No kidding. You mean, the exact same thing I stated in the post you replied to? And in my follow-up post with the statement, "Which is a far more deterring effect than turning a city into a ghost town."
You still haven't answered the question: WHY SHOULD THEY BE CLEANER?
As I said before, dirty makes for a more effective deterrent.
BTW we have clean nukes they are called neutron bombs they are not science fiction.
They're not really clean. They're "clean" from the perspective that they kill all the people while leaving the buildings *mostly* intact. However, they greatly increase the amount of radioactivity in the area. All those buildings that are penetrated with neutron radiation become radioactive themselves. A significant "rest" period is required before the city can be inhabited again. (Which is arguably unwise anyway.)
Air-burst nukes are already relatively clean. Putting aside the fact that they mow over cities, the detonation event happening in mid-air leaves very little ground material in a highly radioactive state. Topsoil still should be replaced and drinking water checked for possible contamination, but the long term effects of an area that is properly cleaned up are usually fairly minimal.
It's the interim before cleanup that's the big deal. With plenty of short-term radiation to go around, the bombs do a pretty good job of turning any area into a hell-hole. Which is a far more deterring effect than turning a city into a ghost town.
Ground detonations are another matter altogether. Those are just about as nasty as you can get. The fallout does an extremely good job of making the area unlivable for a very long time. (As the US found out after it unhelpfully blasted dozens of islands into nothingness during nuclear testing.)
But I have to go with Spaz on the idea that they should not be dirty nukes.
You still haven't answered the question: WHY? What possible use could such weapons be?
No offense, but stuff it. The US does not set out to kill as many people as possible. If we did, we would have nuked Bagdad and left. But we didn't. We put our men and women on the line to die for the war. Now people here and in other countries can argue whether that was the correct decision or not. But we do NOT set out to slaughter people en masse.
And for the record, your figures are complete bunk. 91,060 - 99,433 is the complete total for civilian deaths in Iraq. If you want to blame the US for each and every one of those deaths, that is your prerogative. But having a hundred thousand people die due to being killed by their own people (#1 cause) and accidental deaths during live fire are a LONG way from heartlessly killing millions of people.
NASA had the same issue with some spaceship components because new people were not trained on how legacy systems were built.
I hope you're not referring to the "we lost the blueprints to the Saturn V" urban legend. Because if you are, you need to be aware that the US has all the plans and the experience it needs to rebuild these craft. What it doesn't have is the heavy industrial base. Material science has moved the US significantly forward from the heavy metal construction and high noise/high latency electronics used in the original SatV. Rebuilding the SatV would be more effort than just designing a new spacecraft.
If you're just referring to a few components here and there, then I have to argue that these things just happen. Systems age, get out of date, and certain challenges arise in maintenance. For someone like NASA, they're not that difficult to solve. It can take quite a few man hours to understand the part properly and re-machine it (even if original staff are on hand; people tend to forget things over time), but the job still gets done with a minimum amount of fuss.
This issue is a far more worrisome problem. Due to the need for secrecy (there was a HUGE concern that the USSR would obtain our technology), many of the steps were maintained as secrets in people's heads rather than on paper. That makes it difficult to combat the brain drain that invariably happened both as the engineers and researchers aged and the Cold War wound down.
What the funding should go towards is creating weapons that do effectively just as much damage without the radiation fallout.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but... Why?
Is there any particular target you can think of that would be a viable candidate for a nuclear weapon strike? Cities would seem to be the most viable option, but we'd kill millions of innocents along with the bad guys. The brass once suggested that armies in open areas could be wiped out with a single nuke. However, no modern army is going to just line up and wait to be nuked short of a parade or show of force. (And definitely not in an unpopulated area.) Supercarriers and other large ocean-going vessels are good "soft" targets for nukes, but to what effect? Only the US floats supercarriers. With over a dozen in service plus hundreds of supporting vessels, all other navies are already outclassed.
