The USA has "lost" other satellites in the past. One of the early Keyhole sats was unable to be inserted into it's intended orbit due to a launch failure. It made orbit, but not at all a very suitable one & other problems were announced that caused it to be written off as a failure. As The Soviets knew when their classified sites were to be overflown by our operational spy sats, they would cover up the interesting parts. They didn't do so for the "lost" satellite & we obtained a number of very interesting pictures...
You seem to be arguing that in 1968 that soldiers would not yet have been affected by this tactic. Whether it was in 68 or 72 makes no difference because the VC had already been using "civilians" (yes, even children) to approach & kill US soldiers in 1968.
My own opinion on My Lai is that Medina & Calley should have been hung. Medina gave the orders & Cally followed them.
Why do people carry around a BT headset when all they need to do is take the damn phone out of their pocket & hold it up to their ear?
I expect that the software keyboard will be enough for most situations, just as the pico-keyboard on my P910i is at present. If you want to complain that you can use a BT keyboard on the iPhone instead of lugging around your PC, be my guest. I'll be happy knowing that adding a keyboard to the iPhone is an option in situations where keyboard + iPhone is a better solution.
I expect the iPhone to be a solution to manufacturers purposely crippling phone functions so that the telecom companies can sell overly expensive "solutions", not a contributor. If Apple doesn't open the phone enough to be a real alternative to moto/nokia/etc, the iphone will die a short inglorious death. It's got MacOS X on it. I'm confident that all needed BT profiles will be present.
I have a P910i that can get pretty cruddy. The hardest part aboit cleanint the crud off it is cleaning the edges and corners as the screen is inset. The iPhone with it's sleek packaging looks easy to clean so I'm not worried about that. If it scratches from being placed in a pocket with some change on the otherhand...
I don't have a pocket reserved for an iPhone & nothing else on all my clothes yet. If buying an iPhone forces me reserve a pocket like that, the decision to buy one becomes more complicated.
The only major question in my mind is: How resistant to scratches is the screen?!?! If it scratches easily, the problems with the video ipods will pale in comparison...
I have little sympathy for big pharma but sometimes the high price can be justified. When Taxol was determined to be a promising cancer treatment it's only source was from harvesting the bark of the pacific yew tree. As Taxol was only present in minute quantities in the bark, you needed to sacrifice hundreds of trees to obtain enough Taxol for a single treatment, thus Taxol was extremely expensive. They have since come up with methods of synthesising taxol from precursors in the needles which has allowed them to avoid sacrificing the tree and thus increase production, but it will remain a very expensive drug until they find a reliable means of synthesising it from a more common/inexpensive source.
Re:the reason for its popularity was billing users
on
The End of Minitel
·
· Score: 1
When posting after midnight on Jan 2 after living more than 20 years in France, misspelling apartment is no surprise. FF flagged it as misspelled but given that I often post in french where it flags almost every word, I've gotten into the habit of ignoring FF's spellchecker. I need a spellchecker that can tell when I'm writing in english & when I'm writing in french...
Re:the reason for its popularity was billing users
on
The End of Minitel
·
· Score: 1
Another major reason the minitel was widely used was that the french government bankrolled it (to the tune of over a billion francs). You could get one free from FT in exchange for agreeing to forgo receiving an annual telephone book, but using it to find numbers could sometimes be an exercise in frustration due to the rigidity of the software used. When using it to look up numbers it cost essentially nothing to use, but the per minute charges on the other services (like the 3615) added up fast and were billed to your telephone line.
France's investment in the minitel came with some hidden costs. In the government's choice to push the minitel, they killed off a number of network projects that could have made France an internet pioneer and instead retarded the internet as long as possible to avoid competition with FT's cash cow.
As is just about always the case with new technology, sex was the major moneymaker. Chat rooms where people could talk dirty to each other initially then prostitution rings using the minitel to setup meetings. One of my first jobs in France long ago was writing a minitel server. While debugging it I chatted with some of the more addicted "minitellers". Lots of people would discover the minitel, run up a few thousand francs, then swear off it once they received their first bi-monthly bill from FT with the added charges.
Some people were so hooked that they used illicit means to support their habit. One common scam would be to move to a new appartment, get a new telephone line, use a minitel on it for three months, then move again and not pay FT. Some people ran up tabs of over 250000FF (30000 USD) before the FT in all it's governmental monopolied nimbleness started checking that people asking for a new line had paid their bills in previous appartments before opening a new line.
When it first came out, it wasn't too badly obsolete as 2400 baud modems were still common. After a few years the 1200 baud modems were holding it back but the government was unwilling to fork out another major lump of cash to replace the existing minitels with faster modems and the 9600 baud minitels were stillborn.
Some have said the sinking of the Kursk some years ago was caused by a the rocket on a Shkval exploding inside the torpedo room.
