You would have to be incredibly lucky to hit precisely in the same place twice. Most anti-tank weapons, such as the RPG, LAW, etc. all have to travel a certain distance to arm so they don't detonate too close to the firer and kill the guy who launched it.
Then the RPG is an unguided weapon and has very poor accuracy. Tanks are pretty big, so you can get away with this and have acceptable results. Even with ATGW (Anti-tank guided weapons), you are very very unlikely to hit the same place twice. Also, in combat you don't have the luxury of trying to make these precision shots except perhaps in the first two seconds after you spring an ambush. Then that tank will slew around and start blasting in the direction they detected the attack coming from and you are toast. Or the tank behind it will get you. They usually travel in mutually supporting formations.
Your "sacrificial missile" is already in use to defeat reactive armor. The US makes the TOW-2, and most other countries have a very similar design to defeat reactive armor. It's two shaped charges stacked together in a way that the first one detonates the explosive panel of the reactive armor and the second cuts through the armor like normal.
Zapping the occupants of the tank won't work either. The inside it insolated from the armor, which is why this works in the first place. Your cable had better be pretty strong too, since an M1 Abrams has 1500 hp and is 70+ tons (good momentum).
The welding action you talk about in the last paragraph would have to have some pretty incredible power and would likely fry everyone around for quite a distance.
Yes you can get killed by friendly fire. The offender is penalized, and you can get blacklisted (your character ends up in prison) if you are a repeat offender.
The laws of the state are based on the laws of religion, like it or not, and not the other way around. Our ethics and morals determine laws, and those are often expressed in laws.
On a purely secular, pragmatic note, the laws defining marriage, particularly financial benefits, are there for the protection of women under the legacy roles. It's there to care for women who grew up in another era, and others who still chose to live that way. You cannot suddenly expect some old WWII era widow to suddenly jump up and get a job after you cancel all her benefits, and I think it is wrong to expect a same sex couple to get the same survivor benefits when that social norm of the "stay at home" spouse does not exist.
The main thing I know about this disease is that once you are diagnosed with it, the diagnosis sticks with you for life. No second opinion can countermand it. Scarry because it has the potential to be abused.
The article says that China wants to be included on the ISS, but was snubbed. They guess it was because the Chinese PLA is so involved with the space program and they fear them advancing a lot in space tech.
That doesn't add up though, because the Russian and American space programs are closely tied to the military, and neither of them seems to be too concerned. As far as competition commerically, why is the ESA and JASDA(?) invited if we are afraid of advancements in tech resulting in competition?
Almost noone seems to remember there was a Nazi resistance at the end of WWII that compares to what you are seeing in Iraq.
The "half-hearted" attempt to rebuild the country is enormously complicated by a spectrum of issues from incredibly poor infrastructure to begin with, to looting, to sabotage. The infrastructure was horrible to begin with and what was running was running because of ingenuity and incredible jury rigging (from lack of resources to repair properly) that would make any slashdotter proud.
As for the police training being the fault of the leaders of the troops, troops are not meant to be cops. Training time is valuable and that time is dedicated to doing stuff that will ensure victory and save their lives.
Yes it is trivial+1 because you have to find, download, and install the software, and then use it to convert the files. It would be about as quick to just burn it to an audio CD (except the software will allow you to do it quicker with subsequent file conversions). Now I send a few cease and desist orders to the host of the website, or change my encryption and Playfair(n+1) comes out and you have to find it and so on. I think it's convenient enough to convert stuff for my private use, but just annoying enough that I would think twice before wasting my time sharing out my music collection on Gnutella/Kazaa/et al.
I could write a book in response to this, but I will focus on one point--why Iraq and not North Korea? Because of the incredible population density in the area, and because the entire peninsula is rigged with demolitions and booby traps, the civilian death toll would be astronomical and there wouldn't be much left of anything when the smoke (and nuclear isotopes) clears. Also, we have a real diplomatic effort by many nations to try to resolve the issue there, not countries being bribed by the leader to oppose the war like Saddam did in the UN Oil for Food scandal. China, SK and Japan are vigorously working to defuse the situation, and China has more pull with NK than any country had with Iraq prior to the war.
Mutually Assured Destruction, the cornerstone of strategic nuclear defense during the Cold War will not work with NK, but other countermeasures are being worked, like the Airborne Laser.
