HEAVENS! THE SKY IS FALLING! Oh wait, maybe you should read some *more* articles then (and I'm actually supplying the links) http://www.factcheck.org/article148.html, essentially: "...in fact, the current projected deficit was equaled or exceeded in four years during the Reagan administration and two years in the term of Bush's father." And those were what again? Just before periods of UNPRECEDENTED ECONOMIC GROWTH.
Hm. Wonder if there's a correlation there?
Oh yeah, and the above comparison, to be apples/apples, is only examining RECENT budgets. The deficit for the US gov't in 1943 was more than 30%. Today it's 4.5%.
But hey, don't let me stop your Anti-Bush rant. It's so trendy now, and so simple, all you must do is believe the main media sources without question. So easy!
New slashdot categories in 2006: Anti-Bush +1, Pro-US -1.
You do know that pretty much every country does the same thing, advocating one set of limits for itself while following another for everyone else, generally resorting to narrow, sometimes hypocritical definitions, depending on their own interests?
Not to interrupt your little Anti-American rant, I mean, it's so trendy nowadays. Self-loathing is so satisfying, it's like moral masochism. It's like self-righteousness in a can!
I think you've posted a thoughtful comment that's worthy of respectful response.
You're right, there is a longstanding (sometimes strong, sometimes weak) campaign against the United Nations in the United States. This is generally from what's considered the Conservative and Libertarian sides of the populace, the people who support George Bush but are very angry with him for his excessive spending and spread of government powers.
You have to go back to the very foundations of the US to really understand. Read De Tocqueville's books on the US and its people, to better understand these Americans' deep suspicion of government in general. It's a very old feeling, and has its roots in Jeffersonian concepts of what the US should have been.
Unfortunately, the US had 'superpower' status FORCED on it at the end of WW2, and it hasn't really worked well for us. I think that the efforts by the US that created the UN out of the exhaustion of WW2 were authentically American as well: a desire for consensus, as well as an effort to push the responsibility for the postwar world OFF our shoulders and onto some sort of international body. But, like all such efforts before it, the original altruism of the organization was fatally poisoned by the realities of geopolitics.
Certainly, I think the US's militant and righteous zeal (reinforced very much by its religious roots) for capitalism and democracy made it the right opponent for a expansionist and aggressively totalitarian state like the postwar Soviet Union. It's perhaps the only sort of opponent that could eventually beat a prosetlyzing cult like Communism.
But the battle stained us morally, and deeply - by as early as the 60's, we started to become what we fought: centralizing, secretive, arrogant, and rationalizing that our ends justified the means. Don't get me wrong, I think it was almost inevitable. Personally, I think it was not a good thing, but it was justified. The body counts one can credit to 'totalitarian Socialist and Communist' societies number in the scores, if not hundreds, of millions. That was a philosophy that needed to die, and while China remains "communist" even that state structure is arguably on the defensive against encroaching democracy and capitalist tendencies - slowly, but definitely. I think that's a net "good" thing.
So now we have the US: a colossal warrior who has defeated his arch opponent and now doesn't really know what to do next, and whose friends are looking at his armor, and his sword, and the martial gleam in his eye and starting to wonder how they can restrain him. He's now jumping at shadows (even he sort of recognizes this, secretly), and they are quite reasonably afraid that he might accidently whack one of them a serious injury in his spasms. To continue the analogy - all his friends seem to be convinced that he really didn't do that much over the last 50 years anyway, and that he's not really needed anymore today. To him, younger, and with a rather more black-and-white view of the world, it's hard to understand this.
I think the reflexive dislike of the UN by Americans is based very much in this reluctance to submit to the soothing words of the "sophisticated" diplomats of the Old World. After all, these are the same creatures that *built* the security structures that resulted in WW1 and subsequently WW2? That's not a great track record, frankly.
I think Americans are also reacting negatively to the patronizing way that (particularly from the Europeans) such advice is given. I think any honest commentator would admit that much of the anti-Americanism so popular now has, at its roots, a simple matter of "ganging up on #1". The Europeans, desperate to be relevant again, were in favor of the US stepping into what was perceived to be the quagmire of Afghanistan, and were subsequently a little shocked at the result (everyone had rationalized the Gulf War I result, and took far too much example from the debacle in Mogadishu, IMO). Then, when the US went after Iraq for what se
But the young folks are moving away. I'd guess that's been said about most small towns since, well, since there WERE small towns.
