Wow. This isn't going to be easy, and I'm digging deep in the recesses of my brain to remember this, but I'll try to respond.
> Provided you don't mind creating a terribly crude
> and inefficient bomb that wastes most of its
> reaction mass, a nuke is reasonably
> straightforward to make.
I didn't take issue with the research; remember, our supposition is that the terrorists in question can get detailed plans off of the Internet, so there's no research at all. My assertion is that if you want a bomb that's going to work (see failing to detonate, below), you need very high quality manufacturing equipment.
> Uranium isn't exactly uncommon in the Earth's crust;
> hell, uranium can be refined out of granite.
> The explosively fissile material is easy to get
> hold of. Separating the explosively fissile
> material from the fissile and nonfissile materials
> (i.e., the refinement process) is what's hard.
I think I can claim this point based on your argument. My claim is that getting the reactive material is tough, and, as you know, having a pile of ore-grade uranium is meaningless if you can't refine a critical mass of U-235 out of it. Again I remind you that we're talking about independent terrorists here, not rogue states.
> I'd just hide it in a bale of marijuana, myself.
> The stoners I know never seem to have any trouble
> getting south-of-the-border weed. This point of
> yours is absolutely wrong; it's not just easy,
> it's positively trivial.
Wow! That would be one BIG bale (and a very heavy one, too). This thing can't be packed into plastic bags and carried across on somebody's gas tank. Using a comparison with drugs is neglecting that this is not like drugs, which are (for lack of a better word) very modular, and don't require much shielding. You'd either have to bring it in in pieces and assemble it (in which case intercepting any part of it is good enough to kill the endeavor), or bring it in all at once, for which you'd need a crane to move it.
> Hmm. How many "crude nuclear devices" have failed
> to detonate in recent memory?
Well, none, but I can't very well refer to recent memory for crude nuclear devices, now can I? I'm referring to the devices built by the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, France and India in the early days of the '50s (well, not India in the fifties). For the most part, those test bombs were duds, and the thing that made them more effective was the development of the tools necessary to build them properly. Hence my comment.
> Depends on the yield. A 10kt fizzle would leave
> most of New York City intact, yes. A 1Mt citykiller
> would leave the city as radioactive ash.
Well, geez, how you're talking hydrogen bombs. That's a different argument entirely, since it adds a big jump in complexity and materials requirements (hydrogen is cheap but the container is even more difficult than the atomic to build). Besides, if our terrorist group is looking to make a statement, they'd go the easy route to begin with.
> While any collection of physicists and engineers
> can build a nuke, most countries want to mount a
nuke in a gravity bomb or a warhead.
You've made a very good point, but you've overextended the discussion. Once more, we're talking terrorists, not China. Taking them as an example takes the discussion to a whole new level.
I would be interested to dig deeper into the whole issue of a possible arms race with China, but I've got much learning to do before I can discuss that topic with anything approaching expertise.
Here we go yet again. I've heard the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" comment so many times, and each and every time it's from some "good, upstanding citizen" that never has a problem with the loss of privacy because they never rock the boat. I've always found that people like this consider anyone with a social agenda as a subversive, and that police should have far-reaching powers to enforce their vision of what America "should be", completely rejecting the idea that freedom applies to people who don't cotton with their ideals and belief system. Do you define union leaders as "subversive"? Some portions of our government do, and have since the thirties. How about political leaders? Are you really going to tell me that Martin Luther King, Jr. (who had an enormous FBI dossier and was regularly followed and harassed by federal agents) can be called, "some fucked up anti-government militia pyschopath"? You seem content to let government officials do whatever they want as long as they agree with your view of America. Perhaps you should try to understand your country's Constitution better before you talk again. The concept of personal privacy was so central to the concept of freedom to Founding Fathers that they took pains to write it into the Constitution itself. It would be good of you to consider why they felt it was so important to do so, and then be glad that they had more vision than you seem to be able to muster.
I like my children to be able to attend school safely, too, but I have trouble seeing why the FBI needs access to my credit report to ensure that.
> The people who stole the nuclear bomb designs
> will conduct their tests in a tug boat off the
> coast of Long Island. That's why it concerns a
> lot of us.
Avoiding any of the "why would nuking Long Island be a bad thing?" jokes, these folks would learn a few lessons about nuclear devices. Some are:
1: Building a nuclear device isn't as simple as most people would assume. You really can't get your plans off of the Internet and build it in your basement, Hollywood notwithstanding. The levels of precision needed for the parts is high enough that small terrorist groups likely won't be up to the task.
2: Assuming you're dealing with a rogue government or other such entity capable of building a precision device, getting the reactive material for such a bomb is doggedly difficult. Saddam Hussein has an entire country to work with, and he can't seem to get the stuff together by hook or by crook. This is not by accident. The methods for getting or making this material are few and difficult, and for the most part require something the size of a breeder reactor to pull off. This is the main reason countries like Iraq can't make it happen (they can't build such a reactor lest the Israelis fly in and blow it up, which they've done in the past).
3: Getting said device anywhere near the U.S. is also doggedly difficult. It's what the Coast Guard does for a living, and building a delivery vehicle like an ICBM also follows the five rules laid out here.
4: Assuming they manage the above three problems, most crude nuclear devices fail to detonate, which means it's very likely they'll blow their tug out of the water with the explosive trigger, but the reaction will fizzle.
5: Assuming functionality, the atomic reaction at one foot above sea level will do significantly less damage than most people assume. It's going to cause a huge incident, but not the end of the island (or the city) that most people assume.
