Look, this isn't like a degree in science or engineering. If extremely lucky, you might get that for the undergraduate, but generally it's something lame.
The "master's degree" is some wanking bullshit that involves teaching theory dogma, much of which has actually been proven wrong in proper scientific study.
Teachers generally struggle to do something as simple as the addition of fractions with different denominators. A decent number of them are also unable to write properly.
Teachers are the people who sucked too much to get good jobs. Thus they teach, which is a fairly bad job. (when your workplace has people who curse you and threaten you, it's NOT good)
I am not so sure if the Next Generation Nuclear Players will have this same wisdom.
This is why a missile defense is such a dangerously stupid idea.
WTF?
The next generation (Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, etc.) might not worry about self destruction, and you see this as a reason to continue the MAD idea???
MAD relies on each side having fear of destruction. When somebody knows that launching an ICBM at the USA will grant him everlasting life in Heaven, fear is not an issue. Many fanatics welcome their own death in that case.
MAD is especially insane when you consider the long-term instability of the countries in question. You may be willing to gamble that the current leadership of these countries will wish to avoid destruction, but you can not be sure that the leadership won't be overthrown or ignored.
Like this:
Ali, an Al Qaida bastard, applies for a job running Pakistan's missile facility. He promotes a few of his buddies as needed, then schedules them all to work the same shift. They level New York for good. The USA returns fire, allowing them to reach heaven and get the virgins.
Maybe the enemy doesn't build so many weapons. Maybe they see our defense system and decide they'd rather spend effort on their own defense system. Maybe we succeed in ignoring the dummy warheads (BTW, good ones are NOT cheap), or we just pay the big $$$ to hit everything.
It might not be a winning strategy, but raising the white flag right from the start is certainly a losing strategy.
You can argue about "similar" maybe, but "developed" is long past. It's operational.
From best to worst:
* only USA protected * both Russia and USA protected * neither protected * only Russia protected
Right now we're in one of the worst two situations, depending on how you count a system that only protects the area around Russia's primary (by far) city. (imagine NY/LA/DC all together in one city -- that's Moscow)
Moving to a better situation is good. The "both" situation is probably the best we can hope for. Let's go there.
At what point do you decide to develop anti-ICBM capability? Maybe when a "test" missile passes over the USA? Maybe only if a live warhead is used?
When you finally decide that Iran can indeed reach the USA, you'll have a big problem. You can't instantly install a good anti-missile system. That takes a decade or two of effort, during which you'll... beg Iran to wait?
"OK, we believe you now. Please don't launch until we develop and install an anti-ICBM system."
To "take control of one missile", you merely need to pass the employment screening for a job taking care of the missile.
Plenty of countries have crazy people who would do that. The big old nuclear powers try to reduce the problem by having multiple people required for a launch, but this isn't perfect. France and the UK both have islamists who would be glad to launch something. Then of course there is Pakistan, etc.
It's like you have an evil desire ("nuke them") that can only be inhibited by leaving yourself in grave danger.
Wow.
If you want to do things that way, then an anti-ICBM system doesn't matter. You launch today, aiming for the silos and subs. (if you don't, they could launch first at any moment) Of course, this makes you an evil bastard.
In any case, there would be no single point in time when an anti-ICBM system goes from nothing to perfection. We'd have continuous technical improvement and continuous installation. This greatly discourages the already-unlikely problem of Russia deciding to launch before the shield becomes active. At no point would there be extreme pressure to launch RIGHT NOW.
None of this has anything to do with the nonproliferation structure. I happen to like the nonproliferation structure because it benefits me, but I must admit that it is totally unfair to nations that were late to the party.
MAD is toast as soon as an irrational fanatic gets enough control to cause a launch. Get used to it. Putin can be coldly logical; we are fortunate that he doesn't believe that ridding Earth of infidels would earn him virgins in heaven. When some fanatic gets his possibly-unauthorized finger on a launch button, it'll be too late to deploy any sort of defense system.
I listed "border fences" and "subsurface ocean monitoring" first. We need that.
By the time North Korea and Iran can reliably nuke mainland USA, it'll be too late to build an ICBM defence. We can't just wake up one day, realize that we need an ICBM defense, and go pick one up at Walmart. If we keep up the effort, we probably have just barely enough time to get this deployed.
Border protection is great too. BTW, it's being blocked by people who actually like having Mexicans streaming over the border. For some this is a source of employees who won't complain about unsafe work conditions and other abuses. For others, including many voters who don't actually have a right to vote, it's a way to get friends and family over. The combination of terrorism and the drug war may eventually get us a wimpy fence. I certainly hope so.
We might ward off an attack from a strong enemy. We can build a damn large system if we wish.