The headline could have more simply stated "EU Bureaucrats find reason to give glass firm subsidy." and be equally true.
But the real question: would this reflected sunlight kill vampires, or is this some sort of wierd EU vampire-vacation spot subsidy in disguise?
"See the sunlight! Don't get reduced to ashes!" Inquiring minds want to know!
Only if you gigantically misunderstand or deliberately misstate the situation. The US isn't controlling the Internet - it was INVENTED HERE. You have a better idea? MAKE YOUR OWN and let the users decide which is better. Really, it's tantamount to a bunch of squatters demanding a say in running a building, which may be the way it works in Europe/the rest of the world, but here they're just trespassers.
As I see it, the US is saying "look, it works the way it has, leave it alone" while the Euros are all crying "OMFG! Look at how the imperialistic domineering US is going rogue again!" Not hardly. Generally (and our meddlesome bureaucrats in Washington notwithstanding) Americans don't LIKE overbearing, centralized government - we prefer our government minimalist and incompetent (got the latter, working on the former). That's just us. So when someone says "hey, let's put control of the commons in the hands of a bunch of unelected bureacrats" our reaction is pretty negative. The US is saying "leave us alone. Keep using our (!) internet if you want, but don't tell us how to run it."
I think that's fine. Do you guys spend a lot of time fixing what isn't broken? Because it sure smells like politically-motivated meddling to me.
...but one might realize that from an American's PoV (the poster was almost certainly American) imperial units ARE "common"?
I'm sorry, but just because we don't subscribe to your particular social engineering doesn't make us bad. I work for a German firm and *constantly* get bugged by the question "why don't you just switch to metric - it's so much simpler!"
First of all, I point out that US firms and people HAVE switched to metric in many of the sciences and international transport, where it IS simpler. Further, the "metric" system is NOT universally "simpler". The imperial system with its base-12 feet and fractions is in many ways superior (HERESY!) in the practicalities of everyday application. For example: - If I have an inch standard, I can go fairly easily down to an accurate 1/32 or even 1/64 of an inch. Without a ruler with accurately scribed gradations, can you measure me 0.396875 cm? - a base 12 foot is wonderful for general use. 12 is a number that can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and their multiples very easily, and still end up in integer units again without equipment. The decimal metric system gets icky when you try to divide anything by anything except 5 and 2.
Personally I don't *know* the answer. But as a layperson, I'm definitely sick of people who claim to *know* the answer stating facts which even I can see are spun, biased, and omit certain contradictory evidence (on both sides) to the point that whatever they say is entirely tainted by their obvious biases.
And frankly, environmentalists have been crying that the sky is falling for the entirety of my adult life (I was born in 1967), to the tune of: - running out of fresh water (ridiculous, we'll never run OUT, the cost to get it will simply rise) - coming ice age (apparently no longer fashionable) - nuclear winter caused by warmonger Republicans like Reagan - exhaustion of oil supplies (current known reserves are the greatest they've EVER been) - filling of landfills and being buried under our mountains of trash (I think they're still saying this one)
Not sure at what point I'm supposed to start believing them, but I don't know...if I was wrong that blatantly that many times, I think I'd STFU.
Let's see how much money it gets compared to the AIDS popu-demic.
Flu: -(according to the scaremongers) WILL kill 50% of the victims, WILL kill 50 million etc. - (truth): unknown
AIDS: - (according to the scaremongers) WILL kill 100% of those contracting, and the disease will spread to bajillions (of course including heterosexuals) - (truth) AIDS is an almost entirely PREVENTABLE disease, whose spread is limited really to people with (typically MANY) multiple sexual partners and intravenous drug users.
Yet AIDS is in the news nearly every day and consumes an estimated $18.4 billion this year.
Actually I've been surprised that the whole 'convergence' thing of computers, stereos, DVRs, TVs, etc hasn't resolved a lot of inconsistencies at very basic levels that make integration difficult.
I am not an electrical engineer, but couldn't - 3 cord, digital video cable - S-video - speaker wire - coaxial antenna cable - RCA-plug video connectors (VCR-TV) - USB all be functionally replaced by - CAT5e with RJ45 connectors?
