It annoys me to have to say this more than twice. Individuals don't get ICBMs. Individuals can't even launch ICBMs (long range especialy). These weapons don't fit on anything even remotely portable and they are very complex requiring an administrative staff. (Yes, SRBMs and MRBMS are a different matter, but the ABM system dosn't protect terribly well against those now does it?) Thus, we've eliminated the "one crazy kook" possibility.
Now lets turn our attention to the "rogue state." Assuming a rogue nation has only a few functional weapons on ICBMs they will do much better to smuggle these weapons into the US rather than fire missiles with the proverbial return address. Assuming the "Rational Actor" theory (a central tenant of international relations) this dismisses minor nuclear powers. Major nuclear powers will utilize a massive ICBM strike, but the ABM system is not designed to deal with this kind of a threat. It is thus also disguarded from the equation at the moment.
What this leaves us with is.... nothing. Small scale attacks will and MUST be carried out by a non-missile delivery system. Large scale attacks circumvent the ABM system. Thus, what's the point? The answer is that there is none. The ABM system is just an attempt to drum up another military spectre. G.W. and Mr Clinton learned well from the Regan years, and this is a page right out of President Regan's book "Evil Empires: How to fool the American People into a blind Panic in 12 easy steps."
Someone earlier equated this to a Maginoit line. they are 100% correct. This is a very formidable looking defence with no real value. Hopefully this system will not be showen to be ineffective in the same manner as the Maginoit line... but only history will tell. I for one am staking a healthy sum of money on the assumption that I will see nuclear terrorism rear its ugly head sometime within my lifetime. I just hope I'm not anywhere near it when it happens.
Except for the nasty little fact that a nation willing to send a THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON our way on the end of a missile will be more than willing to smuggle one into the nation to core out new york. So retailiation would still come. The world would be no safer.
Also, nuclear weapons have a certain stigma to them. Russia would have distanced herself rather rapidly from an Iraq that had used nuclear weapons. Aliances tend to break down when the nucelar trump card is played.
Because the nature of an ABM system does not eliminate the threat entirely, just the most expensive method of delivering it. The Kurds are never going to launch a missile at anyone because they'll never have a missile to launch. ICBMs require infrastructure. Nations launch these things, perhaps an unususaly well established and entrenched terrorist group. Not disorganized disidents. Point being that an ABM system forces your enemy to rely on a method of delivery that is thousands of times more difficult to track. If someone fires an ICBM at us we know who did it and can retaliate. If they know we have an ABM system they won't fire that ICBM, they'll truck it into the country or detonate the nuke in a major harbor. Same result to us, but no retaliation is possible as we have no idea where it came from.
Point being, and ABM system is a waste of money. It will not remove a threat from a "rogue nation" simply force them to use a more underhanded system of delivery. ABM systems are only usefull if they can stop a large scale attack, simply because missiles are the only practical solution to the problem of how to bombard an enemy with nukes on a vast scale. ABM systems are ineffective for stoping nuclear terrorism because one bomb is just as easily delivered by boat as it is by missile, perhaps more easily.
No, missile defense is not a catch all, stop all kinds of nasties. It does make things more difficult for a North Korea or Iraq to just lob a missile at the US with no more than a few minutes warning, and no defense for it. The attacker is forced to get up close and personal, on US turf.
Yea... but: One major advantage/disadvantage of a missile based attack is accountability. The United States maintains an extensive network of launch detection satelites to identify and track incoming ICBMs. Thus, a missile attack on the US, while rather unfortunate for those in the targeted city, is a clear act of war. It is detered by the fact that we're going to reduce your entire nation to a smokeing hole in the ground.
With a anti-ballistic missle shield in place missile attacks (at least small ones) become a thing of the past. The attacker must smuggle the weapon into range. Now, there's tons of ways to do this. If you want to carry the damn thing (low tech solution) you have to land it on part of the thousands of miles of undefended coast land in the US and Canada and then truck it to your destination, possibly crossing the Canadian boarder (which incidently is the longest undefended boarder in the world). Of course, simply putting a nuke on a passanger liner and sailing it into NY harbor would work about a million times better. To say nothing of a short range missile delivery system fired from a boat in international waters.
The fundamental fact of it is that a ABM system makes the world LESS stable rather than more stable. Weapons technology has progressed to the point that a suitcase full of small pox can cause just as much havoc as the "Nuclear Trump Card." The international mindset still seems to rate nukes as the best suit to hold though, and ICBMs as the best way to deliver them. As long as that mindset prevails the ballance of mutual terror keeps the world a safe place to live. ABMs threaten that order, an order the United States has happily dominated for 50 years. The addage holds, if it ain't broke....
The Rodney King statement is flat out wrong. The laws on the books say you can record public places on videotape, but you can not retain copies of audio. The person who recorded it would have been perfectly allowed to record the incident, just as long as what they were saying wasn't audible.
Notice: This encounter is being videotaped for quality control purposes. Closed Captioning supplied by "the purpitrator."
I think the real problem would not be the 10,000 sites and nothing's on problem but more the fact that the web (we're not seriously considering content charges on routers are we?) serves a fundamentaly different purpose than TV. TV is not a content on demand medium. Thus, it's not terribly useful for much other than entertainment. The web contains a wealth of information that, without the free content model, will die out. The reason for this death is not that people are unwilling to pay to have the data. On the contrary, numerous specilized data services have proven that's not the case. The problem is that the internet is poorly cataloged (yes, even by Google) and has no journalistic responcibility for providing accurate information. I am willing to pay for the data I want when I want it. I am not willing to pay for the privilage of searching your site to discover that you don't have what I'm looking for. That's like (pardon the poor analogy) a cover charge for WalMart.