More people blame the peroxide topedoes the Russians were due to test during the excercise the Kursk was participating in when it sank. High concentarions of Peroxide are notoriously unstable and start runaway decomposition at a the slightest trace of organic contamination. The UK had a similar incident with the HMS Sidon in 1955.
refers to: Shkval [fas.org]. Scared the bejesus out of the U.S. Navy
Uh, no. To see underwater you use sonar, but the shkval's propulsion is so noisy that it is essentially blind once launched. It's major utility was as a nuclear tipped revenge weapon. Don't forget that when the shkval was being developped, russian subs were relatively deaf & noisy compared to the US & the UK. In that scenario, when a Russian sub discovered that it was being targeted by an unavoidable torpedo, launched from a sub they hadn't detected, they would launch a few shkvals back up the vector that the torp was detected on. Hopefully one of them would take out the opposing sub or at least cut the wires that are used to direct the torp from the sub. An autonomous torp is easier to shake than one that has a subs sonar directing it so cutting the wires gives the russian sub a better chance. Once Nato was aware of the shkval, attack doctrine was changed to include a quiet swim out & dogleg so that the shkval would be targeting the empty sea & not the Nato sub.
Using a shkval also means nuclear first use, which both sides wanted to avoid.
Having followed Derek's arguments for over a decade, I'd assume that his are based on better ground than those his critics use. If you don't want to believe him, fine. Ask for his references and furnish yours so that they can be compared and critiqued.
"I figure that if I use a rubber that she won't get pregnant": Your father.
Both your quotation & mine were reasonable at the time they were uttered, yet clearly in error with disastrous consequences when viewed with 20/20 hindsight. Should there one day be a way to go back in time & fix such errors revisionism of your brand may become useful, but until then it'll only reveal you as intellectually dishonest.
Oh, Bull. The largest proposed windmill project in the eastern USA was the windfarm that was proposed for Cape Cod Bay. Is was killed by opposition from the senior DEMOCRATIC senator from Massachusets: Ted Kennedy.
Oh sure, so we humans have become the most adaptable species ever, yet we are supposedly all going to die because of a minor climate change? Much like the preachers who scream "REPENT! THE END IS NEAR! OBEY ME OR ALL IS LOST!", you lose most of your credibility when you attempt to paint everything using only two colors.
I can remember back to the 70's when most climatologists were warning about our impending doom from an impending Ice Age! Niven & Pournelle wrote a book about it. When you see the same people completely changing directions it tends to make you doubt that this time they're not wrong.
I don't deny that the climate is changing. I don't deny that some people will be hurt by it either, I just don't jump to the automatic conclusion that climate change is somehow "unnatural", that this change has only negative attributes and that after the human race adapts to it that we won't all end off better for it.
First off, without the context, it's impossible to dtermine whether the comments supposed derogetory nature.
<blockquote><i>are any of your personality traits due to your race or ethnicity?</i></blockquote>
Oh bollocks. Most of my personality traits are related to my ethnicity insofar as they usually go hand in hand with the cultural norms of the society they come from. Other than adopted children it rarely happens & even then, many people who are adopted into a different ethnic family assume some of the cultural habits of their own ethnicity on their own. Learning who I really am, etc. Being of mixed ethnic origins & growing up in the US then living in France gives me a pretty good insight on the subject.
The problem is not generally with the Islamic leadership in the west, It's with the masses. As long as significant sections of muslims living in the west hold positions that are considered intolerant in the west, there will continue to be a cultural clash. Examples: Wanting death sentances for former muslims who convert to another religion. Sharia over western law.
Note that I have the same problem with christian fundies who justify murdering abortion nurses as "doing gods work"
Those "rising columns of hot air" barely reach the stratosphere even in major events like a major volcano eruption. Your fears of running out of atmosphere through global warming are unfounded. Look at Venus: Hot as hell (literally) yet it still has an atmosphere denser than Earth's.
The title to the story is "Faster Global Warming from Permafrost Melt" yet TFA & even the extract say "No one is sure if the greenhouse effect will cause them to lock up more, or to release more carbon"...
Sensationalist titles like this are why I still have my doubts about global warning. Every time any climate data is released, the global warning crowd comes out with another sensationalist global warning blurb.
Irix itself wan't that much worse than any other *nix of the same time period, but none of the varied tools, 3D bells & whistles that SGI bolted on were designed with security in mind. The only way to avoid getting hacked into was to remove it all before connecting it to the net, but once you removed it there was little point in buying one.
Yes, the mi5400x looks to be a close fit to my needs. When I ran through the on & off line shops looking for mice a month ago, no Trust mice were displayed so I missed them, but now that I have a pointer I'll be able to run one down. Now I just have to determine whether I want Trust's 5 buttons or the Mighty Mouse's scroll button. Thanks again!
