, so that's really a bad example.
So? They did break break America's laws, which is something Americans usually find reprehensible. And its not like all of your "pirating" friends are from abroad either:-)
Furthermore, I've yet to read a single Slashdot comment seriously advocating the abolition of copyright
Well, after the initial shock of somebody rejecting the obvious, I went searching. Thesetwo are what I found in 5 minutes of using Slashdot's (rather broken) search. These are only the flat-out "abolish copyright" kinds. There are plenty more posters, who — like you — don't reject copyright completely, but (inconsistently) scoff at any attempts by copyright owners to enforce their rights: "You have your rights, you just don't have the right to use them".
Petitioning for redress of grievances was never intended to apply to corporate entities
That — personal vs. corporate — is a really common and a really stupid distinction. I — along with millions of small-business owners — own a corporation, which you want to keep from petitioning the government. But you don't mind Warren Buffet or Larry Ellison or Bill Gates petitioning politicians in person...
My belief is that lobbying should be illegal, period. You want to write your Congressman and convince him of the merits of your position?
So, where is the line between legitimately communicating your concerns to your lawmaker and "lobbying"? Oh, well, must be another case of the "I know it, when I see it", used so "successfully" to distinguish art from pornography. Hear, hear...
this technology may evolve into a tool of even greater oppression of liberty than anything we have now.
The entire Law Enforcement profession is dedicated to "oppressing the liberty" of the law-breakers...
The real question to ponder is whether 100% efficiency is even desired in the law-enforcement field, or whether we want to leave out an option for some people to slip through — because what's going to be used by criminals today, may some day be needed by "freedom-fighters".
Congress is making deals with a known corrupt organization (there, is that better?)
Well, Slashdot is full of praise for organizations, that are similarly corrupt — such as Pirate Bay, for example. The difference? Pirate Bay are (alleged to be) breaking laws, that Slashdotters feel, should not exist.
I think, my first post on the subject made a good argument, why there should be no such thing as "illegal lobbying" — because the right "to petition the government for redress of grievances" is directly derived not only from "the spirit", but also from the letter of the very First Ammendment...
So, if the Ammendment can be construed to enshrine the right to, for example, sell pornography or to speak anonymously (both rather indirect derivations from the spirit of the Ammendment), any laws banning lobbying are flat-out un-Constitutional.
See that's exactly what it makes them, criminal is one who does crime, doing crime is doing something illegal.
Let me spell it out for you in detail... The write-up alleged, that the organization — SoundExchange — is illegally lobbying. From this the GGP — to a rather enthusiastic modding up — has concluded, that SoundExchange is a criminal organization.
My comment explained, that many (most?) of the things illegal are not, in fact criminal. You see, criminal is the subset of illegal, not the other way around.
... is another's excercise of their First Ammendment right. And not only "in spirit" (such as the right to sell porn), but also in letter: "petition the government for redress of grievances".
Huh. Congress making deals with a known criminal organization. Who would have even thought that was possible?
Doing something illegal (like jaywalking) does not make one a criminal...
The incompatible changes in the Apache module API could have something to do with it, hm?
People proposing Apache: We'll need this module, and this one. Oops, we can't mix them, because one is only for Apache-1.x and the other — for Apache-2.x. We'll need to port one of them.
People proposing IIS: While those punks do their "porting" you can have an IIS-based solution up and running next week.
World War II was a war with readily identifiable enemies
United States weren't at war in 1939, when Roosevelt allowed British spies to eavesdrop on communications and — quite possibly — even to kill some Americans engaged in trading with the Nazis.
Comparing an extraordinary or constitutionally-questionable surveillance power or privilege from WWII to one today is beyond absurd.
Oh, no, dear. It was not "questionable". It was unquestionably illegal. And no, the comparison is not "absurd" (nor "beyond absurd"). The point was, Roosevelt has done something quite illegal, but he is still respected today.
Unlike in a regular war, which typically ends after some period of time, in a permanent war, freedoms gone are gone for good, because it is problematic to reasonably postulate a time when the tools used to prosecute the war will no longer be necessary
I'm quite confident, this war will end too — just like during the Cold War we are pitted against a bankrupt ideology, which can not win on merits and so resorts to violence. Back then it was Communism. Today it is Caliphate. It may take us a while, but prevail we shall... Children of today's Che Guevarra-wearing morons will be "shocking the neighborhoods" (and pissing off the "contards") with Osama's portraits on their T-shirts...