It is absurd that people take so lightly the idea of shaving off a couple of percent of GDP; are so quick to sacrifice the livlihood of their fellow man
And I find it absurd that so many here assume the dire consequences of Global Warming will occur in what sounds like a half an hour. Global Warming, while rapid on a geological time scale, is slow as toast on ours. The Netherlands are not going to vanish one day under a massive tidal wave nor are you going to wake up one morning and find that New Orleans has washed away into the sea while you listen to reports that Germany has turned into a desert overnight. These changes will happen slowly. Sure, there will be major disturbances. Huricanes will become more frequent, that sort of thing, but we're not talking about an apocolypse here, millions of people are not going to die.
Now, what Global Warming is going to do is completely ruin our infrastructure. Flooding and climactic alterations are going to make those irrigation systems in the midwest pretty pointless. The Netherlands population will probably survive (joining the Hebrews as a disporia people) but much of the industrial infrastructure of the country is going to be, pardon the pun, all washed up.
Action against global warming now is not a humanitarian thing. You can pitch it that way if you want, if you're dumb enough to assume that corporate America gives more of a damn about innocent lives then it's own net earnings. The upshot of all this is that global warming has the potential to cost a large number of companies a completely insane quantity of money. The only ones who don't stand to loose their shirts are the oil companies. At least not immediately. Of course, after all this happens I imagine oil sales aren't going to do so well. That's probably why they're pushing consumption now, before the tide (pun intended) turns against them.
I'm still trying to figgure out how this matters.... I mean, these are Tiawanese companies right? I wasn't aware that the PRC and the ROC were on speaking terms. Tiawan is the place we were considering selling the new AEGIS cruisers to right? The 7th fleet is parked off their coast right? It is there to defend Tiawan from the PRC? This is confusing.
My understanding of the situation (flawed though it may be) is this. The entire point of these background clients is to use a small amount of bandwidth at long intervals and to use only unused processor cycles to preform calculations. Now then... if we assume this to be the case (if I'm wrong on this please ignore the rest of this comment) then the defendant has not used any significant amount of bandwidth that the prosecutor wasn't allready paying for anyhow (broadband like this is a flat charge, not by the bit right?) and he's not taking processor cycles away from anything else right? So, really, how can they claim any monitary damages? It seems to me that this can be equated with raiding the shredder waste bins for paper scraps for making paper mache or something.
Does this mean we can start to look forward to the death of the Hert as a "measure" of chip speed? Since the ability of a chip to spin off quantum processes rather than vibrate will become it's dominant characteristic I'm thinking we might start to see chips measured by a different benchmark...
Not that Hertz are really that terribly usefull or anything.... but they do give an idea, however vauge. Any thoughts on what new buzzword we'll be dealing with?
Yes, and then if you feed it the improbibility ratio of a truely infinitely quantum processor you can create that out of thin air. You'll win the award for amazing cleverness and probably get lynched by all the other CS geeks who finaly realise that the one thing they can't stand is a smartass.
It's posts like this that make me want to cry. You sir, have completely missed the point. The point is not that/.['s] editors... think its a crime... for companies to restrict how you connect but that this move by napster effectivly bans all Linux users because all Linux clients for the service are unofficial ones. Consequently,/. has chosen to post this article informing its heavily Linux dependent userbase of this development.
And frankly, there are a large number of people in Cal. complaining about how they receive electricity, and a large number in Florida who were (a few months ago) complaining about how they received water (or the lack there of).
Last point. No one said it was -wrong-. Many people called it stupid, irritating, obnoxious, and even counter productive. No it's not illegal. But it certainly alienates a large portion of their potential user base... that would make it unwise.
See, you guys need to think more broadly. There are ways of geneticly engineering crops that don't involve turing them into biological toxin factories. Who ever decided that pestiside production was a beneficial trait for plants to have needs to have his head examined. At least as far as plants I'm planing on eating goes.
Now then, on to genetic engineering. First off let me point out that human beings have been geneticly engineering plants for something like 100,000 years. Of course, we didn't always do it with viruses and protein introduction. Example. Almonds. Ever eaten a handfull of wild almonds? I doubt it. Three wild almonds have enought cyanide to drop a 200lb man in less than an hour. Of course, almonds are available in little baggies in damn near ever supermarket. Why? Because humans have selected the almond trees that don't kill us, and planted and nurtured those trees. We've created a new strain of almond that dosn't produce deadly nerve toxins.
It's true of almost everything you eat. Oranges have thicker peals to keep them from bruising in shipping. Corn is a notable one. Did you know that corn, in it's natural state has an ear no longer than 2 inches? That it's almost inedible and typicaly has only one ear per stalk?
Genetic engineering is going to happen. We can't avoid it. Even our preferences as to what constitutes a "good" crop will result in genetic drift. The problem is that now that we're engineering these things more directly we're trying to build in more direct defences against the things that damage the crops. This is a mistake. The answer is passive defences. Don't have the corn produce pesticides, but make the husk harder for bugs to tunnel through. Make the stalk tougher.
Not that it really matters. We'll be living on blue green algae in a few more centuries anyway.
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Re:Red Hat remains in red: Posts $27.6M net loss
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Red Hat In The Black
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· Score: 5
Goodwill dosn't quite work like that but ok. Say company X buys company Y for $5.0x10^9. Now, if we sit down and count all of company Y's assets and they come up to be, say, $3.6x10^9 the remainder is something called "goodwill." These are intangable assets. Things like, perhaps, market share, location, reputation. In short, things that no company can go out and buy, and thus do not have a dollar value of their own. Now the thing is, goodwill, must, under GAAP (Generaly Accecpted Accounting Principles) be ammortized off over a period not to exceed 40 years. Because it's always nice to have assets sticking around most companies use 40 years as their ammortization period.
So yes, ammortization of old expenses, especialy those having to do with the depreciation of goodwill is going to play a huge roll in this.
