Regardless of whether your content is accurate and on-topic, your attitude and phrasing are most certainly flamebait.
I'm not saying you should say it any other way, but if you say things in an inflammatory manner, you should expect people to react accordingly. Any other expectation is foolish.
Well, I suppose that depends, eh? If I were to capitalize the words in my list, the poor blighter who misspelt them the first time might think he was supposed to have capitalized them when HE used them. My intention was to indicate EXACTLY how those words should have been used, in an easy-to-understand, explicit way.
1) Greatest band ever. Sadly, White Zombie didn't make the final cut. 2) responsible. 3) anonymity. 3) amongst Sorry to be such a pedant. One or two errors, I could overlook. Four became too egregious to ignore. After that, I kinda stopped counting...
On the bright side, you spelled the plural of Illuminatus correctly. However, you forgot to capitalize it. Technically, you shouldn't have hyphenated super-royal-bitch the second time; super-royal bitch would have been correct. You should have hyphenated single-handedly, though. Oh, and unless there's a lot more about Yoko we don't know, she is more likely a defected spy mistress.
Its all about buying a piece of software/hardware taking it home, plugging it in, and playing with it. Everything else is irelevant to most of the population.
Yup. Right up to the time when they find out that their broadband has been cut off because they got rooted and have been sending Viagra spam, their credit card numbers have been stolen, and their PC rendered inoperable by a series of worms, trojans, virii, and black hats.
You are completely correct that the average Joe PcUser cares not a whit for the fact that IE breaks not only the letter of HTML standards, but the basic spirit of the Web. Nor does he concern himself for a moment with the fact that Microsoft enjoys a monopoly, protected at the highest levels of government.
I fail to see how that's a good thing. Clearly, MS are abusing their own customers, and doing so in a way of which the customers are unaware. I don't see that as an argument for complacency. I see that as a reason to tell my bank, my university, my utilities, etc. that I am totally unhappy with an insistence upon IE. I find it humorous, in a most unpleasant way, when bellsouth.net smugly tell me that their website won't work for me because my browser doesn't have sufficient security, and that I should use Internet Explorer for (get this) increased security!
Well, if people expect Windows to provide massive security holes, then you're absolutely right - it's not broken. If they expect Windows to break all the standards it can in favor of customer lock-in, they're getting exactly what they pay for.
Amazing. I would not have thought that focus groups would indicate such customer needs. Then again, I'm sure the Pontiac Aztek did very well in focus groups...
that was intended to say OS [less than] 10 - however, I forgot that the less-than symbol would be interpreted/rendered. Ooops. I am particularly fond of OSX. Apologies to all.
1) I never told you to switch. Furthermore, my experience is that *you* are incorrect. I have switched; I've seen both sides. We are at an impasse.
2) You didn't say you couldn't switch because it would cost too much, and no-one would ever use the software elsewhere; you said you have to use Windows because inter-platform compatibility is impossible. This IS untrue, and therefore you ARE wrong.
3) If you don't want to be right, I certainly won't force you.:-)
Well, lessee. I don't want to imply that you are a liar; I do, however, believe that several of your statements/implications are false-to-fact.
Your explanation about OSX centers around incompatibility between files created on one OS but transferred to another; this is only true, occasionally, with MSOffice. It is possible that Office has some particular little feature that makes it the only possible package that you can use in your specific application; however, for nearly all WP tasks, OpenOffice can perform all needed functions just as easily. It reads and writes Word files, too. As another poster pointed out, Word often has incompatibilities between machines running the same version of Windows; Open Office has no such trouble, even between differing OS's.
You said, and I understand more exactly now what you meant, that Windows is better because industry-standard software (I'm assuming you mean MSOffice and Photoshop) runs on it. I take exception to your non-specific use of the word "better", and feel that "a better choice for me" is a more accurate and honest phrasing. It certainly isn't better for me. Nor are you specifying what it is better than; I repeat that OSX satisfies all of your requirements in that regard, including interoperability of generated files. It may be that there are some other "industry-standard" programs you use which I'm not accounting for; that might change my assertion.