All told, the threat of stolen plans for building nukes is really not a big one. The larger concern (and rightly so) has been tracking down what has happened with all of the pre-built, fully tested, properly manufactured and maintained nuclear warheads in the arsenal of the former Soviet Union. These have always been (and will continue to be) of much larger concern, if you truly need to worry about nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists.
> Software companies aren't going to let their
> products fall by the wayside because Microsoft
> changed something in their OS.
That's true. However, they will need to expend some not-insignificant effort playing "catch-up" so that they can again compete with Windows Media Player. Meanwhile, Microsoft doesn't have the same lag in development. If you think that this is an insignificant effect, I respond by asking, when was the last time you ran Lotus 1-2-3?
> Relavent quote: The new restrictions in Windows
> XP won't prevent other vendors' software
> applications from recording MP3 music at a
> higher fidelity.
Well, another relevant quote:
> The new restrictions in Windows XP won't prevent
> other vendors' software applications from recording
> MP3 music at a higher fidelity, but early testers
> of beta versions of Windows XP already complain that the
> most popular MP3 recording applications -- which compete
> with Microsoft's format -- don't seem to function
> properly, apparently because of changes Microsoft
> made to how data are written on CD-ROMs under Windows XP.
I want to open this discussion by saying at first that I'm completely on your side in thinking that software rental is being set up as more of a cash cow for the software companies than as a benefit to the end user. That said, let me address a few points.
> So when software rental company "X" says they
> will no longer support / rent product "Y" and I
> have to eventually reinstall the old "Y" due to
> crash / hardware upgrade etc. and they can't/
> won't supply me with a key for "Y" any longer??
The idea behind software rental (Microsoft's idea, at least) is that of a "subscription" service. The simple idea is that you subscribe to Microsoft Office, for example, and you pay a monthly fee. While your account is in good standing, you get updates to the program for free (it's part of the rental agreement), so there's never an issue of getting support for an older version or paying for an upgrade, since they just send you the new version when it comes out. In their very highest dream, you don't even have a copy of the software locally; you just log on to an application server and you get the application over the wire (the model pretty much requires broadband) with no upgrade/reinstall issues. The value to you (purportedly) is that you just subscribe, then log in, and you don't have to deal with the trouble of locally installed software. The value for them is that you can't very well pirate a service, and if you stop paying they cut you off.
Based on this model, I present these points:
> Drive up the cost of support through the roof
> from ignorant users constantly hosing their
> products and calling in or choking the web
> servers every other day trying to get new keys.
Ignorant users pay for their support, and for their upgrade keys. The payment will pay for the infrastructure.
> Drive off the corporate customer who just
> won't stand for it.
Corporate customers are well known for standing for virtually anything. Inertia makes them very compliant.
> Make yourself a target for a new breed of
> virii that screws up your registration key.
Being a target doesn't really concern them. If it did, they'd be more concerned about the promiscuity of Outlook and IE. They don't take responsibility for the damage that today's virii do to systems because of bad security in Outlook, so what would lead you to think they'd take calls from key holders?
The simple answer is that the subscription model will be viable for Microsoft because they're such a presence in the market. It won't make it the best model for all companies, but the big ones will certainly be capable of pulling it off.
Algebra: I had to cut down a recipe for making blueberry muffins. If you can't see the value in a good blueberry muffin, then you truly must die.
Geometry/Trigonometry: I had to do a fair amount of landscaping in front of my house, partly to eliminate a drainage problem that was driving water into my basement. If you don't own a house now, you probably will at some point, and repairing damage is much more expensive than doing landscaping work.
Calculus: I had to solve several integrals at work to track a satellite as it dug into the atmosphere. I like getting paid, so it's easy to see the value here.
Vector Analysis: well, okay, I haven't done this in a while. But by gum, I'll know how when I find a real world problem to apply it to.
The point is that mathematics does have uses outside in the real world. It's true that those in architecture and design (of anything, not just buildings) will use more (and more complex) math than, for example, a baker, but it's still to be found all around. Also, remember that the guy whose quote you drew upon is a mathematician and computer scientist, so he likely finds use for a lot more of his math than we do.
In response to your sig line, both ships worked great until they were run into solid objects by their captains. Seems unfair to fault the shipwrights, no?
The guesses are related. The strategy discussed beforehand is the correlation. It's what allows the team to use the probability curve of the three hats together instead of each one guessing independently. If the players were not allowed to establish the guessing strategy, the odds are 50 percent (odds of each coin toss). The strategy allows the team to get the better odds (odds of two hats being one color, one hat being the other).
There are two things about your sugestion that don't pan out. The first is that Mr. Spielberg isn't in it for the money. His wealth derives from the fact that he's good at what he does, but he was doing it long before he made any money at it. So, it stands to reason that the reason he's not in the porn industry is that he doesn't want to make porn movies.
The second point is that most pornographic movies don't require a director of Spielberg's caliber. As stated in another post, most people don't watch porn films for good acting, solid plot and powerful directing. They watch it for the sex. There are some stag films where it appears that the only thing the director does is tell the actors when to start screwing. A guy with a starter pistol could direct like that. Those films still sell, though. Hollywood can only expect to make money on badly-made films by blowing stuff up.
On average, the profit-to-cost ratio of most porn films is much higher than feature films, in part because they're cheaper to make (so you don't need to make as much money per film). Also, many more porn films are produced each year than feature films. Put these two things together, and you can see how Hollywood ends up in second place.