When we say a company is "in the red" or "in the black" the meaning differs depending on the period we are talking about. If we're refering to a year in general, the statement usualy refers to the income statement and or the statement of cash flows. The key portion of this is to ballance Revenue against COGS (cost of good sold). For Red Hat, COGS will include R&D work and will thus be very high. Revenue from goods sold will of course be close to zero due to the nature of open source. This leaves Red Hat makign it's money from Tech support and subscription servies as was so aptly pointed out above. Here's the other key, R&D expenses can be ammortized as well by a sufficiently creative accountant. Afterall, if this R&D is going to benefit the company over the next 10 years, then the expensce of that research can be spread out over those 10 years.
What this amounts to is this. We rather need a good solid stock holders report from RHAT to pour over until we can get some answers. Never trust what a company claims to the media, trust what it is required by law to report to the IRS. (And not even that in some cases)
I think you're missing the point in many ways. Episode I is not a "bad movie" because it dosn't measure up to the other SW films, and it's not a bad movie because it lacks plot. The fundamental problem with the film is not that it fails to measure up to IV V and VI, but that it simply is not intended as a continuation or a precurser to the trilogy. Now, before you all tell me I'm a nimrod for writing this, let me explain.
Find the origional trilogy in a video store. See what it's listed under. Most places will list it under Sci-Fi, but smaller stores that lack such a section will list it as an action film. Now here's the kicker. Phantom Menace isn't listed as a Sci-Fi film. It clearly is, but it's listed under children's films.
Fans aren't angry simply because the film was bad. Bad films happen. Life goes on. Fans were angry because so much of Episode I was specificly tailored to spawn marketable products. Firstly, the targeting of the film. By targeting the film to young audiances you vastly increase merchandising options. When did you last see a Shawshank Redemption lunch box? Secondly, Lucas allowed the film to focus in the wrong place. Episode I is about the origions of Anakin Skywalker. It's not about Qui Gon Jin, it's not about Jar Jar Binks. These things do not matter in the long run. These characters are clearly transitory in nature, yet Lucas blows them up, larger even than the roles of the coterie from IV V and VI, thus overshadowing Anakin. Now I'm not saying that Anakin was played by an Oscar winner here, but again, how many Anakin action figures were sold in comparison to Jar Jar or Qui Gon Jin figures? Anakin's not as marketable a character is Episode I, so he gets downplayed. You pointed out that a crucial scene was cut. This is a perfect example of this kind of market pandering.
So that's my point. I don't think fans were upset that Episode I was a bad movie. It had a good plot, not great, but not bad either. It had great visuals. It lacked some of the great one liners that the rest of the trilogy is known for, but at least half of those are famous for their utter wretchedness. The problem was that Episode I was a sell out. It was done with a big budget, for a massive debut, and a huge marketing gig afterwards. No more drive buys on a block of wood covered with model battleship parts here, this is corporate america at work. And that's why the fans feel betrayed.
There are few things a civilian can buy that are more dangerous than an arcwelder. Perhaps you mean, "Keep the power reasonable and these things will be a lot safer than, say, oh I don't know, a screwdriver.
I think the key here is the policy./. is getting upset, not because the TVA is saying "no unapproved software" but because they are saying "no SETI@Home." Unapproved software doesn't seem to enter into it. And therein lies the problem. The saying goes that a chain is only as secure as its weekest link. If you ban SETI@Home because it's "some kind of risk" but don't bother to check and get rid of every other unapproved peice of software you're running, the whole thing is for naught. Furthermore, not only have you failed to protect your system, you've also managed to annoy and irritate your users (and from what I can tell a number of/.ers) for what is ultimately no realizeable gain.
In short, what's the point in being a stickler for security on one front if you let it slide everywhere else?
Delta-V in the vertical direction simply didn't exist for anything heavier than air 100 years ago (at least not for any sustained period). 100 years is a long time.
On a related note, Delta-V is very cheep when you're allready on the asteroid. See R.A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for examples of creative use of Earth's gravity well. I used to have figgures for this, but basicly it boils down to this. Shipping anything to earth from space (not from another planet surface) is the cheepest air freight you'll ever pay. The answer is the rail gun or celonoid cannon (different designs, same basic end). This page would have you belive one could construct a device at home capable of reaching escape velocity.
Through a bizarre series of bad puns you seem to have made your opponents argument for him. He asserts that gold is untraceable. You retort with...
Untracable? Who cares. Cash is not traceable EITHER.
But I think we can establish that cash carries serial numbers. Serial numbers, while a pain in the ass to deal with, make cash traceable. At least in small quantity. Gold though, as you said, is more liquid than stock. Which is true is both sences of the word. Yes, gold is closer to M1 than stock, but it's also a meltable metal, which means that short of isotopic taging, it's very hard to trace because you can melt it down! Try doing that to a dollar bill.
Normaly I'd let this slide. But why is someone who's using a racial slur and a media entrenched view of a foreign culture complaining about moral lackings?
I don't think I should have to point out that sexual themes in Japanese media are in high demand in the United States. Nor should I have to point out that violence, bigotry, and a lust for judgemental puritanism more than compensates for this nations so called moral stance on sexual issues.
In reguards to the Japanese conduct in the second world war I need only point out that the victors write the history books. While the Japanese did conduct horrible bio-warfare experiments in unit 731 the United States kept knowledge of unit 731 secret for more then 40 years after the war so it's research could be used in US biowarfare technology. The Japanese tortured and killed American POWs while we stuffed the nozels of our flamethrowers into their concrete bunkers and burned them out. And while Japanese troops burned tortured and raped the city of Nanking to the ground the United States skipped the "raped" step and simply burned and tortured the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagisaki with nuclear weapons and powerfull blasts of radiation that are still causing painfull deaths to rare cancers today.
Beware, the moral highground is a tretcherous slope and footing can be very unstable.
