The difference in the gravitational field of person and the satellites skews the GPS results somewhat. One needs to compensate for this to have a useable result for GPS.
Sometimes applications of knowledge are either completely nonobvious or impossible to do at the time of the discovery. This is something people need to accept. Much like GPS was impossible to do even after we understood relativity, we may not see the practical results of this or any other fundamental research well into this century.
I'm not sure why so many people say it's hard to learn. I learned it at the age around the age of 8, along with everyone else of my generation (I'm 30). If you can teach a 2nd or 3rd grader to do it, it's not difficult.
As far as it's usefulness, all of my college notes were taken in cursive, all of my college papers were graded in cursive, my handwritten letters are always in cursive. All of my college papers were typed. I started typing courses in the 7th grade, which back then I was one of two males in the class, and can type nearly 100wpm.
It's not a one thing or another world. As far as I'm concerned for hand written things, cursive is used exclusively. For everything else, typing.
It's probabally hard for you to read because you CAN'T read cursive. Which, in college, you might as well be illerate (try taking notes from a teacher writing on the blackboard in cursive.).
I have to ask where you get off telling me that there should be a hard cap on the limit of my copyright.
Alright, I'll bite. A citizen of the world who willing GRANTS YOU permission to have a monolopy on distributing your work(s) in exchange that it goes into the public domain as a way of "further sciences and the arts". Knowledge, inherently isn't owned, by anyone, even you. Which is why you have a monolopy on copying, not ownership. The law currently tries to reflect this fact (at least in the US), despite representatives of companies that take copyrights from authors trying to impy otherwise.
Think for a moment, about a work where copyright went on indefinitely. Would we have the works of Plato? How about Newtons Principa? Would copies of Tom Sawyer be affordable? Would they even exist? I'm sorry, the world you live in is short sighted and greedy and quite frankly without a public domain, works of today will be lost FOREVER to all future generations because the author doesn't want it distributed. Quite frankly, I could give two shits about what one person wants, in the case of a copyright, vs the interest of the whole of society. If you don't like it, we the people may one day get rid of copyright all togethor as a solution to the problem.
For you PC users who haven't seen the store, let me tell you, that place is addictive as crack rock. The default settings are such that you click "buy song" and it starts downloading. With a cable modem, I was able to get an album of 9 Tracks in a few minutes. All without getting my lazy ass up and going to the store.
I expect that within a year, there will be MUG meets where the topic of discussion will be "Music Store Addiction:How I lost my wife and house downloading music".
Just wait till Apple releases iTunes for Windows, so you PC users can join in the fun.
"Seriously, as cool as a big laser is it seems as though the defense to this multi-billion-dollar system is to polish the outside of the missile to reflect the beam."
Nature of reflection is that it works based on percentages. Some of the light will make it though the shell. This is totally unavoidable. The trick is nailing the frequency in such a way that something inside (or the outside shell) the missle will have near 100% absorbtion. Jack up the power high enough and no matter how shiny and polished that missle is, it's going down.
Even if one could make a shell that was immune to this laser, I would assume the cost of doing so would be so high that only the riches nations would access to it. So that practially speaking, it's still effective. Remember, the only nations the USA has been at war with since WW2 are 3rd world nations.
This is fine as long as Kazaa tracks songs on a per download basis (which means a far more napster like server), otherwise all revenue will go to major labels, which from talking to the people I know is NOT what most downloads are. Once people become used to a model of getting music via the internet and think of as no different from going to the store to buy a CD, they will no longer think of actually going out and buying CDs. Thus potentially turning what is helping smaller bands into their own death sentence.
Not to mention, I highly doubt any money from downloads will actually go to artists (much like ASCAP).
"A child by your own statement is not a full citizen thus lacks the rights that entails, thus the child in fact does not own any money"
This is variant of a strawman argument. Now, I'm not a legal scholar, so I don't know the exact legal definitions, perhaps someone can jump in here for me, but....
Not being a full citizen and lacking the rights of a full citizen does NOT mean they lack ALL rights. Children, irrc, are legally speaking, akin to slaves with far more advanced rights than slaves ever had in the United States.