The accountability part is still the part I have the most trouble with. You said elsewhere that the EULA hasn't been tested and probably wouldn't hold up; that's a pretty dishonest argument, sir. The fact is that you DID agree to that EULA, that Microsoft fully intend for you to abide by it, and that they have ridiculously deep legal pockets with which to enforce it. It further avoids the fact that even were you correct that it wouldn't hold up if tested, that accountability still has gotten you nothing. You got that accountability in trade for security, which is a bad deal IMHO.
Now, cost-effectiveness is a particularly thorny issue, and that see-saw tips variously depending on what factors you choose to account for. If it's just purchase price, Linux wins hands-down. If you include training of existing Windows-oriented personnel, Windows gains a distinct advantage over OSX and *nix. This advantage is drastically reduced if you are training new hires or inexperienced personnel - I'd assert that OSX has the advantage here. If you count maintenance, then you have to determine exactly what maintenance, who does it, etc. It's certainly possible to maintain a *nix system with less down-time, simply because you can implement patches without rebooting - not mention that there are fewer patches needed. If you add in lost employee hours due to virii, etc, you can get almost any result you want. There are four kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, statistics, and benchmarks.
Again, sir, I point out that in your situation, Windows may in fact be the best choice. I am certainly not telling you it isn't. It may be worth the additional security risks, software costs, etc., in order to achieve compatibility with specific software and reduce training costs. What I'm pointing out is that many of the reasons you cite are based on a very narrow view of compatibility, etc. I believe, but cannot definitively state due to incomplete knowledge of your specific situation, that inertia plays a greater role in your beliefs than actual experience with the issues involved.
Yes. MacOS10 was a stability disaster. NT4 was clearly more stable than 9x series, and certainly less so than (say) Solaris.
I wasn't considering NT4 to be a desktop OS, but that could just be me. It's certainly not a gaming OS as the grandparent poster desires. I'd like to think that my original point about MS needing to improve stability as a result of competition is still valid.
"when everyone I exchange files with uses Windows, I need to use Windows, too"
This is demonstrably untrue. Several Windows computers in my office print through my Samba shares. I exchange Word and OpenOffice files with people running Windows, OSX, and Linux daily.
Were you using Office on OSX, those files would interchange easily between OSX and Windows. Similarly, were you using OpenOffice, you could exchange files between Windows, OSX, Linux, xBSD, Solaris, etc. Photoshop files created on a Mac open just fine on a Windows PC. Jpegs are jpegs, ditto pngs, GIFs, etc. PDF works great in the rest of the computing world.
If the boss says "Use Windows," you use Windows. Reason goes out the [ahem] window. But you, personally, present reasons which simply aren't correct.
Am I saying you should use Linux? No. What I'm saying is that all the reasons you keep reciting why you CAN'T are wrong.
You know... it's not because Windows is somehow better that you can use the "industry-standard" word-processing and publishing software. What about OSX? It runs those same packages... No, the reason that (e.g.) Linux doesn't run Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop, etc., is because those vendors have CHOSEN not to release those packages on any platform other than Windows and (grudgingly) OSX. That's a marketing decision, especially in the case of MS Office, not a technical decision.
It is nice that XP doesn't crash as much as Me did. I believe that you can place the credit for that improvement squarely on the competition; until something else came along and pointed up how crash-prone earlier Windows versions were (and let's be honest, MacOS10 weren't much better, if any), Microsoft had no reason to improve.
Now, the thing that really puzzles me is this: How does "accountability in... design" make up for the security issues? It's pretty clear that when Ballmer and Gates, et al., have to specifically tell both their own company and the world, publically, that MS will now stop new development to concentrate on improving security in Windows, there's an overall flaw in the security strategy. Apparently, "accountability in... design" doesn't solve that problem. What does that even mean? Accountability? To whom? Who is accountable? Do *you* get to call WHGates and say, "Hey! I got a virus, and I want you to fix it! I want my money back, too!"? No. Unless your name is Michael Dell, and even then you ask VERY politely. No sir, you run multiple spyware, spybot, and virus scanners. You have a hardened firewall between your PC and the rest of the web. You post armed guards in front of your floppy drive. I'm still amazed at having to get someone from IT to come type in the administrator password so that we could install the patch for Sasser, even though the worm itself had NO trouble getting in...
What you're seeing, vis-a-vis your desired software not being available under Linux, is 3 parts inertia and 1 part ease-of use. There are many people who find differently; they find that all of the software that they need to use in their daily jobs is available on several platforms, including Linux and OSX - especially in the scientific and educational fields.