I wouldn't say that the Japanese have no value of the individual. Rather, the Japanese value traits in the individual that we find alien. Tranquility, docility, conformity. Many portions of Japanese culture focus on the individual to an overwhelming extent. Dating back to the Tokugawa period we have traditional Samuri combat and Kendo. Kendo is primarily a one on one sword fighting art, concentrating on a single opponent and the individual contest of skill. In more modern times Sumo wrestling pits the skills of two enormous individuals against each other.
Japanese conduct in WWII, while inexcuseable, is explainable. Bushido, or the warrior way, dictated that the greatest service a warrior could render his country was his death (kind of a loosing strategy there if you ask me). Surrender was unaccecptable, this is easily proven by looking at the surrender rates of Japanese vs American troops in the war. The Japanese surrendered something like 1 out of 20 casualties (killed or captured for this statistic). The US surrendered more like 12 in 20.
Here's where it gets weird. The Bushido considered the sword the soul of the samuri. Japanese troops c. 1940 had this weird idea that they were 14th century samuri. Thus, surrender (and the giving up of the sword/gun/whatever) was the loss of the soul. The POW was less then a person. Many in Japan would consider death, even an insanely painfull one preferable to capture (see hari-kari, the ritual suicide of the shamed samuri).
This goes a long way to explaining (not excusing) the conduct of the Japanese toward Allied POWs. Now we'll move on to Korea.
Don't tell the Japanese this, it still gets many of them rather pissed off, but the Koreans are ethnicly very close to the Japanese. This is because of Japanese interaction, possession of, occupation of the Korean peninsula over the centuries. Now, for some reason I've never quite understood, the Japanese have developed some great and personal hatred of the Koreans. Perhaps this has to do with the idea of the "Purity of the Japanese Race" (a popular notion c. 1931) or maybe it's just blind nationalism. Who knows? Point being that Korea is rarely a good example of Japanese war conduct. It's like saying that all US foreign policy during the Cold War was identical to US foreign policy toward communist nations.
Anyway, hope that helps. Just wanted to clear up a few points with the above post.
Well, arguably he's entitled to a cut from the website. And even if that dosn't come through his diary is a national best seller. I'd assume he gets the royalties on that.
This is a huge bone of contention on many campuses: Professor A and B want the Journal of Obscure Latvian Chemistry at $2000/year, but C and D would rather have Acta Trivia at $2500/year. Academic budgets aren't much- what do you do?
To say nothing of inter colegiate competition. I'm at the University of Virginia, my fiancee is at Virginia Tech. Because our schools co-operate Tech's liberal arts departments rely heavily on UVA's archives. UVA's engineering school works closely with VA Tech for scientific journals. While UVA and Tech are rivals in sports and have been for some time this rivalry is extending more and more into academics. As the lines of communication break down between the universities a lot of this data is becoming unavailable to students who need it.
Ultimately this could and should be fixed by placing all publicly funded research in the public domain (with all appropriate restrictions as to who gets credit for it of course). I just don't see that happening. Shame really.
Religious freedom does not involve government participation in that freedom. The freedoms our Consitution gives the people are freedoms for the people not for the State (note that representitives of the State, though private citizens must be treated as "The State" so long as they are acting in that compacity).
Thus, a student is allowed to pray in public school. He/she may even ask other students to join him/her in prayer. A teacher (representitive of the State) may not ask a student to lead a prayer nor may he lead the class in prayer. Similarly, you are perfectly w/in your rights to bring a copy of the 10 commandments into a Courtroom. They probably don't want you to tape it to the wall, maintence dosn't like that. The judge shouldn't do that though, as he is a representitive of the state.
Aside from that I agree with your viewpoint. Paintball doesn't teach people to kill, it certainly dosn't teach them to commit school massacres. When was the last time you played paintball in a public school? Against people without paintball guns, who didn't know you were there or coming?
Video games are the same thing. I used to be damn good at Doom. Now I work at a camp in N. VA. and was down on the shooting sports course. They handed me a 12 gauge and starting flinging skeets in the air. I think I knicked one out of 12. Tells you how much Doom taught me, and they weren't even shooting back!
My only question is this. Theoreticly, at least, a 12 year old kid can't go see an R rated movie on his own. If acompanied by a parrent or guardian I think it's still allowed though. Is there any "allowed" system at software stores? Is a 12 year old kid actualy forbidden to buy an MA game title w/out his parrents? I'd definately encourage that sort of enforcement of the ratings system simply because it puts more control in the hands of the parrents.
Argh! Cell phone markets, hell, ALL electronics markets are cutting edge in Japan for one simple reason. Government / Buisness cooporation. Doesn't happen in the US, or rather, it happens, but in a different way.
Because of a relationship known in Poly-Si as the "Iron Triangle" the FCC is pretty much in the pocket (indirectly) of US manufacturers. Now, if you're a US phone manufacturer and you've got ties to the service market (Which I assume is the case) you don't want to have to provide any of the following at less then a totaly outragous price:
1.) High speed data
2.) Heavy internet integration
3.) Color
This is largly due to the insane cost of R&D (no, it dosn't carry over as well from Japan as you might think). As long as the American Public is willing to shell out insane quantities of money for the 10 year old technology you offer them, why bother burning money to keep the US market up to date?
In Japan, on the other hand, R&D budgets are heavily subsidized by the government. At least, they were all through the 1980s. Now, while this trend has suffered under pressures from the WTO, it does continue to a certain extent in the present. This artificialy lowered cost of development results in an explosion of innovations which are quickly adopted.
So why don't we do this in the States? Sociologists teach us that our American work ethos is decended from early Protestant teachings about the spiritualy redeaming value of work. Toil and labor was, in the early days of the Reformation, considered almost on par with prayer. The result of this trend (filtered though the centuries) is a unique desire in America to "do it on my own." Government help is intervention, especialy in reasearch and development is often seen as "cheeting" in America. Consequently American companies are denied that funding and the result is the technological discrepancy we see today.