In short, we are able to handle the NK situation through technological means, whereas the expeditionary campaign being carried on by terrorists require a different approach.
The license agreement allows you to burn the same playlist full of songs 7 times, and you can put the same songs in different playlists to burn regular audio CDs from them as many times as you want. From there, you can re-rip the audio CD as an MP3 or whatever you want. Apple fought hard for the terms, which they deem "fair use", that you should be able to use your music in multiple formats etc. They only included the DRM limitations to make it more than a trivial thing for you to share out your whole collection on a P2P, but you can still do it (not with their blessing) if you really want to go through the extra hassle of burning the CDs, the time invested, etc. etc. Instead, many people will either go for the low-hanging fruit or just not bother going through all that trouble to share their songs.
The same is true of pursuing PlayFair authors and download sites. All they have to do is make it one step above trivial and most users won't bother to do the google search to find it or download the latest version, etc. OTOH, someone determined will always crack the DRM and they know it. Why bother really chasing that down the rabbit hole when you don't really need to, especially when it will be a futile, quixotic effort that will garner you nothing but ill will?
I doubt Apple is seriously concerned about PlayFair. The purpose of a lock really is to keep honest people honest. It's just a minor inconvenience for someone determined to get at the contents. Apple just wants to make it trivial+1 effort to keep most people from breaking it because it's too much of a chore. That's why they let you burn it to a CD and re-import as MP3 or whatever, but not convert directly to MP3--to make it too much of a hassle for most users to massively violate the agreement.
It's not a retroactive price hike because no-one is forcing you to upgrade to iTunes 4.5, which has the changes you mention (and allow you to play on more computers, incidentally). The number of times you can burn a playlist is a pretty silly thing to concern yourself with too. Just make another freaking playlist, quitcherbichin and burn some more.
The Artist stereotype Mac user is getting really old. Many of your artsy types are the die-hard Classic Mac OS users and are being dragged by their toenails to OS X. IMO, OS X is allowing engineers, scientists, and other techies to "come home" to the Mac. As seen on Slashdot, a lot of real geeks are also taking to it because you can get the best of both worlds.
Linux and IBM are a great combo and it offers Big Blue a great chance to break free of MS. They picked up on the fact that their OS's couldn't compete with Linux, but their hardware and Linux combined is sweeeeet! You can buy crappy wintel boxes to put your Linux on, or you can buy top of the line stuff.
IBM had to differentiate itself to survive. How do you compete against all the other PC makers when everyone uses the same CPU? Then you have Linux (free), or Windows (which almost everyone uses). IBM can't control the software or the hardware and would have to be the Walmart of PCs to make it with those parameters.
Putting yourself out there as an experienced enterprise powerhouse with your own special Intel killing platforms is the only solution.
From a corporate standpoint, I think IBM has hit the right business model there too. One of the things holding Linux back from wider acceptance is support and guarantees that this stuff is gonna work. IBM provides that. Companies trust that they've tested this stuff and will give them stuff that works....or else they sue them and people get fired.
I wonder if they know that the "OK" sign that bird is making is a pretty offensive gesture in some parts of the world. "Hey, the bird just gave me the bird!"
Yes, OO needs to be compatible with MS Office in order to be sold. However, they will never ever ever be 100% compatible because the file formats are "closed" and MS would sue all of you if you managed to reverse engineer the format 100%. Not to mention it will change again in Office 2005, 2007, and so on just to keep people buying the latest version.
OO needs to concentrate on being "compatible enough" for most people, and extending functionality and useability on their own path. In the end this will help them against MS office because MS must change things around to justify selling new versions, whereas OO can maintain a stable interface and user experience.
Support is also a major issue for companies. I can just imagine some government agency IMO deploying OO and then having to tell the CIO they "downloaded it off some website". Furthermore, when the first user starts screaming for support, you'd better be sure what you are doing and be able to get the answer. That's why many just suck down the money for MS because they can guarantee support and they can blame MS if there's a bug or security hole, etc. Open source code only does that IMO any good if they know how to read it and are willing to bet their job there are no security holes.
Apache/1.3.28 (Unix) FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 on Linux
Good enough even with the bare minimum
on
Is Mac OS X Slow?
