Either someone in DoD needs some training in what animal does what job, or they think that there's PR points to be gained by calling it a 'dog'.
The prototype is dog-sized. The company making it decided to name the project "big dog". Wired (in it's usual "hip, cool, rad" style of sloppy journalism) makes it sound like the Army asked specifically for "robot dogs", when all they really asked for was 4-legged transport prototypes. So blame the dog thing on Yobotics and Wired, not the DOD.
In my experience, even Win2k does deteriorate and need reinstalling
I have two win2k boxes I administer. One is used as a simple web browser and email reader (with occasional Excel and Word use). It's been running 24/7 for 3+ years now and hasn't slowed down a bit-- and yes, it gets all the automatic windows updates. I have another win2k box that needs a clean install every 4-6 months. I use it as a test machine. Every crazy application, freak-out codec, and monkey-ass piece of hardware (with monkey-ass driver) gets installed on that machine. There doesn't seem to be so much a problem with win2k by itself; it seems more a problem with 3rd party crap that doesn't uninstall properly.
A) take gun from air-marshal.
B) kill air-marshal.
C) threaten passengers.
D) enter cockpit.
NEW: E) Disable softwall-thingy
F) take plane wherever I please.
Even assuming a hijacker can somehow manage A) and B), what makes you think that he can do C) effectively enough to to keep everyone from dogpiling him before he can even attempt D)? Before 11SEP01, people would be afraid of being shot, but now they're more afraid of the plane ramming a building. The days of compliant passengers are over.
M16's - the preferred sidearm of the Republican Guard. Sourced from South America.
Source, please? I've never heard/seen even the slightest hint that the Iraqi army ever actively fielded the M-16. All photos of Republican Guard troops show them with Czech, Chinese, or Soviet made Kalashnikovs. The notion that they would issue a small arm (not sidearm-- that means a pistol) that's totally incompatible-- both parts and ammunition wise-- with the rest of their inventory is ridiculous. Equipping the best troops with a hard to support and not-significantly-superior weapon is prima facie stupid. Furthermore, even if they did have the M-16, this in no way gurantees that it's a US weapon. Dozens of countries have licenses to produce M-16 pattern rifles locally. A South Korean M-16 is no more a US weapon than a Chinese AK-47 is a Russian weapon.
Various Soviet designed equipment was upgraded with US made parts, notably missiles and aircraft (ejector seats, etc).
Specifics, please. "Ejector seats, etc." is a pretty vague category. First, I'd like to hear which Russian-designed missile systems are in any way compatible with US made ones, and which parts-- you made the claim, back it up. Russian aircraft, likewise, are almost totally incompatible with US ones, and aside from very generic parts that can be adapted easily (like ejector seat rocket motors), there's not much interchangeability.
I remain open to the possibility that your claims are true-- they just seem to be technically highly unlikely. At any rate, you've already strayed quite far from your original claim of "Backing Saddam with weapons".
But the binaries will only match if they were compiled with the same compiler and the same options...and possibly a few other restrictions.
OTOH, I guess that most of the code would be similar enough that you would know just where to look closely...so maybe binaries *would* suffice.
Strings and static data tables usually come out the same on the other side of a compiler. That's usually what they look for. They could rearrange everything in the source, but they'd have to understand the source pretty thoroughly to do that. At that point they might as well write it themselves and avoid the headache.
Little of Saddams military material came directly from the USSR, as mutual distrust took hold early on.
Absolutely, undeniably false. The soviets maitained a position of official neutrality with regard to Iraq, but they sold military equipment to the directly all the way up to the collapse of the USSR. In 1972, over 95% of their equipment had been sold to them by the USSR. That percentage dropped to less than 65% by 1979, but the USSR was still their most important supplier. In 1987 they sold 24 MiG-29's to Iraq. There were no third party manufacturers of the MiG-29 in 1987, they all came directly from Moscow.
The remainder of Saddams arsenal came from many sources, part of a policy of not being dependent on any one supplier for key military items.
