This means that you can even have a weapon on a ship that is owned by a company from a friendly country (if they aren't careful and don't know the contents of the container).
No it doesn't. How do they ensure the container gets loaded on top so it can open and fire? How does the container missile acquire the location of the carrier? How does it know when to fire?
The whole point is that the missiles are can be loaded on to and launched from any commercial ship that can carry a shipping container
I think the bit you're missing is that you can't just simply schedule these to be loaded onto a bunch of container ships at random and then push a button in Tehran and have them automatically take out a carrier. First, it'd have to be loaded with the cooperation of the ship's operator in order to assure that it was on top. No matter how fancy the design, I seriously doubt it could launch with two layers of other containers on top of it. Targeting and firing would require some sort of last-minute interaction, because until someone sees it, I guarantee they don't know where a carrier is going to be. What this means is that any such container ship would have to be Iranian flagged (to use my hypothetical) and would have to military operated. Furthermore, these are so expensive that no one could afford to load them and actually ship them anywhere and have them be essentially out of service while the ship is unloaded in a foreign port. This means that any container ship armed with the Club-K would effectively have to be loaded with decoy containers and kept within the operational area. At that point, it's just a badly designed missile cruiser. No, the whole fantasy of a secret missile launcher has too many holes.
However, Tetris does not. Tetris has a single obvious purpose, and no underlying message.
Are you kidding? If a douchebag can frame an untouched piece of engineering graph paper and claim it as art (saw it hanging in a gallery in Santa Fe) then you certainly can't say Tetris isn't art. The definition of art is completely subjective. Art merely has to evoke something that the materials alone do not. Your suggestion that it has to be a "message" is incorrect. It need only be a feeling... and it doesn't even have to be the feeling the artist intended. If something on a computer makes someone feel something that the mere flipping of bits doesn't normally make them feel, then it's art. If you're going to suggest that you know how Tetris makes everyone else feel, you're a fool.
Apart from them, what other examples of games that could count as art are there?
Doesn't matter! At this point, we've already advanced "games" to the same position as "novels" in his own example. Once you show that some games are definitely art, it becomes a matter of subjective tastes what constitutes "art" in a game. Ebert's real problem is that he doesn't understand that the aspects of interactivity and free will within a game are only slightly less constrained than someone watching a movie. You can't go read a newspaper in a Full Metal Super Warrior 2 FPS game. The creators of games already have a path in mind for you--- they just don't lead you by the nose down it like a movie writer does.
I think bigger question is how many hours a week are you actually able to program when you consider all interruptions
"I can't get the job estimate Excel sheet to work"
"How do we install the IR telemetry data transfer software on this Dell Axim PDA?"
"Do you have a Sargent LC 7-pin key blank?"
"Do you have a longer mini USB cable than this 2 inch one I found god knows where?"
"When Ernesto comes by, you should tell him *I* was the one who wrote that combination data interpolator program that saves hours of copy-paste work in Excel, that you sweat blood into while coding, because I for some reason think giving the credit to a computer illiterate like me is something you might think was a fun trick to play on someone who would likely think it's true."
"My home computer is slow. Do you know how to fix that?"
"I can't find my key. Can you open the storeroom for me?"
"Show these idiots from IT (who control static IP address assignments) the web interface for the new access control system and somehow convince them that there isn't going to be an NSA spy in the parking lot sniffing the password to the admin console you log into maybe 4 times a year so they don't make us VPN it to one computer in the back room under lock and key."
I get about 15 minutes of coding in. I wish the above was made up, but it's actually a rundown of what I dealt with just today. I miss not being the only computer savvy person in a department of 50 people.
Sounds like what I do at work. I wish I was joking. I work for a large school district in maintenance as a locksmith. Fiddling with safes and locks is part of my job (and its fucking awesome being a locksmith). Additionally, all our computers are behind the same ridiculous firewall that "protects the children", so I'm constantly finding proxy servers for my coworkers, presumably to use to watch youtube videos and check their facebook mafia war bullshit. And last but not least, the bureaucracy where I work is so horrifyingly bad, a non-trivial amount of time and effort is spent "shifting blame" for things that look like they're our fault, but aren't. I'd say that's pretty close to blaming others for my mistakes.
