I damn well promise you they can pull it off, if as a nation they want to do it. Having lived and worked in China, I can say I have all the admiration in the world for their ability to do things the rest of the world thinks it is impossible for them to do.
It won't be sexy or glitzy like the US space program, but it will sure be pragmatic and it was probably cost a whole lot less, too.
It would be nice to see some political reforms, though...
Completely agree. I started college hellbent on a computer software engineering degree and will graudate in just a little while with an International Relations degree.
I love it. Sure, I still dig computers, and technical skills have helped me land and maintain above-average college jobs.
But I couldn't imagine doing anything besides what I'm doing right now for the rest of my life, and I would have never known that if I would have taken my programming skills into the job market out of high school.
And, if you do finish college with the same career path that you start it with (a rarity, I think), then you'll have a degree in your field, and there are very few jobs where that's a bad thing.
If cops actually have to be there, and the city/state actually has to pay for their payroll, etc., maybe they'll be more careful and not just whip out a search warrant on a whim. I know that the local department probably wouldn't be happy having to use their officers for that rather than having them on the street doing their jobs.
Re:Disclaimer?
on
Worst Buy
·
· Score: 2, Informative
One would think that Best Buy has a decent legal team, but if it's anything like the team of people in their stores...
A LOT of companies have disclaimers and things like that that are illegal (and I don't know if this one is or not) but nobody finds that out unless someone challenges it. Thus they save paying out tons of money to people that decide not to try to sue because of the stated policy.
Mentions globalism: check! Mentions Open Source: check! Mentions WTO: check! Makes some strange connection between Open Source and social politics: check!
If only he could somehow blame Swaziland's continuing strife on Microsoft's business practices, he'd be set.
Import restrictions, I would think. The only real way to punish them otherwise would be to sue them in Russian court against Russian laws, which obviously isn't going to fly.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but TV and radio are not the same.
When you hear a song on the radio, you're hearing a single track from an album that, in theory, you must buy to hear the rest of. If you like the tune that you hear on the radio, perhaps you'll buy the album and the record people will make money. That's what radio is for.
When you watch TV you get the entire performance, not just a little part of it. It's a completely and totally different business model. Really, TV is the glue to keep people there for commercials (where the networks make the big money), because if there wasn't anything entertaining on between commercials nobody would watch TV.
But they're going to be using this for an OO class... isn't the *entire* point of object-oriented programming the simple reuse of code?
95% of most programmer's jobs is finding someone else who has solved the same problem in the past and, maybe, improving on their solution in some little way.
But why should we let the real world intrude into the academic world?
I don't think that taxes are really the focus of a city that size... I'd push that the money could be used to fix the big pothole on Second Street, to build a new park or add a new wing onto the local high school's science building or whatever. Offer them something tangible, which will not only make them happier but improve the overall value of the city.
Obviously you can't put a price on human life, but in purely economic terms, the cruise missiles are much, much less expensive than ground troops.
First, there is the cost of just a soldier's kit and munitions... not that expensive, but still the cost is there.
Then you have to figure the cost of getting thhe soldiers there, sheltering them and resupplying them. Remember that the modern military has a large ratio of "tail" to "teeth" (support units vs. actual combat units), so supplying even a handful of combat troops requires many, many people, all of which also need to be supplied, fed, etc.
Then, there is the invested cost of training a soldier. Say a soldier with ten years in the military is killed... then not only do you lose a priceless life, but you also lose the experience and expertise that the soldier brought to the fight, experience and expertise that was bought at a very high financial cost during peacetime training.
Of course there are benefits of using ground troops. Humans are more flexible, more capable to reacting in a fluid situation (which is why cruise missiles are used on targets that are well-defined and static while manned strike aircraft are still used to go after more difficult targets). But in light of the conditions of fighting in Afghanistan, whose history of combatting first-rate militaries and extremely difficult terrain make defense against ground troops far more possible than defense against airborne threats, cruise missiles are by far the most cost-effective, followed by manned aircraft, followed distantly by ground forces.
I'm getting hammered from the 61.*.*.* range, too... and I'm just on a laptop with a dialup. Aren't I glad I run Apache and not IIS to do local web dev...
- John
Yeah, that was a damn good book. It was kinda sad, though, because it was written before Congress killed the super-conducting super-collider project (I'm pretty sure that was its name) and so much of his book talked about all the cool stuff they could do with that.
Goes to show you what happens when you let politicians run real science.
If the same study was performed on the win32 desktop, by the same group, it would pass with flying colors.