France, Brazil, South Africa supplied a lot of material to them, but the core systems of the Iraqi military were soviet designs.
This could only occur with tacit approval of the US
We had no direct opposition to Iraq at the time. Why should we care if Brazil sold them APCs?
The US allowed American firms to sell arms to third parties knowing full well they were intended for Iraq. Further US designed weapons were sourced from licensed producers outside the US.
Name the weapons to which you refer. Other than a handfull of old howitzer parts and a few unarmed MD500 light helicopters, the Iraqis had no US material in their inventory.
The US embargo of Japan in 1941 cut off nearly all of Japan's oil supplies, from third-party countries, when Japan was in a state of war, yet Japan's attack on the US to restore these supplies was supposedly an act of infamy
What? Bombing the crap out of the US pacific naval forces was an attempt to end the US oil emabargo? I seriously doubt it.
It probably involves a US marine buying a ticket on a US Air jet to Paris and shouting "Surrender you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!" when he touches down.
Whereupon he gets the shit kicked out of him by a parisian whore and an appalled, struggling, artist who'll put down his brush and glass of wine and run over to help the whore, who'll both explain between blows that invasion plans based on poor stereotypes are never likely to be successful.
You are aware, of course, that influential members of the current administration have called for the US to "fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars" in order to maintain American military dominance. Interestingly, this 'call to arms' was made well before September 11 2001.
Multi-theater victory capability had been standard US military policy since WW2-- until the big defense cuts of the 90's. The strategy was "reduced" to "win one theater while 'containing' the others" after the soviet bloc disintegrated, but many thought this was a bad idea. This "call to arms" isn't some sort of unprecedented escalation, it's simply a call to bring back what they had before.
I don't have much sympathy for you using a laptop to get at GPS information. Unless you've got a great solid mount holding the laptop in a position where you can quickly move your eyes between it and the road, and a touch screen interface or some easy to hit buttons, it's unsafe to drive and use it at the same time, period.
His exact words: (emphasis mine)
"With the fact that I can't use a laptop
as a passenger, my GPS system would be worthless in California"
It appears his beef is with the fact that the law even prohibits the passenger from using a laptop.
Iridium handsets seem large by cell phone standards, but military radios with long range capability are still a backpack item or worse. There's more network capacity in the Iridium system than in military commo nets, and you can call any phone in the world.
That, and the guys in camouflage BDUs generally won't let State Department weenies clog up their system with constant inane phone calls to DC. I think the State Dept. and the FAA are the biggest gov't Iridium users.
I became slightly interested in F1 for a couple years when Nissan kept winning. They apparently had a HUGE tech edge on everyone else because their cars would come in first and second, one right behind the other, and then third place would come dawdling in many seconds later. Supposedly Nissan had developed an amazing turbocharging system that gave their cars an unbelievable advantage. But instead of spurring the competition to out-tech Nissan what happened? They complained to the F1 powers-that-be and had a new design rule passed that placed a limitation on the size of the air intake-- which hindered the Nissan turbo enough so that others could win. That idiocy put me off pretty much all car racing forever.
Yup. How about "lowest common denominator". If you think about that, it's always one. All numbers share 1 as a common denominator. Maybe people mean "least common multiple" or "greatest common denominator". Number theory should be part of grade school math, methinks:)
That one used to bother me, till I had it pointed out that to "aim for the lowest common denominator" is (for example) exactly what many businesses do. The ideal product or service is one which is the equivalent of "1", as it appeals equally to all people. Unfortunately, this also means it's dumbed down such that a "1" person and a "100" person get the same thing.
Sadly, people who don't read just can't cut the muster.
Funny you should mention this one, as "cut the muster" is actually the correct usage. It became "cut the mustard" because people heard the expression and didn't know what a "muster" was. A muster is the calling out of the militia. To not "cut the muster" would be to be sent home as unfit to serve due to age, infirmity, etc.
Is the argument:
The paper is a hoax.
In which case the negative is that it's not and by Occam's razor it can't be proven so the burden of proof is on those who think it's a hoax.
or is the argument:
The paper is legitimate.
