As a matter of fact, hitting is not required for a kill with many anti-air missiles. The missile blows up as it passes near the target, doing enough damage to take it down.
I assumed that 'hit-to-kill' meant that these particular missiles actually attempt to make contact with the target. This would save on explosives, and thus make the missile smaller, lighter and more maneuverable. Of course, hitting the target is a lot harder than getting 'close enough'.
> You mean there is no crime in Communist countries where everyone gets the same check?
I can only speak about Bulgaria in the 70s and 80s. There was no crime to speak of. I lived in a town of 300,000. I am pretty sure I heard of every murder, and there was less than one per year. Usually it was drunk teenagers killing one of their own, or pedophiles killing their victims. You could go anywhere after dark. Staying with your girlfriend in a park the whole night was not in any way risky. Most of the stealing was done by gypsies and homeless who did not get a paycheck, and it was relatively rare. Burglaries were only committed against people who were known to have worked abroad. Car thefts were nearly always for joyrides. The only brushes I've had with crime, or the law, were fights amongst individuals, schools, or locals/army boys. Using anything that cut or shot was considered unmanly. That included the militia (law officers). Damn these bastards were big and knew how to fight.
After the regime change, there was a lot of talk about crimes committed by the relatives of those in power. I am not sure the rumors had a significant basis, but even if they did, these could also be explained by inequality.
Once a visible class divide appeared, crime skyrocketted. Armoured doors, security guards, kidnappings, hitmen, yada, yada, yada
Yes, I have read 'Fascism'. It was a trendy thing to do at the time:-) Funny you'd mention it, because what you wrote made me think of the book anyway... not only because of the subject, but because of your argument's style.
Yes, the two regimes are similar, but one has to be really paranoid to say that the US is anywhere close to Fascism today. Getting closer... maaaybe. I think what we are living through is more of a case of incompetant people trying their best, with relatively good intentions.
As for the government telling the airlines how to run their business - that is bad. But I think I was replying to someone who was saying that the airlines weren't required to check ID by law, and only did it to prevent people from switching tickets.
I don't know where you get the "slap on the wrist". I had a girl working for me, single mother, not a bad worker. She got two DUIs, the first one barely above the limit, and the second one due to (she claimed) some police screw up. Her car got impounded, and her wages got garnished... she was supposed to pay more than nine thousands. Of course, she changed her name and moved out of state.
I also have a friend who got his car impounded in New York. Getting caught in CA and NYC is no joke.
As for the legal limit, I think that it is ridiculous. Back in 1989, I and a few friends were messing around with wine, a breathalizer (BG militia issue), a couple of beat up cars, and a race track. One of us was a race car driver, one drove for a living... I had gotten my license, from the Army, two months earlier. As the worst driver, I was the only one who did not drink. Everyone else would drink a glass of wine, blow into the balloon, and drive a lap. By the end, everyone was above the limit, and I was still the one with the worst time. By the way, the legal limit in Bulgaria at the time had recently been reduced to 150% of what it is in California today.
As far as I am concerned, the legal limit is way, way too low. At the legal limit, a good driver is a lot less dangerous that a sleepy, distracted, or plain bad one.
Oh, and of course, I never, ever drink and drive. Not even a sip of beer, no Sir.
I've been asked to leave my driving license as security for using a pool table. It reminded me that in Bulgaria, when I was growing up, leaving one's passport as security was an offense punishable by jail for both the owner of the passport and the one holding it.
As far as I am concerned, this is a convenience. Most people would prefer leaving their license rather than a cash deposit. I hate leaving my license, so I always offer to leave cash. The only time it has not worked is when I tried to rent a powerboat from a place no one knew me. I am sure that a cash deposit would have worked there as well, if I'd had 10k.