I mean, aside from setting on a stack-mount profile for equipment (gad, could you imagine how convenient that would be, that your "built in media niche" in your familyroom would actually fit multiple generations of components?), to be able to cable the whole system with a standard set of cables and a patch panel. It would be wonderful, IMO.
Ironically, I agree with you in principle, but I think you're a little too harsh. Yes, NASA is practically a caricature of the classic "bloatware" of entrenched government monopoly. HOWEVER, let's make it absolutely clear: - ISS is the result of POLITICS, not NASA plans. NASA has gone along with the ISS (and shown proper enthusiasm for) the ISS for budgetary and political reasons, not because they are crusading for a vision of space exploration based on the ISS. - The constant carping about shutting down the Hubble is vexing. The simple economics of it is cost > benefit, especially with having to rely on the crappy shuttle as the tender for the ISS. Finite resources. Personally, I'd LOVE it if NASA got a bigger budget but that's outside the scope of this discussion. - NASA has recently done some STUNNING pure science. Mars rovers, anyone? Cassini? Mars Recon Orbiter? Deep Impact? Stardust? (ok, that kind of also became it's own "Deep Impact", but the pure science validation was there). And in the future? Dawn? New Horizons? Phoenix?
C'mon - NASA is as worthy of criticism as any government agency but you're making it sound like the ESA is the only one trying to do science, which is just silly.
BTW: big "grats" to the guys at ESA for the clean, solid launch. Best wishes on a safe and boring flight to Venus and a successful mission with oodles of data. GREAT JOB!
IANAP (I am not a physicist) but it seems to me that the detection of an event is *relatively* pedestrian.
Sorting through the 'noise'and proving it was a gravitational wave that caused the movement seems to be the big trick. I expect that several budding young physicists who aren't even in college yet will have their PhDs before anything detected is conclusively PROVEN to be a gravity wave.
But hey: long-term experiments, indeterminate results, and long spans of analysis are what keeps the grant money flowing, right?
In every MMOG the quest lines are variations of a) kill creature x b) find the red key for the red door c) combinations or series of a & b.
Boring, yes? Why not leverage the power of the CPUs on people's desks to offer a DIFFERENT experience? I understand that in an MMOG with 4 million players you can't have as intricate and convoluted story lines as a single player game, but they could be more engaging - dynamically spawn a specific set of NPCs for a player to help, NPCs that change and develop over the course of adventures.
Using WoW as an example: character Adam enters Undercity for the first time. Immediately, a wandering NPC or three is created. It wanders the city, and if Adam comes close enough to it, it tries to engage him in conversation (and ultimately getting him involved in it's quest line). It's quest line is also randomized to some extent, but each stage might change the character so that if the player 'rescues' his sister, the player gets another wandering NPC (the sister) in a nearby town that does something similar. Or if the player finds his lost child, a couple of weeks later that NPC may have moved to another town or gotten married. The people change in the world according to a matrix of randomized possibilities to inhibit the walkthrus being posted everywhere on the web days later.
Then, let's say character Adam invites character Betty to join his party, and shares one of his personalized NPC quests with Betty. Then (here's the interesting part) Betty, when she turns in that quest, will 'meet' that NPC family. Now, she too can pick up quests from that network of developing NPCs...HOWEVER any progress she or Adam now make individually or together advances the plot. Meaning that Adam and Betty could both have the same quests, but if Betty finishes it, Adam may find an email from the NPC saying "Thanks for introducing us to Betty, she rescued Fido" and the quest disappears from Adam's log.
This is just off-the-top-of-the-head stuff, certainly it needs refinement. But you can see how very quickly the interlocking mesh of relationships would make for an intriguing and engaging world, much more like 'real life' than the static things we have now....
They're like food. If you like them, it's bad for you. If you don't like them, they're good for you. Or you're gay. Not sure how that works into the metaphor though.
Like any number of administrations I can name, newspapers had a near monopoly on the reportage of news. For the longest time it was them or hearsay. Then TV came along and didn't really compete for the depth of serious reporting.
Yet today's newspapers are about litte more then poorly-disguised polemic and not-so-subtle agenda driven editorials masked as news reporting.
Know why Fox news and the talk radio stations are eating your lunch? Because when you become so self-satisfied and smug, people are revolted by it, and driven to other sources.