Slashdot Mirror
The USA has "lost" other satellites in the past. One of the early Keyhole sats was unable to be inserted into it's intended orbit due to a launch failure. It made orbit, but not at all a very suitable one & other problems were announced that caused it to be written off as a failure. As The Soviets knew when their classified sites were to be overflown by our operational spy sats, they would cover up the interesting parts. They didn't do so for the "lost" satellite & we obtained a number of very interesting pictures...
You seem to be arguing that in 1968 that soldiers would not yet have been affected by this tactic. Whether it was in 68 or 72 makes no difference because the VC had already been using "civilians" (yes, even children) to approach & kill US soldiers in 1968.
My own opinion on My Lai is that Medina & Calley should have been hung. Medina gave the orders & Cally followed them.
David Pogue says that the iPhone's screen uses glass, so it should be much more scratch resistant than the plastic screened iPods.
Why do people carry around a BT headset when all they need to do is take the damn phone out of their pocket & hold it up to their ear?
I expect that the software keyboard will be enough for most situations, just as the pico-keyboard on my P910i is at present. If you want to complain that you can use a BT keyboard on the iPhone instead of lugging around your PC, be my guest. I'll be happy knowing that adding a keyboard to the iPhone is an option in situations where keyboard + iPhone is a better solution.
I expect the iPhone to be a solution to manufacturers purposely crippling phone functions so that the telecom companies can sell overly expensive "solutions", not a contributor. If Apple doesn't open the phone enough to be a real alternative to moto/nokia/etc, the iphone will die a short inglorious death. It's got MacOS X on it. I'm confident that all needed BT profiles will be present.
It's got a logical keyboard for casual use and if you really need more, bluetooth, so you should be able to pair it with a BT keyboard.
I have a P910i that can get pretty cruddy. The hardest part aboit cleanint the crud off it is cleaning the edges and corners as the screen is inset. The iPhone with it's sleek packaging looks easy to clean so I'm not worried about that. If it scratches from being placed in a pocket with some change on the otherhand...
I don't have a pocket reserved for an iPhone & nothing else on all my clothes yet. If buying an iPhone forces me reserve a pocket like that, the decision to buy one becomes more complicated.
The only major question in my mind is: How resistant to scratches is the screen?!?! If it scratches easily, the problems with the video ipods will pale in comparison...
I have little sympathy for big pharma but sometimes the high price can be justified. When Taxol was determined to be a promising cancer treatment it's only source was from harvesting the bark of the pacific yew tree. As Taxol was only present in minute quantities in the bark, you needed to sacrifice hundreds of trees to obtain enough Taxol for a single treatment, thus Taxol was extremely expensive. They have since come up with methods of synthesising taxol from precursors in the needles which has allowed them to avoid sacrificing the tree and thus increase production, but it will remain a very expensive drug until they find a reliable means of synthesising it from a more common/inexpensive source.
When posting after midnight on Jan 2 after living more than 20 years in France, misspelling apartment is no surprise. FF flagged it as misspelled but given that I often post in french where it flags almost every word, I've gotten into the habit of ignoring FF's spellchecker. I need a spellchecker that can tell when I'm writing in english & when I'm writing in french...
Another major reason the minitel was widely used was that the french government bankrolled it (to the tune of over a billion francs). You could get one free from FT in exchange for agreeing to forgo receiving an annual telephone book, but using it to find numbers could sometimes be an exercise in frustration due to the rigidity of the software used. When using it to look up numbers it cost essentially nothing to use, but the per minute charges on the other services (like the 3615) added up fast and were billed to your telephone line.
France's investment in the minitel came with some hidden costs. In the government's choice to push the minitel, they killed off a number of network projects that could have made France an internet pioneer and instead retarded the internet as long as possible to avoid competition with FT's cash cow.
As is just about always the case with new technology, sex was the major moneymaker. Chat rooms where people could talk dirty to each other initially then prostitution rings using the minitel to setup meetings. One of my first jobs in France long ago was writing a minitel server. While debugging it I chatted with some of the more addicted "minitellers". Lots of people would discover the minitel, run up a few thousand francs, then swear off it once they received their first bi-monthly bill from FT with the added charges.
Some people were so hooked that they used illicit means to support their habit. One common scam would be to move to a new appartment, get a new telephone line, use a minitel on it for three months, then move again and not pay FT. Some people ran up tabs of over 250000FF (30000 USD) before the FT in all it's governmental monopolied nimbleness started checking that people asking for a new line had paid their bills in previous appartments before opening a new line.
When it first came out, it wasn't too badly obsolete as 2400 baud modems were still common. After a few years the 1200 baud modems were holding it back but the government was unwilling to fork out another major lump of cash to replace the existing minitels with faster modems and the 9600 baud minitels were stillborn.