This was a study of usability and familiarity. Like it or not, the win32 desktop is usable and familiar to Joe Average-computer user. It is Gnome that, for most users, needs the changing to make it friendly.
Personally, I like Gnome (and KDE) much more than the win32 interface, but it's because I'm used to them. To appeal to the wider audience, changes will have to be made to make it more like the familiar desktop, which in this case is Windows.
Really, it's only recently that the space program has started to get its own gear, instead of using military stuff. For much of the last fifty years, the space program inherited equipment from the military, or at least designed hardware to meet the military's needs.
For instance, the first American in space (er... suborbit) was on a Mercury-Redstone, which was the Mercury capsule attached to the top of a Redstone ballistic missile. We still launch things on Titan rockets, which were still in-service as ICBMs into the mid-(late?) eighties.
And the shuttle is a massive as it is because of a requirement to launch ever-larger and heavier photo-recon birds.
So maybe the Air Force taking this isn't so bad... the military has been the impetus before, it could be again.
Think manned troop carriers deploying shock troops to nearly anywhere in the world in 90 minutes or less.
How useful would this capability be, really? At best you could land airborne troops (which can already be delivered rather quickly by conventional means), because of likely payload and volume restrictions, but because they would get there they would be without support for an even longer time than airborne troops are now.
Look at the 82nd Airborne Division's DRB deployment in northern Saudi Arabia... yes, it put a brigade of light infantry on the ground quickly, but they would have barely blunted a determined Iraqi assault into Saudi Arabia, had they had the intention to keep advancing southward.
Until payload goes WAY up or systems weight goes WAY down, things like this will be purely weapons delivery platforms. But man oh man will they be nice weapon delivery platforms.
But there have always been bullies, and there have always been guns. If anything access to guns has gone down at least a little bit in recent years due to legislation and safety measures. There has got to be something else causing this, but finding it (and doing something about it) is much harder than just blaiming the internet/video games/movies/TV etc and washing our collective hands of it.
What about unmanned aerial vehicles? I'm guessing the flying would be limited to circling over the city (so you'd be in a predictable place for the receivers on the ground to find and point to). Not only would it save a lot in personnel costs (dear God would it be boring to be this thing's pilot) but by removing the weight of all the systems to keep the crew alive at 50,000+ feet, you could save a lot on fuel costs.
The idea isn't a terrible one (the military is already playing with stuff like this for different missions), but manned aircraft don't seem to make any sense.
I would say your best best is to go to flea markets and garage sales and the like. It would probably take a little while, but you could get carts there for a low enough price to actually have a little margin.
Also, long long ago when I worked at Gamestop we would occassionally have huge sales on used games just to clear inventory (usually after two or three kids came in with every Nintendo game ever made wanting to trade them for a new Playstation or something). You could pick up a LOT of really good games like that for well below market value there, too.
Don't beleive me? Ask survivors of the Kent State Massacre exactly what the U.S. military will do and to whom.
OK, I know damn well this is probably flamebait, but still... where do you get off judging the modern US military by the actions at Kent State?
1. The Kent State massacre was not committed by the military. It was committed by the National Guard. Not the same thing, as related as they are. The military does not have legal power to operate within the United States unless under martial law and (I think) a few other very special circumstances.
2. As horrible as the Kent State massacre was, it was perpetuated by the actions of the commander on the scene. It's not like an order came from the Pentagon telling them to kill those kids. It's like judging all animals as dangerous because you were bit by a shark. It's bad logic.
Who's definition of 'dangerous' do we use, and who watches the watchers?
Lemme tell you... when I was in the Army, I got hit in the hand by a 7.62mm rifle round (stupid training accident, don't ask:), and I've never, never, never had a sunburn that hurt anything like that. Sure, any weapon, lethal or non-lethal, can be abused, but if we're going to ask our troops to keep the peace in foreign countries, we've got to give them good equipment. I don't seem this being and more or less humane than rubber bullets (which hurt like hell too) or high-pressure water or pepper spray.
There are also claims by Argentinian pilots that the British used lasers (dazzlers, as they're called in this application) to temporarily blind enemy pilots during the Falklands War.
Slashdot Mirror
I damn well promise you they can pull it off, if as a nation they want to do it. Having lived and worked in China, I can say I have all the admiration in the world for their ability to do things the rest of the world thinks it is impossible for them to do.
It won't be sexy or glitzy like the US space program, but it will sure be pragmatic and it was probably cost a whole lot less, too.