Likewise, the whole idea of IP for artwork is also a recent invention, likely the result of sound reproduction technology. In that sense, Edison is the direct ancestor of the MPAA/RIAA and DRM.
If Joebob von Sommenwhere the composer wrote a song people liked in 1648, he got a lot of concert bookings and patronage (read: cash$) from wealthy supporters, but the idea that Joebob should collect a 'royalty' (there's a telling word!) everytime someone whistled the tune for someone else would be considered ludicrous.
Why the fuck do I go to the polls as part of the only blue city n a red state, I might as well not vote at all. Yeah, you heard me. It literally DOES NOT MATTER if I vote. When the reciepient of "my" support is already a forgone conclusion.
Waah, waah, Cry me a river.
As a Republican resident of Minnesota, one of the bluest of blue states, my (federal) votes have been nearly 100% worthless. I still go to the polls because NOT doing anything is simply LAZINESS. Yes, you can lie around the house eating snack chips all day, or you can get off your butt and vote.
Fortunately, we've been able to turn this bastion of neo-socialist leftism around, and elect a Republican governor and house. In this we've been assisted by a DFL party who has (locally and nationally) left behind the marginally-credible "working man" platform in favor of a radical "save the gay whales, taxes until you bleed" platform which is only appealing to the government-dependent underclass and white-guilt, wealth-glutted, dilettante limousine liberals for whom more taxes don't really matter.
So yeah, I can understand your frustration. Keep feeling it while the rest of us keep voting. Eventually it's going to sink in that "your side" keeps losing for a reason. Personally, I think it's a beautiful illustration of the different motivating ethos of liberal (I'll march in the streets for justice, but it's too much work to vote...it doesn't matter anyway) vs. conservative (responsible for yourself and making your own opportunities through deferred gratification and hard work over time). Grasshopper and ant, baby.
I hate hearing about slave labor, it's just such a shame in 2005. Because you ^must^ be a slave, or else you would change jobs.
That's how a free, capitalist society works. (And yes, that is a 'typical right wing talking point' - you're responsible for your own farking choices, it's not "the man's" responsibility to coddle your sad buttocks.)
You start work for company for low wage. You and your coworkers perform well. Because of your talent/skill, your company is successful and make huge profits. If they don't give you what you feel you are worth, the workers leave, being replaced by workers willing to take the pay you decided was not enough. If they are good enough, you overvalued your worth and the company continues to succeed. If they aren't, you were right, and the company's performance falters, and they make less money or eventually fail.
It's pretty simple. I admit it's not very 'nice' for the employee, who is constantly being evaluated for their value to the organization, not for "if they really need the money" or "they are really a nice guy".
See, your own perceptions are valueless except insofar as you can justify them to get you a higher salary. They mean nothing intrinsically to your boss, whose *responsiblity* is to pay you as LITTLE as he can get away with without hurting your performance. Unless you're replaceable.
I love hearing people bitching about a lack of raises, it's like people standing in the rain complaining they're wet. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY, CHANGE YOUR OWN SITUATION, OR STFU. If you haven't switched jobs, then either you have made your choices, or you're lazy. Simple as that.
No raises at my company this year, but I've made the cost-benefit calculations about moving jobs and have determined that my long-term best interests are to stay. So I *can't* complain or I'm just a hypocrite.
Slashdot Mirror
HEAVENS! THE SKY IS FALLING! Oh wait, maybe you should read some *more* articles then (and I'm actually supplying the links) http://www.factcheck.org/article148.html, essentially:
"...in fact, the current projected deficit was equaled or exceeded in four years during the Reagan administration and two years in the term of Bush's father."
And those were what again? Just before periods of UNPRECEDENTED ECONOMIC GROWTH.
Hm. Wonder if there's a correlation there?
Oh yeah, and the above comparison, to be apples/apples, is only examining RECENT budgets. The deficit for the US gov't in 1943 was more than 30%. Today it's 4.5%.
But hey, don't let me stop your Anti-Bush rant. It's so trendy now, and so simple, all you must do is believe the main media sources without question. So easy!
New slashdot categories in 2006: Anti-Bush +1, Pro-US -1.