More people blame the peroxide topedoes the Russians were due to test during the excercise the Kursk was participating in when it sank. High concentarions of Peroxide are notoriously unstable and start runaway decomposition at a the slightest trace of organic contamination. The UK had a similar incident with the HMS Sidon in 1955.
Uh, no. To see underwater you use sonar, but the shkval's propulsion is so noisy that it is essentially blind once launched. It's major utility was as a nuclear tipped revenge weapon. Don't forget that when the shkval was being developped, russian subs were relatively deaf & noisy compared to the US & the UK. In that scenario, when a Russian sub discovered that it was being targeted by an unavoidable torpedo, launched from a sub they hadn't detected, they would launch a few shkvals back up the vector that the torp was detected on. Hopefully one of them would take out the opposing sub or at least cut the wires that are used to direct the torp from the sub. An autonomous torp is easier to shake than one that has a subs sonar directing it so cutting the wires gives the russian sub a better chance. Once Nato was aware of the shkval, attack doctrine was changed to include a quiet swim out & dogleg so that the shkval would be targeting the empty sea & not the Nato sub.
Using a shkval also means nuclear first use, which both sides wanted to avoid.
Having followed Derek's arguments for over a decade, I'd assume that his are based on better ground than those his critics use. If you don't want to believe him, fine. Ask for his references and furnish yours so that they can be compared and critiqued.
"I figure that if I use a rubber that she won't get pregnant": Your father.
Both your quotation & mine were reasonable at the time they were uttered, yet clearly in error with disastrous consequences when viewed with 20/20 hindsight. Should there one day be a way to go back in time & fix such errors revisionism of your brand may become useful, but until then it'll only reveal you as intellectually dishonest.
"Father, I cannot tell a lie": Washington
"I did not have sex with that woman": Clinton
I find the dichotomy between your use of the first statement to take a cheap shot demeaning to the abnegation that Washington impersonated.
Yes, the cherry tree story is certainly false, but we all know that another president lied straight to us and to the justice system. How noble...
Oh, Bull. The largest proposed windmill project in the eastern USA was the windfarm that was proposed for Cape Cod Bay. Is was killed by opposition from the senior DEMOCRATIC senator from Massachusets: Ted Kennedy.
4 /27/kennedy_faces_fight_on_cape_wind/
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2006/0
I can remember back to the 70's when most climatologists were warning about our impending doom from an impending Ice Age! Niven & Pournelle wrote a book about it. When you see the same people completely changing directions it tends to make you doubt that this time they're not wrong.
I don't deny that the climate is changing. I don't deny that some people will be hurt by it either, I just don't jump to the automatic conclusion that climate change is somehow "unnatural", that this change has only negative attributes and that after the human race adapts to it that we won't all end off better for it.
First off, without the context, it's impossible to dtermine whether the comments supposed derogetory nature.
<blockquote><i>are any of your personality traits due to your race or ethnicity?</i></blockquote>
Oh bollocks. Most of my personality traits are related to my ethnicity insofar as they usually go hand in hand with the cultural norms of the society they come from. Other than adopted children it rarely happens & even then, many people who are adopted into a different ethnic family assume some of the cultural habits of their own ethnicity on their own. Learning who I really am, etc. Being of mixed ethnic origins & growing up in the US then living in France gives me a pretty good insight on the subject.
The problem is not generally with the Islamic leadership in the west, It's with the masses. As long as significant sections of muslims living in the west hold positions that are considered intolerant in the west, there will continue to be a cultural clash.
Examples:
Wanting death sentances for former muslims who convert to another religion.
Sharia over western law.
Note that I have the same problem with christian fundies who justify murdering abortion nurses as "doing gods work"
Those "rising columns of hot air" barely reach the stratosphere even in major events like a major volcano eruption. Your fears of running out of atmosphere through global warming are unfounded. Look at Venus: Hot as hell (literally) yet it still has an atmosphere denser than Earth's.
The title to the story is "Faster Global Warming from Permafrost Melt" yet TFA & even the extract say
"No one is sure if the greenhouse effect will cause them to lock up more, or to release more carbon"...
Sensationalist titles like this are why I still have my doubts about global warning. Every time any climate data is released, the global warning crowd comes out with another sensationalist global warning blurb.
Irix itself wan't that much worse than any other *nix of the same time period, but none of the varied tools, 3D bells & whistles that SGI bolted on were designed with security in mind. The only way to avoid getting hacked into was to remove it all before connecting it to the net, but once you removed it there was little point in buying one.
Yes, the mi5400x looks to be a close fit to my needs. When I ran through the on & off line shops looking for mice a month ago, no Trust mice were displayed so I missed them, but now that I have a pointer I'll be able to run one down. Now I just have to determine whether I want Trust's 5 buttons or the Mighty Mouse's scroll button. Thanks again!
> can i zap my co-workers with this laser????
That depends... Do you look like a frikkin shark?