In the end, our nuclear arsenal serves one purpose: deterrence. Whoever might want to lob nukes out way is aware that we have nukes of our own to lob back. And we WANT those nukes to be as eco-unfriendly as possible so that they won't do any stupid calculations like "we'll take out 20 million of their's in exchange for 1 million of ours." Instead, the calculation should be, "if we kill 20 million of their's, we die."
No, I shouldn't. The link to "Bobby Tables" was intended to convey the usual XKCD joke, not suggest that anyone try. I'm very concerned that if I tried, I might succeed. Which would not be a good thing.:-/
You can clearly see the text: "DO NOT use FIREFOX or other Browsers besides IE. It has been decided that Mozilla based, non-IE browsers pose a security risk."
Well, I'm impressed. I tried to send them a message telling them that they're morons. (Though in a more polite manner.) They got right back to me with this message:
Server Error in '/SKILLS' Application.
Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Source Error:
An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.
Stack Trace:
[NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.]
Skills.Suggestion.doTheSend() in C:\Documents and Settings\qeuc34\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\Skills\Skills\Suggestion.aspx.vb:137
Skills.Suggestion.sendEmailLink_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) in C:\Documents and Settings\qeuc34\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\Skills\Skills\Suggestion.aspx.vb:127
System.Web.UI.WebControls.LinkButton.OnClick(EventArgs e) +90
System.Web.UI.WebControls.LinkButton.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +76
System.Web.UI.WebControls.LinkButton.System.Web.UI.IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +7
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) +11
System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(NameValueCollection postData) +177
System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +1746
Version Information: Microsoft.NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.1433; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.1433
I love how the site is:
A) Being run off of someone's desktop. Out of their My Documents folder, no less. B) Gives up the username of the machine without so much as a "how do you do" C) Shows the world that our amazing admin can't even hack it at C#
I should check the IIS version. I have a sneaky suspicion that it's not up to date. Or maybe take a cue from Bobby Tables and throw some SQL injection attacks at the site.:-/
I'm not trying to make it sound insurmountable. Only a royal PITA. As I said, it's worth it if you have a lot of items to sell. It's not worth it if you want your money NOW or if you have very few items to sell.
I guess you don't know what Amazon Marketplace is.
Actually, I do.
You don't need to work out delivery or payment details
Presumably, you want Amazon to give you your money, right? Well, it doesn't magically appear in your hand. You need to setup payment details with Amazon or you won't get paid.
you don't need to beg for feedback
O RLY? Is that why my orders always come with a card that says, "Please leave us feedback for this transaction!" And why my orders page gives me an opportunity to leave feedback? And why users always confuse the comment system for the feedback system and leave reviews that read like: "Product arrived in great condition. Will do business again. A+"
Because listing items is a serious PITA that's not worth the trouble? Between the options of:
A) Get money now for the thing you want to get rid of B) Setup a web front, attract a buyer, work out delivery and payment details, package item properly, go to [UPS|FedEx|USPS] to send package, and then beg the buyer for feedback...I know which one most people would choose. B only makes sense if you plan to do a significant volume.
...we notched lines on sticks. And we LIKED IT THAT WAY. We even developed a counting system out of it. See?
IIIVIIIX
That's 10. Ignore the previous notches. Some young whippersnappers thought it would be funny to do "subtractive" forms whereby IV would be "four". Oooo. I'm so impressed. Not. GET OFF MY LAWN.
That was only in the first half of the series. Later on, FTL comms were introduced using satellites with grav-pulse generators. The idea was that an early warning system could detect and alert of an enemy as soon as they jump into the system. The Manticorians could then let loose with a missile barrage guided by drones with FTL comms thus making their targeting solutions superior to their opponent's.
Does VirtualBox allow you to run your BootCamp partition in a virtual machine? Last time I check it didn't.