You do know that pretty much every country does the same thing, advocating one set of limits for itself while following another for everyone else, generally resorting to narrow, sometimes hypocritical definitions, depending on their own interests?
d s/2070.html and let me know how many of the open, standing disputes between states have to do with maritime limits? Or maybe http://www.oceanlaw.net/netpath/page8-mb2.htm ?
Please look at http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/fiel
Not to interrupt your little Anti-American rant, I mean, it's so trendy nowadays. Self-loathing is so satisfying, it's like moral masochism. It's like self-righteousness in a can!
I think you've posted a thoughtful comment that's worthy of respectful response.
You're right, there is a longstanding (sometimes strong, sometimes weak) campaign against the United Nations in the United States. This is generally from what's considered the Conservative and Libertarian sides of the populace, the people who support George Bush but are very angry with him for his excessive spending and spread of government powers.
You have to go back to the very foundations of the US to really understand. Read De Tocqueville's books on the US and its people, to better understand these Americans' deep suspicion of government in general. It's a very old feeling, and has its roots in Jeffersonian concepts of what the US should have been.
Unfortunately, the US had 'superpower' status FORCED on it at the end of WW2, and it hasn't really worked well for us. I think that the efforts by the US that created the UN out of the exhaustion of WW2 were authentically American as well: a desire for consensus, as well as an effort to push the responsibility for the postwar world OFF our shoulders and onto some sort of international body. But, like all such efforts before it, the original altruism of the organization was fatally poisoned by the realities of geopolitics.
Certainly, I think the US's militant and righteous zeal (reinforced very much by its religious roots) for capitalism and democracy made it the right opponent for a expansionist and aggressively totalitarian state like the postwar Soviet Union. It's perhaps the only sort of opponent that could eventually beat a prosetlyzing cult like Communism.
But the battle stained us morally, and deeply - by as early as the 60's, we started to become what we fought: centralizing, secretive, arrogant, and rationalizing that our ends justified the means. Don't get me wrong, I think it was almost inevitable. Personally, I think it was not a good thing, but it was justified. The body counts one can credit to 'totalitarian Socialist and Communist' societies number in the scores, if not hundreds, of millions. That was a philosophy that needed to die, and while China remains "communist" even that state structure is arguably on the defensive against encroaching democracy and capitalist tendencies - slowly, but definitely. I think that's a net "good" thing.
So now we have the US: a colossal warrior who has defeated his arch opponent and now doesn't really know what to do next, and whose friends are looking at his armor, and his sword, and the martial gleam in his eye and starting to wonder how they can restrain him. He's now jumping at shadows (even he sort of recognizes this, secretly), and they are quite reasonably afraid that he might accidently whack one of them a serious injury in his spasms. To continue the analogy - all his friends seem to be convinced that he really didn't do that much over the last 50 years anyway, and that he's not really needed anymore today. To him, younger, and with a rather more black-and-white view of the world, it's hard to understand this.
I think the reflexive dislike of the UN by Americans is based very much in this reluctance to submit to the soothing words of the "sophisticated" diplomats of the Old World. After all, these are the same creatures that *built* the security structures that resulted in WW1 and subsequently WW2? That's not a great track record, frankly.
I think Americans are also reacting negatively to the patronizing way that (particularly from the Europeans) such advice is given. I think any honest commentator would admit that much of the anti-Americanism so popular now has, at its roots, a simple matter of "ganging up on #1". The Europeans, desperate to be relevant again, were in favor of the US stepping into what was perceived to be the quagmire of Afghanistan, and were subsequently a little shocked at the result (everyone had rationalized the Gulf War I result, and took far too much example from the debacle in Mogadishu, IMO). Then, when the US went after Iraq for what se
But the young folks are moving away.
I'd guess that's been said about most small towns since, well, since there WERE small towns.
The headline could have more simply stated "EU Bureaucrats find reason to give glass firm subsidy." and be equally true.
But the real question: would this reflected sunlight kill vampires, or is this some sort of wierd EU vampire-vacation spot subsidy in disguise?
"See the sunlight! Don't get reduced to ashes!"
Inquiring minds want to know!
Only if you gigantically misunderstand or deliberately misstate the situation. The US isn't controlling the Internet - it was INVENTED HERE. You have a better idea? MAKE YOUR OWN and let the users decide which is better. Really, it's tantamount to a bunch of squatters demanding a say in running a building, which may be the way it works in Europe/the rest of the world, but here they're just trespassers.