In which case the negative is that it's not, putting the burden of proof on those who think it's legitimate.
Yeah, Occam doesn't help here. Neither the "hoax" nor the "not-hoax" theories is provably less complicated an explaination. The best Occam can do here is rule out the "fell out of a time machine" and "written in 1100 by space-monks in their papal flying saucer" explainations. It amazes me that some people cannot accept that the nature of the manuscript is indeterminate until hard evidence pushes it one way or the other.
At which point you have to argue which freedom is more important - the freedom not to wear clothes, or the freedom not to see other people without clothes.
Yeah, the latter "right" isn't a right at all. A "right to only see people wearing clothes" is as ridiculous a "right to have all people bow to me as I pass by". Personal rights end at the point where they begin to infringe upon the personal rights of others. Nobody has the "right" to walk around in public without being offended. I could stand on the corner in lincoln, nebraska and preach the gospel of satan to passers-by and, I'm certain, offend the crap out of a whole lot of them. But according to the 1st amendment, nobody can stop me from doing that, but a woman can't lift her shirt?
Of course, nobody ever said law was totally consistent.
"it seems unlikely that a sixteenth-century forger would go to the trouble of creating something that would have all the qualities of a real language and would include techniques that would deliberately resemble" Well I have news for you. 3.5 Kilogram gold (a prince wealth for the time) make it more likely than you wish to hold it.
So what you're saying is that a 16th century forger crafted his hoax to pass principles of linguistic analysis that wouldn't even be discovered for another 400 years? Frankly, I'm not sure what you're saying. I need a linguist to decipher your abominable english.
A quick refresher on what I wrote is, perhaps, in order.
Yeah, your lowly little AA rechargable would happily dump 6,120A in 1 second if the short circuit had small enough resistance.
Supply-side internal resistance is still part of the circuit, short or not.
I gotta call "weasel" on that one. That means your original statement was along the lines of "AA rechargable would dump 6120A in a second if this were a magic universe where batteries didn't have to obey the laws of physics". Your statement of "this is 7,344 watts for one second... 7.3kJ released in my pocket if the battery fails catastrophically? No thank you."
So, you're worried about pocket battery explosions in a make-believe universe? Please. Be a mensch and admit you forgot to include the battery's internal resistance.
The excuse "WEll, current BIOS systems is just patch written upon patch written upon patch. ITs a mess."
But it works. Is an EFI system going to be markedly faster?
Heh. What I always tell people who say the "BIOS is all patch", is that BIOS is more like an axe that's been in the family for generations. Sure, we've had to replace the handle a few times, and sometimes we replace the head, but it's still the same axe! I think you're spot-on about EFI. Is there really anything BIOS needs to do that it's not doing well enough already, or can't be made to do without a total tearout-and-replace?
have you ever used an HP Pavilion? To a first approximation, it's a Compaq Presario. The HPaq merger is just a consolidation of the two surviving players in that niche.
My mother bought one on the cheap and I eventually just bought her a real computer because I was sick of trying to keep that piece of dung functioning. As far as consumer grade equipment, their motto should be: "Hewlett-Packard...we used to make good printers".
(their commercial-grade stuff seems ok, at least. Dunno, myself; we use [gack] Dell's crap where I work)
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The prototype is dog-sized. The company making it decided to name the project "big dog". Wired (in it's usual "hip, cool, rad" style of sloppy journalism) makes it sound like the Army asked specifically for "robot dogs", when all they really asked for was 4-legged transport prototypes. So blame the dog thing on Yobotics and Wired, not the DOD.
The Sierra Club should be calling for a boycott on Intel. All this tree cutting just to feed a wood chipper...
I have two win2k boxes I administer. One is used as a simple web browser and email reader (with occasional Excel and Word use). It's been running 24/7 for 3+ years now and hasn't slowed down a bit-- and yes, it gets all the automatic windows updates. I have another win2k box that needs a clean install every 4-6 months. I use it as a test machine. Every crazy application, freak-out codec, and monkey-ass piece of hardware (with monkey-ass driver) gets installed on that machine. There doesn't seem to be so much a problem with win2k by itself; it seems more a problem with 3rd party crap that doesn't uninstall properly.
