Mr Blunkett said the ID card plan added little costs to what was already being done in creating a database for passports holding biometric details such as iris scans and fingerprints.
Such a database would prevent people travelling to America having to pay $100 on every visit for a biometric visa, he suggested.
So... Blunkett's argument for introducing a national ID card which drastically improves the government's tools for invading the privacy of its citizens is that it will save you money when visiting the U.S.A. - a country that is already in the process of invading its citizens' privacy far more effectively than Blunkett's little scheme would.
What that boils down to is "Give up most of your privacy, so you can go visit a country which demands that you give up all of your privacy."
I've got a better idea: forget the ID cards, and forget visiting the U.S.A. - go someplace sane and free, instead.
Ooh, a Wikipedia link, watch for that page to be repeatedly defaced for the next few hours....
...and, of course, it was.
See, this is what I'm always telling folks. "On Slashdot, the readership is part of the technological intelligentsia. They're smarter than the average reader, so the level of discourse is high."
Sometimes, I can even say it with a straight face.
But of course, even if he didn't do that, there's always Jeb.
That probably really is their plan, actually.
Hmm. I think you're probably right. After all, dynastic office-holding is a characteritic of decaying republics - and America has come close to a presidential dynasty before.
... and change presidents.
Well, guess what? They *WILL* have to do that in four years.
You're making the assumption that Bush won't make a successful attempt at doing what Nixon was toying with, before his fall - namely, repealing the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.
"President for Life George W. Bush" - how does that sound?
I'm well aware of that. Tell me, how does this affect the discussion at hand?
Since everybody is agreed that it is a neologism, does it really matter whether or not it started out as a pseudo-Latinate Italian neologism which was then translated to English to become a pseudo-Latinate English neologism?
I like to nitpick as much as the next geek, but there comes a time when the nits get too small, and the cost/benefit of picking them becomes prohibitive.
Well, let me respond to that by saying that I don't call people "paid shills" unless I know for a fact that money changed hands. My private suspicions and concerns are another thing.
Heheh... no, I didn't make it up. But somebody else did. Umberto Eco, to be precise.
Look for it in Eco's The Name of the Rose. Eco uses it (judging from context) to mean the quality of being an atypical but illustrative example, and applies it to describe that quality which lists and list-making have of creating a sense of understanding where none may actually exist.
I'm the meme thief... I don't coin phrases - I steal other people's coinage.
Are you truly surprised that it would still apply?
This SCO story isn't just one instance of bogus journalism - it's a hypotypical example of the weaknesses of the journalistic profession as a whole (although I hesitate to lump that person in with the real professionals). This sort of thing isn't something that we're ever going to "get over", because it isn't just a "sign of the times". It's an endemic condition.
There's always going to be a difference between conscientious professionals and sloppy hacks. In any profession, not just journalism.
Who needs sources, when you've biased reporting and scurrilous innuendo?
Milo Bloom: Senator? This is Milo Bloom at the Beacon. Will you confirm that you sunk Jimmy Hoffa in your backyard pond? Senator Bedfellow: What? Of course not! Milo: Fine. I'll go with "Sen. Bedfellow denies that pond is where he sunk Hoffa." Bedfellow: That's not true! Milo: Okay. "Bedfellow did sink Hoffa in pond". Bedfellow: I don't know where Hoffa is!! Milo: "'I lost the body' says Bedfellow."
Yah, sure. While it would be nice to have such a thing, it doesn't really help in selecting candidates for your vote in the upcoming elections.
I don't know how it is in the UK, but Danish candidates for the EU parliament are usually either young and untested or over-the-hill in one way or another. There is a tendency to view the EU parliament as a "second choice" in political affairs - something you do if you can't cut it in the national elections. In any case, few of the candidates running for election have a track record on the issues that concern Europe - apart from what they state their opinions to be.
So, selecting a candidate in Denmark becomes a question of picking someone you distrust the least. Not an ideal situation, but doable, one might think.