Even if unreliable, the enemy can't be certain that their attack will work. That's a pretty good disincentive. They'd be pissing us off without any assurance of hurting us.
If it is reliable and they do attack, we just saved our asses. Wonderful!!!
If it's not reliable, well wouldn't you still rather have it in an attack? Compare the destruction of 3 cities to the destruction of 2000 cities. The destruction of 3 cities is awful, perhaps 10x as bad as Katrina. The destruction of 2000 cities results in a country like Somalia.
You don't leave your door unlocked just because somebody could climb in through a broken window.
Proper defense is multi-layer and it covers as much as possible. If you insist on absolute protection, you'll give up and you'll get nothing. This isn't a time or place for perfectionism.
A proper defense includes:
* border fences * subsurface ocean monitoring * nuclear non-proliferation treaty * direct diplomatic discussions * hacking into launch control systems * return fire hitting the launch sites * return fire in general, as a threat * sabotage * boost-phase anti-ICBM * cruise-phase anti-ICBM * terminal-phase anti-ICBM * redundant infrastructure * bomb shelters * well-prepared emergency responders * evacuation plans * air-superiority * probably 50 other things
With everything at risk, it would be incredibly irresponsible and evil to skip on a multi-layered defense.
Blowing something up generally makes chunks, not vapor.
Also it's far less devastating for many reasons. First of all, it probably hits something low-value instead of the carefully selected target. Second of all, those ideas about plutonium (which probably isn't the material in use) getting equally distributed to every person's lungs are pure fantasy.
We're checksumming free disk space. That's dumb. It makes RAID rebuilds needlessly slow.
We're unable to adjust redundancy according to the value that we place on our data. Everything from the root directory to the access time stamps gets the same level of redundancy.
The on-disk structure of RAID (the lack of it!) prevents reasonable recovery. We can handle a disk that disappears, but not one that gets some blocks corrupted. We can't even detect it in normal use; that requires reading all disks. We have extremely limited transactional ability. All we get for transactions is a write barrier. There is no way to map from RAID troubles (not that we'd detect them) to higher-level structures.
With an integrated system, we could do so much better. Sadly, it's blocked by an odd sort of kernel politics. Radical change is hard. Giving of the simplicity of a layered approach is hard, even when obviously inferior. There is this idea that every new kernel component has to fit into the existing mold, even if the mold is defective.
Monsanto can charge $500 because farmers can pay. They can pay because of the subsidies.
It's much like higher education, where hardly any institution charges less than what the students can get in assistance and loans. (but that's more severe because the money is unusable for any other purpose)
To some extent, we see this in health care. People don't just give up and die if somebody else is paying $million for a few more weeks of life.
If you can pay, you will, especially if it isn't your money.
Error #1: as understood at the time, the "militia" meant every able-bodied male. (age 14 to 60 IIRC) It certainly doen't mean "army".
Error #2: you're not paying attention to how the various parts of that sentence depend on each other. The bit at the beginning is merely justification. They could have left it out, and there wouldn't be any real difference in the meaning of the sentence. Like this...
"Since we think it would be cool, people have the right to own guns." (coolness NOT made a requirement for gun ownership)
"given that intelligence would be a positively selected attribute"
WTF?
Obviously this is not the case today. Bright people are lucky to have one kid, while dumb people often have 5 to 10.
In times past, don't forget the energy cost of having a large brain. (and yes, in the absense of general defects, size is the determining factor)
A powerful brain is only selected for when it offers an advantage. It often doesn't, especially when you factor in the energy costs (directly, plus indirectly via weight) of brainpower.
It requires a husband who respects the job. (obviously not you!)
Smart women produce smart kids generally, if they try. Most don't try, which ought to terrify anybody who wants the future of humanity to include intelligence.
Raising a big family can be really satisfying. After the first few, extras are no big deal.
Slashdot Mirror
Look, this isn't like a degree in science or
engineering. If extremely lucky, you might get
that for the undergraduate, but generally it's
something lame.
The "master's degree" is some wanking bullshit
that involves teaching theory dogma, much of
which has actually been proven wrong in proper
scientific study.
Teachers generally struggle to do something as
simple as the addition of fractions with
different denominators. A decent number of
them are also unable to write properly.
Teachers are the people who sucked too much to
get good jobs. Thus they teach, which is a
fairly bad job. (when your workplace has people
who curse you and threaten you, it's NOT good)
This is why a missile defense is such a dangerously stupid idea.
WTF?
The next generation (Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, etc.) might not worry about self destruction, and you see this as a reason to continue the MAD idea???
MAD relies on each side having fear of destruction. When somebody knows that launching an ICBM at the USA will grant him everlasting life in Heaven, fear is not an issue. Many fanatics welcome their own death in that case.