When I fly, I have to show ID. I know this does not stop determined terrorists, but if that's what takes to make even one old lady feel safer, what is the harm? If I had a reason to fly anonymously, sure, I'd mind. But even if the only reason they check ID is to prevent you from transferring a discount ticket, it's their right. It may be baggage from growing up in a Communist country, but I am more wary of laws that tell a private business what it can do than of businesses that impose stupid requirements. Your milleage may, of course, vary.
A dead Englishman is always better than a measure of butter, except on bread.
A specific kind of bread, actually, long, thin, and crunchy. And I would have used an indefinite article before 'livre', but for all I know, it's a stable idiom.
If you have not read the Lazarus Long stories, but know who he is, because you like much of Heinlein's and have madea conscious decision avoid some of his late works, you' still qualify as a geek.
Of course, I would hardly advance a definition which would disqualify me. I dislike most of Lazarus Long's books.
On the other hand, lately I have been rereading early Heinlein kiddy stuff (Farmer in the Sky, Spaceman Jones) and am surprised how much I enjoy them. I grew up in a communist country, and read Heinlein books that would have never gotten translated. I have to admit that I thought of him as the ultimate American, and I believed that the US was a land where libertarians were in the majority. Boy, was going to college in Boston a shock.
> I'd not see a freaking diving board in a private or public > swimming pool since I was.....lets see....about 16???
Speaking for myself, it's the simple horizontal bar that I miss. I do not think I have seen one in the States except on the Santa Monica beaches. I used to love monkeying around one...
Yes, people can get hurt, but it's like brain cells and alcohol. It's the weak ones that die:-)
Back to land and farming? What a bunch of nonsense. That would happen only if oil would run out at once, without a gradual decline AND all existing coal/nuclear plants were destroyed on the same day. Europe's oil consumption has not significantly increased since the 70's. No matter how expensive oil becomes, coal and nuclear will pick up some load. It could be a much dirtier world, and maybe 90% of the human race will go back to farming, but there will always be an elite with access to technology and the energy to keep it going.
And that's a worst case scenario. In all likelihood, the total world population will fall off, especially in rather unfertile zones, many wasteful practices will be abandoned, and civilisation will keep going. Every slow change will be seen coming, and those who can afford it will have time to prepare. Just make sure your offsprings are well-off or well-educated when the easy times end.
The SUV will disappear, the bicicle may become a luxury. The huge cities will be abandoned, but there is no reason that a port town reasonably close to coal deposits won't retain industry and civilisation... as long as it manages to keep undesirables (it means you, doomsayers) out.
While the tirade about no one hiring MIT grads is flamebait, I have to agree about the drug use at MIT. The stress at MIT hard to imagine. Everyone has to deal with it in some way, and drug and alcohol are some of the means.
There are other means - the Assassin Guild's games, endurance sex, Sport Death, long distance running... but I have to say that everyone I knew did something that would seem plain weird to a normal person. I cannot explain why MIT gets to you that way, all I know is that every time I go back there, for a party, a lecture, or just because, I feel as if I enter purgatory. There is a miasma of bad karma in the air, and no, it's not just the smell fo unwashed bodies.
MIT does teach a few things though - MIT grads usually don't give up easily, can work quite well under pressure and with little rest, and enjoy technology. It's great, if not for themselves, then for their bosses.
I did not need a type-R sticker, as my car came with an 'R' from the factory. Instead of messing with the tailpipe, I replaced the downpipe, and adjusted the ECU. Don't know about wings, I try to keep the car on the ground, so I stick to spoilers. And no, 60 extra hps did not turn my Volvo into a Jaguar. They just made it faster than most stock Jaguars.
There are mods, and then there are mods. Just because most people prefer cosmetic modifications does not mean that you can sneer at performance modifications. And finally, I have no beef with people who modify their car to look cool. They pay for it, and they enjoy it. More power to them.
But an article that feels it can compare the Jaguar performance to Ferrari? It's been a decade since this was honest.