However....
I've written to four candidates (the ones that best matched my own opinions, according to a poll on a number of issues in a Danish political website), asking them for a clear answer on the subject of software patents (which, due to its undeservedly low profile, was not mentioned among the issues in the poll).
To date, my response rate has been: ZERO.
That's right - not one of the candidates even bothered to respond.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy, I feel such confidence in the future of democracy in Europe!
As for myself... as a Dane, I am disappointed in the way my representatives behaved - to see how they were bullied into following the crowd, read the second transcript. Sheesh!
I'm sure I don't need to point this out, but all the same: [Lucy-S] on E2 is the same person as the credited author, Lucy Snyder. So, there's no monkey (or badger) business going on.
To quote Einstein; "If I have seen further than other men, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants"
Mmm.... No. That was Isaac Newton, not Albert Einstein, and you misquoted even that. Newton said: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." [Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1676. See H. W. Turnbull (ed.) Correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol. 1, p.416 (1959)]
However, Newton was himself paraphrasing John of Salisbury (who attributed the saying to Bernard of Chartres, in John's The Metalogicon, 1159).
While we're at it, Samuel Taylor Coleridge also used the expression, in The Friend (1818): "The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant's shoulder to mount on."
In any case, it's a wonderfully humble expression, perfect for showing your modesty (whether becomingly genuine or unbecomingly false).
You're thinking in terms of absolute velocity relative to a hypothetical fixed frame of reference. That makes no sense in a space dogfight. In such a situation, the only motion (disregarding the possible presence of close obstacles, such as debris or large/planetoidal masses - or atmosphere, in VLEO) that makes any sense to consider is your motion relative to your opponent.
So, let's picture it: you're zooming along (with no sound, this being space, and all) with your opponent on your tail. You "suddenly spin your ship 180 degrees and fire your thrusters the other way".
Now, let's make the following assumptions:
Your opponent was closely matched in vector to yourself - he was hot on your tail, so to speak.
Just prior to your executing this maneuver, both you and your opponent were accelerating at maximum, along fairly similar courses. You were trying to accelerate away from him, and he was trying to catch up.
Thus, given these assumptions, what will happen is this:
You will stop accelerating, while your opponent is still closing fast. For a brief moment, you will be slightly more vulnerable, as you execute the rotation maneuver (assuming there is no way you can apply full thrust from either end of the fighter - for maneuverability reasons, I can imagine a fighter being built with some system to allow full available thrust to be directed in largely any direction, not unlike the Harrier jump jets of today).
Once the rotation maneuver is complete (if necessary - see preceding point), you will apply full thrust. Assuming your opponent doesn't change his pattern of approach in reaction to your maneuver (he'd be a fool not to react, but let's assume), you will now start accelerating towards him, while he is still accelerating towards you. This will be perceived by both parties as the "dramatic change in vector" that I mentioned in my previous post.
As both opponents apply thrust in opposing directions, they will close fast. At this point, the results of the dogfight will probably be determined by which side has the best combat computers.
Once again: there is no fixed frame of reference here. You are only dealing with two bodies maneuvering relative to each other in space.
1.) In a battle, it's important to keep moving. If you suddenly spin your ship 180 degrees and fire your thrusters the other way, you're going to come to a complete stop for a moment before re-accellerating back to your attack speed. A wide sweeping arc keeps you in motion and provides for better evasive maneuvers.
"A complete stop"? Relative to what? Assuming this is a dogfight, any force you apply will alter your vector relative to your opponent. There is no need to assume that this will seem to him to be "coming to a complete stop". Not unless you were zooming by him, that is. If he was in hot pursuit, the reverse-thrust move will appear to be a dramatic change in vector, not "coming to a complete stop".
I may be just an historian, but I have at least a nodding acquaintance with simple Newtonian physics.