You could make a valid criticism about the difficulty of installing and administrating Linux, and you'd be at least partially correct. Some of that difficulty is due to unfamiliarity, some is due to ongoing development, and some is by design.:-) Clearly, for you, Windows is the best choice. But let's be honest about why that is, OK?
And, of course, there are the experiments done by (IIRC) Pioneer with a cobbled-up double speed DAT machine in which samples of Harmon-muted trumpet, which has significant harmonic content past 20-30 kHz, were played by for test listeners. EEG's indicated that the brain activity differed between recordings bandlimited to 20 kHz and recordings which contained the higher frequency content. None of the listeners could hear the difference, but they appeared to respond to it nonetheless.
What the underlying cause and effect were, I don't know.
Personally, I'd feel pretty confident that a 24/96 medium, with relatively sharp Nyquist filters, would qualify as being completely transparent compared to the rest of the signal chain. There certainly aren't going to be many mike/preamp combinations exceeding 120 dB s/n!
I suspect that the use of a 192 kHz sample rate allows for both extended bandwidth past the conventionally accepted limits of human hearing, and for shallower, gentler Nyquist filtering. The sampling's certainly cheap enough now, unlike 1983 when most CD players used 14-bit D/A converters!
Only slightly mistaken; it's 44.1 kHz. The difference is often overlooked. Overall, though, you're exactly correct, in that the difference is a matter of kHz sampling as opposed to kbps bitrate.
"without any real right to do so"? Hey, check it out: 1) free speech. You're welcome. 'Nuff said. 2) I read the site regularly, I don't block the ads, I post informational and (occasionally) insightful commentary - I AM the target audience for subscription sales. 3) Slashdot offers subscriptions to people like me, I point out what needs to be done to sell me one - hint: decent editing is high on the list. This website is a product, and I pay for it by viewing ads. That gives me EVERY right to bitch, and to point out that I have NO reason to pay more for a product whose improvement continues to falter.
Did I leave anything out? Oh, yeah - BILLY GOAT! Get thee back under thy bridge, troll.
You are very short-sighted, sir. It's ironic that you act as if doped Si is not used in modern aircraft, when in fact it most certainly is - just not structurally. Those cockpits are chock full of hi-tech integrated circuits, which makes air travel both safer AND cheaper. Carbon nanotubes are not only a potential replacement / upgrade for many of those uses for doped Si, it opens up new possibilities for structural improvements in airframes as well. In fact...
Oh, who am I kidding? You're an uninformed troll. I say unto thee, "Billy Goat!" Get thee back under thy rock.
Following up to your own reply, a carbon nanotube has properties which are either metallic or semiconductive, depending on the chirality of the tube. Each tube is essentially a rolled-up piece of graphene (single layer of graphite), which has a hexagonal crystal lattice. If you imagine taking a sheet of that hexagonal structure and rolling it into a tube, there will clearly be a line along which the two opposite edges join, kinda like the line that runs up the back of the stocking..:-) If you roll the sheet up perpendicularly to the axis of the nanotube, you get (basically) a bunch of rings of hexagons. If there's a bit of twist, you get spirals of hexagons. These two structures would have different chirality - the number of hexagons around the circumference of the tube matters, too.
To make a long story short (too late), by controlling the amount of twist in the nanotube you can determine whether that particular nanotube will be a metal or a semiconductor, and (I believe) can control the bandgap as well. Now, if we can just learn to control the chirality easily and cheaply...
Anyone with more experience in carbon nanotubes, please chime in. I'm only a few weeks into a graduate class in nanotubes, and may have missed a subtlety or two.
"As the president has repeatedly pointed out in response to the terrorist attack, "We can't love our country and hate our government."
Well, if he really said that, then I think we've found a reason why someone might hate him.
Were we supposed to love Nixon's presidency? Ignore his little flaws, and look on the positive side?
Dude, check it out - the most - MOST - basic tenet of our way of life is the idea that EVERY citizen of this country is expressly granted the right to criticize our government WHENEVER it is seen to be going in the wrong direction.
That's kinda the point of a democracy, dig?
The only people who want to suppress the criticisms of the populace are the people who KNOW that they will be the target of those criticisms. Describing honest political dissent as unAmerican is itself the most unAmerican behavior I can think of.