The acceleration of a Ferrari, Porsche or even a high-end tuning car will typically smoke the XK, which goes from zero to 60 mph in about six seconds
Heh. The guy is brownnosing Jaguar. The high end sedans from BMW, Legus, and Audi do better than six seconds. My Volvo has less than 3000 dollars in mods, and gets 5.3 on a cold day. High-end tuning indeed.
I was playing a real-time/real-space game in college. It was some fantasy game, low-magic in a medieval setting. The witches' team got hosed. They were infiltrated, set-up, arrested, and burned on the stake. It so happened that two of the players were lesbians both in game and in real-life, and part of the evidence at the trial was that they had committed an abomination.
The story somehow got to the University's administration. It got to the newspaper. The lesbigay groups heard about it. The 'roleplaying' guild got in so much trouble you would not believe it. Some of the activity money was withheld, some of us had to sit and listen to some insane feminazis about how insensitive we were, and the the next few games were reviewed and censored.
Keep in mind that the girls whose characters died on the stake had no complaints. The guild was not accused of harrassment, but of creating a hostile environment, or some similar shit. Now, I can see how Blizzard wants to avoid a similar mess. If you allow gay-friendly guilds, what do you do about White Pride ones? Democrats? Scientologists? Blizzard has a business to run... good call, I say.
I never understood how you protect similar systems from enemy action. If you allow for weapons in space, what prevents the enemy to park a shotgun near your mirror, and fire it five seconds before the missile? I assume that the cost of the counter-measure would be orders of magnitudes less than the relay system.
About one year ago, somewhere in the Inland Valley, California, a stoned chick rammed a car from the back, killing one child, and I think messing up another for life. No skid marks, no sign that she tried to stop, and according to the cops who arrested her, she did not understand what she had done for half an hour. If you need the details, I can give you the date and location of the accident once I get home, my girlfriend's brother was one of the officers at the scene.
Now, on the other hand, we do not need any special laws to deal with this case. The punishment should be the same no matter whether the driver was high, drunk, or sleepy.
One time pads do not qualify as encription. Or, here is an unbreakable 'encription' scheme. I want to convey one of two messages: 'Go' or 'Stop'. Before hand, we agree that if I say 'Adam' it means 'Go', and if I say 'Eve', it means 'Stop'. Of course, we will use the convention only once. Here you are, completely unbreakable encription.
One-time pads require that your key is as long as the message. Hello?
That is absolutely true. The question is 'How much time?' For some encryption technics, using state of the art math, it would take longer than the lifetime of our Galaxy.
He has no idea what he is talking about. His writing style is not too bad, but in no way unique. But I wonder whether he knows anything!
Lessee... Women do not judge other women as beautiful or attractive. MIT does not have a dean list. Sleeping your way through college involves, in any high end institution, sleeping with someone ahead of you - a senior or a TA in the same department. People have instincts which would prevent them from falling on their chest unless they were someone encumbered or under the influence. A virus that kills the host in 72 hours would have a hard time spreading, and in this particular case would be extinct exactly three days after its existance becomes common knowledge. The physics of the 'hamster shot out of the ass by igniting farts are all wrong', and even if they were not, the doctor would be hard at work trying to limit infection from the ruptured intestines, not messing around with a broken nose. And this is only on the first few pages.
In a few words, the guy has no clue about anything.
Because the radius of the ISS is too small for comfortable results. When a man-size is a significant part of the station radius, your feet and head would experience different forces... Sitting down and getting up would be quite an experience as well.:-)
I question your data. Solar and wind power
generators both use a lot of real estate, are
season dependant, require an awful lot of
maintainance, and of course, cannot be used
everywhere.
When I lived in Greece, my whole roof was a solar
panel. It was a nice way of cutting some 60% off
my electricity bill during the summer, but even
the mild and rather sunny Greek winters, it did
not make enough of a difference during the winter
to make it worth for me to clean it.