Making a great space battle in an anime is less of a technical challenge, and more of a story-telling challenge. Many anime productions which rely heavily on technical props (from giant robots to space battles to cyborgs, etc.) have design staff working specifically on the technology in the anime.
Among the better examples of how technical design produces realistic-looking space battles are such animes as Cowboy Bebop and Crest of the Stars. You can also find very realistic-looking space sequences in Planetes. All of these three are also well-told tales, so one needn't fear that focussing on the tech will draw away attention from telling a good story.
Getting slightly off-topic, a fine example of technical innovation and design implemented in an anime is Ghost in the Shell. Featuring well-designed cybernetics technology, this one is a joy to watch. And though the technological details (and the shapely female lead) are definitely the main draw, the character development is excellent, too.
Hmm... when did "over 40" become old?:-/ What are you, a teenager?
Apart from being monstrously arrogant, your remarks are, quite simply, wrong. I've taught new tech to older users from an innovation-resistent environment (typographers). With a few exceptions (and I regard these as simple personality issues), they were eager to learn, and quite capable.
Sure, there were one or two who had to be taught the simplest, most basic concepts (e.g., basic mouse use), but this didn't take all that long. Besides - we all had to learn this, at one time or another.
Not to drip hemlock in your cup, old boy, but I am a connoisseur of Asian film, and I was mightily disappointed by "Hero" (orig. title Ying Xiong). Certainly, it's a beautiful film to look at - eye candy for film lovers - but the story just never really grabs me. It has far less appeal than, say, "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" (orig. title Wo Hu Cang Long).
These kids have to be small and thin to fit inside the plugs - there's not supposed to be a lot of room in there.
Not true. The plugs will actually hold two "passengers" (as seen in the anime, in the episode where Ikari Shinji saves his two classmates by taking them into the plug with him). This does, however, cause problems with synchronisation between the pilot and the EVA unit.
Slashdot Mirror
Mr Blunkett said the ID card plan added little costs to what was already being done in creating a database for passports holding biometric details such as iris scans and fingerprints.
Such a database would prevent people travelling to America having to pay $100 on every visit for a biometric visa, he suggested.
So... Blunkett's argument for introducing a national ID card which drastically improves the government's tools for invading the privacy of its citizens is that it will save you money when visiting the U.S.A. - a country that is already in the process of invading its citizens' privacy far more effectively than Blunkett's little scheme would.
What that boils down to is "Give up most of your privacy, so you can go visit a country which demands that you give up all of your privacy."
I've got a better idea: forget the ID cards, and forget visiting the U.S.A. - go someplace sane and free, instead.
Ooh, a Wikipedia link, watch for that page to be repeatedly defaced for the next few hours....
...and, of course, it was.
See, this is what I'm always telling folks. "On Slashdot, the readership is part of the technological intelligentsia. They're smarter than the average reader, so the level of discourse is high."
Sometimes, I can even say it with a straight face.
But of course, even if he didn't do that, there's always Jeb.
That probably really is their plan, actually.
Hmm. I think you're probably right. After all, dynastic office-holding is a characteritic of decaying republics - and America has come close to a presidential dynasty before.
You're making the assumption that Bush won't make a successful attempt at doing what Nixon was toying with, before his fall - namely, repealing the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution.
"President for Life George W. Bush" - how does that sound?
I'm well aware of that. Tell me, how does this affect the discussion at hand?
Since everybody is agreed that it is a neologism, does it really matter whether or not it started out as a pseudo-Latinate Italian neologism which was then translated to English to become a pseudo-Latinate English neologism?
I like to nitpick as much as the next geek, but there comes a time when the nits get too small, and the cost/benefit of picking them becomes prohibitive.
Well, let me respond to that by saying that I don't call people "paid shills" unless I know for a fact that money changed hands. My private suspicions and concerns are another thing.
Heheh... no, I didn't make it up. But somebody else did. Umberto Eco, to be precise.