I had my first lockpick set when I was 14. Padlocks, particularly the kind typical tightwad single parents used, were no barrier to me. For $10 a week I'd pick the lock to a guy's mom's bedroom, then pick the lock to her weed storage box so he and his friends could get high. It was easy money.
I can see it now... Parent hits "shut down now" but then runs into the bedroom to see if it's working...
At which point, the power button is only inches away....:-P
Years ago I had a girlfriend who INSISTED upon keeping the TV remote on top of the TV. INSANITY!
Hey genius, how's a single parent going to walk into the room quietly at (say) 3pm after school when he/she is TWENTY MILES AWAY BECAUSE SINGLE PARENTS HAVE FUCKING JOBS?
To really solve Chicago's education problem, you have to prioritize the schools that cater to the very worst students; it makes no sense to spend more money on students who are already succeeding.
Trouble is, they aren't failing for lack of money to teach them. It's taboo to suggest so, but not all people are college material. I work for Los Angeles Unified School District, and their theory is that they're going to prepare everyone for college... everyone. Subsequently, the dropout rate is obscene, but they keep pounding away, trying to teach calculus to kids who'd be better served learning practical skills, like they used to teach in shop classes. The idiots in charge are convinced that a kid with a associate degree from a junior college working as a customer service rep at a rental car agency for $11/hr is somehow better off than a kid working as a welder in a body shop for $18/hr. It's all based on the ignorant bias of education academics that being a tradesman is to be a failure. Fuck people who push this universal college prep concept. Bring back the fucking shop classes. You can cite all the Jaime Escalante cases you want, but the fact remains that the kids that make it to high school calculus are already the cream of the crop. Despite what crap movies like Stand and Deliver want you to think, the ghetto dregs aren't taking fucking calculus because they haven't even passed algebra. They're stuck repeating remedial math in a vain effort to push them into academia when what they really need is to learn something they can use. Instead, they fail class after class before they give up and go get a job. The problem isn't lack of spending, it's lack of acceptance that some people would fucking love being a plumber and would make tons of money doing it.
corporations can (and do!) flee. People are much more reluctant to emigrate
More accurately, corporations can relocate at will with the host country welcoming them, if not overtly giving them concessions like tax breaks. People, on the other hand, are discouraged (if not outright prohibited) from going to a different country to work. Population is a captive audience.
but Pfizer was trying to sell a product that helped people in horrible pain
No, Pfizer was trying to sell an epilepsy medicine that (as proved by their own studies) didn't help people in horrible pain, by telling doctors that it did. That's fraud, and there ain't a shred of "but they meant well" behind it.
The amazing thing about the united states is that it existed before 1974. Furthermore, the maximum speed limit says nothing at all about the average speed limit.
Drive in a straight line, drive backwards in a straight line, parallel park, do a 3 point U-turn
California hasn't had the U-turn or parallel parking sections for at least 25 years. My test consisted of driving around the block through a residential neighborhood. So long as you remember to mind the speed limit, stop at stop signs, and cover the brake with your foot (ridiculous) as you pass the blind intersections, you'll pass.
There are areas in my city where you have two choices when attempting to travel from one east-west street to a prallel east-west street a half mile north: either (a) drive a mile in either direction in heavy traffic with lights at every other block to reach the nearest "big" north-south street, or (b) take one of the two dozen minor streets in between that have all become clogged with stop signs and speed bumps. It's done nothing but made traffic worse, all because these people don't want anyone driving over 20mph on the two-lane, dotted yellow down the middle road that's near their house.
Road design takes that sort of behavior into account. If it's causing a traffic jam, then the road is carrying more traffic than it is designed to carry. This is traffic engineering 101 stuff. Real world design can't be based on the theory that humans are perfect little robots.
They’re the holy grail of transportation engineering: streets and highways specifically designed to encourage automobilists to drive less quickly, reducing the rates of passenger fatalities and generally encouraging a safer urban environment.
That's not the holy grail of transportation engineering. That's the holy grail of technically ignorant busybody safety nazis. Traffic engineers are concerned with the big picture. Simply slowing down traffic on average doesn't make the road safer. Idiot politicos have this notion that because accidents at higher speeds are more damaging, lowering speed limits is safer. The problem is that lower limits--- either through signage or optical illusions or whatever--- simply create a wider speed differential. Speed differential is what causes the majority of accidents. Slightly reducing the injurious result of accidents is no help when the means of doing so increases the accident rate.
there were no "socialist/communist countries" from the get go - at all. They all started as dictatorships.