MAD is especially insane when you consider the long-term instability of the countries in question. You may be willing to gamble that the current leadership of these countries will wish to avoid destruction, but you can not be sure that the leadership won't be overthrown or ignored.
Like this:
Ali, an Al Qaida bastard, applies for a job running Pakistan's missile facility. He promotes a few of his buddies as needed, then schedules them all to work the same shift. They level New York for good. The USA returns fire, allowing them to reach heaven and get the virgins.
You're still admitting defeat without trying.
Maybe the enemy doesn't build so many weapons. Maybe they see our defense system and decide they'd rather spend effort on their own defense system. Maybe we succeed in ignoring the dummy warheads (BTW, good ones are NOT cheap), or we just pay the big $$$ to hit everything.
It might not be a winning strategy, but raising the white flag right from the start is certainly a losing strategy.
They already have an anti-ICBM protecting Moscow.
You can argue about "similar" maybe, but "developed" is long past. It's operational.
From best to worst:
* only USA protected
* both Russia and USA protected
* neither protected
* only Russia protected
Right now we're in one of the worst two situations, depending on how you count a system that only protects the area around Russia's primary (by far) city. (imagine NY/LA/DC all together in one city -- that's Moscow)
Moving to a better situation is good. The "both" situation is probably the best we can hope for. Let's go there.
At what point do you decide to develop anti-ICBM capability? Maybe when a "test" missile passes over the USA? Maybe only if a live warhead is used?
When you finally decide that Iran can indeed reach the USA, you'll have a big problem. You can't instantly install a good anti-missile system. That takes a decade or two of effort, during which you'll ... beg Iran to wait?
"OK, we believe you now. Please don't launch until we develop and install an anti-ICBM system."
Riiiight...
To "take control of one missile", you merely need to pass the employment screening for a job taking care of the missile.
Plenty of countries have crazy people who would do that. The big old nuclear powers try to reduce the problem by having multiple people required for a launch, but this isn't perfect. France and the UK both have islamists who would be glad to launch something. Then of course there is Pakistan, etc.
That's a fascinating comment.
It's like you have an evil desire ("nuke them") that can only be inhibited by leaving yourself in grave danger.
Wow.
If you want to do things that way, then an anti-ICBM system doesn't matter. You launch today, aiming for the silos and subs. (if you don't, they could launch first at any moment) Of course, this makes you an evil bastard.
In any case, there would be no single point in time when an anti-ICBM system goes from nothing to perfection. We'd have continuous technical improvement and continuous installation. This greatly discourages the already-unlikely problem of Russia deciding to launch before the shield becomes active. At no point would there be extreme pressure to launch RIGHT NOW.
None of this has anything to do with the nonproliferation structure. I happen to like the nonproliferation structure because it benefits me, but I must admit that it is totally unfair to nations that were late to the party.
MAD is toast as soon as an irrational fanatic gets enough control to cause a launch. Get used to it. Putin can be coldly logical; we are fortunate that he doesn't believe that ridding Earth of infidels would earn him virgins in heaven. When some fanatic gets his possibly-unauthorized finger on a launch button, it'll be too late to deploy any sort of defense system.
I listed "border fences" and "subsurface ocean monitoring" first. We need that.
By the time North Korea and Iran can reliably nuke mainland USA, it'll be too late to build an ICBM defence. We can't just wake up one day, realize that we need an ICBM defense, and go pick one up at Walmart. If we keep up the effort, we probably have just barely enough time to get this deployed.
Border protection is great too. BTW, it's being blocked by people who actually like having Mexicans streaming over the border. For some this is a source of employees who won't complain about unsafe work conditions and other abuses. For others, including many voters who don't actually have a right to vote, it's a way to get friends and family over. The combination of terrorism and the drug war may eventually get us a wimpy fence. I certainly hope so.
We might ward off an attack from a strong enemy. We can build a damn large system if we wish.
Even if unreliable, the enemy can't be certain that their attack will work. That's a pretty good disincentive. They'd be pissing us off without any assurance of hurting us.
If it is reliable and they do attack, we just saved our asses. Wonderful!!!
If it's not reliable, well wouldn't you still rather have it in an attack? Compare the destruction of 3 cities to the destruction of 2000 cities. The destruction of 3 cities is awful, perhaps 10x as bad as Katrina. The destruction of 2000 cities results in a country like Somalia.
Putin may well lack the interest in chicks.
There is some mystery surrounding a cover-up
and bad job assignment long ago, reports of
being caught on camera with young boys, etc.
Accusing him of pedophilia seems to result in
death by polonium.
(making this not the wisest thing to post!)