As I see it, the US is saying "look, it works the way it has, leave it alone" while the Euros are all crying "OMFG! Look at how the imperialistic domineering US is going rogue again!" Not hardly. Generally (and our meddlesome bureaucrats in Washington notwithstanding) Americans don't LIKE overbearing, centralized government - we prefer our government minimalist and incompetent (got the latter, working on the former). That's just us. So when someone says "hey, let's put control of the commons in the hands of a bunch of unelected bureacrats" our reaction is pretty negative. The US is saying "leave us alone. Keep using our (!) internet if you want, but don't tell us how to run it."
I think that's fine. Do you guys spend a lot of time fixing what isn't broken? Because it sure smells like politically-motivated meddling to me.
you can sit there at the login prompt, go make a sandwich, then come back and play more
You can have this with graphically beautiful games too.
Tried to Login to a Blizzard WoW server lately? Replace "play more" with "try to login again" then you have it.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics?
...but one might realize that from an American's PoV (the poster was almost certainly American) imperial units ARE "common"?
I'm sorry, but just because we don't subscribe to your particular social engineering doesn't make us bad. I work for a German firm and *constantly* get bugged by the question "why don't you just switch to metric - it's so much simpler!"
First of all, I point out that US firms and people HAVE switched to metric in many of the sciences and international transport, where it IS simpler.
Further, the "metric" system is NOT universally "simpler". The imperial system with its base-12 feet and fractions is in many ways superior (HERESY!) in the practicalities of everyday application. For example:
- If I have an inch standard, I can go fairly easily down to an accurate 1/32 or even 1/64 of an inch. Without a ruler with accurately scribed gradations, can you measure me 0.396875 cm?
- a base 12 foot is wonderful for general use. 12 is a number that can be divided by 2, 3, 4, and their multiples very easily, and still end up in integer units again without equipment. The decimal metric system gets icky when you try to divide anything by anything except 5 and 2.
You're right, and that's a terrific link - thank you.
_ 1999_Moberg_2005.png) linked at the bottom of that page and, frankly, it's contradictory to some degree.
But here's a source of the confusion - I look at graphs like this one (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:IPPC_1990_MBH
Personally I don't *know* the answer. But as a layperson, I'm definitely sick of people who claim to *know* the answer stating facts which even I can see are spun, biased, and omit certain contradictory evidence (on both sides) to the point that whatever they say is entirely tainted by their obvious biases.
And frankly, environmentalists have been crying that the sky is falling for the entirety of my adult life (I was born in 1967), to the tune of:
- running out of fresh water (ridiculous, we'll never run OUT, the cost to get it will simply rise)
- coming ice age (apparently no longer fashionable)
- nuclear winter caused by warmonger Republicans like Reagan
- exhaustion of oil supplies (current known reserves are the greatest they've EVER been)
- filling of landfills and being buried under our mountains of trash (I think they're still saying this one)
Not sure at what point I'm supposed to start believing them, but I don't know...if I was wrong that blatantly that many times, I think I'd STFU.
Let's see how much money it gets compared to the AIDS popu-demic.
Flu:
-(according to the scaremongers) WILL kill 50% of the victims, WILL kill 50 million etc.
- (truth): unknown
AIDS:
- (according to the scaremongers) WILL kill 100% of those contracting, and the disease will spread to bajillions (of course including heterosexuals)
- (truth) AIDS is an almost entirely PREVENTABLE disease, whose spread is limited really to people with (typically MANY) multiple sexual partners and intravenous drug users.
Yet AIDS is in the news nearly every day and consumes an estimated $18.4 billion this year.
I like the comments, but a 'review' that doesn't even give generalize prices for most of the units surveyed?
I don't know a lot of people for whom price is no object at all when buying an MP3 player, do you?
Stop Blackberry service? Heaven forfend!
You mean I won't get any more cryptically abbreviated, nearly-meaningless replies to complex questions? How will I continue working?
That's no moon, it's a space station!
Well, technically...
Actually I've been surprised that the whole 'convergence' thing of computers, stereos, DVRs, TVs, etc hasn't resolved a lot of inconsistencies at very basic levels that make integration difficult.