Got it. Now, what do I do with the users I can't get to upgrade? Oh, yeah, I should mention that I'm not allowed to force setup changes to systems on login. All I can do is issue strong warnings and nail my servers back together every time they get crushed by the newest 1337 k1dd13 toy.
What fix do you suggest for this apparently-not-a-real geek, other than to get a new job?
> You can't deny that IE is the best browser, simply
> because it can access all the sites without crashing,
> deciding that it can't display the site because of
> broken tables, or just freezing while it makes sense
> of javascript.
Most certainly I can deny it. Since being able to view any and all web sites is your sole criterion for judging a browser, you will think it's the best. Since security of the browser is more important to me than being able to view any and all web sites, it's a bag of rocks to me.
> Who really cares about security? If I get a virus,
> then I'll have to reinstall the OS, but I have to do
> that once a month or so anyway.
Well, I care about security. Did it cross your mind that you might not have to reinstall your OS every month if you concerned yourself more with security? Well, never mind, it is Windows, after all. Still, reinstalling every month or so? That's excessive even for MS.
> If people get access to my PC, why should I worry?
> What are they going to do? Use my modem to launch a
> DOS attack? Look at my email from my mum? Ooh,
> I'm frightened.
Well, since you don't use your PC for business (and because of your statement I certainly hope you don't store anything sensitive on your machine), you don't have much to fear. How about your mum? Does she store anything sensitive? How about the other people in your address book? Do they? If someone 0wnz your machine, they'll certainly 0wn your address book as well. I can't speak for your mum, but I'd certainly be annoyed if I started getting spammed (or got a poison pill email message from you) because you don't give a whit about securing your machine.
Your entire post just reeks of egocentrism. You should consider working on your social responsibility before making more statements like "Who cares about security?" in the future.
I feel the need to slap the both of you. Why must both of you assume that there's no middle ground to any of this? Do I think it's a good idea to tell kids that it's dangerous to talk to strangers? Yes. Do I need to show them death videos to get this point across? No. Do I think that not showing a 6 year old child "Schindler's List" is lying to him? No. Do I think that nobody should be allowed to air the movie because it's not appropriate for a 6 year old? No.
You've both taken an appallingly "all-or-nothing" stance, and you should both be ashamed of yourselves. Now, go back to your corners, and when you come back out, stop overextending each others' arguments to ridiculous extremes to try to make your points.
Well, how old are you? I'll say about a year before that.
I truly like the way you pair off "impetuous, hothead, no sense of how the world works liberal" with "works for a living, raises a family, wise conservative". Where I come from, that's referred to as "name-calling". Didn't anyone ever teach you good, old-fashioned manners?
> One aside: eugenics was not soley focused on physical,
> but also on racial and IQ characteristics as well.
(Said with a large grin) Racial, but not physical? I confess, though that I didn't know about the IQ part, but since that's also very subjective, it's just as easy to reject.
> As a fundamentalist Christian, I agree also that
> many of my brothers and sisters are too quick to
> rush to conclusions, and to retreat into
> 'just-so' acceptance of the world around us.
> Thankfully, there are very exciting movements in
> the Christian fundamentalist movement towards
> education and dialogue.
A short while ago, I would have thought that "education and dialogue" and "fundamentalist" were contradictory terms, but of late I have made an effort to have intelligent discourse with some of my more fundamentalist acquaintances and co-workers, and I've discovered (as evidenced in this case, thanks to you) that a little civility goes a long way, and I've learned a lot about "the other side", which helps me understand my own argument better.
There is one thing that I have noticed in all of the back-and-forth that happened over this topic on Slashdot. I've discovered that any disucssion that involves such a highly polarized subject tends to turn toward a discussion (or fight) about the subject. This discussion was about an anti-abortion web site's being shut down or not, and most of the discussions I had (or saw) were about whether abortion is right or wrong, which is really tangential to the subject matter.
I figured I'd like to answer these questions myself instead of letting some Anonymous Coward do it for me:).
> Saying that something is alive when it's self
> sustaining is hogwash. Children up to toddlers
> are not self sustaining, does that mean parents
> should be allowed to have them killed?
I think our definition of "self-sustaining" is out of alignment. The real-world example I came up with is this: if you can disconnect the entity from any and all mechanical devices and lay it on the floor for five minutes, and it doesn't die, it's self-sustaining. Your definition of self-sustaining (infants and toddlers) fits my definition of self-supporting, so I think our only disagreement is on semantics.
> anyway (IMHO) because whether something fits a
> scientific definition or not is really not the
> point. If an unborn baby is aware of itself, how
> can you justify killing it?
To use your argument, if there's no way to demonstrate whether an unborn baby is aware of itself, how do you justify saying it is? Since the crux of my question is how to define life (and, by extension, awareness), the answer to this is relevant.
> My opinion is not egocentric, it is arrogant. It
> is not based on personal experience, as I have
> never impregnated anyone. It is based on my
> opinion of other people and their reasoning for
> getting abortions and how I feel like I am a
> better more responsible person than they are. I
> feel superior, that is being extremely arrogant
> (I'm being honest here...).
Again, we're arguing semantics. So, I present the following definitions from the clinic:
Arrogant: "I'm great. Really great."
Egotistical: "I'm better than you are."
Egocentric: "Because you're not me, your experience is irrelevant."