·
· Score: 1
I've used Windows boxes, UNIX workstations and PCs for years. I have the BARE minimum machine to support OS X--a 233 MHz G3 with 128 MB RAM. It works well. It's a little slower than OS9, but once I boosted my RAM to 192+, it picked up quite a bit (much less swapping with the disk). It's certainly tolerable for day to day tasks. I also run the Darwin SETI client in the background fulltime. The amazing thing is (in contrast with my experiences with other machines) is that the system is always responsive to the user. iTunes *never* skips no matter what other intensive task I throw at it. Furthermore, I think the animation simply gives the psychological perception of slowness where Windows and OS 9 menus and so forth snapped down. It does not take a huge amount of processing power to redraw a rectangle.
1. The whole thing is encrypted and uses spread spectrum frequency hopping. I know someone probably could find a way to compromise it, eventually. Getting cocky and thinking it impervious would be like the Germans with Enigma. But we can't exactly go back to semaphore flags, and this technology lets us do stuff that was damned near impossible just a few years ago.
2. Yes, a heavy brigade is a massive monster to deploy and support. There are plans to handle this, and speed up deployments, like having prepositioned equipment so the first brigade to deploy has equipment already there when they land. This is also part of why GEN Shinseki (Army Chief of Staff) wants to develop medium brigades which can deploy quickly. However, for however strategically cumbersome a heavy brigade may be, ours are nearly invincible if they are deployed.
3. The berets you saw on the TRADOC website are on OPFOR people, who are playing the enemy. The rest of the Army is still pending getting theirs, and it's sort of a sore topic with some people.
Then get off your ass and do something constructive about it instead of just whining. The US military is here to protect and defend the constitution of the United States. It is not there to define what that means, or to pick and chose its fights, but to go where the elected officials send us. This prevents the military from getting self-righteous and having us end up with coup after coup in what someone (emphasis on ONE) thinks is his version of the ideal society.
Republics and democracies only work when the people give a shit.
As the other guy who responded said, this is a mechie exercise, and the privates not only are driving tanks and stuff across the desert, but they all also have the FBCB2/tactical intranet I was refering to in my post. An M1 can be an exciting ride--going through desert wadis and stuff no other vehicle could treverse, and do it at 40+ mph. Believe me, at least SOME of those guys are having fun.
On the other hand, some of the support guys are in a living hell trying to keep those things fixed and fueled at all hours of the night, and in the cold. Ironic that some of the people derided as REMFs by those frontline troops you felt so sorry for have it far worse. Then again, if this were a real war, those frontline guys would be in imminent danger of dying at any second, whereas the loggies behind them would stand just a little less chance of dying. (you'd be pretty surprised how far forward you will find mechanics and fuelers)
Never mind that.mil is there to guarantee your freedom. I agree that war is a bad thing, but it is a reality in our world that I just don't see going away any day soon. You want war to go away? Vote, or do something tangible to solve the problems in the world. Don't take it out on the instruments of your elected government's policy. Given the mission, they can do it well and live, or do it poorly and die. Failure also could literally mean the end of the free world. I don't know anyone who joined the military to go "kill some mofos". I know some that joined for the college money, some that joined for many other reasons, but many joined because they believed they are guaranteeing the freedom of their country. I believe it was John Melville who said "War is a terrible thing, but not the worst of things...." There is another quote, which I don't remember who to attribute it to: "A nation which insists on drawing a delineation between its thinking men and fighting men will find themselves defended by fools and its thinking done by cowards."
Until you come up with a solution for world peace, the military is a necessity to guarantee your freedom. How it is used it determined by your vote. Whether it is used or not isn't really the point--it's ready if needed, which is more often than not all that's needed to make someone think twice about starting a war.
Furthermore, some of this technology in of itself is cool technology with other applications. Take a step back and take that in perspective.
Yeah, well can your caddie tell you where every other car is, as well as potentially hostile cars?
BTW, this is only the latest version of some of this equipment. FBCB2 has been around in various forms since at least 1994.
Yes. Encrypted and frequency hopping, so direction finding and jamming are a bit more difficult. They (the OPFOR) are also reportedly trying to hack into the tactical intranet as well to test that aspect.
Hey, warfare is a huge waste. Then again, losing at it is even worse. I believe it was John Melville that said "War is a terrible thing, but not the worst of things..."