Parents have the right to (among things) 1. Limit the travel of their children (by time and place) 2. Limit the association of their children 3. Put their children under house arrest (grounding) 4. Physically hit their children (what that means differs from community to community and as a society we are migrating away from that as being acceptable) 5. Destroy any piece of property of the child (throwing away their toys, throwing out cloths)
and many other things
But with theses right come responsibilities. Keeping the child fed, doing nothing resembling torture (this definition changes over time), keeping the child physically and mentally safe from danger (both in the house and out of the house), and many more I can't think of.
Point is, there are MANY things that parents can do to children that would get those same parents thrown in prision (sometimes for years) if they did it to an adult. This is because children are not given the SAME rights of full blown citizens. Not that they don't have rights, but to think of a child as a citizen is wrong.
So back to your argument: "A child by your own statement is not a full citizen thus lacks the rights that entails, thus the child in fact does not own any money." Children CAN own property, it can just be seized by the parent. Though, recently the courts have gone so far as to safeguard large sums of money and the like from parents so that when the child is of legal age, they have access to it.
"You seem to imply that every parrent in America wishes their children to not be exposed to violent games."
'Parents have the right to...' is NOT the same thing as "All parents desire to strictly enforce their right to...". There was no implication.
"If it becomes a crime to sell violent video games to children, should it not also become a crime to broadcast violent material through television?"
My basic principle is that parents need to have the tools available to raise their children as they see fit. That does NOT mean everything under the sun should be illegal for a kid to do.
There is a difference. Where technology exists to allow parents to be empowered, then parents have the tools they need. In the case of TV, one can easily purchase a TV today that limits what shows their children can watch. In fact, I have digital cable at home and built into that box is the ability to restrict it's use to specific channels (Disney) or specific types of shows (TV-G/Cartoons) without a pin number. Without the box, my cable line is USELESS.
To a certain extent, the same could be said to video games/software. MacOS allows the admin to limit apps on a per user basis. Perhaps if all the console makers decided to give parents the ability to LOCK a console from playing Mature video games, and advertised it on the box or even go so far as to offer TWO versions of the console, one that will NEVER play mature games and one that will. As long as it wasn't trivial to bipass the lock (like removing a battery to flash a ROM, hitting a hard to find reset button), then perhaps the kind of laws suggested in this thread wouldn't be needed. I doubt that would happen.
I'm sorry, but children are NOT full blown citizens with all the rights thereof. Even if there is absolutely no research supporting it, parents have a right to raise their children as they see fit by not letting them play video games (or watch a movie, or anything else for that matter).
I've been saying for years that children shouldn't be allowed to buy videogames (or movies or books of anysort) without parental consent. If you want your kid to have access to such things, get them a library card, get them a membership at Blockbuster, or perhaps even have an active role in your childs life by buying it for them.
Granted, in the US it's absolutely 100% impossible to control ALL aspects of your kids life and I would never suggest trying that, but perhaps anything that encourages involvement is a good thing.
In CALIFORNIA v. GREENWOOD, 486 U.S. 35 (1988), the Supreme Court ruled police could do this. I happen to agree with this. By putting it on the curb, you have shown that you want the city to come and take it away. In other word you want the city to have it.
As far as the city getting annoyed at the journalists, they can be annoyed, but I doubt there is much they can do about it, for much the same reason that the police can rummage though trash.
"The Matrix" borrowed heavily from several sources, mostly comic books, Japanese anime and Asian kung fu movies (graphic). "But I think people misunderstand art when they say things like that," says Pope. "Once you filter an influence through yourself, it's not the same thing anymore--if you really filter it. There's a film vocabulary out there, and it's for everybody to use."
This is exactly why copyright should fall in the public domain after a short time.
"True but I'm pretty sure the functionality of Mac Photoshop and PC Photoshop are the same or extremely close. So I don't know if it matters in this argument."
Well, if PS was an island of use, that would be true. Problem is, most people need to import files, maintain databases of images, and generally make applications interact. On any given day, I have PS 7, DW MX, iPhoto, Freehand, Navigator, IE 5, and RDC (to test pages on the crappy PC at my desk, no monitor) open at the same time. It's just easier on a Mac. Qualities you can't put in a chart, and I'm sure if I were a usability expert, I could explain in a thesis, but they still matter.