With that in mind, I disassemble your statement thusly: It is based on my opinion of other people and their reasoning for getting abortions
Here's where the lack of personal experience tells. Having never had to consider abortion, your opinion on someone else's reasoning has to be a guess (or, at very best, hearsay). Assuming that your guess is correct in the absence of their experience is to assume that their experience is meaningless (if you don't need it to know their reasoning, why do they?), and so my use of "egocentric". Your opinion may also be arrogant, and even egotistical, but my original analysis fits the definition.
> I really don't know enough about this particular
> case to make a sound judgement, however it was
> my understanding that these people really were
> trying to get these doctors killed. That is not
> free speech. It really depends on intent. If you
> intend to influence someone to kill someone
> else, that is the same as hiring a hitman.
> Hiring a hitman is just influencing someone
> through monitary gain. Saying that you wish
> someone was dead is free speech though.
Ideologically I fully agree, and legally so do the courts. The question in this case is unfortunately not a case of right vs. wrong, though. It's a matter of legality only (as it must be in the court), and, again unfortunately, intent is only a part of the whole idea of tangible threat. Basically the upshot of the overturning on appeal is that making it easy for someone to kill one of these doctors does not translate in a legal sense to threatening them directly, so the web site qualifies as free speech. The fact that it's reprehensible does not concern the court, and realistically it shouldn't, since that's what the First Amendment was specifically designed to prevent. It doesn't make it right, but it does (according to the appeal ruling) make it legal. Your analogy of the hit man is completely valid, and the original jury agreed that the web site was an incitement to murder, but the appeals court disagreed.
> >...and show that you're no better than them.
> > A really good plan to perpetuate that cycle.
> I was being sarcastic.
After better review, I see you were. My apologies.
Your compliment is noted and appreciated. The point I was getting at wasn't to present science as the only (or even a perfectly valid) definition of life, but to present to the forum as a whole that the inability to agree on the terminology undermines the ability of both parties to "fight it out" without resorting to moral opinion. I don't claim to be able to define what it is that makes a person "a person" (at least not nearly as well as some of my much-more-eloquent friends), and if I had to pick a science on which to base such definitions, the only one I could point to with any accuracy is chaos theory (even if that sounds like a joke or a cop-out, which it half is on both counts).
To address your comments about eugenics, I consider this to be and extension to absurdity of the concept of genetics. As you're aware, someone with a mind to can justify just about anything with scientific theory (do a Google on "Social Darwinism" if you need more proof than just eugenics). That rarely makes it good science. In the case of eugenics, the assumption was that certain physical characteristics were considered more important than others, but there was no basis (that stands up to examination) for choosing the traits they did. I don't see that as thinking in isolation at all. I call that science with an agenda, which is in direct opposition to the scientific method on which it purports to rest. What most fundamentalists (and far too many scientists) forget is that "I don't know" and "not proved" are acceptable answers to hypotheses and that it's not acceptable to make up an answer if your data is inconclusive, a practice of which the Fuhrer was frequently guilty.
As to Swedenborg's "uses", I think the whole concept is worthy of contempt. Trying to define a person's uses is far too subjective to apply the label of science to it. Having not read anything about Swedenborg, I can't make any direct refutation to his/her points, but it sounds to me like someone trying to decide who's better by what they contribute to society, and that's not science (well, it's social science, but still far too subjective for my tastes, which are themselves subjective, so...oh, damn...).
As to your last question, I think we'd have to have a discussion about the situation before we could even begin to decide this. It's possible that science will allow for fertilization and development entirely independently of a human mother, but then (since such "pregnancies" would require some non-biological means of beginning), abortion isn't really an issue, because the problem of unwanted pregnancy goes away in such cases. After all, why would you take the time to externally manufacture an embryo, and then abort its development? Take away the mother's body, and the issue becomes much more black-and-white. By the same token, and embryo "rescued' from a mother's womb in the first trimester and put in an artificial development device would not have been a very likely candidate for abortionin the first place, no?
OK. Let's try this to see if "Help others find doctors" != "killing the doctor".
Hi there! Death is bad. Nobody wants to be killed. I've discovered something. People with blue heads overwhelmingly explode on their 20th birthday. It's a documented fact. Here's a list of testimonials. (insert links here) When these blue-headed people explode, they usually kill everyone in their vicinity. This is awful. I've discovered a little known fact. If you cut off the blue head before they're 20, it never explodes. What a service to all of those poor innocent bystanders! Hey, here's a list of people with blue heads. Have a nice day!
Now comes the time when you tell me that this isn't going to cause people to draw the obvious conclusion, right? Well, here's the secret. You know to what I refer when I say, "the obvious conclusion", don't you? Quod erat demonstrandum.
> -1, Self-indulgent
> -1, Self-rightous
> -1, WHAT???
> -1, didn't read the story
And, of course, -1, Can't Use a Spell-Checker.
This should all be taken with a grin, as I fully agree with you on this post, except for the last one. Take note, his statement was, "What this lawsuit says is that people who see a violent film and then commit a violent act are innocent", and this is what the lawsuit said. It's the overturning on appeal that the original article mentioned, so (perhaps accidentally) he didn't make a factual error.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. This isn't going to be easy, and I'm digging deep in the recesses of my brain to remember this, but I'll try to respond.
> Provided you don't mind creating a terribly crude
> and inefficient bomb that wastes most of its
> reaction mass, a nuke is reasonably
> straightforward to make.
I didn't take issue with the research; remember, our supposition is that the terrorists in question can get detailed plans off of the Internet, so there's no research at all. My assertion is that if you want a bomb that's going to work (see failing to detonate, below), you need very high quality manufacturing equipment.
> Uranium isn't exactly uncommon in the Earth's crust;
> hell, uranium can be refined out of granite.