Slashdot Mirror
You would have to be incredibly lucky to hit precisely in the same place twice. Most anti-tank weapons, such as the RPG, LAW, etc. all have to travel a certain distance to arm so they don't detonate too close to the firer and kill the guy who launched it.
Then the RPG is an unguided weapon and has very poor accuracy. Tanks are pretty big, so you can get away with this and have acceptable results. Even with ATGW (Anti-tank guided weapons), you are very very unlikely to hit the same place twice. Also, in combat you don't have the luxury of trying to make these precision shots except perhaps in the first two seconds after you spring an ambush. Then that tank will slew around and start blasting in the direction they detected the attack coming from and you are toast. Or the tank behind it will get you. They usually travel in mutually supporting formations.
Your "sacrificial missile" is already in use to defeat reactive armor. The US makes the TOW-2, and most other countries have a very similar design to defeat reactive armor. It's two shaped charges stacked together in a way that the first one detonates the explosive panel of the reactive armor and the second cuts through the armor like normal.
Zapping the occupants of the tank won't work either. The inside it insolated from the armor, which is why this works in the first place. Your cable had better be pretty strong too, since an M1 Abrams has 1500 hp and is 70+ tons (good momentum).
The welding action you talk about in the last paragraph would have to have some pretty incredible power and would likely fry everyone around for quite a distance.
Yes you can get killed by friendly fire. The offender is penalized, and you can get blacklisted (your character ends up in prison) if you are a repeat offender.
The laws of the state are based on the laws of religion, like it or not, and not the other way around. Our ethics and morals determine laws, and those are often expressed in laws.
On a purely secular, pragmatic note, the laws defining marriage, particularly financial benefits, are there for the protection of women under the legacy roles. It's there to care for women who grew up in another era, and others who still chose to live that way. You cannot suddenly expect some old WWII era widow to suddenly jump up and get a job after you cancel all her benefits, and I think it is wrong to expect a same sex couple to get the same survivor benefits when that social norm of the "stay at home" spouse does not exist.
The main thing I know about this disease is that once you are diagnosed with it, the diagnosis sticks with you for life. No second opinion can countermand it. Scarry because it has the potential to be abused.
The article says that China wants to be included on the ISS, but was snubbed. They guess it was because the Chinese PLA is so involved with the space program and they fear them advancing a lot in space tech.
That doesn't add up though, because the Russian and American space programs are closely tied to the military, and neither of them seems to be too concerned. As far as competition commerically, why is the ESA and JASDA(?) invited if we are afraid of advancements in tech resulting in competition?
Almost noone seems to remember there was a Nazi resistance at the end of WWII that compares to what you are seeing in Iraq.
The "half-hearted" attempt to rebuild the country is enormously complicated by a spectrum of issues from incredibly poor infrastructure to begin with, to looting, to sabotage. The infrastructure was horrible to begin with and what was running was running because of ingenuity and incredible jury rigging (from lack of resources to repair properly) that would make any slashdotter proud.
As for the police training being the fault of the leaders of the troops, troops are not meant to be cops. Training time is valuable and that time is dedicated to doing stuff that will ensure victory and save their lives.
Yes it is trivial+1 because you have to find, download, and install the software, and then use it to convert the files. It would be about as quick to just burn it to an audio CD (except the software will allow you to do it quicker with subsequent file conversions). Now I send a few cease and desist orders to the host of the website, or change my encryption and Playfair(n+1) comes out and you have to find it and so on. I think it's convenient enough to convert stuff for my private use, but just annoying enough that I would think twice before wasting my time sharing out my music collection on Gnutella/Kazaa/et al.
I could write a book in response to this, but I will focus on one point--why Iraq and not North Korea? Because of the incredible population density in the area, and because the entire peninsula is rigged with demolitions and booby traps, the civilian death toll would be astronomical and there wouldn't be much left of anything when the smoke (and nuclear isotopes) clears. Also, we have a real diplomatic effort by many nations to try to resolve the issue there, not countries being bribed by the leader to oppose the war like Saddam did in the UN Oil for Food scandal. China, SK and Japan are vigorously working to defuse the situation, and China has more pull with NK than any country had with Iraq prior to the war.
Mutually Assured Destruction, the cornerstone of strategic nuclear defense during the Cold War will not work with NK, but other countermeasures are being worked, like the Airborne Laser.