This also neglects the fact that the article was about Video Editing. FCP wins in ease of use and cost for a NLE app. That's Mac only.
I'm sorry, but this is a moral relativistic cop out. Free speech is a fundamental human right. End of story. If I were a stock holder in the above companies, I would sell that stock as soon as trading re-opened. It is fundamentally morally backwards to support in anyway the blocking of speech or access to other peoples speech.
If it is not illegal for US companies to help other countries to do things that violate the fundamental human rights of it's citizens, then it SHOULD BE. We shouldn't pass the buck on this stuff, it's how the US gets such a bad reputation.
I'm sitting at an OS X machine in a multi-lingual institute. Each user has the ability to choose language preferences for their desktop/apps, and even set an order of preferences if the language they desire isn't available for a specific App. The Chinese, Japanese, and Thai nationals I work with, use OS X to send and receive all their e-mails back home and not a single one users any of the Win2K or XP machines for Asian language input. Not knowing any asian languages myself, I can't speak directly about it, but I have not heard a complaint from them.
"have you noticed operations that seemed slower using Mac OS X compared to similar operations on other operating systems?" Simple answer, yes. Complex answer: Those systems aren't running Windows. Mac OS X is always RESPONSIVE. If a splash screen comes up, you can still pull another application in front of it. If an app is running a huge calculation, you can still web browse. iTunes doesn't skip. You can play DVD on your background (you have to set your background color to a specific value, start up the DVD, then hide the DVD player). You put a really pretty fish tank OpenGL screensaver as your background. Running many mpeg4s at the same time doesn't choke the system. It keeps going, in fact if you just add ram, like with any Unix system, you can throw any number of big jobs at it, and it will keep going.
That being said, you have to wait for the genie effect to take place. Because it's a friggen animation. Same with icon removals from the desktop. If you aren't running QE (which from what I know is most of the OS X installs today), you get a big CPU hit on moving windows, resizing, and putting in dock. But it still keeps going. I'm really quite amazed at how well it works, day in, day out.
Am I unpleased, no. Do I even consider other OS's. Not anymore. Can it be made faster, sure.
"While I agree with basic sentiment, the problem is that action is required now."
Why? I see no reason. The FBI's success rate at stopping Islamic terrorists up till 9/11 was pretty commendable. They slip up once, and all of a sudden it's a green light to let the Federal Govt do what it pleases. I don't buy. Can things be improved, perhaps, but there is only so much one can do about "security" when billions of dollars couldn't put a dent in the drug trade.
Quite frankly, I'm not willing to one iota of freedom for the illusion of security. If my mind is not free, I will NEVER be secure.
"The MBAs of Wharton and Harvard who run the country are going to have a lot of explaining to do once the economy truly crashes and burns, as they have gutted the entire American industrial base with their selfish management."
I've always thought that an economic slump is the BEST time to agressive hire the best workers so that when the times change, they are in a great position by having the best on staff in place. People without money (cause they lost jobs) won't buy half ass products (due to having smaller staffs working on them). It's as simple as that. Times like this is when companies should be MORE aggressive and buy every good idea and worker, because they will sell for less and be more likely to be grateful when times turn around.
Whatever, it's not like I studied economic theory...
"Why should AOL or Microsoft get on board to be inter-operable?"
Because it's inevidable. I remember a time when companies were building proprietary networks systems for corporate use. I remember when AOL wouldn't let people send/receive e-mail from internet. What forced them to change was University use. Researchers don't care about ease of use. They see computers like a hammer, just a tool. They set up e-mail systems and web servers. I remeber compiling Linux onto a 383 long before many of you even knew what e-mail was. Instant Messaging is next.
My boss want to do IM, to keep in more direct touch with associates. He doesn't understand why noone sets up their own servers. So we set up our own right next to our e-mail system (so that e-mail and jabber ids are the same). This is one of the first of MANY coming jabber servers. After a point, every incoming freshman is going to not only get e-mail/web hosting but also a jabber id.
"Not to mention, it would bring out a lot of texts that would show just how modern Christianity and Catholicism was practically invented by Roman Councils picking, choosing, and editing text as they pleased, and how all the text of the Bible either came from oral history or history written 70 years after Jesus' death, of which none of the original texts still exist."