I lived in that house for nearly two years, but
never bothered to really think whether it would
have been worth it for me to install it in the
first place. (I was renting) Now that I live in
California, and have had blackouts every day
since the beginning of the week, I tried doing
the math... before I learned that my neighbors
would not allow me to 'dessecrate' their view.
But anyway... solar panels and windmills are
great as an addition to the 'real' generators,
but anyone who thinks that they can actually
replace them has his math wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
As a matter of fact, hitting is not required for a kill with many anti-air missiles. The missile blows up as it passes near the target, doing enough damage to take it down.
I assumed that 'hit-to-kill' meant that these particular missiles actually attempt to make contact with the target. This would save on explosives, and thus make the missile smaller, lighter and more maneuverable. Of course, hitting the target is a lot harder than getting 'close enough'.
I can only speak about Bulgaria in the 70s and 80s. There was no crime to speak of. I lived in a town of 300,000. I am pretty sure I heard of every murder, and there was less than one per year. Usually it was drunk teenagers killing one of their own, or pedophiles killing their victims. You could go anywhere after dark. Staying with your girlfriend in a park the whole night was not in any way risky. Most of the stealing was done by gypsies and homeless who did not get a paycheck, and it was relatively rare. Burglaries were only committed against people who were known to have worked abroad. Car thefts were nearly always for joyrides. The only brushes I've had with crime, or the law, were fights amongst individuals, schools, or locals/army boys. Using anything that cut or shot was considered unmanly. That included the militia (law officers). Damn these bastards were big and knew how to fight.
After the regime change, there was a lot of talk about crimes committed by the relatives of those in power. I am not sure the rumors had a significant basis, but even if they did, these could also be explained by inequality.
Once a visible class divide appeared, crime skyrocketted. Armoured doors, security guards, kidnappings, hitmen, yada, yada, yada
This is exactly how I feel as well. With Virtual Fighter V coming out on the 360, I may actually remain firm in my boycott of all things Sony.
Yes, I have read 'Fascism'. It was a trendy thing to do at the time :-) Funny you'd mention it, because what you wrote made me think of the book anyway... not only because of the subject, but because of your argument's style.
Yes, the two regimes are similar, but one has to be really paranoid to say that the US is anywhere close to Fascism today. Getting closer... maaaybe. I think what we are living through is more of a case of incompetant people trying their best, with relatively good intentions.
As for the government telling the airlines how to run their business - that is bad. But I think I was replying to someone who was saying that the airlines weren't required to check ID by law, and only did it to prevent people from switching tickets.
I don't know where you get the "slap on the wrist". I had a girl working for me, single mother, not a bad worker. She got two DUIs, the first one barely above the limit, and the second one due to (she claimed) some police screw up. Her car got impounded, and her wages got garnished... she was supposed to pay more than nine thousands. Of course, she changed her name and moved out of state.
I also have a friend who got his car impounded in New York. Getting caught in CA and NYC is no joke.
As for the legal limit, I think that it is ridiculous. Back in 1989, I and a few friends were messing around with wine, a breathalizer (BG militia issue), a couple of beat up cars, and a race track. One of us was a race car driver, one drove for a living... I had gotten my license, from the Army, two months earlier. As the worst driver, I was the only one who did not drink. Everyone else would drink a glass of wine, blow into the balloon, and drive a lap. By the end, everyone was above the limit, and I was still the one with the worst time. By the way, the legal limit in Bulgaria at the time had recently been reduced to 150% of what it is in California today.
As far as I am concerned, the legal limit is way, way too low. At the legal limit, a good driver is a lot less dangerous that a sleepy, distracted, or plain bad one.
Oh, and of course, I never, ever drink and drive. Not even a sip of beer, no Sir.
I've been asked to leave my driving license as security for using a pool table. It reminded me that in Bulgaria, when I was growing up, leaving one's passport as security was an offense punishable by jail for both the owner of the passport and the one holding it.