I am not an electrical engineer, but couldn't
- 3 cord, digital video cable
- S-video
- speaker wire
- coaxial antenna cable
- RCA-plug video connectors (VCR-TV)
- USB
all be functionally replaced by
- CAT5e with RJ45 connectors?
I mean, aside from setting on a stack-mount profile for equipment (gad, could you imagine how convenient that would be, that your "built in media niche" in your familyroom would actually fit multiple generations of components?), to be able to cable the whole system with a standard set of cables and a patch panel. It would be wonderful, IMO.
Ironically, I agree with you in principle, but I think you're a little too harsh. Yes, NASA is practically a caricature of the classic "bloatware" of entrenched government monopoly. HOWEVER, let's make it absolutely clear:
- ISS is the result of POLITICS, not NASA plans. NASA has gone along with the ISS (and shown proper enthusiasm for) the ISS for budgetary and political reasons, not because they are crusading for a vision of space exploration based on the ISS.
- The constant carping about shutting down the Hubble is vexing. The simple economics of it is cost > benefit, especially with having to rely on the crappy shuttle as the tender for the ISS. Finite resources. Personally, I'd LOVE it if NASA got a bigger budget but that's outside the scope of this discussion.
- NASA has recently done some STUNNING pure science. Mars rovers, anyone? Cassini? Mars Recon Orbiter? Deep Impact? Stardust? (ok, that kind of also became it's own "Deep Impact", but the pure science validation was there). And in the future? Dawn? New Horizons? Phoenix?
C'mon - NASA is as worthy of criticism as any government agency but you're making it sound like the ESA is the only one trying to do science, which is just silly.
BTW: big "grats" to the guys at ESA for the clean, solid launch. Best wishes on a safe and boring flight to Venus and a successful mission with oodles of data. GREAT JOB!
Cuba was easy money until 9/11, now we have our Coast Guard pretending to fight terrorism but actually destroying the free market in smuggling.
That's like those darn cops ruining the "free market" in theft? What fascists!
IANAP (I am not a physicist) but it seems to me that the detection of an event is *relatively* pedestrian.
Sorting through the 'noise'and proving it was a gravitational wave that caused the movement seems to be the big trick. I expect that several budding young physicists who aren't even in college yet will have their PhDs before anything detected is conclusively PROVEN to be a gravity wave.
But hey: long-term experiments, indeterminate results, and long spans of analysis are what keeps the grant money flowing, right?
In every MMOG the quest lines are variations of
a) kill creature x
b) find the red key for the red door
c) combinations or series of a & b.
Boring, yes? Why not leverage the power of the CPUs on people's desks to offer a DIFFERENT experience? I understand that in an MMOG with 4 million players you can't have as intricate and convoluted story lines as a single player game, but they could be more engaging - dynamically spawn a specific set of NPCs for a player to help, NPCs that change and develop over the course of adventures.
Using WoW as an example: character Adam enters Undercity for the first time. Immediately, a wandering NPC or three is created. It wanders the city, and if Adam comes close enough to it, it tries to engage him in conversation (and ultimately getting him involved in it's quest line). It's quest line is also randomized to some extent, but each stage might change the character so that if the player 'rescues' his sister, the player gets another wandering NPC (the sister) in a nearby town that does something similar. Or if the player finds his lost child, a couple of weeks later that NPC may have moved to another town or gotten married. The people change in the world according to a matrix of randomized possibilities to inhibit the walkthrus being posted everywhere on the web days later.
Then, let's say character Adam invites character Betty to join his party, and shares one of his personalized NPC quests with Betty. Then (here's the interesting part) Betty, when she turns in that quest, will 'meet' that NPC family. Now, she too can pick up quests from that network of developing NPCs...HOWEVER any progress she or Adam now make individually or together advances the plot. Meaning that Adam and Betty could both have the same quests, but if Betty finishes it, Adam may find an email from the NPC saying "Thanks for introducing us to Betty, she rescued Fido" and the quest disappears from Adam's log.
This is just off-the-top-of-the-head stuff, certainly it needs refinement. But you can see how very quickly the interlocking mesh of relationships would make for an intriguing and engaging world, much more like 'real life' than the static things we have now....
you apparently didn't get the memo:
surging, perky, young, firm, attractive breasts: pr0n
droopy, dirty, 3rd-world, saggy, working breasts: education
They're like food. If you like them, it's bad for you. If you don't like them, they're good for you. Or you're gay. Not sure how that works into the metaphor though.
