Or are you making the case that any of the previous administrations *cough*George W Bush*cough* could be considered a scientific-technological elite? Hell, President Obama just admitted to not knowing how to use an iPod or iPad. Yes, he has his Crackberry, but still...
Scientists routinely have to beg for funding, and NASA always seems to be on death's door for lack of funding.
Wake me when it is the other way around, and the military budget is round-off error for the scientific research one.
Actually, no it wasn't a vague political term introduced on purpose. It may have been turned into that now when dealing with other nations but with concern to Iraq, it originated out of the list of prohibited weapons in the 1991 armistice agreement that brought the UN into jurisdiction. The term weapons of mass destruction was a technical terms that defined all of the prohibited weapons and weapons systems that Iraq agreed to not possess in order to stop the advancement of coalition forces after they invaded Kuwait.
Thank you for clarifying that for me.
Now I will agree that it has been used as a blank political terms when dealing with other nations who do not/did not have such agreements but with Iraq.
We agree there.
And as I said before, before 9/11, we saw things differently, after 9/11 we took a proactive approach instead of waiting until after something happened to point fingers. Let me ask you something, do you think it's not OK to change your mind or be concerned about some things after other events happen? I mean would you be out of line if you let your kids climb a tree in your back yard then forbid them from doing that after one of them falls out and seriously injures himself? The mark of humanity is learning from our past to make life better for us. Not climbing a rotting tree after someone is injured in it is the same as taking notice to Saddam's forbidden WMDs and the possibility of them getting into the hands of terrorists who pushed your kid out of the tree.
In other words, after some events happen, it's perfectly natural to care about shit that didn't bother you before. And it's not like we didn't care at all, the Armistice wouldn't have banned their possession of the weapons if we didn't care. We just didn't care enough to do much about it.
Well, it depends. Yes, it is perfectly reasonable to change your mind. However, after 10 years of dicking around with Iraq after Gulf War 1, we had a pretty solid knowledge of what Iraq was doing. Mainly dancing around the subject of concrete proof because of his relationship with hostile neighbors. We handled it badly. Letting it drag on that long was politically expedient and we're paying a high price for it.
However, I wouldn't ban my kids from climbing trees after a fall (I have 4 -- kids, not trees), but would teach them to look closer for dangers and weaknesses before climbing the next one. Along that line, we knew Iraq had *nothing* to do with 9/11. There was no connection, and the President eventually admitted it in no uncertain terms. Iraq, in their actions, presented no direct threat to the U.S. then or in their history.
Iraq was invaded because it was convenient. The whole "they have WMDs" was the excuse of the day, considering our responses to N. Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel all having WMDs and nuclear programs.
All I've got to say is how Cmdr Taco found time to head over to Iraq and arrest Saddam Hussein is beyond me. What with all the attention paid to editing Slashdot submissions...
Nice response, but (IMHO) your argument on Iraq is flawed.
The problem is the term "WMDs". It is a vague, political term that was introduced on purpose. The idea was to lump together nuclear weapons, which generate lots of fear and concern, with biological and chemical, which aren't in the same class.
We KNEW Iraq had chemical weapons because they used them publicly against the Kurds and Iranians. It was common knowledge, and WE DIDN'T CARE. They were little to no threat to the U.S. with those.
We KNEW they were working on biological weapons, but again they weren't much of a threat to the U.S. Certainly not enough to justify an invasion. Both chemical and biological have short shelf-lives and are fairly difficult to use effectively except on a battlefield.
Nuclear we had NO credible intelligence that Iraq had any capability. What little we had was suspect, cherry picked, and refuted by several other, more credible sources.
BUT, the people that wanted war knew they couldn't sell it to Congress or the public based on chemical or biological weapons. The term WMD was introduced to explicitly blur the line with nuclear weapons and peoples inherent fear of them.
Change the term "WMD" in your argument to "nuclear weapons" and tell me if you still stand behind it.
Yes. That is what I get for answering that one on my mobile. I can't really expound on the itty bitty keyboard.:-)
My point was supposed to be that their super-inflated "we're losing BILLIONS!" message is bullshit. Category #2 -- can't really afford it -- is HUGE. All those students they are whining about would be in the "do without" category. They aren't lost revenue.