It would be nice to see some political reforms, though...
Completely agree. I started college hellbent on a computer software engineering degree and will graudate in just a little while with an International Relations degree.
I love it. Sure, I still dig computers, and technical skills have helped me land and maintain above-average college jobs.
But I couldn't imagine doing anything besides what I'm doing right now for the rest of my life, and I would have never known that if I would have taken my programming skills into the job market out of high school.
And, if you do finish college with the same career path that you start it with (a rarity, I think), then you'll have a degree in your field, and there are very few jobs where that's a bad thing.
If cops actually have to be there, and the city/state actually has to pay for their payroll, etc., maybe they'll be more careful and not just whip out a search warrant on a whim. I know that the local department probably wouldn't be happy having to use their officers for that rather than having them on the street doing their jobs.
One would think that Best Buy has a decent legal team, but if it's anything like the team of people in their stores...
A LOT of companies have disclaimers and things like that that are illegal (and I don't know if this one is or not) but nobody finds that out unless someone challenges it. Thus they save paying out tons of money to people that decide not to try to sue because of the stated policy.
It's sleazy, but what isn't?
When is the JonKatz madness going to stop?!
Mentions globalism: check!
Mentions Open Source: check!
Mentions WTO: check!
Makes some strange connection between Open Source and social politics: check!
If only he could somehow blame Swaziland's continuing strife on Microsoft's business practices, he'd be set.
Import restrictions, I would think. The only real way to punish them otherwise would be to sue them in Russian court against Russian laws, which obviously isn't going to fly.
Perhaps you haven't noticed, but TV and radio are not the same.
When you hear a song on the radio, you're hearing a single track from an album that, in theory, you must buy to hear the rest of. If you like the tune that you hear on the radio, perhaps you'll buy the album and the record people will make money. That's what radio is for.
When you watch TV you get the entire performance, not just a little part of it. It's a completely and totally different business model. Really, TV is the glue to keep people there for commercials (where the networks make the big money), because if there wasn't anything entertaining on between commercials nobody would watch TV.
"Now with quick-swap battery packs, so having to change batteries every seventeen seconds during use won't seem like such a chore..."
But they're going to be using this for an OO class... isn't the *entire* point of object-oriented programming the simple reuse of code?
95% of most programmer's jobs is finding someone else who has solved the same problem in the past and, maybe, improving on their solution in some little way.
But why should we let the real world intrude into the academic world?
I don't think that taxes are really the focus of a city that size... I'd push that the money could be used to fix the big pothole on Second Street, to build a new park or add a new wing onto the local high school's science building or whatever. Offer them something tangible, which will not only make them happier but improve the overall value of the city.
Obviously you can't put a price on human life, but in purely economic terms, the cruise missiles are much, much less expensive than ground troops.
First, there is the cost of just a soldier's kit and munitions... not that expensive, but still the cost is there.
Then you have to figure the cost of getting thhe soldiers there, sheltering them and resupplying them. Remember that the modern military has a large ratio of "tail" to "teeth" (support units vs. actual combat units), so supplying even a handful of combat troops requires many, many people, all of which also need to be supplied, fed, etc.
Then, there is the invested cost of training a soldier. Say a soldier with ten years in the military is killed... then not only do you lose a priceless life, but you also lose the experience and expertise that the soldier brought to the fight, experience and expertise that was bought at a very high financial cost during peacetime training.
Of course there are benefits of using ground troops. Humans are more flexible, more capable to reacting in a fluid situation (which is why cruise missiles are used on targets that are well-defined and static while manned strike aircraft are still used to go after more difficult targets). But in light of the conditions of fighting in Afghanistan, whose history of combatting first-rate militaries and extremely difficult terrain make defense against ground troops far more possible than defense against airborne threats, cruise missiles are by far the most cost-effective, followed by manned aircraft, followed distantly by ground forces.
I'm getting hammered from the 61.*.*.* range, too... and I'm just on a laptop with a dialup. Aren't I glad I run Apache and not IIS to do local web dev... - John
Yeah, that was a damn good book. It was kinda sad, though, because it was written before Congress killed the super-conducting super-collider project (I'm pretty sure that was its name) and so much of his book talked about all the cool stuff they could do with that.
Goes to show you what happens when you let politicians run real science.
If the same study was performed on the win32 desktop, by the same group, it would pass with flying colors.
This was a study of usability and familiarity. Like it or not, the win32 desktop is usable and familiar to Joe Average-computer user. It is Gnome that, for most users, needs the changing to make it friendly.