> The explosively fissile material is easy to get
> hold of. Separating the explosively fissile
> material from the fissile and nonfissile materials
> (i.e., the refinement process) is what's hard.
I think I can claim this point based on your argument. My claim is that getting the reactive material is tough, and, as you know, having a pile of ore-grade uranium is meaningless if you can't refine a critical mass of U-235 out of it. Again I remind you that we're talking about independent terrorists here, not rogue states.
> I'd just hide it in a bale of marijuana, myself.
> The stoners I know never seem to have any trouble
> getting south-of-the-border weed. This point of
> yours is absolutely wrong; it's not just easy,
> it's positively trivial.
Wow! That would be one BIG bale (and a very heavy one, too). This thing can't be packed into plastic bags and carried across on somebody's gas tank. Using a comparison with drugs is neglecting that this is not like drugs, which are (for lack of a better word) very modular, and don't require much shielding. You'd either have to bring it in in pieces and assemble it (in which case intercepting any part of it is good enough to kill the endeavor), or bring it in all at once, for which you'd need a crane to move it.
> Hmm. How many "crude nuclear devices" have failed
> to detonate in recent memory?
Well, none, but I can't very well refer to recent memory for crude nuclear devices, now can I? I'm referring to the devices built by the U.S., the Soviet Union, China, France and India in the early days of the '50s (well, not India in the fifties). For the most part, those test bombs were duds, and the thing that made them more effective was the development of the tools necessary to build them properly. Hence my comment.
> Depends on the yield. A 10kt fizzle would leave
> most of New York City intact, yes. A 1Mt citykiller
> would leave the city as radioactive ash.
Well, geez, how you're talking hydrogen bombs. That's a different argument entirely, since it adds a big jump in complexity and materials requirements (hydrogen is cheap but the container is even more difficult than the atomic to build). Besides, if our terrorist group is looking to make a statement, they'd go the easy route to begin with.
> While any collection of physicists and engineers
> can build a nuke, most countries want to mount a
nuke in a gravity bomb or a warhead.
You've made a very good point, but you've overextended the discussion. Once more, we're talking terrorists, not China. Taking them as an example takes the discussion to a whole new level.
I would be interested to dig deeper into the whole issue of a possible arms race with China, but I've got much learning to do before I can discuss that topic with anything approaching expertise.
Virg
Here we go yet again. I've heard the "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" comment so many times, and each and every time it's from some "good, upstanding citizen" that never has a problem with the loss of privacy because they never rock the boat. I've always found that people like this consider anyone with a social agenda as a subversive, and that police should have far-reaching powers to enforce their vision of what America "should be", completely rejecting the idea that freedom applies to people who don't cotton with their ideals and belief system. Do you define union leaders as "subversive"? Some portions of our government do, and have since the thirties. How about political leaders? Are you really going to tell me that Martin Luther King, Jr. (who had an enormous FBI dossier and was regularly followed and harassed by federal agents) can be called, "some fucked up anti-government militia pyschopath"? You seem content to let government officials do whatever they want as long as they agree with your view of America. Perhaps you should try to understand your country's Constitution better before you talk again. The concept of personal privacy was so central to the concept of freedom to Founding Fathers that they took pains to write it into the Constitution itself. It would be good of you to consider why they felt it was so important to do so, and then be glad that they had more vision than you seem to be able to muster.
I like my children to be able to attend school safely, too, but I have trouble seeing why the FBI needs access to my credit report to ensure that.
Virg
> I would like to stimulate my orgasm nerve for continuous orgasms.
Where is that nerve? Is it perhaps right next to your dumbass?
Virg
> Don't you remember the 1998 and 1999 Super Bowls?
:)
Well, no. And that's the point.
Virg
> The people who stole the nuclear bomb designs
> will conduct their tests in a tug boat off the
> coast of Long Island. That's why it concerns a
> lot of us.
Avoiding any of the "why would nuking Long Island be a bad thing?" jokes, these folks would learn a few lessons about nuclear devices. Some are:
1: Building a nuclear device isn't as simple as most people would assume. You really can't get your plans off of the Internet and build it in your basement, Hollywood notwithstanding. The levels of precision needed for the parts is high enough that small terrorist groups likely won't be up to the task.
2: Assuming you're dealing with a rogue government or other such entity capable of building a precision device, getting the reactive material for such a bomb is doggedly difficult. Saddam Hussein has an entire country to work with, and he can't seem to get the stuff together by hook or by crook. This is not by accident. The methods for getting or making this material are few and difficult, and for the most part require something the size of a breeder reactor to pull off. This is the main reason countries like Iraq can't make it happen (they can't build such a reactor lest the Israelis fly in and blow it up, which they've done in the past).
3: Getting said device anywhere near the U.S. is also doggedly difficult. It's what the Coast Guard does for a living, and building a delivery vehicle like an ICBM also follows the five rules laid out here.
4: Assuming they manage the above three problems, most crude nuclear devices fail to detonate, which means it's very likely they'll blow their tug out of the water with the explosive trigger, but the reaction will fizzle.
5: Assuming functionality, the atomic reaction at one foot above sea level will do significantly less damage than most people assume. It's going to cause a huge incident, but not the end of the island (or the city) that most people assume.
All told, the threat of stolen plans for building nukes is really not a big one. The larger concern (and rightly so) has been tracking down what has happened with all of the pre-built, fully tested, properly manufactured and maintained nuclear warheads in the arsenal of the former Soviet Union. These have always been (and will continue to be) of much larger concern, if you truly need to worry about nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists.