Yeah, whatever. You obviously know absolutely nothing about Historical Criticism. Your bias against Christianity has scewed your view of New Testament development so severely that you lack any objectivity. Though, IMHO, traditional authorship (as claimed by Christians) of NT texts has a tendency to be incorrect, save for Paul's writings (and even some of those are up for contention), it's a stetch to say "modern Christianity and Catholicism was practically invented by Roman Councils picking, choosing, and editing text as they pleased" and "written 70 years after Jesus' death". There are some that argue (including myself) that Mark and "Q" predate the revolt/Temple destruction and 'Luke'/'Mat.' reliance on said texts shows a level of care in constructing their gospels that sceptics don't want to admit.
I'm probabally wasting my time...
Learn some Biblical history and take your anti-Christian bias out of the picture, it makes you look immature, even to non-Christians (like myself).
Although, iirc, Kramnik was able to study deep Fritz before hand, he is still at a disadvantage. Any hash tables that Deep Fritz uses will use library if GM games (properly ranked of course). Odds are, Deep Fritz has decades of Kramniks playing against other GM's and could easily do some kind of prediction of what Kramnik is going to play based off a probabisitic model. That's one thing the best GMs attempt to do against one another. Kramnik has very little experience against Deep Fritz, comparativly speaking, and walks into this tournament at a disadvantage. Give this, it's good to soo it's tied into the last game. I would be willing to be that if you put Deep Fritz into tournament play for 2 years and expose it's abilities complete against a cross section of the best GMs, Kramnik would beat it hands down.
Now, maybe finding intelligent life outside our Solar System isn't very important, since we currently have no way of actually effectively communicating with them, but...
Distributed computing research is important. I really don't see why this kind of research isn't flowing with money, if for the only reason to fully understand how to effectively handle a network of computations that number in the millions. In 30 years, I get the feeling computers are going to come with low priority generic network computing clients to off load research of varing projects onto, what else are we going to use that 20Ghz machines for when we go to work?
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it would be about time that DVD caught up with German TV.
The difference in the gravitational field of person and the satellites skews the GPS results somewhat. One needs to compensate for this to have a useable result for GPS.
For those who asked earlier about what use this research has, the parent troll seems to know...
"Scientists can use these jets to probe your anus"
Sometimes applications of knowledge are either completely nonobvious or impossible to do at the time of the discovery. This is something people need to accept. Much like GPS was impossible to do even after we understood relativity, we may not see the practical results of this or any other fundamental research well into this century.
I'm not sure why so many people say it's hard to learn. I learned it at the age around the age of 8, along with everyone else of my generation (I'm 30). If you can teach a 2nd or 3rd grader to do it, it's not difficult.
As far as it's usefulness, all of my college notes were taken in cursive, all of my college papers were graded in cursive, my handwritten letters are always in cursive. All of my college papers were typed. I started typing courses in the 7th grade, which back then I was one of two males in the class, and can type nearly 100wpm.
It's not a one thing or another world. As far as I'm concerned for hand written things, cursive is used exclusively. For everything else, typing.
It's probabally hard for you to read because you CAN'T read cursive. Which, in college, you might as well be illerate (try taking notes from a teacher writing on the blackboard in cursive.).
I have to ask where you get off telling me that there should be a hard cap on the limit of my copyright.
Alright, I'll bite. A citizen of the world who willing GRANTS YOU permission to have a monolopy on distributing your work(s) in exchange that it goes into the public domain as a way of "further sciences and the arts". Knowledge, inherently isn't owned, by anyone, even you. Which is why you have a monolopy on copying, not ownership. The law currently tries to reflect this fact (at least in the US), despite representatives of companies that take copyrights from authors trying to impy otherwise.
Think for a moment, about a work where copyright went on indefinitely. Would we have the works of Plato? How about Newtons Principa? Would copies of Tom Sawyer be affordable? Would they even exist? I'm sorry, the world you live in is short sighted and greedy and quite frankly without a public domain, works of today will be lost FOREVER to all future generations because the author doesn't want it distributed. Quite frankly, I could give two shits about what one person wants, in the case of a copyright, vs the interest of the whole of society. If you don't like it, we the people may one day get rid of copyright all togethor as a solution to the problem.