Personally, I like Gnome (and KDE) much more than the win32 interface, but it's because I'm used to them. To appeal to the wider audience, changes will have to be made to make it more like the familiar desktop, which in this case is Windows.
I work about 45-55 hours a week most weeks, with the occassional 80 hour week just to throw the internal clock off balance
Compared to when I was in the Army (40 hour work weeks most weeks, then the occassional month of 160 hour weeks) I'm liking it a lot.
Hey, you've got to put in your time. We did it, you'll do it, and your kids will do it. It's part of the game.
Is the Apollo stat in today dollars? Or 1960's dollars? That makes a big difference.
Really, it's only recently that the space program has started to get its own gear, instead of using military stuff. For much of the last fifty years, the space program inherited equipment from the military, or at least designed hardware to meet the military's needs.
For instance, the first American in space (er... suborbit) was on a Mercury-Redstone, which was the Mercury capsule attached to the top of a Redstone ballistic missile. We still launch things on Titan rockets, which were still in-service as ICBMs into the mid-(late?) eighties.
And the shuttle is a massive as it is because of a requirement to launch ever-larger and heavier photo-recon birds.
So maybe the Air Force taking this isn't so bad... the military has been the impetus before, it could be again.
Think manned troop carriers deploying shock troops to nearly anywhere in the world in 90 minutes or less.
How useful would this capability be, really? At best you could land airborne troops (which can already be delivered rather quickly by conventional means), because of likely payload and volume restrictions, but because they would get there they would be without support for an even longer time than airborne troops are now.
Look at the 82nd Airborne Division's DRB deployment in northern Saudi Arabia... yes, it put a brigade of light infantry on the ground quickly, but they would have barely blunted a determined Iraqi assault into Saudi Arabia, had they had the intention to keep advancing southward.
Until payload goes WAY up or systems weight goes WAY down, things like this will be purely weapons delivery platforms. But man oh man will they be nice weapon delivery platforms.
But there have always been bullies, and there have always been guns. If anything access to guns has gone down at least a little bit in recent years due to legislation and safety measures. There has got to be something else causing this, but finding it (and doing something about it) is much harder than just blaiming the internet/video games/movies/TV etc and washing our collective hands of it.
What about unmanned aerial vehicles? I'm guessing the flying would be limited to circling over the city (so you'd be in a predictable place for the receivers on the ground to find and point to). Not only would it save a lot in personnel costs (dear God would it be boring to be this thing's pilot) but by removing the weight of all the systems to keep the crew alive at 50,000+ feet, you could save a lot on fuel costs.
The idea isn't a terrible one (the military is already playing with stuff like this for different missions), but manned aircraft don't seem to make any sense.
I would say your best best is to go to flea markets and garage sales and the like. It would probably take a little while, but you could get carts there for a low enough price to actually have a little margin.
Also, long long ago when I worked at Gamestop we would occassionally have huge sales on used games just to clear inventory (usually after two or three kids came in with every Nintendo game ever made wanting to trade them for a new Playstation or something). You could pick up a LOT of really good games like that for well below market value there, too.
Don't beleive me? Ask survivors of the Kent State Massacre exactly what the U.S. military will do and to whom.
OK, I know damn well this is probably flamebait, but still... where do you get off judging the modern US military by the actions at Kent State?
1. The Kent State massacre was not committed by the military. It was committed by the National Guard. Not the same thing, as related as they are. The military does not have legal power to operate within the United States unless under martial law and (I think) a few other very special circumstances.
2. As horrible as the Kent State massacre was, it was perpetuated by the actions of the commander on the scene. It's not like an order came from the Pentagon telling them to kill those kids. It's like judging all animals as dangerous because you were bit by a shark. It's bad logic.
Who's definition of 'dangerous' do we use, and who watches the watchers?
Lemme tell you... when I was in the Army, I got hit in the hand by a 7.62mm rifle round (stupid training accident, don't ask :), and I've never, never, never had a sunburn that hurt anything like that. Sure, any weapon, lethal or non-lethal, can be abused, but if we're going to ask our troops to keep the peace in foreign countries, we've got to give them good equipment. I don't seem this being and more or less humane than rubber bullets (which hurt like hell too) or high-pressure water or pepper spray.
There are also claims by Argentinian pilots that the British used lasers (dazzlers, as they're called in this application) to temporarily blind enemy pilots during the Falklands War.
How do you represent trinary systems electrically? Binary is simple (voltage and no voltage), but how would you represent the -1 state?