Anyone can be wiretapped without oversight as long as the claim is made that they are suspected of communicating with said foreign suspects.
That's true. So, what's the cost of it? Possible violation of privacy... And the benefit? The government will be able to learn of foreign threats faster. You see, snooping on the two people abroad was and remains legal (Echelon, anyone?). It is just when one of the suspects is in the US, that the government runs into problems.
Is the benefit worth the cost? Not sure — but the majority of Congress have decided, that it is... The current (imperfect) law was extended for six months — until a better-designed one (all laws are software) can be produced...
Oh, and before anyone goes screaming about America sliding into BigBrother/Nazi Germany/whatever, just remember, that Frank Delano Roosevelt — the war-President respected even by the French today — has authorized illegal wiretaps (in the 1939 or thereabouts) with the argument, that went something like this: "I don't believe, an American court will interfere with the President fighting German saboteurs". Just who is a saboteur was up to the Executive to decide, of course... Or, sometimes, even up to the foreigners — the British agents, who were allowed to operate in the US.
Exchange is nowdays a VERY MATURE colaboration system and the de-facto standard for business in many places.
Same can be said about Windows, can it not? Certainly "mature", right? And with 95% of the desktops running it, there is no argument, that it is anything, but a standard.
Just like the rest of Microsoft products, Exchange is very appealing on the surface of it and from the start. Then the real problems start creeping in and soon you can't buy new hardware fast enough to keep the piece of crap running. It does not help, that the messages are kept in "a database" (which means, they can not be operated on with regular file-tools) — because the authors could not trust the underlying FS (I guess, being able to run on top of FAT32 was one of the requirements).
For similar reasons, backing it all up requires their own tools too, or special "plug-ins" for the common backup software vendors.
There really is a point, beyond which one should stop trusting a person or a firm — presumption of guilt, so to speak. With everything, that Microsoft has put its customers through, anybody wishing to buy their products should be justifying the decision in front of extreme prejudice, not the other way around.
Slashdot Mirror
Carnot's efficiency itself quickly approaches 1 as the core's temperature rises to thousands, while the river's water remains at under 25C. And none of the existing reactors are anywhere above 50% anyway.
Uhm, can you share the formulas? Carnot's limit applies to closed systems only, which a plant is not (because the infinite source of cold is external).
The cold sink is river's water. Even if it is at the boiling point, T_c is under 300. T_h is the temperature of the nuclear reaction, which could be in the thousands. It is not there because of the engineering limits. The T_c/T_h ratio can thus be well under 10% allowing for over 90% efficiency.
None of the existing reactors are close, of course — because there remain many engineering problems to be solved. That's if look at the plant as a closed system, whose entropy can only grow.
That formula (of the Carnot cycle's efficiency) applies to closed systems, which a power plant is not. Because the "supply of cold" is external and endless (a river), the limit does not apply. For example, the high-temperature steam/water ("waste heat") can be used as the heat source for another heat engine (of lesser efficiency)...
A nuclear reaction can produce much higher temperatures than that. Finding a good medium, and a good way to contain/control the reaction is an engineering problem.
Uhm, no, it does not. The equation you are referring to is an engineering one. It applies to a single round heat/work conversion. As the "spent" medium is hotter than fresh (and it always is), its heat could be used again in another cycle. And so on (assuming "endless" supply of fresh medium, which river provides), until the difference in temperatures make another cycle impractical. This is how efficiency can — in theory — be brought all the way up to 1 but not quite.
I don't think, the existing plants do even one more cycle because of all the engineering problems involved. Some use the "spent" hot water to heat up nearby buildings and/or orchards... Making these uses (of heat) more efficient is another problem — a lot of the heat-derived electricity is converted back to heat by, uhm, electric heaters, as well as grills and other cooking machinery. But that's a subject for another flame-war...
No, dear, I did not. You are struggling with the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which — in the form most applicable to the situation — is spelled as "It is impossible to convert heat completely into work."
My point was, that a better-engineered reactor would convert more energy into work. This increase of the work/heat ratio is a purely engineering problem — the only "fundamental limit of thermodynamics" is that the ratio be below 1...