I got one thing to say.
"I Love You" Virus style outlook killer....
That would ruin businesses everywhere.
For you PC users who haven't seen the store, let me tell you, that place is addictive as crack rock. The default settings are such that you click "buy song" and it starts downloading. With a cable modem, I was able to get an album of 9 Tracks in a few minutes. All without getting my lazy ass up and going to the store.
I expect that within a year, there will be MUG meets where the topic of discussion will be "Music Store Addiction:How I lost my wife and house downloading music".
Just wait till Apple releases iTunes for Windows, so you PC users can join in the fun.
I don't know what you guys could be bitching about. That nuclear war looks cool and you get to see her ass, looks like a keeper to me.
"Seriously, as cool as a big laser is it seems as though the defense to this multi-billion-dollar system is to polish the outside of the missile to reflect the beam."
Nature of reflection is that it works based on percentages. Some of the light will make it though the shell. This is totally unavoidable. The trick is nailing the frequency in such a way that something inside (or the outside shell) the missle will have near 100% absorbtion. Jack up the power high enough and no matter how shiny and polished that missle is, it's going down.
Even if one could make a shell that was immune to this laser, I would assume the cost of doing so would be so high that only the riches nations would access to it. So that practially speaking, it's still effective. Remember, the only nations the USA has been at war with since WW2 are 3rd world nations.
This is fine as long as Kazaa tracks songs on a per download basis (which means a far more napster like server), otherwise all revenue will go to major labels, which from talking to the people I know is NOT what most downloads are. Once people become used to a model of getting music via the internet and think of as no different from going to the store to buy a CD, they will no longer think of actually going out and buying CDs. Thus potentially turning what is helping smaller bands into their own death sentence.
Not to mention, I highly doubt any money from downloads will actually go to artists (much like ASCAP).
"A child by your own statement is not a full citizen thus lacks the rights that entails, thus the child in fact does not own any money"
This is variant of a strawman argument. Now, I'm not a legal scholar, so I don't know the exact legal definitions, perhaps someone can jump in here for me, but....
Not being a full citizen and lacking the rights of a full citizen does NOT mean they lack ALL rights. Children, irrc, are legally speaking, akin to slaves with far more advanced rights than slaves ever had in the United States.
Parents have the right to (among things)
1. Limit the travel of their children (by time and place)
2. Limit the association of their children
3. Put their children under house arrest (grounding)
4. Physically hit their children (what that means differs from community to community and as a society we are migrating away from that as being acceptable)
5. Destroy any piece of property of the child (throwing away their toys, throwing out cloths)
and many other things
But with theses right come responsibilities. Keeping the child fed, doing nothing resembling torture (this definition changes over time), keeping the child physically and mentally safe from danger (both in the house and out of the house), and many more I can't think of.
Point is, there are MANY things that parents can do to children that would get those same parents thrown in prision (sometimes for years) if they did it to an adult. This is because children are not given the SAME rights of full blown citizens. Not that they don't have rights, but to think of a child as a citizen is wrong.
So back to your argument:
"A child by your own statement is not a full citizen thus lacks the rights that entails, thus the child in fact does not own any money."
Children CAN own property, it can just be seized by the parent. Though, recently the courts have gone so far as to safeguard large sums of money and the like from parents so that when the child is of legal age, they have access to it.
"You seem to imply that every parrent in America wishes their children to not be exposed to violent games."
'Parents have the right to...' is NOT the same thing as "All parents desire to strictly enforce their right to...". There was no implication.
"If it becomes a crime to sell violent video games to children, should it not also become a crime to broadcast violent material through television?"
My basic principle is that parents need to have the tools available to raise their children as they see fit. That does NOT mean everything under the sun should be illegal for a kid to do.
There is a difference. Where technology exists to allow parents to be empowered, then parents have the tools they need. In the case of TV, one can easily purchase a TV today that limits what shows their children can watch. In fact, I have digital cable at home and built into that box is the ability to restrict it's use to specific channels (Disney) or specific types of shows (TV-G/Cartoons) without a pin number. Without the box, my cable line is USELESS.