Like any number of administrations I can name, newspapers had a near monopoly on the reportage of news. For the longest time it was them or hearsay. Then TV came along and didn't really compete for the depth of serious reporting.
Yet today's newspapers are about litte more then poorly-disguised polemic and not-so-subtle agenda driven editorials masked as news reporting.
Know why Fox news and the talk radio stations are eating your lunch? Because when you become so self-satisfied and smug, people are revolted by it, and driven to other sources.
Welcome to capitalism, biatch.
I have to say I love it when Thomas Hobbes totally pwns Hugo Grotius.
Leviathan FTW!
Likewise, the whole idea of IP for artwork is also a recent invention, likely the result of sound reproduction technology. In that sense, Edison is the direct ancestor of the MPAA/RIAA and DRM.
If Joebob von Sommenwhere the composer wrote a song people liked in 1648, he got a lot of concert bookings and patronage (read: cash$) from wealthy supporters, but the idea that Joebob should collect a 'royalty' (there's a telling word!) everytime someone whistled the tune for someone else would be considered ludicrous.
This is /.
... as if millions of voices cried out in terror and were suddenly relieved...."
Anything having to do with a breakdown or interruption at sex.com:
"...I felt a great disturbance
Why the fuck do I go to the polls as part of the only blue city n a red state, I might as well not vote at all. Yeah, you heard me. It literally DOES NOT MATTER if I vote. When the reciepient of "my" support is already a forgone conclusion.
Waah, waah, Cry me a river.
As a Republican resident of Minnesota, one of the bluest of blue states, my (federal) votes have been nearly 100% worthless. I still go to the polls because NOT doing anything is simply LAZINESS. Yes, you can lie around the house eating snack chips all day, or you can get off your butt and vote.
Fortunately, we've been able to turn this bastion of neo-socialist leftism around, and elect a Republican governor and house. In this we've been assisted by a DFL party who has (locally and nationally) left behind the marginally-credible "working man" platform in favor of a radical "save the gay whales, taxes until you bleed" platform which is only appealing to the government-dependent underclass and white-guilt, wealth-glutted, dilettante limousine liberals for whom more taxes don't really matter.
So yeah, I can understand your frustration. Keep feeling it while the rest of us keep voting. Eventually it's going to sink in that "your side" keeps losing for a reason. Personally, I think it's a beautiful illustration of the different motivating ethos of liberal (I'll march in the streets for justice, but it's too much work to vote...it doesn't matter anyway) vs. conservative (responsible for yourself and making your own opportunities through deferred gratification and hard work over time). Grasshopper and ant, baby.
I hate hearing about slave labor, it's just such a shame in 2005.
Because you ^must^ be a slave, or else you would change jobs.
That's how a free, capitalist society works. (And yes, that is a 'typical right wing talking point' - you're responsible for your own farking choices, it's not "the man's" responsibility to coddle your sad buttocks.)
You start work for company for low wage. You and your coworkers perform well. Because of your talent/skill, your company is successful and make huge profits. If they don't give you what you feel you are worth, the workers leave, being replaced by workers willing to take the pay you decided was not enough. If they are good enough, you overvalued your worth and the company continues to succeed. If they aren't, you were right, and the company's performance falters, and they make less money or eventually fail.
It's pretty simple. I admit it's not very 'nice' for the employee, who is constantly being evaluated for their value to the organization, not for "if they really need the money" or "they are really a nice guy".
See, your own perceptions are valueless except insofar as you can justify them to get you a higher salary. They mean nothing intrinsically to your boss, whose *responsiblity* is to pay you as LITTLE as he can get away with without hurting your performance. Unless you're replaceable.
I love hearing people bitching about a lack of raises, it's like people standing in the rain complaining they're wet. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY, CHANGE YOUR OWN SITUATION, OR STFU. If you haven't switched jobs, then either you have made your choices, or you're lazy. Simple as that.
No raises at my company this year, but I've made the cost-benefit calculations about moving jobs and have determined that my long-term best interests are to stay. So I *can't* complain or I'm just a hypocrite.