Here's the dirty little secret about communism on a national scale: it requires totalitarian control. Humans are unable to effectively operate cooperatively on a scale beyond what is loosely defined as the "tribal" level. Evolution has developed in us a strong predilection towards protection of our close genetic relations at the expense of non-relations. The only way to override this predilection is with the threat of force. Marx hinted at this, and Lenin & co all but admitted to it with their preposterous notion of a "vanguard" of "equals". Young intellectuals sipping coffee in a cafe can prattle on about the meaning of "real" communism, but it's all a load of crap. Theoretical communism is self-delusional mental masturbation. Real communism is pointing a gun at someone and saying "all that is yours is now collective", then loading all their grain onto a truck to be "redistributed" to the vanguard (we must keep our strength up to lead!) while the farmer barely survives.
No one ever mentions the other possible solution: Use less energy.
That's because it isn't a solution. Unless you're also going to somehow make there be fewer people, and have them do less, with fewer luxuries like sanitation and refrigeration, it won't work. Energy powers civilization. Hybrid cars, taking the train, fluorescent lighting, and turning the thermostat down to 68F/20C in the winter is not going to make a fart in a thunderstorm worth of difference where it really matters. A ridiculously optimistic projection would have it reduce our dependence on coal from 60% to 40%. That doesn't solve the problem, it just puts it off a little longer. Reducing power use enough to where we can all live on fluffy bunny wind generators and happy little solar panels essentially requires us to throw away the very technological pyramid which supports the manufacture those very same windmills and panels. There simply isn't enough "waste" to make conservation a workable plan for fulfilling our future energy needs.
Slashdot Mirror
This means that you can even have a weapon on a ship that is owned by a company from a friendly country (if they aren't careful and don't know the contents of the container).
No it doesn't. How do they ensure the container gets loaded on top so it can open and fire? How does the container missile acquire the location of the carrier? How does it know when to fire?
The whole point is that the missiles are can be loaded on to and launched from any commercial ship that can carry a shipping container
I think the bit you're missing is that you can't just simply schedule these to be loaded onto a bunch of container ships at random and then push a button in Tehran and have them automatically take out a carrier. First, it'd have to be loaded with the cooperation of the ship's operator in order to assure that it was on top. No matter how fancy the design, I seriously doubt it could launch with two layers of other containers on top of it. Targeting and firing would require some sort of last-minute interaction, because until someone sees it, I guarantee they don't know where a carrier is going to be. What this means is that any such container ship would have to be Iranian flagged (to use my hypothetical) and would have to military operated. Furthermore, these are so expensive that no one could afford to load them and actually ship them anywhere and have them be essentially out of service while the ship is unloaded in a foreign port. This means that any container ship armed with the Club-K would effectively have to be loaded with decoy containers and kept within the operational area. At that point, it's just a badly designed missile cruiser. No, the whole fantasy of a secret missile launcher has too many holes.
It is buried in a landfill (where decomposition releases methane, which is far worse than carbon dioxide.
Actually, paper doesn't degrade in a landfill. You can still dig up readable newspapers from the 1800's.
However, Tetris does not. Tetris has a single obvious purpose, and no underlying message.
Are you kidding? If a douchebag can frame an untouched piece of engineering graph paper and claim it as art (saw it hanging in a gallery in Santa Fe) then you certainly can't say Tetris isn't art. The definition of art is completely subjective. Art merely has to evoke something that the materials alone do not. Your suggestion that it has to be a "message" is incorrect. It need only be a feeling... and it doesn't even have to be the feeling the artist intended. If something on a computer makes someone feel something that the mere flipping of bits doesn't normally make them feel, then it's art. If you're going to suggest that you know how Tetris makes everyone else feel, you're a fool.
Apart from them, what other examples of games that could count as art are there?
Doesn't matter! At this point, we've already advanced "games" to the same position as "novels" in his own example. Once you show that some games are definitely art, it becomes a matter of subjective tastes what constitutes "art" in a game. Ebert's real problem is that he doesn't understand that the aspects of interactivity and free will within a game are only slightly less constrained than someone watching a movie. You can't go read a newspaper in a Full Metal Super Warrior 2 FPS game. The creators of games already have a path in mind for you--- they just don't lead you by the nose down it like a movie writer does.