To a certain extent, the same could be said to video games/software. MacOS allows the admin to limit apps on a per user basis. Perhaps if all the console makers decided to give parents the ability to LOCK a console from playing Mature video games, and advertised it on the box or even go so far as to offer TWO versions of the console, one that will NEVER play mature games and one that will. As long as it wasn't trivial to bipass the lock (like removing a battery to flash a ROM, hitting a hard to find reset button), then perhaps the kind of laws suggested in this thread wouldn't be needed. I doubt that would happen.
I'm sorry, but children are NOT full blown citizens with all the rights thereof. Even if there is absolutely no research supporting it, parents have a right to raise their children as they see fit by not letting them play video games (or watch a movie, or anything else for that matter).
I've been saying for years that children shouldn't be allowed to buy videogames (or movies or books of anysort) without parental consent. If you want your kid to have access to such things, get them a library card, get them a membership at Blockbuster, or perhaps even have an active role in your childs life by buying it for them.
Granted, in the US it's absolutely 100% impossible to control ALL aspects of your kids life and I would never suggest trying that, but perhaps anything that encourages involvement is a good thing.
In CALIFORNIA v. GREENWOOD, 486 U.S. 35 (1988), the Supreme Court ruled police could do this. I happen to agree with this. By putting it on the curb, you have shown that you want the city to come and take it away. In other word you want the city to have it.
As far as the city getting annoyed at the journalists, they can be annoyed, but I doubt there is much they can do about it, for much the same reason that the police can rummage though trash.
"The Matrix" borrowed heavily from several sources, mostly comic books, Japanese anime and Asian kung fu movies (graphic). "But I think people misunderstand art when they say things like that," says Pope. "Once you filter an influence through yourself, it's not the same thing anymore--if you really filter it. There's a film vocabulary out there, and it's for everybody to use."
This is exactly why copyright should fall in the public domain after a short time.
"True but I'm pretty sure the functionality of Mac Photoshop and PC Photoshop are the same or extremely close. So I don't know if it matters in this argument."
Well, if PS was an island of use, that would be true. Problem is, most people need to import files, maintain databases of images, and generally make applications interact. On any given day, I have PS 7, DW MX, iPhoto, Freehand, Navigator, IE 5, and RDC (to test pages on the crappy PC at my desk, no monitor) open at the same time. It's just easier on a Mac. Qualities you can't put in a chart, and I'm sure if I were a usability expert, I could explain in a thesis, but they still matter.
This also neglects the fact that the article was about Video Editing. FCP wins in ease of use and cost for a NLE app. That's Mac only.
"The First Amendment only applies to America."
I'm sorry, but this is a moral relativistic cop out. Free speech is a fundamental human right. End of story. If I were a stock holder in the above companies, I would sell that stock as soon as trading re-opened. It is fundamentally morally backwards to support in anyway the blocking of speech or access to other peoples speech.
If it is not illegal for US companies to help other countries to do things that violate the fundamental human rights of it's citizens, then it SHOULD BE. We shouldn't pass the buck on this stuff, it's how the US gets such a bad reputation.
I'm sitting at an OS X machine in a multi-lingual institute. Each user has the ability to choose language preferences for their desktop/apps, and even set an order of preferences if the language they desire isn't available for a specific App. The Chinese, Japanese, and Thai nationals I work with, use OS X to send and receive all their e-mails back home and not a single one users any of the Win2K or XP machines for Asian language input. Not knowing any asian languages myself, I can't speak directly about it, but I have not heard a complaint from them.
"have you noticed operations that seemed slower using Mac OS X compared to similar operations on other operating systems?"
Simple answer, yes. Complex answer: Those systems aren't running Windows. Mac OS X is always RESPONSIVE. If a splash screen comes up, you can still pull another application in front of it. If an app is running a huge calculation, you can still web browse. iTunes doesn't skip. You can play DVD on your background (you have to set your background color to a specific value, start up the DVD, then hide the DVD player). You put a really pretty fish tank OpenGL screensaver as your background. Running many mpeg4s at the same time doesn't choke the system. It keeps going, in fact if you just add ram, like with any Unix system, you can throw any number of big jobs at it, and it will keep going.