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It annoys me to have to say this more than twice. Individuals don't get ICBMs. Individuals can't even launch ICBMs (long range especialy). These weapons don't fit on anything even remotely portable and they are very complex requiring an administrative staff. (Yes, SRBMs and MRBMS are a different matter, but the ABM system dosn't protect terribly well against those now does it?) Thus, we've eliminated the "one crazy kook" possibility.
Now lets turn our attention to the "rogue state." Assuming a rogue nation has only a few functional weapons on ICBMs they will do much better to smuggle these weapons into the US rather than fire missiles with the proverbial return address. Assuming the "Rational Actor" theory (a central tenant of international relations) this dismisses minor nuclear powers. Major nuclear powers will utilize a massive ICBM strike, but the ABM system is not designed to deal with this kind of a threat. It is thus also disguarded from the equation at the moment.
What this leaves us with is.... nothing. Small scale attacks will and MUST be carried out by a non-missile delivery system. Large scale attacks circumvent the ABM system. Thus, what's the point? The answer is that there is none. The ABM system is just an attempt to drum up another military spectre. G.W. and Mr Clinton learned well from the Regan years, and this is a page right out of President Regan's book "Evil Empires: How to fool the American People into a blind Panic in 12 easy steps."
Someone earlier equated this to a Maginoit line. they are 100% correct. This is a very formidable looking defence with no real value. Hopefully this system will not be showen to be ineffective in the same manner as the Maginoit line... but only history will tell. I for one am staking a healthy sum of money on the assumption that I will see nuclear terrorism rear its ugly head sometime within my lifetime. I just hope I'm not anywhere near it when it happens.
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Except for the nasty little fact that a nation willing to send a THERMONUCLEAR WEAPON our way on the end of a missile will be more than willing to smuggle one into the nation to core out new york. So retailiation would still come. The world would be no safer.
Also, nuclear weapons have a certain stigma to them. Russia would have distanced herself rather rapidly from an Iraq that had used nuclear weapons. Aliances tend to break down when the nucelar trump card is played.
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Because the nature of an ABM system does not eliminate the threat entirely, just the most expensive method of delivering it. The Kurds are never going to launch a missile at anyone because they'll never have a missile to launch. ICBMs require infrastructure. Nations launch these things, perhaps an unususaly well established and entrenched terrorist group. Not disorganized disidents. Point being that an ABM system forces your enemy to rely on a method of delivery that is thousands of times more difficult to track. If someone fires an ICBM at us we know who did it and can retaliate. If they know we have an ABM system they won't fire that ICBM, they'll truck it into the country or detonate the nuke in a major harbor. Same result to us, but no retaliation is possible as we have no idea where it came from.
Point being, and ABM system is a waste of money. It will not remove a threat from a "rogue nation" simply force them to use a more underhanded system of delivery. ABM systems are only usefull if they can stop a large scale attack, simply because missiles are the only practical solution to the problem of how to bombard an enemy with nukes on a vast scale. ABM systems are ineffective for stoping nuclear terrorism because one bomb is just as easily delivered by boat as it is by missile, perhaps more easily.
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No, missile defense is not a catch all, stop all kinds of nasties. It does make things more difficult for a North Korea or Iraq to just lob a missile at the US with no more than a few minutes warning, and no defense for it. The attacker is forced to get up close and personal, on US turf.
Yea... but: One major advantage/disadvantage of a missile based attack is accountability. The United States maintains an extensive network of launch detection satelites to identify and track incoming ICBMs. Thus, a missile attack on the US, while rather unfortunate for those in the targeted city, is a clear act of war. It is detered by the fact that we're going to reduce your entire nation to a smokeing hole in the ground.
With a anti-ballistic missle shield in place missile attacks (at least small ones) become a thing of the past. The attacker must smuggle the weapon into range. Now, there's tons of ways to do this. If you want to carry the damn thing (low tech solution) you have to land it on part of the thousands of miles of undefended coast land in the US and Canada and then truck it to your destination, possibly crossing the Canadian boarder (which incidently is the longest undefended boarder in the world). Of course, simply putting a nuke on a passanger liner and sailing it into NY harbor would work about a million times better. To say nothing of a short range missile delivery system fired from a boat in international waters.
The fundamental fact of it is that a ABM system makes the world LESS stable rather than more stable. Weapons technology has progressed to the point that a suitcase full of small pox can cause just as much havoc as the "Nuclear Trump Card." The international mindset still seems to rate nukes as the best suit to hold though, and ICBMs as the best way to deliver them. As long as that mindset prevails the ballance of mutual terror keeps the world a safe place to live. ABMs threaten that order, an order the United States has happily dominated for 50 years. The addage holds, if it ain't broke....
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The Rodney King statement is flat out wrong. The laws on the books say you can record public places on videotape, but you can not retain copies of audio. The person who recorded it would have been perfectly allowed to record the incident, just as long as what they were saying wasn't audible.
Notice: This encounter is being videotaped for quality control purposes. Closed Captioning supplied by "the purpitrator."
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I think the real problem would not be the 10,000 sites and nothing's on problem but more the fact that the web (we're not seriously considering content charges on routers are we?) serves a fundamentaly different purpose than TV. TV is not a content on demand medium. Thus, it's not terribly useful for much other than entertainment. The web contains a wealth of information that, without the free content model, will die out. The reason for this death is not that people are unwilling to pay to have the data. On the contrary, numerous specilized data services have proven that's not the case. The problem is that the internet is poorly cataloged (yes, even by Google) and has no journalistic responcibility for providing accurate information. I am willing to pay for the data I want when I want it. I am not willing to pay for the privilage of searching your site to discover that you don't have what I'm looking for. That's like (pardon the poor analogy) a cover charge for WalMart.