Virg
> Software companies aren't going to let their
> products fall by the wayside because Microsoft
> changed something in their OS.
That's true. However, they will need to expend some not-insignificant effort playing "catch-up" so that they can again compete with Windows Media Player. Meanwhile, Microsoft doesn't have the same lag in development. If you think that this is an insignificant effect, I respond by asking, when was the last time you ran Lotus 1-2-3?
Virg
> Relavent quote: The new restrictions in Windows
> XP won't prevent other vendors' software
> applications from recording MP3 music at a
> higher fidelity.
Well, another relevant quote:
> The new restrictions in Windows XP won't prevent
> other vendors' software applications from recording
> MP3 music at a higher fidelity, but early testers
> of beta versions of Windows XP already complain that the
> most popular MP3 recording applications -- which compete
> with Microsoft's format -- don't seem to function
> properly, apparently because of changes Microsoft
> made to how data are written on CD-ROMs under Windows XP.
Telling, no?
Virg
Actually, it's a lot better to divide by zero, because then the resulting muffins can be used to power a star drive.
Just my one cent.
Virg
> This would be clever if it weren't so evil.
How dare you?!? Are you implying that things cannot be both clever and evil?!? All of my plans are both clever and evil!
Virg
I want to open this discussion by saying at first that I'm completely on your side in thinking that software rental is being set up as more of a cash cow for the software companies than as a benefit to the end user. That said, let me address a few points.
/
> So when software rental company "X" says they
> will no longer support / rent product "Y" and I
> have to eventually reinstall the old "Y" due to
> crash / hardware upgrade etc. and they can't
> won't supply me with a key for "Y" any longer??
The idea behind software rental (Microsoft's idea, at least) is that of a "subscription" service. The simple idea is that you subscribe to Microsoft Office, for example, and you pay a monthly fee. While your account is in good standing, you get updates to the program for free (it's part of the rental agreement), so there's never an issue of getting support for an older version or paying for an upgrade, since they just send you the new version when it comes out. In their very highest dream, you don't even have a copy of the software locally; you just log on to an application server and you get the application over the wire (the model pretty much requires broadband) with no upgrade/reinstall issues. The value to you (purportedly) is that you just subscribe, then log in, and you don't have to deal with the trouble of locally installed software. The value for them is that you can't very well pirate a service, and if you stop paying they cut you off.
Based on this model, I present these points:
> Drive up the cost of support through the roof
> from ignorant users constantly hosing their
> products and calling in or choking the web
> servers every other day trying to get new keys.
Ignorant users pay for their support, and for their upgrade keys. The payment will pay for the infrastructure.
> Drive off the corporate customer who just
> won't stand for it.
Corporate customers are well known for standing for virtually anything. Inertia makes them very compliant.
> Make yourself a target for a new breed of
> virii that screws up your registration key.
Being a target doesn't really concern them. If it did, they'd be more concerned about the promiscuity of Outlook and IE. They don't take responsibility for the damage that today's virii do to systems because of bad security in Outlook, so what would lead you to think they'd take calls from key holders?
The simple answer is that the subscription model will be viable for Microsoft because they're such a presence in the market. It won't make it the best model for all companies, but the big ones will certainly be capable of pulling it off.
Y'know, Linux is looking better every day...
Virg
Math I've used recently:
Algebra: I had to cut down a recipe for making blueberry muffins. If you can't see the value in a good blueberry muffin, then you truly must die.
Geometry/Trigonometry: I had to do a fair amount of landscaping in front of my house, partly to eliminate a drainage problem that was driving water into my basement. If you don't own a house now, you probably will at some point, and repairing damage is much more expensive than doing landscaping work.
Calculus: I had to solve several integrals at work to track a satellite as it dug into the atmosphere. I like getting paid, so it's easy to see the value here.
Vector Analysis: well, okay, I haven't done this in a while. But by gum, I'll know how when I find a real world problem to apply it to.
The point is that mathematics does have uses outside in the real world. It's true that those in architecture and design (of anything, not just buildings) will use more (and more complex) math than, for example, a baker, but it's still to be found all around. Also, remember that the guy whose quote you drew upon is a mathematician and computer scientist, so he likely finds use for a lot more of his math than we do.
Virg
In response to your sig line, both ships worked great until they were run into solid objects by their captains. Seems unfair to fault the shipwrights, no?
Virg
The guesses are related. The strategy discussed beforehand is the correlation. It's what allows the team to use the probability curve of the three hats together instead of each one guessing independently. If the players were not allowed to establish the guessing strategy, the odds are 50 percent (odds of each coin toss). The strategy allows the team to get the better odds (odds of two hats being one color, one hat being the other).
Virg
There are two things about your sugestion that don't pan out. The first is that Mr. Spielberg isn't in it for the money. His wealth derives from the fact that he's good at what he does, but he was doing it long before he made any money at it. So, it stands to reason that the reason he's not in the porn industry is that he doesn't want to make porn movies.
The second point is that most pornographic movies don't require a director of Spielberg's caliber. As stated in another post, most people don't watch porn films for good acting, solid plot and powerful directing. They watch it for the sex. There are some stag films where it appears that the only thing the director does is tell the actors when to start screwing. A guy with a starter pistol could direct like that. Those films still sell, though. Hollywood can only expect to make money on badly-made films by blowing stuff up.
On average, the profit-to-cost ratio of most porn films is much higher than feature films, in part because they're cheaper to make (so you don't need to make as much money per film). Also, many more porn films are produced each year than feature films. Put these two things together, and you can see how Hollywood ends up in second place.