Look for it in Eco's The Name of the Rose. Eco uses it (judging from context) to mean the quality of being an atypical but illustrative example, and applies it to describe that quality which lists and list-making have of creating a sense of understanding where none may actually exist.
I'm the meme thief... I don't coin phrases - I steal other people's coinage.
So you're saying, basically, that every American is really a slave to money?
Hmm. Yes.
Are you truly surprised that it would still apply?
This SCO story isn't just one instance of bogus journalism - it's a hypotypical example of the weaknesses of the journalistic profession as a whole (although I hesitate to lump that person in with the real professionals). This sort of thing isn't something that we're ever going to "get over", because it isn't just a "sign of the times". It's an endemic condition.
There's always going to be a difference between conscientious professionals and sloppy hacks. In any profession, not just journalism.
Caveat lector.
Who needs sources, when you've biased reporting and scurrilous innuendo?
Milo Bloom: Senator? This is Milo Bloom at the Beacon. Will you confirm that you sunk Jimmy Hoffa in your backyard pond?
Senator Bedfellow: What? Of course not!
Milo: Fine. I'll go with "Sen. Bedfellow denies that pond is where he sunk Hoffa."
Bedfellow: That's not true!
Milo: Okay. "Bedfellow did sink Hoffa in pond".
Bedfellow: I don't know where Hoffa is!!
Milo: "'I lost the body' says Bedfellow."
>My wife even said I could. :D
Yah, so did mine - but she won't hear of my bringing the kids. Dang.
krog wrote:
I think what this guy is looking for is a CS student who will write it for him. This is how academia works.
sp0rk173 replied:
Which gives the CS student experience to put on his/her resume, and helps forward the research of the non-coder academic
...which is how academia works.
One silly rhetorical question deserves another, so...
"When will the idiots who think The Matrix is original enough to be worth ripping off, cease to post on /.?"
Yah, sure. While it would be nice to have such a thing, it doesn't really help in selecting candidates for your vote in the upcoming elections.
I don't know how it is in the UK, but Danish candidates for the EU parliament are usually either young and untested or over-the-hill in one way or another. There is a tendency to view the EU parliament as a "second choice" in political affairs - something you do if you can't cut it in the national elections. In any case, few of the candidates running for election have a track record on the issues that concern Europe - apart from what they state their opinions to be.
So, selecting a candidate in Denmark becomes a question of picking someone you distrust the least. Not an ideal situation, but doable, one might think.
However....
I've written to four candidates (the ones that best matched my own opinions, according to a poll on a number of issues in a Danish political website), asking them for a clear answer on the subject of software patents (which, due to its undeservedly low profile, was not mentioned among the issues in the poll).
To date, my response rate has been: ZERO.
That's right - not one of the candidates even bothered to respond.
Oh boy oh boy oh boy, I feel such confidence in the future of democracy in Europe!
As for myself... as a Dane, I am disappointed in the way my representatives behaved - to see how they were bullied into following the crowd, read the second transcript. Sheesh!
True... But it's a pretty sterile conversation topic:
GEEK NO. 1: You know, Star Wars III really sucked.
GEEK NO. 2: Yah, but not as bad as Star Wars II.
GEEK NO. 1: Yah, that really, really sucked.
GEEK NO. 3: What about Matrix Revolutions?
GEEK NO. 1 and GEEK NO. 2 (chorus): That really sucked.
(repeat until audience gives up and goes home)
EXEUNT OMNES
I'm sure I don't need to point this out, but all the same: [Lucy-S] on E2 is the same person as the credited author, Lucy Snyder. So, there's no monkey (or badger) business going on.
To quote Einstein; "If I have seen further than other men, it is only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants"
Mmm.... No. That was Isaac Newton, not Albert Einstein, and you misquoted even that. Newton said: "If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." [Letter to Robert Hooke, February 5, 1676. See H. W. Turnbull (ed.) Correspondence of Isaac Newton, vol. 1, p.416 (1959)]
However, Newton was himself paraphrasing John of Salisbury (who attributed the saying to Bernard of Chartres, in John's The Metalogicon, 1159).