As far as I know, this has not changed. However, it is possible to extract the Bootcamp partition into a VDMK which VirtualBox can read. I've never done it before, so try it at your own risk.
I must the admit that the number of times I actually boot into windows has diminished drastically
What's this "windows" you speak of? I use VirtualBox for alternative operating systems!:-P
Actually, I did setup one Windows 7 VM so my wife could use an educational CD she needs. Other than that, I haven't found a lot of reason to use Windows on my Mac. I imagine I would have a few more if I didn't have an older Windows XP desktop hanging around, but even that tends to run cross-platform software. (Even Microsoft Office has been successfully replaced with OpenOffice!)
All told, the age of Windows lock-in is fading rapidly. Just about all native software these days either has a Mac version or a good Mac alternative available. Interestingly, FireFox shows markedly better graphics performance on the Mac over the PC. I haven't figured that one out yet.:-/
That's from nearly two years ago. There's now support for hardware accelerated 3D. From section 4.8 of the user manual:
Starting with version 2.1, the VirtualBox Guest Additions for Windows contain experimental hardware 3D support.
With this new feature, if an application inside your Windows guest uses 3D features through the OpenGL programming interfaces, these will not be emulated in software (which is slow), but instead VirtualBox will attempt to use your host's 3D hardware. This works for all supported host platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris), provided that your host operating system can make use of your accelerated 3D hardware in the first place.
Personally, I prefer VirtualBox. It has all the features you expect of a professional VM (rootless desktop, 3D acceleration, drive passthrough, etc.) but is available for the low-low price of $0.
The situation looks a bit different if you're going to use it for business purposes, but for home use there is no better option than VirtualBox.
As I recall, only the grav waves traveling through hyperspace were FTL. So grav waves could be read by sensors at superluminal velocities, but the impeller drive functioned on the light-speed grav waves. I think.:-P
Gravity waves? I thought they'd never be observed! Impeller Drive, here we come! Now all we need is to prove hyperspace as a viable means of travel and invent Warshawski sails.:-P
(Joking aside, this is great news! Gravity waves have been one of the most difficult aspects of relativistic physics to pin down.)
One problem existing in the art is that there are no systems and methods to bridge the gap between the programming paradigm used for object-oriented systems and the programming paradigm used for relational systems.
O RLY? They honestly want us to believe that they invented O/R mapping? Then what is this ACM paper from 1996?
Either somebody didn't do their homework and their patent is going to fall under a weight of prior art, or they're just plain patent trolls. Given that they waited until 2009 (9 years after the patent was issued!), I'm leaning toward the latter.
What memory? There is no memory used if there is no reference. Ergo, there is no need for NULL. NULL only exists because it was easier to develop as a solution rather than making the underlying data structures mutable.
If there's nothing to put there, that something is NULL.
If there is nothing to put there, there is nothing. Poof. Nothing. No need for NULL.
Watch:
var x = {y: 10};
delete(x.y);//POOF!
if(!x.y) alert("Nothing there, chief");
As an underlying data structure, y has just disappeared from the map that was holding it. Once the 'y' reference was deleted (no NULLs!) there was *nothing*. No reference, no pointer, nada, zip, zilch, none, nulla, no-thing. The data structure simply stopped including it.
Local Storage APIs would probably work better. The entire data set could even be dumped to local storage to allow recovery from browser failures. In addition, using the SQL engine of the Local Storage database can speed up certain sorting and aggregation tasks, thus (potentially) allowing for a faster response than making Javascript do all the heavy lifting.
When your hand contains air, we say it is empty, even though it is not.
Replace my hand with a robotic arm in space. Claw is open. What exists in the claw?
Emptiness is only an abstraction, and it is assigned to a specific content.
Technically, all high level code is an abstraction. As is mechanical work in the universe. Both are caused by complex quantum interactions at very low levels. The purpose of the abstractions around both is to produce a framework that is as easy as possible for the human brain to grasp and work with. Situations like NULL values are a form of leaky abstraction that are very confusing and don't map to concepts that are intuitive for humans.