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It is absurd that people take so lightly the idea of shaving off a couple of percent of GDP; are so quick to sacrifice the livlihood of their fellow man
And I find it absurd that so many here assume the dire consequences of Global Warming will occur in what sounds like a half an hour. Global Warming, while rapid on a geological time scale, is slow as toast on ours. The Netherlands are not going to vanish one day under a massive tidal wave nor are you going to wake up one morning and find that New Orleans has washed away into the sea while you listen to reports that Germany has turned into a desert overnight. These changes will happen slowly. Sure, there will be major disturbances. Huricanes will become more frequent, that sort of thing, but we're not talking about an apocolypse here, millions of people are not going to die.
Now, what Global Warming is going to do is completely ruin our infrastructure. Flooding and climactic alterations are going to make those irrigation systems in the midwest pretty pointless. The Netherlands population will probably survive (joining the Hebrews as a disporia people) but much of the industrial infrastructure of the country is going to be, pardon the pun, all washed up.
Action against global warming now is not a humanitarian thing. You can pitch it that way if you want, if you're dumb enough to assume that corporate America gives more of a damn about innocent lives then it's own net earnings. The upshot of all this is that global warming has the potential to cost a large number of companies a completely insane quantity of money. The only ones who don't stand to loose their shirts are the oil companies. At least not immediately. Of course, after all this happens I imagine oil sales aren't going to do so well. That's probably why they're pushing consumption now, before the tide (pun intended) turns against them.
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I'm still trying to figgure out how this matters.... I mean, these are Tiawanese companies right? I wasn't aware that the PRC and the ROC were on speaking terms. Tiawan is the place we were considering selling the new AEGIS cruisers to right? The 7th fleet is parked off their coast right? It is there to defend Tiawan from the PRC? This is confusing.
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My understanding of the situation (flawed though it may be) is this. The entire point of these background clients is to use a small amount of bandwidth at long intervals and to use only unused processor cycles to preform calculations. Now then... if we assume this to be the case (if I'm wrong on this please ignore the rest of this comment) then the defendant has not used any significant amount of bandwidth that the prosecutor wasn't allready paying for anyhow (broadband like this is a flat charge, not by the bit right?) and he's not taking processor cycles away from anything else right? So, really, how can they claim any monitary damages? It seems to me that this can be equated with raiding the shredder waste bins for paper scraps for making paper mache or something.
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Does this mean we can start to look forward to the death of the Hert as a "measure" of chip speed? Since the ability of a chip to spin off quantum processes rather than vibrate will become it's dominant characteristic I'm thinking we might start to see chips measured by a different benchmark...
Not that Hertz are really that terribly usefull or anything.... but they do give an idea, however vauge. Any thoughts on what new buzzword we'll be dealing with?
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Yes, and then if you feed it the improbibility ratio of a truely infinitely quantum processor you can create that out of thin air. You'll win the award for amazing cleverness and probably get lynched by all the other CS geeks who finaly realise that the one thing they can't stand is a smartass.
Or is that tea?
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It's posts like this that make me want to cry. You sir, have completely missed the point. The point is not that /.['s] editors... think its a crime... for companies to restrict how you connect but that this move by napster effectivly bans all Linux users because all Linux clients for the service are unofficial ones. Consequently, /. has chosen to post this article informing its heavily Linux dependent userbase of this development.
And frankly, there are a large number of people in Cal. complaining about how they receive electricity, and a large number in Florida who were (a few months ago) complaining about how they received water (or the lack there of).
Last point. No one said it was -wrong-. Many people called it stupid, irritating, obnoxious, and even counter productive. No it's not illegal. But it certainly alienates a large portion of their potential user base... that would make it unwise.
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See, you guys need to think more broadly. There are ways of geneticly engineering crops that don't involve turing them into biological toxin factories. Who ever decided that pestiside production was a beneficial trait for plants to have needs to have his head examined. At least as far as plants I'm planing on eating goes.
Now then, on to genetic engineering. First off let me point out that human beings have been geneticly engineering plants for something like 100,000 years. Of course, we didn't always do it with viruses and protein introduction. Example. Almonds. Ever eaten a handfull of wild almonds? I doubt it. Three wild almonds have enought cyanide to drop a 200lb man in less than an hour. Of course, almonds are available in little baggies in damn near ever supermarket. Why? Because humans have selected the almond trees that don't kill us, and planted and nurtured those trees. We've created a new strain of almond that dosn't produce deadly nerve toxins.
It's true of almost everything you eat. Oranges have thicker peals to keep them from bruising in shipping. Corn is a notable one. Did you know that corn, in it's natural state has an ear no longer than 2 inches? That it's almost inedible and typicaly has only one ear per stalk?
Genetic engineering is going to happen. We can't avoid it. Even our preferences as to what constitutes a "good" crop will result in genetic drift. The problem is that now that we're engineering these things more directly we're trying to build in more direct defences against the things that damage the crops. This is a mistake. The answer is passive defences. Don't have the corn produce pesticides, but make the husk harder for bugs to tunnel through. Make the stalk tougher.
Not that it really matters. We'll be living on blue green algae in a few more centuries anyway.
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Goodwill dosn't quite work like that but ok. Say company X buys company Y for $5.0x10^9. Now, if we sit down and count all of company Y's assets and they come up to be, say, $3.6x10^9 the remainder is something called "goodwill." These are intangable assets. Things like, perhaps, market share, location, reputation. In short, things that no company can go out and buy, and thus do not have a dollar value of their own. Now the thing is, goodwill, must, under GAAP (Generaly Accecpted Accounting Principles) be ammortized off over a period not to exceed 40 years. Because it's always nice to have assets sticking around most companies use 40 years as their ammortization period.
So yes, ammortization of old expenses, especialy those having to do with the depreciation of goodwill is going to play a huge roll in this.