I visited Israel thrice. On the first visit everyone was searched — in a remote terminal in El Al's exclusive use in a German transfer-point. It was rather annoyed by having to drag my checked-in luggage (which I planned not to see until Tel Aviv) and re-check it in again.
On the second flight, I went through a detailed search both ways — in and out of the country. Somehow these experts read my body-language as suspicious... First, at JFK, they took me to a special room, where they even took my shoes away for X-raying...
On the way back in Tel Aviv, I was also flagged, and the searchers' zeal went even further as they took a test-shot with my camera (to see, if it was real).
Only on the third flight, which was not by El Al did I escape the scrutiny. Either because Continental is not as paranoid (much to the annoyance of some of the Israelis on the flight), or because I was flying with my (very) significant other — a couple is always perceived to be of lower risk.
Now, here why I was not offended. First and foremost, because the Israeli searchers were always extremely polite, well-mannered, and respectful — unlike a typical TSA asshole. (I don't know, why that is. Maybe, because America's low unemployment forces TSA to hire and keep lower quality people...) When they asked for my shoes, for example, they pulled me a chair, so I would not have to stand on the floor bare-feet. After the search, one of them escorted me all the way to the plane chatting and apologizing continuously and handed me over to the stewardess (cutting the line of the boarding passengers), who apologized once more.
Or, maybe, because they weren't looking for bullshit like scissors and other implements, which no terrorist will ever use on a plane again, because it just would not work any more... Because now that we learned, that some hijackers may not be interested in ever landing the hijacked vessel — the passengers and crew will fight them head on (as they did the Shoe Bomber).
Or, more likely, a combination of both factors.
Seems like an inherent design flaw, if the reactor meant to produce energy has a problem throwing some of the energy away.
In theory, it should be possible to have no "waste heat". In practice this is an engineering problem — as the energy is converted from heat to electricity, some of the heat "escapes". The newer designs should either eliminate the leak completely or reduce it significantly... Maybe, by using a significantly cooler gas, than the currently employed steam?..
The poor get government help, the rich don't (or aren't supposed to).
"All men are created equal," — and if they aren't, we'll try to equalize them. This is not neccessarily bad — if all you do is helping the disadvantaged. But when you start hurting the successfull — such as by excessive taxation or, indeed, neglecting the gifted kids, there could, indeed, be a problem there.
You can't make everyone equally rich, but if you try — and (dare I risk a "flaimbait" raiting) KDawson's buddies at PeriodKos can be seen trying — you can make everyone equally poor.
Those same people never liked the "No Child Left Behind" — the only plausible reasons for the dislike are a) it was introduced by the nemesis-court-appointed-dictator (long before he also became the war-monger-torturer, BTW); b) it made teachers accountable. Funny how they now accuse it of the failings, that their own proposals in other areas of life usually involve.
But no, I don't think the fears are justified in the realms of education. Because although you can make someone poor by taxing them out of business, you can not make someone stupid by not spending enough money on them. Or can you? It is not like these (smart) kids are getting totally deprived of education, the competition for good colleges remains very high...
The DMCA makes it illegal (or legally difficult) to remove DRM. But any watermarking and advertising is fair game...
Where is that information? Can I trust the Diebold editing an article about themselves? Or can I not?
And — whichever is the correct option — why?
There is a significant fraction of population — in the law-abiding America — where the belief is strong enough to justify crimes against Property (although, hopefully, not yet against Person). According to the article, about 20% of the passers-by agreed with the perpetrators' sentiment...
Maybe, they did not think, the Hummers are the only thing to blame for the global warming, but they obviously thought, the machines are to blame for a major chunk of the problem.
He is saying, the machines — as we employ them — are bad, because they are being introduced without a safety net for the displaced workers. He can not be talking about the people "in Africa and Asia" because those (largely agrarian) societies never had the "workers" before.
This — your own is crap too. The benefits may be divided unevenly, but everybody benefits anyway, even it is only a little for some. And "the rich" sometimes benefit less, actually, because, for example, they could afford (hand-made!) comforts before, but the poor could not. And now they can...
What a dumb lamentation! There aren't enough workers. America's unemployment is very low and filling a position with a capable worker is rather difficult. Besides, there are jobs, at which humans are simply incredibly bad, whereas a machine is incredibly good. Comparing two texts, for example, or waking you up at the specified time...
Here is an illustration from an earlier era. Rich people used to have staff, who would do all sorts of routine work for them — now even the poorest can have fast and efficient transportation, clean tea-making implements, fast way to wash their clothes and beddings.