The catch is that once we learn and intuitively use the abstraction, it becomes difficult to think without the abstraction.
Further down in the Slashdot comments, a poster also pointed out that Javascript is a poor platform for computationally intensive work. Which I agree with on a general level. The Javascript number system is designed for genericity, not performance.
In the end this is just a cute idea that has any number of practical problems. Many of them reflect the fact that distributed computing is hard, but many of them also reflect the fact that the suggested platform is less than ideal for this function. Especially if you're going to be pushing workloads that take more time and resources to transmit back and forth than to simply compute them.
Doesn't stop me from humoring him, though. We all have to dream.;-)
And besides, this may just inspire the next fellow down the line to use the technology for a more practical purpose.
Slashdot Mirror
No kidding. You mean, the exact same thing I stated in the post you replied to? And in my follow-up post with the statement, "Which is a far more deterring effect than turning a city into a ghost town."
You still haven't answered the question: WHY SHOULD THEY BE CLEANER?
As I said before, dirty makes for a more effective deterrent.
They're not really clean. They're "clean" from the perspective that they kill all the people while leaving the buildings *mostly* intact. However, they greatly increase the amount of radioactivity in the area. All those buildings that are penetrated with neutron radiation become radioactive themselves. A significant "rest" period is required before the city can be inhabited again. (Which is arguably unwise anyway.)
Air-burst nukes are already relatively clean. Putting aside the fact that they mow over cities, the detonation event happening in mid-air leaves very little ground material in a highly radioactive state. Topsoil still should be replaced and drinking water checked for possible contamination, but the long term effects of an area that is properly cleaned up are usually fairly minimal.
It's the interim before cleanup that's the big deal. With plenty of short-term radiation to go around, the bombs do a pretty good job of turning any area into a hell-hole. Which is a far more deterring effect than turning a city into a ghost town.
Ground detonations are another matter altogether. Those are just about as nasty as you can get. The fallout does an extremely good job of making the area unlivable for a very long time. (As the US found out after it unhelpfully blasted dozens of islands into nothingness during nuclear testing.)
You still haven't answered the question: WHY? What possible use could such weapons be?
No offense, but stuff it. The US does not set out to kill as many people as possible. If we did, we would have nuked Bagdad and left. But we didn't. We put our men and women on the line to die for the war. Now people here and in other countries can argue whether that was the correct decision or not. But we do NOT set out to slaughter people en masse.
And for the record, your figures are complete bunk. 91,060 - 99,433 is the complete total for civilian deaths in Iraq. If you want to blame the US for each and every one of those deaths, that is your prerogative. But having a hundred thousand people die due to being killed by their own people (#1 cause) and accidental deaths during live fire are a LONG way from heartlessly killing millions of people.
I hope you're not referring to the "we lost the blueprints to the Saturn V" urban legend. Because if you are, you need to be aware that the US has all the plans and the experience it needs to rebuild these craft. What it doesn't have is the heavy industrial base. Material science has moved the US significantly forward from the heavy metal construction and high noise/high latency electronics used in the original SatV. Rebuilding the SatV would be more effort than just designing a new spacecraft.
If you're just referring to a few components here and there, then I have to argue that these things just happen. Systems age, get out of date, and certain challenges arise in maintenance. For someone like NASA, they're not that difficult to solve. It can take quite a few man hours to understand the part properly and re-machine it (even if original staff are on hand; people tend to forget things over time), but the job still gets done with a minimum amount of fuss.
This issue is a far more worrisome problem. Due to the need for secrecy (there was a HUGE concern that the USSR would obtain our technology), many of the steps were maintained as secrets in people's heads rather than on paper. That makes it difficult to combat the brain drain that invariably happened both as the engineers and researchers aged and the Cold War wound down.
Not to put too fine of a point on it, but... Why?