B) kill air-marshal.
C) threaten passengers.
D) enter cockpit.
NEW: E) Disable softwall-thingy
F) take plane wherever I please.
Even assuming a hijacker can somehow manage A) and B), what makes you think that he can do C) effectively enough to to keep everyone from dogpiling him before he can even attempt D)? Before 11SEP01, people would be afraid of being shot, but now they're more afraid of the plane ramming a building. The days of compliant passengers are over.
Source, please? I've never heard/seen even the slightest hint that the Iraqi army ever actively fielded the M-16. All photos of Republican Guard troops show them with Czech, Chinese, or Soviet made Kalashnikovs. The notion that they would issue a small arm (not sidearm-- that means a pistol) that's totally incompatible-- both parts and ammunition wise-- with the rest of their inventory is ridiculous. Equipping the best troops with a hard to support and not-significantly-superior weapon is prima facie stupid. Furthermore, even if they did have the M-16, this in no way gurantees that it's a US weapon. Dozens of countries have licenses to produce M-16 pattern rifles locally. A South Korean M-16 is no more a US weapon than a Chinese AK-47 is a Russian weapon.
Various Soviet designed equipment was upgraded with US made parts, notably missiles and aircraft (ejector seats, etc).
Specifics, please. "Ejector seats, etc." is a pretty vague category. First, I'd like to hear which Russian-designed missile systems are in any way compatible with US made ones, and which parts-- you made the claim, back it up. Russian aircraft, likewise, are almost totally incompatible with US ones, and aside from very generic parts that can be adapted easily (like ejector seat rocket motors), there's not much interchangeability.
I remain open to the possibility that your claims are true-- they just seem to be technically highly unlikely. At any rate, you've already strayed quite far from your original claim of "Backing Saddam with weapons".
?
29Feb != leap second
Strings and static data tables usually come out the same on the other side of a compiler. That's usually what they look for. They could rearrange everything in the source, but they'd have to understand the source pretty thoroughly to do that. At that point they might as well write it themselves and avoid the headache.
Absolutely, undeniably false. The soviets maitained a position of official neutrality with regard to Iraq, but they sold military equipment to the directly all the way up to the collapse of the USSR. In 1972, over 95% of their equipment had been sold to them by the USSR. That percentage dropped to less than 65% by 1979, but the USSR was still their most important supplier. In 1987 they sold 24 MiG-29's to Iraq. There were no third party manufacturers of the MiG-29 in 1987, they all came directly from Moscow.
The remainder of Saddams arsenal came from many sources, part of a policy of not being dependent on any one supplier for key military items. France, Brazil, South Africa supplied a lot of material to them, but the core systems of the Iraqi military were soviet designs.
This could only occur with tacit approval of the US
We had no direct opposition to Iraq at the time. Why should we care if Brazil sold them APCs?
The US allowed American firms to sell arms to third parties knowing full well they were intended for Iraq. Further US designed weapons were sourced from licensed producers outside the US.
Name the weapons to which you refer. Other than a handfull of old howitzer parts and a few unarmed MD500 light helicopters, the Iraqis had no US material in their inventory.
What? Bombing the crap out of the US pacific naval forces was an attempt to end the US oil emabargo? I seriously doubt it.
OK, so we have to send two US Marines. :)
Multi-theater victory capability had been standard US military policy since WW2-- until the big defense cuts of the 90's. The strategy was "reduced" to "win one theater while 'containing' the others" after the soviet bloc disintegrated, but many thought this was a bad idea. This "call to arms" isn't some sort of unprecedented escalation, it's simply a call to bring back what they had before.
His exact words: (emphasis mine)
It appears his beef is with the fact that the law even prohibits the passenger from using a laptop.You'll also notice that the one I pointed out was, in reality, not a mistake when he intended it to be one. That was my point. Duh.