When we say a company is "in the red" or "in the black" the meaning differs depending on the period we are talking about. If we're refering to a year in general, the statement usualy refers to the income statement and or the statement of cash flows. The key portion of this is to ballance Revenue against COGS (cost of good sold). For Red Hat, COGS will include R&D work and will thus be very high. Revenue from goods sold will of course be close to zero due to the nature of open source. This leaves Red Hat makign it's money from Tech support and subscription servies as was so aptly pointed out above. Here's the other key, R&D expenses can be ammortized as well by a sufficiently creative accountant. Afterall, if this R&D is going to benefit the company over the next 10 years, then the expensce of that research can be spread out over those 10 years.
What this amounts to is this. We rather need a good solid stock holders report from RHAT to pour over until we can get some answers. Never trust what a company claims to the media, trust what it is required by law to report to the IRS. (And not even that in some cases)
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I think you're missing the point in many ways. Episode I is not a "bad movie" because it dosn't measure up to the other SW films, and it's not a bad movie because it lacks plot. The fundamental problem with the film is not that it fails to measure up to IV V and VI, but that it simply is not intended as a continuation or a precurser to the trilogy. Now, before you all tell me I'm a nimrod for writing this, let me explain.
Find the origional trilogy in a video store. See what it's listed under. Most places will list it under Sci-Fi, but smaller stores that lack such a section will list it as an action film. Now here's the kicker. Phantom Menace isn't listed as a Sci-Fi film. It clearly is, but it's listed under children's films.
Fans aren't angry simply because the film was bad. Bad films happen. Life goes on. Fans were angry because so much of Episode I was specificly tailored to spawn marketable products. Firstly, the targeting of the film. By targeting the film to young audiances you vastly increase merchandising options. When did you last see a Shawshank Redemption lunch box? Secondly, Lucas allowed the film to focus in the wrong place. Episode I is about the origions of Anakin Skywalker. It's not about Qui Gon Jin, it's not about Jar Jar Binks. These things do not matter in the long run. These characters are clearly transitory in nature, yet Lucas blows them up, larger even than the roles of the coterie from IV V and VI, thus overshadowing Anakin. Now I'm not saying that Anakin was played by an Oscar winner here, but again, how many Anakin action figures were sold in comparison to Jar Jar or Qui Gon Jin figures? Anakin's not as marketable a character is Episode I, so he gets downplayed. You pointed out that a crucial scene was cut. This is a perfect example of this kind of market pandering.
So that's my point. I don't think fans were upset that Episode I was a bad movie. It had a good plot, not great, but not bad either. It had great visuals. It lacked some of the great one liners that the rest of the trilogy is known for, but at least half of those are famous for their utter wretchedness. The problem was that Episode I was a sell out. It was done with a big budget, for a massive debut, and a huge marketing gig afterwards. No more drive buys on a block of wood covered with model battleship parts here, this is corporate america at work. And that's why the fans feel betrayed.
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There are few things a civilian can buy that are more dangerous than an arcwelder. Perhaps you mean, "Keep the power reasonable and these things will be a lot safer than, say, oh I don't know, a screwdriver.
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I think the key here is the policy. /. is getting upset, not because the TVA is saying "no unapproved software" but because they are saying "no SETI@Home." Unapproved software doesn't seem to enter into it. And therein lies the problem. The saying goes that a chain is only as secure as its weekest link. If you ban SETI@Home because it's "some kind of risk" but don't bother to check and get rid of every other unapproved peice of software you're running, the whole thing is for naught. Furthermore, not only have you failed to protect your system, you've also managed to annoy and irritate your users (and from what I can tell a number of /.ers) for what is ultimately no realizeable gain.
In short, what's the point in being a stickler for security on one front if you let it slide everywhere else?
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Delta-V in the vertical direction simply didn't exist for anything heavier than air 100 years ago (at least not for any sustained period). 100 years is a long time.
On a related note, Delta-V is very cheep when you're allready on the asteroid. See R.A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress for examples of creative use of Earth's gravity well. I used to have figgures for this, but basicly it boils down to this. Shipping anything to earth from space (not from another planet surface) is the cheepest air freight you'll ever pay. The answer is the rail gun or celonoid cannon (different designs, same basic end). This page would have you belive one could construct a device at home capable of reaching escape velocity.
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Through a bizarre series of bad puns you seem to have made your opponents argument for him. He asserts that gold is untraceable. You retort with...
Untracable? Who cares. Cash is not traceable EITHER.
But I think we can establish that cash carries serial numbers. Serial numbers, while a pain in the ass to deal with, make cash traceable. At least in small quantity. Gold though, as you said, is more liquid than stock. Which is true is both sences of the word. Yes, gold is closer to M1 than stock, but it's also a meltable metal, which means that short of isotopic taging, it's very hard to trace because you can melt it down! Try doing that to a dollar bill.
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Normaly I'd let this slide. But why is someone who's using a racial slur and a media entrenched view of a foreign culture complaining about moral lackings?
I don't think I should have to point out that sexual themes in Japanese media are in high demand in the United States. Nor should I have to point out that violence, bigotry, and a lust for judgemental puritanism more than compensates for this nations so called moral stance on sexual issues.
In reguards to the Japanese conduct in the second world war I need only point out that the victors write the history books. While the Japanese did conduct horrible bio-warfare experiments in unit 731 the United States kept knowledge of unit 731 secret for more then 40 years after the war so it's research could be used in US biowarfare technology. The Japanese tortured and killed American POWs while we stuffed the nozels of our flamethrowers into their concrete bunkers and burned them out. And while Japanese troops burned tortured and raped the city of Nanking to the ground the United States skipped the "raped" step and simply burned and tortured the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagisaki with nuclear weapons and powerfull blasts of radiation that are still causing painfull deaths to rare cancers today.
Beware, the moral highground is a tretcherous slope and footing can be very unstable.