You are lamenting the fate of all those poor maids, who lost their jobs to dishwashers and electric kettles. The right approach is to celebrate their having their dishes and tea done for them by machines and the freeing of sentient beings from having to perform these mind-numbing chores.
A false dichotomy (human vs. consumer). Ok...
Oh, boy, please do run for office, lose, and stop repeating this sort of bullshit demagoguery...
Very poetic and very idiotic. The worst atrocities in history were perpetrated with the perpetrators very much face-to-face with the victims. From the ancient Athens (415 BC - worlds first Democracy, ha-ha): > to Holocaust, to Rwanda and Darfur. The massacres all required a lot of manual labor, which did not prevent them from happening. At least, the robots aren't going to rape the women nor to hack off their breasts (so as to starve off their newborns).
Yes, it is a human. A human, who would ram an explosives-filled truck through a wedding. A human, who wants us to either die or to change ourselves to be like him. We went through this with Communism in the 20th century, we are going through it with Caliphate in the 21st. Where they have fanatiques, we have the technology... We shall prevail — despite you holding us back.
But sometimes you need it... Whether it is to project your savings or to figure out, if a particular file was read within the last year.
My problem with atime is that it is not universal enough. For example, reading a file via mmap() or sending it directly to a socket via sendfile() (both methods widely used by web-servers) will not update its atime. The access-timestamp should be updated every time a file is opened for reading, rather than when a read() is issued on it...
So, when I wanted to report, when my little piece of software was last downloaded (via HTTP), I could not, unfortunately, rely on the file's atime...
Right, "political in nature". And these politics are aimed at embarassing the US.
Lancet's methods are what I described to you — they compare the actual population with that expected from the pre-war growth rates. They didn't count the actual casualties.
No, I have not. If you have a reference, post it. Telling me to "look it up" is not going to cut it. You've exaggerated a lot earlier and are trying to weasel out of it now, shifting the burden of proof onto me, and excusing some other crap as "a typo".
Power plants are a legitimate target. But you claimed, we deliberately targeted hospitals. So, post a few credible links, where the hospitals are said to have been explicitly targeted. What's stopping you? Oops...
Of course, you were. Fallujah was actually (re)taken by force, after giving the residents several days to get out. Once an enemy is using a building to fight, the building (even a hospital) becomes a legal target. For this reason our soldiers leave their weapons outside, when entering a hospital — so as not to give an enemy an excuse to target the facility.
The power troubles plaguing Iraq now are mostly due to the insurgents' sabotage of the power lines: "15 of the 17 high voltage lines running into Baghdad have been sabotaged". Can't blame it on US weaponry...
Our superious technology allowed us to defeat Iraq's military in a matter of weeks (their being underarmed due to sanctions was useful, but not decisive, because the Chinese and the North Koreans were rather unequiped too during the Korean War). And with very little casualties from either side.
The subsequent troubles are due to the low-tech insurgency, which gladly attacks soft-targets like funerals, weddings, markets and other gatherings to maximize casualties, as well as power-lines and oil-pipes to maximize the misery. They are too low-tech to prevail, but high-tech enough to be a pain — mostly for Iraqis, though.
Thanks for the details.
However, can't you see, how dangerously slippery this slope is?
How about an IRS rule, that you are supposed to pay 10% higher tax, unless you are willing to accept certain limitations. Such as your right to petition the government...
If this sounds far-fetched, it is not — there was no need to be registered "non-profit" less than a century ago. But now organizations face a choice between having to pay (high) taxes or accepting (severe) limitations on rights... Tested on corporations (evil, aren't they all?), it may come to citizens in some shape or form...
Whoever they are, kid, you are joining us just as soon as you grow up :-)
So? They did break break America's laws, which is something Americans usually find reprehensible. And its not like all of your "pirating" friends are from abroad either :-)
Well, after the initial shock of somebody rejecting the obvious, I went searching. These two are what I found in 5 minutes of using Slashdot's (rather broken) search. These are only the flat-out "abolish copyright" kinds. There are plenty more posters, who — like you — don't reject copyright completely, but (inconsistently) scoff at any attempts by copyright owners to enforce their rights: "You have your rights, you just don't have the right to use them".