That, and the guys in camouflage BDUs generally won't let State Department weenies clog up their system with constant inane phone calls to DC. I think the State Dept. and the FAA are the biggest gov't Iridium users.
I've lost a GPS, a half dozen CD's, and innumerable packs of cigarettes to the "dashboard slide" over the years. I never seem to learn.
I became slightly interested in F1 for a couple years when Nissan kept winning. They apparently had a HUGE tech edge on everyone else because their cars would come in first and second, one right behind the other, and then third place would come dawdling in many seconds later. Supposedly Nissan had developed an amazing turbocharging system that gave their cars an unbelievable advantage. But instead of spurring the competition to out-tech Nissan what happened? They complained to the F1 powers-that-be and had a new design rule passed that placed a limitation on the size of the air intake-- which hindered the Nissan turbo enough so that others could win. That idiocy put me off pretty much all car racing forever.
That one used to bother me, till I had it pointed out that to "aim for the lowest common denominator" is (for example) exactly what many businesses do. The ideal product or service is one which is the equivalent of "1", as it appeals equally to all people. Unfortunately, this also means it's dumbed down such that a "1" person and a "100" person get the same thing.
But yeah, people use it wrong most of the time.
Funny you should mention this one, as "cut the muster" is actually the correct usage. It became "cut the mustard" because people heard the expression and didn't know what a "muster" was. A muster is the calling out of the militia. To not "cut the muster" would be to be sent home as unfit to serve due to age, infirmity, etc.
Yeah, Occam doesn't help here. Neither the "hoax" nor the "not-hoax" theories is provably less complicated an explaination. The best Occam can do here is rule out the "fell out of a time machine" and "written in 1100 by space-monks in their papal flying saucer" explainations. It amazes me that some people cannot accept that the nature of the manuscript is indeterminate until hard evidence pushes it one way or the other.
Yeah, the latter "right" isn't a right at all. A "right to only see people wearing clothes" is as ridiculous a "right to have all people bow to me as I pass by". Personal rights end at the point where they begin to infringe upon the personal rights of others. Nobody has the "right" to walk around in public without being offended. I could stand on the corner in lincoln, nebraska and preach the gospel of satan to passers-by and, I'm certain, offend the crap out of a whole lot of them. But according to the 1st amendment, nobody can stop me from doing that, but a woman can't lift her shirt?
Of course, nobody ever said law was totally consistent.
Well I have news for you. 3.5 Kilogram gold (a prince wealth for the time) make it more likely than you wish to hold it.
So what you're saying is that a 16th century forger crafted his hoax to pass principles of linguistic analysis that wouldn't even be discovered for another 400 years? Frankly, I'm not sure what you're saying. I need a linguist to decipher your abominable english.
Actually, I think TP must have used it in an earlier Discworld book as well, 'cause I think I've been using his axe analogy for more than 3 years.
I gotta call "weasel" on that one. That means your original statement was along the lines of "AA rechargable would dump 6120A in a second if this were a magic universe where batteries didn't have to obey the laws of physics". Your statement of "this is 7,344 watts for one second... 7.3kJ released in my pocket if the battery fails catastrophically? No thank you."
So, you're worried about pocket battery explosions in a make-believe universe? Please. Be a mensch and admit you forgot to include the battery's internal resistance.
Heh. What I always tell people who say the "BIOS is all patch", is that BIOS is more like an axe that's been in the family for generations. Sure, we've had to replace the handle a few times, and sometimes we replace the head, but it's still the same axe! I think you're spot-on about EFI. Is there really anything BIOS needs to do that it's not doing well enough already, or can't be made to do without a total tearout-and-replace?
My mother bought one on the cheap and I eventually just bought her a real computer because I was sick of trying to keep that piece of dung functioning. As far as consumer grade equipment, their motto should be: "Hewlett-Packard...we used to make good printers".
(their commercial-grade stuff seems ok, at least. Dunno, myself; we use [gack] Dell's crap where I work)