To a certain extent, you are correct. Some of those things will be difficult to prove in any way. However, the A/C I was conversing with continues to claim all of those things as facts. Hence, my requests for evidence.
I'd like to address the Kerry comments, too. My understanding is that Kerry claims to have been relating stories told him by other soldiers. In that case, it would not be Kerry's task to prove that those stories were true (IMHO), but to show that he had accurately relayed stories as told to him. And besides, we already KNOW My Lai happened.
Of course, there's no way to prove whether US POWs would or would not have been tortured had Kerry not testified to Congress as he did. However, the A/C's assertion that Kerry's testimony made the torture more intense, or worse, or whatever, simply doesn't ring true with me. He also appears have suggested that the motivation for the Swifties is that they were tortured while listening to Kerry's testimony - except that they are claiming that Kerry didn't earn his medals, not that he somehow was responsible for their torture, which to me undermines the credibility of those people. So, again, this is why I call for evidence and not rhetoric.
There may be more than one A/C working here, so I apologize if I've attributed one A/C's claims to another.
And really, the basic question is how Kerry's testimony to Congress makes him unsuitable for President. That was the assertion of the original A/C, and I continue to ask him to support that assertion. If he wishes to offer opinions, I'm interested in the background for those opinions. If he offers purported facts which seem to me to be incorrect, I ask for factual support.
Basically, sir, you are right. To me, the worst part is that I've been making requests for support that I KNOW the A/C cannot provide. That's really not fair, especially to someone who cannot separate opinion from fact. Mea culpa.
Slashdot Mirror
Regardless of whether your content is accurate and on-topic, your attitude and phrasing are most certainly flamebait.
I'm not saying you should say it any other way, but if you say things in an inflammatory manner, you should expect people to react accordingly. Any other expectation is foolish.
Thank you. I was wondering that myself.
"Your female is shareable?"
Why do you care? Can't you get one of your own?
She's not female.[shareable object], she's female.[significant other].
There. I've had to explain the joke. Happy now?
At least spot doesn't have prerequesites"
We call those dependencies 'round here, even though it seems to be the other way around.Arg. I've been watching emerge too long.
Well, I suppose that depends, eh? If I were to capitalize the words in my list, the poor blighter who misspelt them the first time might think he was supposed to have capitalized them when HE used them. My intention was to indicate EXACTLY how those words should have been used, in an easy-to-understand, explicit way.
I think the context is important here.
I guess it IS a bit ironic. It's only one, though... that, I can overlook.
[shrug] Mea culpa.
1) Greatest band ever. Sadly, White Zombie didn't make the final cut.
:-)
2) responsible.
3) anonymity.
3) amongst
Sorry to be such a pedant. One or two errors, I could overlook. Four became too egregious to ignore. After that, I kinda stopped counting...
On the bright side, you spelled the plural of Illuminatus correctly. However, you forgot to capitalize it. Technically, you shouldn't have hyphenated super-royal-bitch the second time; super-royal bitch would have been correct. You should have hyphenated single-handedly, though. Oh, and unless there's a lot more about Yoko we don't know, she is more likely a defected spy mistress.
No offense, I hope.
Its all about buying a piece of software/hardware taking it home, plugging it in, and playing with it. Everything else is irelevant to most of the population.
Yup. Right up to the time when they find out that their broadband has been cut off because they got rooted and have been sending Viagra spam, their credit card numbers have been stolen, and their PC rendered inoperable by a series of worms, trojans, virii, and black hats.
You are completely correct that the average Joe PcUser cares not a whit for the fact that IE breaks not only the letter of HTML standards, but the basic spirit of the Web. Nor does he concern himself for a moment with the fact that Microsoft enjoys a monopoly, protected at the highest levels of government.
I fail to see how that's a good thing. Clearly, MS are abusing their own customers, and doing so in a way of which the customers are unaware. I don't see that as an argument for complacency. I see that as a reason to tell my bank, my university, my utilities, etc. that I am totally unhappy with an insistence upon IE. I find it humorous, in a most unpleasant way, when bellsouth.net smugly tell me that their website won't work for me because my browser doesn't have sufficient security, and that I should use Internet Explorer for (get this) increased security!
Sigh. Back to the salt mines.