In short, we are able to handle the NK situation through technological means, whereas the expeditionary campaign being carried on by terrorists require a different approach.
The license agreement allows you to burn the same playlist full of songs 7 times, and you can put the same songs in different playlists to burn regular audio CDs from them as many times as you want. From there, you can re-rip the audio CD as an MP3 or whatever you want. Apple fought hard for the terms, which they deem "fair use", that you should be able to use your music in multiple formats etc. They only included the DRM limitations to make it more than a trivial thing for you to share out your whole collection on a P2P, but you can still do it (not with their blessing) if you really want to go through the extra hassle of burning the CDs, the time invested, etc. etc. Instead, many people will either go for the low-hanging fruit or just not bother going through all that trouble to share their songs.
The same is true of pursuing PlayFair authors and download sites. All they have to do is make it one step above trivial and most users won't bother to do the google search to find it or download the latest version, etc. OTOH, someone determined will always crack the DRM and they know it. Why bother really chasing that down the rabbit hole when you don't really need to, especially when it will be a futile, quixotic effort that will garner you nothing but ill will?
I doubt Apple is seriously concerned about PlayFair. The purpose of a lock really is to keep honest people honest. It's just a minor inconvenience for someone determined to get at the contents. Apple just wants to make it trivial+1 effort to keep most people from breaking it because it's too much of a chore. That's why they let you burn it to a CD and re-import as MP3 or whatever, but not convert directly to MP3--to make it too much of a hassle for most users to massively violate the agreement.
It's not a retroactive price hike because no-one is forcing you to upgrade to iTunes 4.5, which has the changes you mention (and allow you to play on more computers, incidentally). The number of times you can burn a playlist is a pretty silly thing to concern yourself with too. Just make another freaking playlist, quitcherbichin and burn some more.
Had to say it.
The Artist stereotype Mac user is getting really old. Many of your artsy types are the die-hard Classic Mac OS users and are being dragged by their toenails to OS X. IMO, OS X is allowing engineers, scientists, and other techies to "come home" to the Mac. As seen on Slashdot, a lot of real geeks are also taking to it because you can get the best of both worlds.
Linux and IBM are a great combo and it offers Big Blue a great chance to break free of MS. They picked up on the fact that their OS's couldn't compete with Linux, but their hardware and Linux combined is sweeeeet! You can buy crappy wintel boxes to put your Linux on, or you can buy top of the line stuff.
IBM had to differentiate itself to survive. How do you compete against all the other PC makers when everyone uses the same CPU? Then you have Linux (free), or Windows (which almost everyone uses). IBM can't control the software or the hardware and would have to be the Walmart of PCs to make it with those parameters.
Putting yourself out there as an experienced enterprise powerhouse with your own special Intel killing platforms is the only solution.
From a corporate standpoint, I think IBM has hit the right business model there too. One of the things holding Linux back from wider acceptance is support and guarantees that this stuff is gonna work. IBM provides that. Companies trust that they've tested this stuff and will give them stuff that works....or else they sue them and people get fired.
I wonder if they know that the "OK" sign that bird is making is a pretty offensive gesture in some parts of the world. "Hey, the bird just gave me the bird!"
Yes, OO needs to be compatible with MS Office in order to be sold. However, they will never ever ever be 100% compatible because the file formats are "closed" and MS would sue all of you if you managed to reverse engineer the format 100%. Not to mention it will change again in Office 2005, 2007, and so on just to keep people buying the latest version.
OO needs to concentrate on being "compatible enough" for most people, and extending functionality and useability on their own path. In the end this will help them against MS office because MS must change things around to justify selling new versions, whereas OO can maintain a stable interface and user experience.
Support is also a major issue for companies. I can just imagine some government agency IMO deploying OO and then having to tell the CIO they "downloaded it off some website". Furthermore, when the first user starts screaming for support, you'd better be sure what you are doing and be able to get the answer. That's why many just suck down the money for MS because they can guarantee support and they can blame MS if there's a bug or security hole, etc. Open source code only does that IMO any good if they know how to read it and are willing to bet their job there are no security holes.
Did anyone bother to Netcraft www.mi2g.net?