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I wouldn't say that the Japanese have no value of the individual. Rather, the Japanese value traits in the individual that we find alien. Tranquility, docility, conformity. Many portions of Japanese culture focus on the individual to an overwhelming extent. Dating back to the Tokugawa period we have traditional Samuri combat and Kendo. Kendo is primarily a one on one sword fighting art, concentrating on a single opponent and the individual contest of skill. In more modern times Sumo wrestling pits the skills of two enormous individuals against each other.
Japanese conduct in WWII, while inexcuseable, is explainable. Bushido, or the warrior way, dictated that the greatest service a warrior could render his country was his death (kind of a loosing strategy there if you ask me). Surrender was unaccecptable, this is easily proven by looking at the surrender rates of Japanese vs American troops in the war. The Japanese surrendered something like 1 out of 20 casualties (killed or captured for this statistic). The US surrendered more like 12 in 20.
Here's where it gets weird. The Bushido considered the sword the soul of the samuri. Japanese troops c. 1940 had this weird idea that they were 14th century samuri. Thus, surrender (and the giving up of the sword/gun/whatever) was the loss of the soul. The POW was less then a person. Many in Japan would consider death, even an insanely painfull one preferable to capture (see hari-kari, the ritual suicide of the shamed samuri).
This goes a long way to explaining (not excusing) the conduct of the Japanese toward Allied POWs. Now we'll move on to Korea.
Don't tell the Japanese this, it still gets many of them rather pissed off, but the Koreans are ethnicly very close to the Japanese. This is because of Japanese interaction, possession of, occupation of the Korean peninsula over the centuries. Now, for some reason I've never quite understood, the Japanese have developed some great and personal hatred of the Koreans. Perhaps this has to do with the idea of the "Purity of the Japanese Race" (a popular notion c. 1931) or maybe it's just blind nationalism. Who knows? Point being that Korea is rarely a good example of Japanese war conduct. It's like saying that all US foreign policy during the Cold War was identical to US foreign policy toward communist nations.
Anyway, hope that helps. Just wanted to clear up a few points with the above post.
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Well, arguably he's entitled to a cut from the website. And even if that dosn't come through his diary is a national best seller. I'd assume he gets the royalties on that.
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This is a huge bone of contention on many campuses: Professor A and B want the Journal of Obscure Latvian Chemistry at $2000/year, but C and D would rather have Acta Trivia at $2500/year. Academic budgets aren't much- what do you do?
To say nothing of inter colegiate competition. I'm at the University of Virginia, my fiancee is at Virginia Tech. Because our schools co-operate Tech's liberal arts departments rely heavily on UVA's archives. UVA's engineering school works closely with VA Tech for scientific journals. While UVA and Tech are rivals in sports and have been for some time this rivalry is extending more and more into academics. As the lines of communication break down between the universities a lot of this data is becoming unavailable to students who need it.
Ultimately this could and should be fixed by placing all publicly funded research in the public domain (with all appropriate restrictions as to who gets credit for it of course). I just don't see that happening. Shame really.
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Religious freedom does not involve government participation in that freedom. The freedoms our Consitution gives the people are freedoms for the people not for the State (note that representitives of the State, though private citizens must be treated as "The State" so long as they are acting in that compacity).
Thus, a student is allowed to pray in public school. He/she may even ask other students to join him/her in prayer. A teacher (representitive of the State) may not ask a student to lead a prayer nor may he lead the class in prayer. Similarly, you are perfectly w/in your rights to bring a copy of the 10 commandments into a Courtroom. They probably don't want you to tape it to the wall, maintence dosn't like that. The judge shouldn't do that though, as he is a representitive of the state.
Aside from that I agree with your viewpoint. Paintball doesn't teach people to kill, it certainly dosn't teach them to commit school massacres. When was the last time you played paintball in a public school? Against people without paintball guns, who didn't know you were there or coming?
Video games are the same thing. I used to be damn good at Doom. Now I work at a camp in N. VA. and was down on the shooting sports course. They handed me a 12 gauge and starting flinging skeets in the air. I think I knicked one out of 12. Tells you how much Doom taught me, and they weren't even shooting back!
My only question is this. Theoreticly, at least, a 12 year old kid can't go see an R rated movie on his own. If acompanied by a parrent or guardian I think it's still allowed though. Is there any "allowed" system at software stores? Is a 12 year old kid actualy forbidden to buy an MA game title w/out his parrents? I'd definately encourage that sort of enforcement of the ratings system simply because it puts more control in the hands of the parrents.
My two cents....
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Argh! Cell phone markets, hell, ALL electronics markets are cutting edge in Japan for one simple reason. Government / Buisness cooporation. Doesn't happen in the US, or rather, it happens, but in a different way.
Because of a relationship known in Poly-Si as the "Iron Triangle" the FCC is pretty much in the pocket (indirectly) of US manufacturers. Now, if you're a US phone manufacturer and you've got ties to the service market (Which I assume is the case) you don't want to have to provide any of the following at less then a totaly outragous price:
1.) High speed data
2.) Heavy internet integration
3.) Color
This is largly due to the insane cost of R&D (no, it dosn't carry over as well from Japan as you might think). As long as the American Public is willing to shell out insane quantities of money for the 10 year old technology you offer them, why bother burning money to keep the US market up to date?
In Japan, on the other hand, R&D budgets are heavily subsidized by the government. At least, they were all through the 1980s. Now, while this trend has suffered under pressures from the WTO, it does continue to a certain extent in the present. This artificialy lowered cost of development results in an explosion of innovations which are quickly adopted.
So why don't we do this in the States? Sociologists teach us that our American work ethos is decended from early Protestant teachings about the spiritualy redeaming value of work. Toil and labor was, in the early days of the Reformation, considered almost on par with prayer. The result of this trend (filtered though the centuries) is a unique desire in America to "do it on my own." Government help is intervention, especialy in reasearch and development is often seen as "cheeting" in America. Consequently American companies are denied that funding and the result is the technological discrepancy we see today.
But I could be completely wrong.
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