As far as I am concerned, this is a convenience. Most people would prefer leaving their license rather than a cash deposit. I hate leaving my license, so I always offer to leave cash. The only time it has not worked is when I tried to rent a powerboat from a place no one knew me. I am sure that a cash deposit would have worked there as well, if I'd had 10k.
When I fly, I have to show ID. I know this does not stop determined terrorists, but if that's what takes to make even one old lady feel safer, what is the harm? If I had a reason to fly anonymously, sure, I'd mind. But even if the only reason they check ID is to prevent you from transferring a discount ticket, it's their right. It may be baggage from growing up in a Communist country, but I am more wary of laws that tell a private business what it can do than of businesses that impose stupid requirements. Your milleage may, of course, vary.
A dead Englishman is always better than a measure of butter, except on bread.
A specific kind of bread, actually, long, thin, and crunchy. And I would
have used an indefinite article before 'livre', but for all I know, it's
a stable idiom.
I'd go for the middle ground on this one:
If you have not read the Lazarus Long stories, but know who he is, because you like much of Heinlein's and have madea conscious decision avoid some of his late works, you' still qualify as a geek.
Of course, I would hardly advance a definition which would disqualify me. I dislike most of Lazarus Long's books.
On the other hand, lately I have been rereading early Heinlein kiddy stuff (Farmer in the Sky, Spaceman Jones) and am surprised how much I enjoy them. I grew up in a communist country, and read Heinlein books that would have never gotten translated. I have to admit that I thought of him as the ultimate American, and I believed that the US was a land where libertarians were in the majority. Boy, was going to college in Boston a shock.
> I'd not see a freaking diving board in a private or public
:-)
> swimming pool since I was.....lets see....about 16???
Speaking for myself, it's the simple horizontal bar that I miss.
I do not think I have seen one in the States except on the
Santa Monica beaches. I used to love monkeying around one...
Yes, people can get hurt, but it's like brain cells and alcohol.
It's the weak ones that die
And that's a worst case scenario. In all likelihood, the total world population will fall off, especially in rather unfertile zones, many wasteful practices will be abandoned, and civilisation will keep going. Every slow change will be seen coming, and those who can afford it will have time to prepare. Just make sure your offsprings are well-off or well-educated when the easy times end.
The SUV will disappear, the bicicle may become a luxury. The huge cities will be abandoned, but there is no reason that a port town reasonably close to coal deposits won't retain industry and civilisation... as long as it manages to keep undesirables (it means you, doomsayers) out.
While the tirade about no one hiring MIT grads is flamebait, I have to agree about the drug use at MIT. The stress at MIT hard to imagine. Everyone has to deal with it in some way, and drug and alcohol are some of the means.
There are other means - the Assassin Guild's games, endurance sex, Sport Death, long distance running... but I have to say that everyone I knew did something that would seem plain weird to a normal person. I cannot explain why MIT gets to you that way, all I know is that every time I go back there, for a party, a lecture, or just because, I feel as if I enter purgatory. There is a miasma of bad karma in the air, and no, it's not just the smell fo unwashed bodies.
MIT does teach a few things though - MIT grads usually don't give up easily, can work quite well under pressure and with little rest, and enjoy technology. It's great, if not for themselves, then for their bosses.
There are mods, and then there are mods. Just because most people prefer cosmetic modifications does not mean that you can sneer at performance modifications. And finally, I have no beef with people who modify their car to look cool. They pay for it, and they enjoy it. More power to them.
But an article that feels it can compare the Jaguar performance to Ferrari? It's been a decade since this was honest.
Heh. The guy is brownnosing Jaguar. The high end sedans from BMW, Legus, and Audi do better than six seconds. My Volvo has less than 3000 dollars in mods, and gets 5.3 on a cold day. High-end tuning indeed.
I was playing a real-time/real-space game in college. It was some fantasy game, low-magic in a medieval setting. The witches' team got hosed. They were infiltrated, set-up, arrested, and burned on the stake. It so happened that two of the players were lesbians both in game and in real-life, and part of the evidence at the trial was that they had committed an abomination.