I wish the RIAA, MPAA and BSA all had magic, unbreakable DRM that made it impossible to use their products at all with paying. I want to see their reactions when their revenues go down as people just DO WITHOUT their unnecessary crap.
FOSS software and CC media would go thru the roof.
Except that the rules are slightly different in software. Specifically, there is minimal marginal cost involved after the initial creation, which isn't true with physical goods.
So, with the World of Goo experiment you can see that they sold over 83,000 copies with an average payment of between $2.00 and $3.00 over a 13 day period. That works out to about $160,000 to $240,000 over just that 13 day period. Blizzard they ain't, but that isn't a bad haul for 2 weeks. While a typical game of their type may sell for $20, what percentage of that goes directly to the developers as opposed to marketing, distributors, duplication, etc.?
Well, I'll agree that Rand didn't seem to understand the Tragedy of the Commons and many of her direct followers also don't. Again, I'm not so much an acolyte of Rand -- who had many flaws -- as I am intrigued by much of the philosophy of objectivism. Some is wrong, but it has a good base from my perspective.
No, never read it. I've read enough about her to agree she was batshit crazy, and egotist of the first order and a major hypocrite on many subjects. I'm not a follower of Rand so much as I'm intrigued about much of her philosophy in Atlas Shrugged.
Not true. Ayn Rand-types won't necessarily pay zero for this. You're assuming they give no thoughts to future desires and only think of immediate costs and instant gratification, and that just isn't true.
The developers get advertising, which they would otherwise have to pay for -- hence a measurable, monetary cost and a selfish desire on their par. Their similar stunt with World of Goo led me to purchase other games they developed because WoG showed me they were delivering quality, entertaining games. I no longer purchase games for any system without trying them out first. I've been burned too many times with over-hyped commercial games that turn out to be shit and a waste of money.
Because *I* want these developers to continue what they are doing -- a selfish desire on my part -- I will pay cash towards that end. Consider it an opportunity to invest in future products by these developers. Speculation in the market, or an investment in future return if you will.
Start small, like with the JFK "Magic Bullet" theory. Once you grasp that, you can move on to The Duke and such puzzlers like the 24-shooter that really looks like a 6-shooter.
The wise programmer is told about Tao and follows it. The average programmer is told about Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer is told about Tao and laughs at it.
Steven Levy's book Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government--Saving Privacy in the Digital Age is a good read. So is David Kahn's The Codebreakers and Simon Singh's The Code Book -- which seems almost like an updated version of Kahn's book.
The truth is a crypto algorithm like AES may be flawless mathematically, but that is just an abstract representation. Crypto is a chain of everything from the sender to the receiver, from everyday PCs infected with malware to buggy implementations of code to side channel leakage, etc. Odds are that somewhere along the chain there is a fairly easily exploitable weakness.
Why bother breaking into the vault the hard way when the bank manager has drinking problems and is frequently down at the local pub with the keys, barely able to stand upright?
Not that it is totally relevant, but your comment reminded me of a cartoon I once saw in a book when I was too young to understand what I was reading.
Heavy googling brings back that Bill Mauldin was probably the artist, but I can't find the actual cartoon.
It was one heavily decorated, pompous military type telling another one "We call it our anti-anti-missile-missile". They were standing in front of a missile mounted on a launcher. There was a little arm off it with another missile pointing at the first. That, in turn, had another little arm with a missile pointing at the second.
This must've been 30 years ago I was reading thru it, and it was probably drawn 10+ years before that. Same shit, different decade.
...that a species capable of interstellar flight...
Well, there is interstellar flight, and then there is Interstellar Flight. Considering there are 50 known star systems within 16.3 LY of Earth, all it would take to qualify is the ability to accelerate a mass to a good fraction of c and either a long lifespan, patience of a generation or two, and/or some form of suspended animation.
If we, as a planet, dropped everything and put our minds to it, we could send people over to Proxima Centauri in their lifetime. Granted, there may not be anything there for a rest stop...