Is there any particular target you can think of that would be a viable candidate for a nuclear weapon strike? Cities would seem to be the most viable option, but we'd kill millions of innocents along with the bad guys. The brass once suggested that armies in open areas could be wiped out with a single nuke. However, no modern army is going to just line up and wait to be nuked short of a parade or show of force. (And definitely not in an unpopulated area.) Supercarriers and other large ocean-going vessels are good "soft" targets for nukes, but to what effect? Only the US floats supercarriers. With over a dozen in service plus hundreds of supporting vessels, all other navies are already outclassed.
In the end, our nuclear arsenal serves one purpose: deterrence. Whoever might want to lob nukes out way is aware that we have nukes of our own to lob back. And we WANT those nukes to be as eco-unfriendly as possible so that they won't do any stupid calculations like "we'll take out 20 million of their's in exchange for 1 million of ours." Instead, the calculation should be, "if we kill 20 million of their's, we die."
No, I shouldn't. The link to "Bobby Tables" was intended to convey the usual XKCD joke, not suggest that anyone try. I'm very concerned that if I tried, I might succeed. Which would not be a good thing. :-/
It looks like they removed the message about Firefox being insecure. Google doesn't have a cache of the page, but you can see it in the summary:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=http://www.coworkforce.com/Skills/myskills.aspx+Firefox+security&btnG=Search
You can clearly see the text: "DO NOT use FIREFOX or other Browsers besides IE. It has been decided that Mozilla based, non-IE browsers pose a security risk."
They wrote their .NET code in Visual Basic. What did you expect?
Well, I'm impressed. I tried to send them a message telling them that they're morons. (Though in a more polite manner.) They got right back to me with this message:
I love how the site is:
A) Being run off of someone's desktop. Out of their My Documents folder, no less.
B) Gives up the username of the machine without so much as a "how do you do"
C) Shows the world that our amazing admin can't even hack it at C#
I should check the IIS version. I have a sneaky suspicion that it's not up to date. Or maybe take a cue from Bobby Tables and throw some SQL injection attacks at the site. :-/
I'm not trying to make it sound insurmountable. Only a royal PITA. As I said, it's worth it if you have a lot of items to sell. It's not worth it if you want your money NOW or if you have very few items to sell.
Actually, I do.
Presumably, you want Amazon to give you your money, right? Well, it doesn't magically appear in your hand. You need to setup payment details with Amazon or you won't get paid.
O RLY? Is that why my orders always come with a card that says, "Please leave us feedback for this transaction!" And why my orders page gives me an opportunity to leave feedback? And why users always confuse the comment system for the feedback system and leave reviews that read like: "Product arrived in great condition. Will do business again. A+"
Because listing items is a serious PITA that's not worth the trouble? Between the options of:
A) Get money now for the thing you want to get rid of ...I know which one most people would choose. B only makes sense if you plan to do a significant volume.
B) Setup a web front, attract a buyer, work out delivery and payment details, package item properly, go to [UPS|FedEx|USPS] to send package, and then beg the buyer for feedback
...we notched lines on sticks. And we LIKED IT THAT WAY. We even developed a counting system out of it. See?
IIIVIIIX
That's 10. Ignore the previous notches. Some young whippersnappers thought it would be funny to do "subtractive" forms whereby IV would be "four". Oooo. I'm so impressed. Not. GET OFF MY LAWN.
Oh, and they forgot about magnetic drums. :-P
That was only in the first half of the series. Later on, FTL comms were introduced using satellites with grav-pulse generators. The idea was that an early warning system could detect and alert of an enemy as soon as they jump into the system. The Manticorians could then let loose with a missile barrage guided by drones with FTL comms thus making their targeting solutions superior to their opponent's.
As far as I know, this has not changed. However, it is possible to extract the Bootcamp partition into a VDMK which VirtualBox can read. I've never done it before, so try it at your own risk.