The story somehow got to the University's administration. It got to the newspaper. The lesbigay groups heard about it. The 'roleplaying' guild got in so much trouble you would not believe it. Some of the activity money was withheld, some of us had to sit and listen to some insane feminazis about how insensitive we were, and the the next few games were reviewed and censored.
Keep in mind that the girls whose characters died on the stake had no complaints. The guild was not accused of harrassment, but of creating a hostile environment, or some similar shit. Now, I can see how Blizzard wants to avoid a similar mess. If you allow gay-friendly guilds, what do you do about White Pride ones? Democrats? Scientologists? Blizzard has a business to run... good call, I say.
I never understood how you protect similar systems from enemy action. If you allow for weapons in space, what prevents the enemy to park a shotgun near your mirror, and fire it five seconds before the missile? I assume that the cost of the counter-measure would be orders of magnitudes less than the relay system.
About one year ago, somewhere in the Inland
Valley, California, a stoned chick rammed a car
from the back, killing one child, and I think
messing up another for life. No skid marks,
no sign that she tried to stop, and according to
the cops who arrested her, she did not understand
what she had done for half an hour. If you need
the details, I can give you the date and
location of the accident once I get home, my
girlfriend's brother was one of the officers at
the scene.
Now, on the other hand, we do not need any
special laws to deal with this case. The
punishment should be the same no matter whether
the driver was high, drunk, or sleepy.
And who is playing word games now?
One time pads do not qualify as encription. Or,
here is an unbreakable 'encription' scheme.
I want to convey one of two messages: 'Go'
or 'Stop'. Before hand, we agree that if I
say 'Adam' it means 'Go', and if I say 'Eve',
it means 'Stop'. Of course, we will use the
convention only once. Here you are, completely
unbreakable encription.
One-time pads require that your key is as long
as the message. Hello?
That is absolutely true. The question is
'How much time?' For some encryption technics,
using state of the art math, it would take
longer than the lifetime of our Galaxy.
I think the guy is not worth reading.
He has no idea what he is talking about. His
writing style is not too bad, but in no way
unique. But I wonder whether he knows anything!
Lessee... Women do not judge other women as
beautiful or attractive. MIT does not have a
dean list. Sleeping your way through college
involves, in any high end institution, sleeping
with someone ahead of you - a senior or a TA in
the same department. People have instincts which
would prevent them from falling on their chest
unless they were someone encumbered or under the
influence. A virus that kills the host in 72
hours would have a hard time spreading, and in
this particular case would be extinct exactly
three days after its existance becomes common
knowledge. The physics of the 'hamster shot out
of the ass by igniting farts are all wrong', and
even if they were not, the doctor would be hard at
work trying to limit infection from the ruptured
intestines, not messing around with a broken nose.
And this is only on the first few pages.
In a few words, the guy has no clue about anything.
Because the radius of the ISS is too small for :-)
comfortable results. When a man-size is a
significant part of the station radius, your
feet and head would experience different forces...
Sitting down and getting up would be quite an
experience as well.
I question your data. Solar and wind power generators both use a lot of real estate, are season dependant, require an awful lot of maintainance, and of course, cannot be used everywhere. When I lived in Greece, my whole roof was a solar panel. It was a nice way of cutting some 60% off my electricity bill during the summer, but even the mild and rather sunny Greek winters, it did not make enough of a difference during the winter to make it worth for me to clean it. I lived in that house for nearly two years, but never bothered to really think whether it would have been worth it for me to install it in the first place. (I was renting) Now that I live in California, and have had blackouts every day since the beginning of the week, I tried doing the math... before I learned that my neighbors would not allow me to 'dessecrate' their view. But anyway... solar panels and windmills are great as an addition to the 'real' generators, but anyone who thinks that they can actually replace them has his math wrong.
Observation: You should not be an hourly employee Advice: You need a lawyer, not a bunch of /.ers