Virg
Got it. Now, what do I do with the users I can't get to upgrade? Oh, yeah, I should mention that I'm not allowed to force setup changes to systems on login. All I can do is issue strong warnings and nail my servers back together every time they get crushed by the newest 1337 k1dd13 toy.
What fix do you suggest for this apparently-not-a-real geek, other than to get a new job?
Virg
> You can't deny that IE is the best browser, simply
> because it can access all the sites without crashing,
> deciding that it can't display the site because of
> broken tables, or just freezing while it makes sense
> of javascript.
Most certainly I can deny it. Since being able to view any and all web sites is your sole criterion for judging a browser, you will think it's the best. Since security of the browser is more important to me than being able to view any and all web sites, it's a bag of rocks to me.
> Who really cares about security? If I get a virus,
> then I'll have to reinstall the OS, but I have to do
> that once a month or so anyway.
Well, I care about security. Did it cross your mind that you might not have to reinstall your OS every month if you concerned yourself more with security? Well, never mind, it is Windows, after all. Still, reinstalling every month or so? That's excessive even for MS.
> If people get access to my PC, why should I worry?
> What are they going to do? Use my modem to launch a
> DOS attack? Look at my email from my mum? Ooh,
> I'm frightened.
Well, since you don't use your PC for business (and because of your statement I certainly hope you don't store anything sensitive on your machine), you don't have much to fear. How about your mum? Does she store anything sensitive? How about the other people in your address book? Do they? If someone 0wnz your machine, they'll certainly 0wn your address book as well. I can't speak for your mum, but I'd certainly be annoyed if I started getting spammed (or got a poison pill email message from you) because you don't give a whit about securing your machine.
Your entire post just reeks of egocentrism. You should consider working on your social responsibility before making more statements like "Who cares about security?" in the future.
Virg
I feel the need to slap the both of you. Why must both of you assume that there's no middle ground to any of this? Do I think it's a good idea to tell kids that it's dangerous to talk to strangers? Yes. Do I need to show them death videos to get this point across? No. Do I think that not showing a 6 year old child "Schindler's List" is lying to him? No. Do I think that nobody should be allowed to air the movie because it's not appropriate for a 6 year old? No.
You've both taken an appallingly "all-or-nothing" stance, and you should both be ashamed of yourselves. Now, go back to your corners, and when you come back out, stop overextending each others' arguments to ridiculous extremes to try to make your points.
Virg
Well, how old are you? I'll say about a year before that.
I truly like the way you pair off "impetuous, hothead, no sense of how the world works liberal" with "works for a living, raises a family, wise conservative". Where I come from, that's referred to as "name-calling". Didn't anyone ever teach you good, old-fashioned manners?
Never mind. You needn't answer that question.
Virg
> One aside: eugenics was not soley focused on physical,
> but also on racial and IQ characteristics as well.
(Said with a large grin) Racial, but not physical? I confess, though that I didn't know about the IQ part, but since that's also very subjective, it's just as easy to reject.
> As a fundamentalist Christian, I agree also that
> many of my brothers and sisters are too quick to
> rush to conclusions, and to retreat into
> 'just-so' acceptance of the world around us.
> Thankfully, there are very exciting movements in
> the Christian fundamentalist movement towards
> education and dialogue.
A short while ago, I would have thought that "education and dialogue" and "fundamentalist" were contradictory terms, but of late I have made an effort to have intelligent discourse with some of my more fundamentalist acquaintances and co-workers, and I've discovered (as evidenced in this case, thanks to you) that a little civility goes a long way, and I've learned a lot about "the other side", which helps me understand my own argument better.
There is one thing that I have noticed in all of the back-and-forth that happened over this topic on Slashdot. I've discovered that any disucssion that involves such a highly polarized subject tends to turn toward a discussion (or fight) about the subject. This discussion was about an anti-abortion web site's being shut down or not, and most of the discussions I had (or saw) were about whether abortion is right or wrong, which is really tangential to the subject matter.
Virg
> I guess the outlook for alternative OSs and office suites is VERY good.
:)
Outlook doesn't run on alternative OSes, nitwit.
Virg
I figured I'd like to answer these questions myself instead of letting some Anonymous Coward do it for me :).
...and show that you're no better than them.
> Saying that something is alive when it's self
> sustaining is hogwash. Children up to toddlers
> are not self sustaining, does that mean parents
> should be allowed to have them killed?
I think our definition of "self-sustaining" is out of alignment. The real-world example I came up with is this: if you can disconnect the entity from any and all mechanical devices and lay it on the floor for five minutes, and it doesn't die, it's self-sustaining. Your definition of self-sustaining (infants and toddlers) fits my definition of self-supporting, so I think our only disagreement is on semantics.
> anyway (IMHO) because whether something fits a
> scientific definition or not is really not the
> point. If an unborn baby is aware of itself, how
> can you justify killing it?
To use your argument, if there's no way to demonstrate whether an unborn baby is aware of itself, how do you justify saying it is? Since the crux of my question is how to define life (and, by extension, awareness), the answer to this is relevant.
> My opinion is not egocentric, it is arrogant. It
> is not based on personal experience, as I have
> never impregnated anyone. It is based on my
> opinion of other people and their reasoning for
> getting abortions and how I feel like I am a
> better more responsible person than they are. I
> feel superior, that is being extremely arrogant
> (I'm being honest here...).