You don't leave your door unlocked just because somebody could climb in through a broken window.
Proper defense is multi-layer and it covers as much as possible. If you insist on absolute protection, you'll give up and you'll get nothing. This isn't a time or place for perfectionism.
A proper defense includes:
* border fences
* subsurface ocean monitoring
* nuclear non-proliferation treaty
* direct diplomatic discussions
* hacking into launch control systems
* return fire hitting the launch sites
* return fire in general, as a threat
* sabotage
* boost-phase anti-ICBM
* cruise-phase anti-ICBM
* terminal-phase anti-ICBM
* redundant infrastructure
* bomb shelters
* well-prepared emergency responders
* evacuation plans
* air-superiority
* probably 50 other things
With everything at risk, it would be incredibly irresponsible and evil to skip on a multi-layered defense.
Blowing something up generally makes chunks, not vapor.
Also it's far less devastating for many reasons. First of all, it probably hits something low-value instead of the carefully selected target. Second of all, those ideas about plutonium (which probably isn't the material in use) getting equally distributed to every person's lungs are pure fantasy.
You're giving up much to the enemy when they can read your ideas. Those ideas had better be useful, or this won't be worth the damage.
Think of power converters. Think of a broadcast TV transmitter.
Pretend that oranges are a critical food.
We can grow them in California and Florida.
If we grow 50% of our need in each location,
we won't have enough when one state gets a
hard freeze.
If we grow 100% of our need in each location,
we'll have enough oranges even if one state
gets a hard freeze.
We're checksumming free disk space. That's dumb.
It makes RAID rebuilds needlessly slow.
We're unable to adjust redundancy according to
the value that we place on our data. Everything
from the root directory to the access time stamps
gets the same level of redundancy.
The on-disk structure of RAID (the lack of it!)
prevents reasonable recovery. We can handle a
disk that disappears, but not one that gets
some blocks corrupted. We can't even detect it
in normal use; that requires reading all disks.
We have extremely limited transactional ability.
All we get for transactions is a write barrier.
There is no way to map from RAID troubles (not
that we'd detect them) to higher-level structures.
With an integrated system, we could do so much
better. Sadly, it's blocked by an odd sort of
kernel politics. Radical change is hard. Giving
of the simplicity of a layered approach is hard,
even when obviously inferior. There is this idea
that every new kernel component has to fit into
the existing mold, even if the mold is defective.
Monsanto can charge $500 because farmers can pay.
They can pay because of the subsidies.
It's much like higher education, where hardly
any institution charges less than what the
students can get in assistance and loans. (but
that's more severe because the money is unusable
for any other purpose)
To some extent, we see this in health care.
People don't just give up and die if somebody
else is paying $million for a few more weeks
of life.
If you can pay, you will, especially if it isn't
your money.
Paying people to preserve farmland (not being
done unfortunately) helps with the needs of a
large future population.
Paying people to produce more food than needed
is useful as protection against disasters that
wipe out crops. (storms, freezes, bugs, rot...)
Error #1: as understood at the time, the "militia"
meant every able-bodied male. (age 14 to 60 IIRC)
It certainly doen't mean "army".
Error #2: you're not paying attention to how the
various parts of that sentence depend on each other.
The bit at the beginning is merely justification.
They could have left it out, and there wouldn't be
any real difference in the meaning of the sentence.
Like this...
"Since we think it would be cool, people have
the right to own guns." (coolness NOT made a
requirement for gun ownership)
He can pretty much sit on his hands for the
next 4 years while the economy recovers.
He almost can't avoid having improvement.
This gets him an automatic win next term,
and most likely Hillary or Biden next time.
Positronium is it. The mass is roughly 2x the
electron mass, which is essentially nothing.
The half-life is a tad short though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positronium
There are other choices as well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exotic_atom
"given that intelligence would be a positively selected attribute"
WTF?
Obviously this is not the case today. Bright people are lucky to have one kid, while dumb people often have 5 to 10.
In times past, don't forget the energy cost of having a large brain. (and yes, in the absense of general defects, size is the determining factor)
A powerful brain is only selected for when it offers an advantage. It often doesn't, especially when you factor in the energy costs (directly, plus indirectly via weight) of brainpower.
Learn your history: The war of 1812
The British even burned the whitehouse.
The best husband hunting ground is the
mechanical or electrical engineering department
of a good school.
One must survive the classes long enough to
find a husband. This requires math ability.
(seriously)
house wife
It requires a husband who respects the job.
(obviously not you!)
Smart women produce smart kids generally,
if they try. Most don't try, which ought
to terrify anybody who wants the future of
humanity to include intelligence.
Raising a big family can be really satisfying.
After the first few, extras are no big deal.