Well, if people expect Windows to provide massive security holes, then you're absolutely right - it's not broken. If they expect Windows to break all the standards it can in favor of customer lock-in, they're getting exactly what they pay for.
Amazing. I would not have thought that focus groups would indicate such customer needs. Then again, I'm sure the Pontiac Aztek did very well in focus groups...
that was intended to say OS [less than] 10 - however, I forgot that the less-than symbol would be interpreted/rendered. Ooops. I am particularly fond of OSX. Apologies to all.
1) I never told you to switch. Furthermore, my experience is that *you* are incorrect. I have switched; I've seen both sides. We are at an impasse.
:-)
2) You didn't say you couldn't switch because it would cost too much, and no-one would ever use the software elsewhere; you said you have to use Windows because inter-platform compatibility is impossible. This IS untrue, and therefore you ARE wrong.
3) If you don't want to be right, I certainly won't force you.
Well, lessee. I don't want to imply that you are a liar; I do, however, believe that several of your statements/implications are false-to-fact.
Your explanation about OSX centers around incompatibility between files created on one OS but transferred to another; this is only true, occasionally, with MSOffice. It is possible that Office has some particular little feature that makes it the only possible package that you can use in your specific application; however, for nearly all WP tasks, OpenOffice can perform all needed functions just as easily. It reads and writes Word files, too. As another poster pointed out, Word often has incompatibilities between machines running the same version of Windows; Open Office has no such trouble, even between differing OS's.
You said, and I understand more exactly now what you meant, that Windows is better because industry-standard software (I'm assuming you mean MSOffice and Photoshop) runs on it. I take exception to your non-specific use of the word "better", and feel that "a better choice for me" is a more accurate and honest phrasing. It certainly isn't better for me. Nor are you specifying what it is better than; I repeat that OSX satisfies all of your requirements in that regard, including interoperability of generated files. It may be that there are some other "industry-standard" programs you use which I'm not accounting for; that might change my assertion.
The accountability part is still the part I have the most trouble with. You said elsewhere that the EULA hasn't been tested and probably wouldn't hold up; that's a pretty dishonest argument, sir. The fact is that you DID agree to that EULA, that Microsoft fully intend for you to abide by it, and that they have ridiculously deep legal pockets with which to enforce it. It further avoids the fact that even were you correct that it wouldn't hold up if tested, that accountability still has gotten you nothing. You got that accountability in trade for security, which is a bad deal IMHO.
Now, cost-effectiveness is a particularly thorny issue, and that see-saw tips variously depending on what factors you choose to account for. If it's just purchase price, Linux wins hands-down. If you include training of existing Windows-oriented personnel, Windows gains a distinct advantage over OSX and *nix. This advantage is drastically reduced if you are training new hires or inexperienced personnel - I'd assert that OSX has the advantage here. If you count maintenance, then you have to determine exactly what maintenance, who does it, etc. It's certainly possible to maintain a *nix system with less down-time, simply because you can implement patches without rebooting - not mention that there are fewer patches needed. If you add in lost employee hours due to virii, etc, you can get almost any result you want. There are four kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, statistics, and benchmarks.
Again, sir, I point out that in your situation, Windows may in fact be the best choice. I am certainly not telling you it isn't. It may be worth the additional security risks, software costs, etc., in order to achieve compatibility with specific software and reduce training costs. What I'm pointing out is that many of the reasons you cite are based on a very narrow view of compatibility, etc. I believe, but cannot definitively state due to incomplete knowledge of your specific situation, that inertia plays a greater role in your beliefs than actual experience with the issues involved.
Thanks for the reasoned debate. It's refreshing.
Yes. MacOS10 was a stability disaster. NT4 was clearly more stable than 9x series, and certainly less so than (say) Solaris.
I wasn't considering NT4 to be a desktop OS, but that could just be me. It's certainly not a gaming OS as the grandparent poster desires. I'd like to think that my original point about MS needing to improve stability as a result of competition is still valid.
"when everyone I exchange files with uses Windows, I need to use Windows, too"
This is demonstrably untrue. Several Windows computers in my office print through my Samba shares. I exchange Word and OpenOffice files with people running Windows, OSX, and Linux daily.