That — personal vs. corporate — is a really common and a really stupid distinction. I — along with millions of small-business owners — own a corporation, which you want to keep from petitioning the government. But you don't mind Warren Buffet or Larry Ellison or Bill Gates petitioning politicians in person...
So, where is the line between legitimately communicating your concerns to your lawmaker and "lobbying"? Oh, well, must be another case of the "I know it, when I see it", used so "successfully" to distinguish art from pornography. Hear, hear...
The entire Law Enforcement profession is dedicated to "oppressing the liberty" of the law-breakers...
The real question to ponder is whether 100% efficiency is even desired in the law-enforcement field, or whether we want to leave out an option for some people to slip through — because what's going to be used by criminals today, may some day be needed by "freedom-fighters".
Well, Slashdot is full of praise for organizations, that are similarly corrupt — such as Pirate Bay, for example. The difference? Pirate Bay are (alleged to be) breaking laws, that Slashdotters feel, should not exist.
I think, my first post on the subject made a good argument, why there should be no such thing as "illegal lobbying" — because the right "to petition the government for redress of grievances" is directly derived not only from "the spirit", but also from the letter of the very First Ammendment...
So, if the Ammendment can be construed to enshrine the right to, for example, sell pornography or to speak anonymously (both rather indirect derivations from the spirit of the Ammendment), any laws banning lobbying are flat-out un-Constitutional.
Let me spell it out for you in detail... The write-up alleged, that the organization — SoundExchange — is illegally lobbying. From this the GGP — to a rather enthusiastic modding up — has concluded, that SoundExchange is a criminal organization.
My comment explained, that many (most?) of the things illegal are not, in fact criminal. You see, criminal is the subset of illegal, not the other way around.
... is another's excercise of their First Ammendment right. And not only "in spirit" (such as the right to sell porn), but also in letter: "petition the government for redress of grievances".
Doing something illegal (like jaywalking) does not make one a criminal...
The incompatible changes in the Apache module API could have something to do with it, hm?
People proposing Apache: We'll need this module, and this one. Oops, we can't mix them, because one is only for Apache-1.x and the other — for Apache-2.x. We'll need to port one of them.
People proposing IIS: While those punks do their "porting" you can have an IIS-based solution up and running next week.
Tought choice, is not it?
United States weren't at war in 1939, when Roosevelt allowed British spies to eavesdrop on communications and — quite possibly — even to kill some Americans engaged in trading with the Nazis.
Oh, no, dear. It was not "questionable". It was unquestionably illegal. And no, the comparison is not "absurd" (nor "beyond absurd"). The point was, Roosevelt has done something quite illegal, but he is still respected today.
That's true. So, what's the cost of it? Possible violation of privacy... And the benefit? The government will be able to learn of foreign threats faster. You see, snooping on the two people abroad was and remains legal (Echelon, anyone?). It is just when one of the suspects is in the US, that the government runs into problems.
Is the benefit worth the cost? Not sure — but the majority of Congress have decided, that it is... The current (imperfect) law was extended for six months — until a better-designed one (all laws are software) can be produced...
Oh, and before anyone goes screaming about America sliding into BigBrother/Nazi Germany/whatever, just remember, that Frank Delano Roosevelt — the war-President respected even by the French today — has authorized illegal wiretaps (in the 1939 or thereabouts) with the argument, that went something like this: "I don't believe, an American court will interfere with the President fighting German saboteurs". Just who is a saboteur was up to the Executive to decide, of course... Or, sometimes, even up to the foreigners — the British agents, who were allowed to operate in the US.
Same can be said about Windows, can it not? Certainly "mature", right? And with 95% of the desktops running it, there is no argument, that it is anything, but a standard.
Just like the rest of Microsoft products, Exchange is very appealing on the surface of it and from the start. Then the real problems start creeping in and soon you can't buy new hardware fast enough to keep the piece of crap running. It does not help, that the messages are kept in "a database" (which means, they can not be operated on with regular file-tools) — because the authors could not trust the underlying FS (I guess, being able to run on top of FAT32 was one of the requirements).
For similar reasons, backing it all up requires their own tools too, or special "plug-ins" for the common backup software vendors.
There really is a point, beyond which one should stop trusting a person or a firm — presumption of guilt, so to speak. With everything, that Microsoft has put its customers through, anybody wishing to buy their products should be justifying the decision in front of extreme prejudice, not the other way around.