Again, we're arguing semantics. So, I present the following definitions from the clinic:
Arrogant: "I'm great. Really great."
Egotistical: "I'm better than you are."
Egocentric: "Because you're not me, your experience is irrelevant."
With that in mind, I disassemble your statement thusly:
It is based on my opinion of other people and their reasoning for getting abortions
Here's where the lack of personal experience tells. Having never had to consider abortion, your opinion on someone else's reasoning has to be a guess (or, at very best, hearsay). Assuming that your guess is correct in the absence of their experience is to assume that their experience is meaningless (if you don't need it to know their reasoning, why do they?), and so my use of "egocentric". Your opinion may also be arrogant, and even egotistical, but my original analysis fits the definition.
> I really don't know enough about this particular
> case to make a sound judgement, however it was
> my understanding that these people really were
> trying to get these doctors killed. That is not
> free speech. It really depends on intent. If you
> intend to influence someone to kill someone
> else, that is the same as hiring a hitman.
> Hiring a hitman is just influencing someone
> through monitary gain. Saying that you wish
> someone was dead is free speech though.
Ideologically I fully agree, and legally so do the courts. The question in this case is unfortunately not a case of right vs. wrong, though. It's a matter of legality only (as it must be in the court), and, again unfortunately, intent is only a part of the whole idea of tangible threat. Basically the upshot of the overturning on appeal is that making it easy for someone to kill one of these doctors does not translate in a legal sense to threatening them directly, so the web site qualifies as free speech. The fact that it's reprehensible does not concern the court, and realistically it shouldn't, since that's what the First Amendment was specifically designed to prevent. It doesn't make it right, but it does (according to the appeal ruling) make it legal. Your analogy of the hit man is completely valid, and the original jury agreed that the web site was an incitement to murder, but the appeals court disagreed.
> >
> > A really good plan to perpetuate that cycle.
> I was being sarcastic.
After better review, I see you were. My apologies.
Virg
Your compliment is noted and appreciated. The point I was getting at wasn't to present science as the only (or even a perfectly valid) definition of life, but to present to the forum as a whole that the inability to agree on the terminology undermines the ability of both parties to "fight it out" without resorting to moral opinion. I don't claim to be able to define what it is that makes a person "a person" (at least not nearly as well as some of my much-more-eloquent friends), and if I had to pick a science on which to base such definitions, the only one I could point to with any accuracy is chaos theory (even if that sounds like a joke or a cop-out, which it half is on both counts).
To address your comments about eugenics, I consider this to be and extension to absurdity of the concept of genetics. As you're aware, someone with a mind to can justify just about anything with scientific theory (do a Google on "Social Darwinism" if you need more proof than just eugenics). That rarely makes it good science. In the case of eugenics, the assumption was that certain physical characteristics were considered more important than others, but there was no basis (that stands up to examination) for choosing the traits they did. I don't see that as thinking in isolation at all. I call that science with an agenda, which is in direct opposition to the scientific method on which it purports to rest. What most fundamentalists (and far too many scientists) forget is that "I don't know" and "not proved" are acceptable answers to hypotheses and that it's not acceptable to make up an answer if your data is inconclusive, a practice of which the Fuhrer was frequently guilty.
As to Swedenborg's "uses", I think the whole concept is worthy of contempt. Trying to define a person's uses is far too subjective to apply the label of science to it. Having not read anything about Swedenborg, I can't make any direct refutation to his/her points, but it sounds to me like someone trying to decide who's better by what they contribute to society, and that's not science (well, it's social science, but still far too subjective for my tastes, which are themselves subjective, so...oh, damn...).
As to your last question, I think we'd have to have a discussion about the situation before we could even begin to decide this. It's possible that science will allow for fertilization and development entirely independently of a human mother, but then (since such "pregnancies" would require some non-biological means of beginning), abortion isn't really an issue, because the problem of unwanted pregnancy goes away in such cases. After all, why would you take the time to externally manufacture an embryo, and then abort its development? Take away the mother's body, and the issue becomes much more black-and-white. By the same token, and embryo "rescued' from a mother's womb in the first trimester and put in an artificial development device would not have been a very likely candidate for abortionin the first place, no?
Virg
OK. Let's try this to see if "Help others find doctors" != "killing the doctor".
Hi there! Death is bad. Nobody wants to be killed. I've discovered something. People with blue heads overwhelmingly explode on their 20th birthday. It's a documented fact. Here's a list of testimonials. (insert links here) When these blue-headed people explode, they usually kill everyone in their vicinity. This is awful. I've discovered a little known fact. If you cut off the blue head before they're 20, it never explodes. What a service to all of those poor innocent bystanders! Hey, here's a list of people with blue heads. Have a nice day!
Now comes the time when you tell me that this isn't going to cause people to draw the obvious conclusion, right? Well, here's the secret. You know to what I refer when I say, "the obvious conclusion", don't you? Quod erat demonstrandum.
Virg
> ...a page saying "I'll give $10,000 to the first person who kills my husband/wife."
And how much for the second person that kills them?
Virg
> New moderations are needed:
> -1, Self-indulgent
> -1, Self-rightous
> -1, WHAT???
> -1, didn't read the story
And, of course, -1, Can't Use a Spell-Checker.
This should all be taken with a grin, as I fully agree with you on this post, except for the last one. Take note, his statement was, "What this lawsuit says is that people who see a violent film and then commit a violent act are innocent", and this is what the lawsuit said. It's the overturning on appeal that the original article mentioned, so (perhaps accidentally) he didn't make a factual error.
Virg