Apache/1.3.28 (Unix) FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 on Linux
I've used Windows boxes, UNIX workstations and PCs for years. I have the BARE minimum machine to support OS X--a 233 MHz G3 with 128 MB RAM. It works well. It's a little slower than OS9, but once I boosted my RAM to 192+, it picked up quite a bit (much less swapping with the disk). It's certainly tolerable for day to day tasks. I also run the Darwin SETI client in the background fulltime. The amazing thing is (in contrast with my experiences with other machines) is that the system is always responsive to the user. iTunes *never* skips no matter what other intensive task I throw at it. Furthermore, I think the animation simply gives the psychological perception of slowness where Windows and OS 9 menus and so forth snapped down. It does not take a huge amount of processing power to redraw a rectangle.
1. The whole thing is encrypted and uses spread spectrum frequency hopping. I know someone probably could find a way to compromise it, eventually. Getting cocky and thinking it impervious would be like the Germans with Enigma. But we can't exactly go back to semaphore flags, and this technology lets us do stuff that was damned near impossible just a few years ago. 2. Yes, a heavy brigade is a massive monster to deploy and support. There are plans to handle this, and speed up deployments, like having prepositioned equipment so the first brigade to deploy has equipment already there when they land. This is also part of why GEN Shinseki (Army Chief of Staff) wants to develop medium brigades which can deploy quickly. However, for however strategically cumbersome a heavy brigade may be, ours are nearly invincible if they are deployed. 3. The berets you saw on the TRADOC website are on OPFOR people, who are playing the enemy. The rest of the Army is still pending getting theirs, and it's sort of a sore topic with some people.
Then get off your ass and do something constructive about it instead of just whining. The US military is here to protect and defend the constitution of the United States. It is not there to define what that means, or to pick and chose its fights, but to go where the elected officials send us. This prevents the military from getting self-righteous and having us end up with coup after coup in what someone (emphasis on ONE) thinks is his version of the ideal society. Republics and democracies only work when the people give a shit.
As the other guy who responded said, this is a mechie exercise, and the privates not only are driving tanks and stuff across the desert, but they all also have the FBCB2/tactical intranet I was refering to in my post. An M1 can be an exciting ride--going through desert wadis and stuff no other vehicle could treverse, and do it at 40+ mph. Believe me, at least SOME of those guys are having fun. On the other hand, some of the support guys are in a living hell trying to keep those things fixed and fueled at all hours of the night, and in the cold. Ironic that some of the people derided as REMFs by those frontline troops you felt so sorry for have it far worse. Then again, if this were a real war, those frontline guys would be in imminent danger of dying at any second, whereas the loggies behind them would stand just a little less chance of dying. (you'd be pretty surprised how far forward you will find mechanics and fuelers)
Never mind that .mil is there to guarantee your freedom. I agree that war is a bad thing, but it is a reality in our world that I just don't see going away any day soon. You want war to go away? Vote, or do something tangible to solve the problems in the world. Don't take it out on the instruments of your elected government's policy. Given the mission, they can do it well and live, or do it poorly and die. Failure also could literally mean the end of the free world. I don't know anyone who joined the military to go "kill some mofos". I know some that joined for the college money, some that joined for many other reasons, but many joined because they believed they are guaranteeing the freedom of their country. I believe it was John Melville who said "War is a terrible thing, but not the worst of things...." There is another quote, which I don't remember who to attribute it to: "A nation which insists on drawing a delineation between its thinking men and fighting men will find themselves defended by fools and its thinking done by cowards."
Until you come up with a solution for world peace, the military is a necessity to guarantee your freedom. How it is used it determined by your vote. Whether it is used or not isn't really the point--it's ready if needed, which is more often than not all that's needed to make someone think twice about starting a war.
Furthermore, some of this technology in of itself is cool technology with other applications. Take a step back and take that in perspective.
Yeah, well can your caddie tell you where every other car is, as well as potentially hostile cars? BTW, this is only the latest version of some of this equipment. FBCB2 has been around in various forms since at least 1994.
Yes. Encrypted and frequency hopping, so direction finding and jamming are a bit more difficult. They (the OPFOR) are also reportedly trying to hack into the tactical intranet as well to test that aspect.
Hey, warfare is a huge waste. Then again, losing at it is even worse. I believe it was John Melville that said "War is a terrible thing, but not the worst of things..."