That being said, you have to wait for the genie effect to take place. Because it's a friggen animation. Same with icon removals from the desktop. If you aren't running QE (which from what I know is most of the OS X installs today), you get a big CPU hit on moving windows, resizing, and putting in dock. But it still keeps going. I'm really quite amazed at how well it works, day in, day out.
Am I unpleased, no. Do I even consider other OS's. Not anymore. Can it be made faster, sure.
Why? I see no reason. The FBI's success rate at stopping Islamic terrorists up till 9/11 was pretty commendable. They slip up once, and all of a sudden it's a green light to let the Federal Govt do what it pleases. I don't buy. Can things be improved, perhaps, but there is only so much one can do about "security" when billions of dollars couldn't put a dent in the drug trade.
Quite frankly, I'm not willing to one iota of freedom for the illusion of security. If my mind is not free, I will NEVER be secure.
I've always thought that an economic slump is the BEST time to agressive hire the best workers so that when the times change, they are in a great position by having the best on staff in place. People without money (cause they lost jobs) won't buy half ass products (due to having smaller staffs working on them). It's as simple as that. Times like this is when companies should be MORE aggressive and buy every good idea and worker, because they will sell for less and be more likely to be grateful when times turn around.
Whatever, it's not like I studied economic theory...
Because it's inevidable. I remember a time when companies were building proprietary networks systems for corporate use. I remember when AOL wouldn't let people send/receive e-mail from internet. What forced them to change was University use. Researchers don't care about ease of use. They see computers like a hammer, just a tool. They set up e-mail systems and web servers. I remeber compiling Linux onto a 383 long before many of you even knew what e-mail was. Instant Messaging is next.
My boss want to do IM, to keep in more direct touch with associates. He doesn't understand why noone sets up their own servers. So we set up our own right next to our e-mail system (so that e-mail and jabber ids are the same). This is one of the first of MANY coming jabber servers. After a point, every incoming freshman is going to not only get e-mail/web hosting but also a jabber id.
"Not to mention, it would bring out a lot of texts that would show just how modern Christianity and Catholicism was practically invented by Roman Councils picking, choosing, and editing text as they pleased, and how all the text of the Bible either came from oral history or history written 70 years after Jesus' death, of which none of the original texts still exist."
Yeah, whatever. You obviously know absolutely nothing about Historical Criticism. Your bias against Christianity has scewed your view of New Testament development so severely that you lack any objectivity. Though, IMHO, traditional authorship (as claimed by Christians) of NT texts has a tendency to be incorrect, save for Paul's writings (and even some of those are up for contention), it's a stetch to say "modern Christianity and Catholicism was practically invented by Roman Councils picking, choosing, and editing text as they pleased" and "written 70 years after Jesus' death". There are some that argue (including myself) that Mark and "Q" predate the revolt/Temple destruction and 'Luke'/'Mat.' reliance on said texts shows a level of care in constructing their gospels that sceptics don't want to admit.
I'm probabally wasting my time...
Learn some Biblical history and take your anti-Christian bias out of the picture, it makes you look immature, even to non-Christians (like myself).
Although, iirc, Kramnik was able to study deep Fritz before hand, he is still at a disadvantage. Any hash tables that Deep Fritz uses will use library if GM games (properly ranked of course). Odds are, Deep Fritz has decades of Kramniks playing against other GM's and could easily do some kind of prediction of what Kramnik is going to play based off a probabisitic model. That's one thing the best GMs attempt to do against one another. Kramnik has very little experience against Deep Fritz, comparativly speaking, and walks into this tournament at a disadvantage. Give this, it's good to soo it's tied into the last game. I would be willing to be that if you put Deep Fritz into tournament play for 2 years and expose it's abilities complete against a cross section of the best GMs, Kramnik would beat it hands down.
Now, maybe finding intelligent life outside our Solar System isn't very important, since we currently have no way of actually effectively communicating with them, but...
Distributed computing research is important. I really don't see why this kind of research isn't flowing with money, if for the only reason to fully understand how to effectively handle a network of computations that number in the millions. In 30 years, I get the feeling computers are going to come with low priority generic network computing clients to off load research of varing projects onto, what else are we going to use that 20Ghz machines for when we go to work?