I think bigger question is how many hours a week are you actually able to program when you consider all interruptions
"I can't get the job estimate Excel sheet to work"
"How do we install the IR telemetry data transfer software on this Dell Axim PDA?"
"Do you have a Sargent LC 7-pin key blank?"
"Do you have a longer mini USB cable than this 2 inch one I found god knows where?"
"When Ernesto comes by, you should tell him *I* was the one who wrote that combination data interpolator program that saves hours of copy-paste work in Excel, that you sweat blood into while coding, because I for some reason think giving the credit to a computer illiterate like me is something you might think was a fun trick to play on someone who would likely think it's true."
"My home computer is slow. Do you know how to fix that?"
"I can't find my key. Can you open the storeroom for me?"
"Show these idiots from IT (who control static IP address assignments) the web interface for the new access control system and somehow convince them that there isn't going to be an NSA spy in the parking lot sniffing the password to the admin console you log into maybe 4 times a year so they don't make us VPN it to one computer in the back room under lock and key."
I get about 15 minutes of coding in. I wish the above was made up, but it's actually a rundown of what I dealt with just today. I miss not being the only computer savvy person in a department of 50 people.
Sounds like what I do at work. I wish I was joking. I work for a large school district in maintenance as a locksmith. Fiddling with safes and locks is part of my job (and its fucking awesome being a locksmith). Additionally, all our computers are behind the same ridiculous firewall that "protects the children", so I'm constantly finding proxy servers for my coworkers, presumably to use to watch youtube videos and check their facebook mafia war bullshit. And last but not least, the bureaucracy where I work is so horrifyingly bad, a non-trivial amount of time and effort is spent "shifting blame" for things that look like they're our fault, but aren't. I'd say that's pretty close to blaming others for my mistakes.
Want to eat tonight? Learn to pick the lock on the refridgerator.
I'd also make them pass a spelling test, and starve them if they couldn't spell refrigerator.
(the shortened bastardization "fridge" only contains a 'd' only because the pronunciation of "frige" doesn't match the root word it comes from)
One word: Padlock.
I had my first lockpick set when I was 14. Padlocks, particularly the kind typical tightwad single parents used, were no barrier to me. For $10 a week I'd pick the lock to a guy's mom's bedroom, then pick the lock to her weed storage box so he and his friends could get high. It was easy money.
I can see it now... Parent hits "shut down now" but then runs into the bedroom to see if it's working... At which point, the power button is only inches away.... :-P
Years ago I had a girlfriend who INSISTED upon keeping the TV remote on top of the TV. INSANITY!
take away the power cords when the kids are in trouble
Yeah, because no kid would EVER be able to scare up a fucking IEC standard power cord.
Walk into room (quietly, if necessary).
Hey genius, how's a single parent going to walk into the room quietly at (say) 3pm after school when he/she is TWENTY MILES AWAY BECAUSE SINGLE PARENTS HAVE FUCKING JOBS?
To really solve Chicago's education problem, you have to prioritize the schools that cater to the very worst students; it makes no sense to spend more money on students who are already succeeding.
Trouble is, they aren't failing for lack of money to teach them. It's taboo to suggest so, but not all people are college material. I work for Los Angeles Unified School District, and their theory is that they're going to prepare everyone for college... everyone. Subsequently, the dropout rate is obscene, but they keep pounding away, trying to teach calculus to kids who'd be better served learning practical skills, like they used to teach in shop classes. The idiots in charge are convinced that a kid with a associate degree from a junior college working as a customer service rep at a rental car agency for $11/hr is somehow better off than a kid working as a welder in a body shop for $18/hr. It's all based on the ignorant bias of education academics that being a tradesman is to be a failure. Fuck people who push this universal college prep concept. Bring back the fucking shop classes. You can cite all the Jaime Escalante cases you want, but the fact remains that the kids that make it to high school calculus are already the cream of the crop. Despite what crap movies like Stand and Deliver want you to think, the ghetto dregs aren't taking fucking calculus because they haven't even passed algebra. They're stuck repeating remedial math in a vain effort to push them into academia when what they really need is to learn something they can use. Instead, they fail class after class before they give up and go get a job. The problem isn't lack of spending, it's lack of acceptance that some people would fucking love being a plumber and would make tons of money doing it.
Signatures that condone murder are nice and classy.