Interstellar Flight, however -- as in the sci-fi traditional "warp" -- is a whole 'nuther story. If they figured that out, then yeah, they probably don't need anything we have except for a few potential slaves to battle for their amusement. If Star Trek (and Quake III Arena) taught us nothing else it is superior alien races love multi-species gladiatorial combat!
Slashdot Mirror
Because it has never come close to happening?
Or are you making the case that any of the previous administrations *cough*George W Bush*cough* could be considered a scientific-technological elite? Hell, President Obama just admitted to not knowing how to use an iPod or iPad. Yes, he has his Crackberry, but still...
Scientists routinely have to beg for funding, and NASA always seems to be on death's door for lack of funding.
Wake me when it is the other way around, and the military budget is round-off error for the scientific research one.
Actually, no it wasn't a vague political term introduced on purpose. It may have been turned into that now when dealing with other nations but with concern to Iraq, it originated out of the list of prohibited weapons in the 1991 armistice agreement that brought the UN into jurisdiction. The term weapons of mass destruction was a technical terms that defined all of the prohibited weapons and weapons systems that Iraq agreed to not possess in order to stop the advancement of coalition forces after they invaded Kuwait.
Thank you for clarifying that for me.
Now I will agree that it has been used as a blank political terms when dealing with other nations who do not/did not have such agreements but with Iraq.
We agree there.
And as I said before, before 9/11, we saw things differently, after 9/11 we took a proactive approach instead of waiting until after something happened to point fingers. Let me ask you something, do you think it's not OK to change your mind or be concerned about some things after other events happen? I mean would you be out of line if you let your kids climb a tree in your back yard then forbid them from doing that after one of them falls out and seriously injures himself? The mark of humanity is learning from our past to make life better for us. Not climbing a rotting tree after someone is injured in it is the same as taking notice to Saddam's forbidden WMDs and the possibility of them getting into the hands of terrorists who pushed your kid out of the tree.
In other words, after some events happen, it's perfectly natural to care about shit that didn't bother you before.
And it's not like we didn't care at all, the Armistice wouldn't have banned their possession of the weapons if we didn't care. We just didn't care enough to do much about it.
Well, it depends. Yes, it is perfectly reasonable to change your mind. However, after 10 years of dicking around with Iraq after Gulf War 1, we had a pretty solid knowledge of what Iraq was doing. Mainly dancing around the subject of concrete proof because of his relationship with hostile neighbors. We handled it badly. Letting it drag on that long was politically expedient and we're paying a high price for it.
However, I wouldn't ban my kids from climbing trees after a fall (I have 4 -- kids, not trees), but would teach them to look closer for dangers and weaknesses before climbing the next one. Along that line, we knew Iraq had *nothing* to do with 9/11. There was no connection, and the President eventually admitted it in no uncertain terms. Iraq, in their actions, presented no direct threat to the U.S. then or in their history.
Iraq was invaded because it was convenient. The whole "they have WMDs" was the excuse of the day, considering our responses to N. Korea, Pakistan, India and Israel all having WMDs and nuclear programs.
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3314 Saddam Hussein Arrested by CmdrTaco
All I've got to say is how Cmdr Taco found time to head over to Iraq and arrest Saddam Hussein is beyond me. What with all the attention paid to editing Slashdot submissions...
Wait a minute. I think I just figured it out.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
Nice response, but (IMHO) your argument on Iraq is flawed.
The problem is the term "WMDs". It is a vague, political term that was introduced on purpose. The idea was to lump together nuclear weapons, which generate lots of fear and concern, with biological and chemical, which aren't in the same class.
We KNEW Iraq had chemical weapons because they used them publicly against the Kurds and Iranians. It was common knowledge, and WE DIDN'T CARE. They were little to no threat to the U.S. with those.
We KNEW they were working on biological weapons, but again they weren't much of a threat to the U.S. Certainly not enough to justify an invasion. Both chemical and biological have short shelf-lives and are fairly difficult to use effectively except on a battlefield.
Nuclear we had NO credible intelligence that Iraq had any capability. What little we had was suspect, cherry picked, and refuted by several other, more credible sources.