What's this "windows" you speak of? I use VirtualBox for alternative operating systems! :-P
Actually, I did setup one Windows 7 VM so my wife could use an educational CD she needs. Other than that, I haven't found a lot of reason to use Windows on my Mac. I imagine I would have a few more if I didn't have an older Windows XP desktop hanging around, but even that tends to run cross-platform software. (Even Microsoft Office has been successfully replaced with OpenOffice!)
All told, the age of Windows lock-in is fading rapidly. Just about all native software these days either has a Mac version or a good Mac alternative available. Interestingly, FireFox shows markedly better graphics performance on the Mac over the PC. I haven't figured that one out yet. :-/
That's from nearly two years ago. There's now support for hardware accelerated 3D. From section 4.8 of the user manual:
Personally, I prefer VirtualBox. It has all the features you expect of a professional VM (rootless desktop, 3D acceleration, drive passthrough, etc.) but is available for the low-low price of $0.
The situation looks a bit different if you're going to use it for business purposes, but for home use there is no better option than VirtualBox.
As I recall, only the grav waves traveling through hyperspace were FTL. So grav waves could be read by sensors at superluminal velocities, but the impeller drive functioned on the light-speed grav waves. I think. :-P
Gravity waves? I thought they'd never be observed! Impeller Drive, here we come! Now all we need is to prove hyperspace as a viable means of travel and invent Warshawski sails. :-P
(Joking aside, this is great news! Gravity waves have been one of the most difficult aspects of relativistic physics to pin down.)
From the Fscking Patent:
O RLY? They honestly want us to believe that they invented O/R mapping? Then what is this ACM paper from 1996?
Object-relational mapping by Scott Amber
Either somebody didn't do their homework and their patent is going to fall under a weight of prior art, or they're just plain patent trolls. Given that they waited until 2009 (9 years after the patent was issued!), I'm leaning toward the latter.
What memory? There is no memory used if there is no reference. Ergo, there is no need for NULL. NULL only exists because it was easier to develop as a solution rather than making the underlying data structures mutable.
If there is nothing to put there, there is nothing. Poof. Nothing. No need for NULL.
Watch:
As an underlying data structure, y has just disappeared from the map that was holding it. Once the 'y' reference was deleted (no NULLs!) there was *nothing*. No reference, no pointer, nada, zip, zilch, none, nulla, no-thing. The data structure simply stopped including it.
Local Storage APIs would probably work better. The entire data set could even be dumped to local storage to allow recovery from browser failures. In addition, using the SQL engine of the Local Storage database can speed up certain sorting and aggregation tasks, thus (potentially) allowing for a faster response than making Javascript do all the heavy lifting.
Replace my hand with a robotic arm in space. Claw is open. What exists in the claw?
Technically, all high level code is an abstraction. As is mechanical work in the universe. Both are caused by complex quantum interactions at very low levels. The purpose of the abstractions around both is to produce a framework that is as easy as possible for the human brain to grasp and work with. Situations like NULL values are a form of leaky abstraction that are very confusing and don't map to concepts that are intuitive for humans.
The catch is that once we learn and intuitively use the abstraction, it becomes difficult to think without the abstraction.
In an attempt to collapse these threads a bit, here's the answer from another thread: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1147437&cid=27056115
Further down in the Slashdot comments, a poster also pointed out that Javascript is a poor platform for computationally intensive work. Which I agree with on a general level. The Javascript number system is designed for genericity, not performance.
In the end this is just a cute idea that has any number of practical problems. Many of them reflect the fact that distributed computing is hard, but many of them also reflect the fact that the suggested platform is less than ideal for this function. Especially if you're going to be pushing workloads that take more time and resources to transmit back and forth than to simply compute them.
Doesn't stop me from humoring him, though. We all have to dream. ;-)
And besides, this may just inspire the next fellow down the line to use the technology for a more practical purpose.