Were you using Office on OSX, those files would interchange easily between OSX and Windows. Similarly, were you using OpenOffice, you could exchange files between Windows, OSX, Linux, xBSD, Solaris, etc. Photoshop files created on a Mac open just fine on a Windows PC. Jpegs are jpegs, ditto pngs, GIFs, etc. PDF works great in the rest of the computing world.
If the boss says "Use Windows," you use Windows. Reason goes out the [ahem] window. But you, personally, present reasons which simply aren't correct.
Am I saying you should use Linux? No. What I'm saying is that all the reasons you keep reciting why you CAN'T are wrong.
You know... it's not because Windows is somehow better that you can use the "industry-standard" word-processing and publishing software. What about OSX? It runs those same packages... No, the reason that (e.g.) Linux doesn't run Word, PowerPoint, Photoshop, etc., is because those vendors have CHOSEN not to release those packages on any platform other than Windows and (grudgingly) OSX. That's a marketing decision, especially in the case of MS Office, not a technical decision.
... design" make up for the security issues? It's pretty clear that when Ballmer and Gates, et al., have to specifically tell both their own company and the world, publically, that MS will now stop new development to concentrate on improving security in Windows, there's an overall flaw in the security strategy. Apparently, "accountability in ... design" doesn't solve that problem. What does that even mean? Accountability? To whom? Who is accountable? Do *you* get to call WHGates and say, "Hey! I got a virus, and I want you to fix it! I want my money back, too!"? No. Unless your name is Michael Dell, and even then you ask VERY politely. No sir, you run multiple spyware, spybot, and virus scanners. You have a hardened firewall between your PC and the rest of the web. You post armed guards in front of your floppy drive. I'm still amazed at having to get someone from IT to come type in the administrator password so that we could install the patch for Sasser, even though the worm itself had NO trouble getting in...
:-) Clearly, for you, Windows is the best choice. But let's be honest about why that is, OK?
It is nice that XP doesn't crash as much as Me did. I believe that you can place the credit for that improvement squarely on the competition; until something else came along and pointed up how crash-prone earlier Windows versions were (and let's be honest, MacOS10 weren't much better, if any), Microsoft had no reason to improve.
Now, the thing that really puzzles me is this: How does "accountability in
What you're seeing, vis-a-vis your desired software not being available under Linux, is 3 parts inertia and 1 part ease-of use. There are many people who find differently; they find that all of the software that they need to use in their daily jobs is available on several platforms, including Linux and OSX - especially in the scientific and educational fields.
You could make a valid criticism about the difficulty of installing and administrating Linux, and you'd be at least partially correct. Some of that difficulty is due to unfamiliarity, some is due to ongoing development, and some is by design.
And, of course, there are the experiments done by (IIRC) Pioneer with a cobbled-up double speed DAT machine in which samples of Harmon-muted trumpet, which has significant harmonic content past 20-30 kHz, were played by for test listeners. EEG's indicated that the brain activity differed between recordings bandlimited to 20 kHz and recordings which contained the higher frequency content. None of the listeners could hear the difference, but they appeared to respond to it nonetheless.
What the underlying cause and effect were, I don't know.
Personally, I'd feel pretty confident that a 24/96 medium, with relatively sharp Nyquist filters, would qualify as being completely transparent compared to the rest of the signal chain. There certainly aren't going to be many mike/preamp combinations exceeding 120 dB s/n!
I suspect that the use of a 192 kHz sample rate allows for both extended bandwidth past the conventionally accepted limits of human hearing, and for shallower, gentler Nyquist filtering. The sampling's certainly cheap enough now, unlike 1983 when most CD players used 14-bit D/A converters!
Only slightly mistaken; it's 44.1 kHz. The difference is often overlooked. Overall, though, you're exactly correct, in that the difference is a matter of kHz sampling as opposed to kbps bitrate.
Waitaminute, waitaminute, waitaminute! They timed how long it took to calculate PI? That implies that it *FINISHED* calculating pi!
Now, THAT's "News for Nerds. Stuff That Matters"
OK, you're wrong.
"without any real right to do so"? Hey, check it out: 1) free speech. You're welcome. 'Nuff said. 2) I read the site regularly, I don't block the ads, I post informational and (occasionally) insightful commentary - I AM the target audience for subscription sales. 3) Slashdot offers subscriptions to people like me, I point out what needs to be done to sell me one - hint: decent editing is high on the list. This website is a product, and I pay for it by viewing ads. That gives me EVERY right to bitch, and to point out that I have NO reason to pay more for a product whose improvement continues to falter.