"Booth was a patriot" isn't condoning murder, genius, it's illustrating that blind patriotism is not a virtue in and of itself.
corporations can (and do!) flee. People are much more reluctant to emigrate
More accurately, corporations can relocate at will with the host country welcoming them, if not overtly giving them concessions like tax breaks. People, on the other hand, are discouraged (if not outright prohibited) from going to a different country to work. Population is a captive audience.
but Pfizer was trying to sell a product that helped people in horrible pain
No, Pfizer was trying to sell an epilepsy medicine that (as proved by their own studies) didn't help people in horrible pain, by telling doctors that it did. That's fraud, and there ain't a shred of "but they meant well" behind it.
You shut your mouth. You shut your mouth, and you never open it again.
The amazing thing about the united states is that it existed before 1974. Furthermore, the maximum speed limit says nothing at all about the average speed limit.
Drive in a straight line, drive backwards in a straight line, parallel park, do a 3 point U-turn
California hasn't had the U-turn or parallel parking sections for at least 25 years. My test consisted of driving around the block through a residential neighborhood. So long as you remember to mind the speed limit, stop at stop signs, and cover the brake with your foot (ridiculous) as you pass the blind intersections, you'll pass.
There are areas in my city where you have two choices when attempting to travel from one east-west street to a prallel east-west street a half mile north: either (a) drive a mile in either direction in heavy traffic with lights at every other block to reach the nearest "big" north-south street, or (b) take one of the two dozen minor streets in between that have all become clogged with stop signs and speed bumps. It's done nothing but made traffic worse, all because these people don't want anyone driving over 20mph on the two-lane, dotted yellow down the middle road that's near their house.
Road design takes that sort of behavior into account. If it's causing a traffic jam, then the road is carrying more traffic than it is designed to carry. This is traffic engineering 101 stuff. Real world design can't be based on the theory that humans are perfect little robots.
Intrusive and expensive technology like this will never be accepted.
They’re the holy grail of transportation engineering: streets and highways specifically designed to encourage automobilists to drive less quickly, reducing the rates of passenger fatalities and generally encouraging a safer urban environment.
That's not the holy grail of transportation engineering. That's the holy grail of technically ignorant busybody safety nazis. Traffic engineers are concerned with the big picture. Simply slowing down traffic on average doesn't make the road safer. Idiot politicos have this notion that because accidents at higher speeds are more damaging, lowering speed limits is safer. The problem is that lower limits--- either through signage or optical illusions or whatever--- simply create a wider speed differential. Speed differential is what causes the majority of accidents. Slightly reducing the injurious result of accidents is no help when the means of doing so increases the accident rate.
there were no "socialist/communist countries" from the get go - at all. They all started as dictatorships.
Here's the dirty little secret about communism on a national scale: it requires totalitarian control. Humans are unable to effectively operate cooperatively on a scale beyond what is loosely defined as the "tribal" level. Evolution has developed in us a strong predilection towards protection of our close genetic relations at the expense of non-relations. The only way to override this predilection is with the threat of force. Marx hinted at this, and Lenin & co all but admitted to it with their preposterous notion of a "vanguard" of "equals". Young intellectuals sipping coffee in a cafe can prattle on about the meaning of "real" communism, but it's all a load of crap. Theoretical communism is self-delusional mental masturbation. Real communism is pointing a gun at someone and saying "all that is yours is now collective", then loading all their grain onto a truck to be "redistributed" to the vanguard (we must keep our strength up to lead!) while the farmer barely survives.
No one ever mentions the other possible solution: Use less energy.
That's because it isn't a solution. Unless you're also going to somehow make there be fewer people, and have them do less, with fewer luxuries like sanitation and refrigeration, it won't work. Energy powers civilization. Hybrid cars, taking the train, fluorescent lighting, and turning the thermostat down to 68F/20C in the winter is not going to make a fart in a thunderstorm worth of difference where it really matters. A ridiculously optimistic projection would have it reduce our dependence on coal from 60% to 40%. That doesn't solve the problem, it just puts it off a little longer. Reducing power use enough to where we can all live on fluffy bunny wind generators and happy little solar panels essentially requires us to throw away the very technological pyramid which supports the manufacture those very same windmills and panels. There simply isn't enough "waste" to make conservation a workable plan for fulfilling our future energy needs.