While we're at it, Samuel Taylor Coleridge also used the expression, in The Friend (1818): "The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant's shoulder to mount on."
In any case, it's a wonderfully humble expression, perfect for showing your modesty (whether becomingly genuine or unbecomingly false).
You're thinking in terms of absolute velocity relative to a hypothetical fixed frame of reference. That makes no sense in a space dogfight. In such a situation, the only motion (disregarding the possible presence of close obstacles, such as debris or large/planetoidal masses - or atmosphere, in VLEO) that makes any sense to consider is your motion relative to your opponent.
So, let's picture it: you're zooming along (with no sound, this being space, and all) with your opponent on your tail. You "suddenly spin your ship 180 degrees and fire your thrusters the other way".
Now, let's make the following assumptions:
Thus, given these assumptions, what will happen is this:
Once again: there is no fixed frame of reference here. You are only dealing with two bodies maneuvering relative to each other in space.
1.) In a battle, it's important to keep moving. If you suddenly spin your ship 180 degrees and fire your thrusters the other way, you're going to come to a complete stop for a moment before re-accellerating back to your attack speed. A wide sweeping arc keeps you in motion and provides for better evasive maneuvers.
"A complete stop"? Relative to what? Assuming this is a dogfight, any force you apply will alter your vector relative to your opponent. There is no need to assume that this will seem to him to be "coming to a complete stop". Not unless you were zooming by him, that is. If he was in hot pursuit, the reverse-thrust move will appear to be a dramatic change in vector, not "coming to a complete stop".
I may be just an historian, but I have at least a nodding acquaintance with simple Newtonian physics.
Making a great space battle in an anime is less of a technical challenge, and more of a story-telling challenge. Many anime productions which rely heavily on technical props (from giant robots to space battles to cyborgs, etc.) have design staff working specifically on the technology in the anime.
Among the better examples of how technical design produces realistic-looking space battles are such animes as Cowboy Bebop and Crest of the Stars. You can also find very realistic-looking space sequences in Planetes. All of these three are also well-told tales, so one needn't fear that focussing on the tech will draw away attention from telling a good story.
Getting slightly off-topic, a fine example of technical innovation and design implemented in an anime is Ghost in the Shell. Featuring well-designed cybernetics technology, this one is a joy to watch. And though the technological details (and the shapely female lead) are definitely the main draw, the character development is excellent, too.
Hmm... when did "over 40" become old? :-/ What are you, a teenager?
Apart from being monstrously arrogant, your remarks are, quite simply, wrong. I've taught new tech to older users from an innovation-resistent environment (typographers). With a few exceptions (and I regard these as simple personality issues), they were eager to learn, and quite capable.
Sure, there were one or two who had to be taught the simplest, most basic concepts (e.g., basic mouse use), but this didn't take all that long. Besides - we all had to learn this, at one time or another.
Or were you born with a mouse in your hand?
Umm... I have no wish to upset you or anything. No doubt, you feel very uncomfortable at the idea of tragic events being used to buttress a joke.
But, well, I found it funny.
Maybe it's just me.
Not to drip hemlock in your cup, old boy, but I am a connoisseur of Asian film, and I was mightily disappointed by "Hero" (orig. title Ying Xiong). Certainly, it's a beautiful film to look at - eye candy for film lovers - but the story just never really grabs me. It has far less appeal than, say, "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" (orig. title Wo Hu Cang Long).
These kids have to be small and thin to fit inside the plugs - there's not supposed to be a lot of room in there.
Not true. The plugs will actually hold two "passengers" (as seen in the anime, in the episode where Ikari Shinji saves his two classmates by taking them into the plug with him). This does, however, cause problems with synchronisation between the pilot and the EVA unit.