Did I leave anything out? Oh, yeah - BILLY GOAT! Get thee back under thy bridge, troll.
Timothy, you might think about giving up now. That's got to be one of the most pitiful dupes I've ever seen - even on Slashdot.
Tell me again what those subscriptions are supposed to get me?
You are very short-sighted, sir.
It's ironic that you act as if doped Si is not used in modern aircraft, when in fact it most certainly is - just not structurally. Those cockpits are chock full of hi-tech integrated circuits, which makes air travel both safer AND cheaper. Carbon nanotubes are not only a potential replacement / upgrade for many of those uses for doped Si, it opens up new possibilities for structural improvements in airframes as well. In fact...
Oh, who am I kidding? You're an uninformed troll. I say unto thee, "Billy Goat!" Get thee back under thy rock.
Following up to your own reply, a carbon nanotube has properties which are either metallic or semiconductive, depending on the chirality of the tube. Each tube is essentially a rolled-up piece of graphene (single layer of graphite), which has a hexagonal crystal lattice. If you imagine taking a sheet of that hexagonal structure and rolling it into a tube, there will clearly be a line along which the two opposite edges join, kinda like the line that runs up the back of the stocking.. :-) If you roll the sheet up perpendicularly to the axis of the nanotube, you get (basically) a bunch of rings of hexagons. If there's a bit of twist, you get spirals of hexagons. These two structures would have different chirality - the number of hexagons around the circumference of the tube matters, too.
To make a long story short (too late), by controlling the amount of twist in the nanotube you can determine whether that particular nanotube will be a metal or a semiconductor, and (I believe) can control the bandgap as well. Now, if we can just learn to control the chirality easily and cheaply...
Anyone with more experience in carbon nanotubes, please chime in. I'm only a few weeks into a graduate class in nanotubes, and may have missed a subtlety or two.
Small nitpick, here:
1/60 of a second is not 1 ms. It is 16.666666666666666666666666666666667 ms, or so.
"As the president has repeatedly pointed out in response to the terrorist attack, "We can't love our country and hate our government."
Well, if he really said that, then I think we've found a reason why someone might hate him.
Were we supposed to love Nixon's presidency? Ignore his little flaws, and look on the positive side?
Dude, check it out - the most - MOST - basic tenet of our way of life is the idea that EVERY citizen of this country is expressly granted the right to criticize our government WHENEVER it is seen to be going in the wrong direction.
That's kinda the point of a democracy, dig?
The only people who want to suppress the criticisms of the populace are the people who KNOW that they will be the target of those criticisms. Describing honest political dissent as unAmerican is itself the most unAmerican behavior I can think of.
To a certain extent, you are correct. Some of those things will be difficult to prove in any way. However, the A/C I was conversing with continues to claim all of those things as facts. Hence, my requests for evidence.
I'd like to address the Kerry comments, too. My understanding is that Kerry claims to have been relating stories told him by other soldiers. In that case, it would not be Kerry's task to prove that those stories were true (IMHO), but to show that he had accurately relayed stories as told to him. And besides, we already KNOW My Lai happened.
Of course, there's no way to prove whether US POWs would or would not have been tortured had Kerry not testified to Congress as he did. However, the A/C's assertion that Kerry's testimony made the torture more intense, or worse, or whatever, simply doesn't ring true with me. He also appears have suggested that the motivation for the Swifties is that they were tortured while listening to Kerry's testimony - except that they are claiming that Kerry didn't earn his medals, not that he somehow was responsible for their torture, which to me undermines the credibility of those people. So, again, this is why I call for evidence and not rhetoric.
There may be more than one A/C working here, so I apologize if I've attributed one A/C's claims to another.
And really, the basic question is how Kerry's testimony to Congress makes him unsuitable for President. That was the assertion of the original A/C, and I continue to ask him to support that assertion. If he wishes to offer opinions, I'm interested in the background for those opinions. If he offers purported facts which seem to me to be incorrect, I ask for factual support.
Basically, sir, you are right. To me, the worst part is that I've been making requests for support that I KNOW the A/C cannot provide. That's really not fair, especially to someone who cannot separate opinion from fact. Mea culpa.