BUT, the people that wanted war knew they couldn't sell it to Congress or the public based on chemical or biological weapons. The term WMD was introduced to explicitly blur the line with nuclear weapons and peoples inherent fear of them.
Change the term "WMD" in your argument to "nuclear weapons" and tell me if you still stand behind it.
Did you by chance rape and murder a young girl in 1990? If not, why haven't you denied it?
Lawrence Taylor, is that you?
Without proper correction, fMRI has been shown to detect brain activity in a dead fish. Next up, trial lawyers.
Yes. That is what I get for answering that one on my mobile. I can't really expound on the itty bitty keyboard. :-)
My point was supposed to be that their super-inflated "we're losing BILLIONS!" message is bullshit. Category #2 -- can't really afford it -- is HUGE. All those students they are whining about would be in the "do without" category. They aren't lost revenue.
Here you go: http://xn--4gbrim.xn----rmckbbajlc6dj7bxne2c.xn--wgbh1c/ar/default.aspx
I wish the RIAA, MPAA and BSA all had magic, unbreakable DRM that made it impossible to use their products at all with paying. I want to see their reactions when their revenues go down as people just DO WITHOUT their unnecessary crap.
FOSS software and CC media would go thru the roof.
Further details. 2D Boy, the makers of World of Goo, consists of 2 people. Their marginal cost on the software was $0.30.
Except that the rules are slightly different in software. Specifically, there is minimal marginal cost involved after the initial creation, which isn't true with physical goods.
So, with the World of Goo experiment you can see that they sold over 83,000 copies with an average payment of between $2.00 and $3.00 over a 13 day period. That works out to about $160,000 to $240,000 over just that 13 day period. Blizzard they ain't, but that isn't a bad haul for 2 weeks. While a typical game of their type may sell for $20, what percentage of that goes directly to the developers as opposed to marketing, distributors, duplication, etc.?
http://2dboy.com/2009/10/26/pay-what-you-want-birthday-sale-wrap-up/
Well, I'll agree that Rand didn't seem to understand the Tragedy of the Commons and many of her direct followers also don't. Again, I'm not so much an acolyte of Rand -- who had many flaws -- as I am intrigued by much of the philosophy of objectivism. Some is wrong, but it has a good base from my perspective.
No, never read it. I've read enough about her to agree she was batshit crazy, and egotist of the first order and a major hypocrite on many subjects. I'm not a follower of Rand so much as I'm intrigued about much of her philosophy in Atlas Shrugged.
Not true. Ayn Rand-types won't necessarily pay zero for this. You're assuming they give no thoughts to future desires and only think of immediate costs and instant gratification, and that just isn't true.
The developers get advertising, which they would otherwise have to pay for -- hence a measurable, monetary cost and a selfish desire on their par. Their similar stunt with World of Goo led me to purchase other games they developed because WoG showed me they were delivering quality, entertaining games. I no longer purchase games for any system without trying them out first. I've been burned too many times with over-hyped commercial games that turn out to be shit and a waste of money.
Because *I* want these developers to continue what they are doing -- a selfish desire on my part -- I will pay cash towards that end. Consider it an opportunity to invest in future products by these developers. Speculation in the market, or an investment in future return if you will.
Start small, like with the JFK "Magic Bullet" theory. Once you grasp that, you can move on to The Duke and such puzzlers like the 24-shooter that really looks like a 6-shooter.
For that to happen, Ogg Theora would have to be a threat or making enough money to make it worthwhile. It hasn't gotten anywhere near that point.
The wise programmer is told about Tao and follows it. The average programmer is told about Tao and searches for it. The foolish programmer is told about Tao and laughs at it.
So, it is going to be a horror flic...
Yeah, that certainly is plausible.
Steven Levy's book Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government--Saving Privacy in the Digital Age is a good read. So is David Kahn's The Codebreakers and Simon Singh's The Code Book -- which seems almost like an updated version of Kahn's book.
The truth is a crypto algorithm like AES may be flawless mathematically, but that is just an abstract representation. Crypto is a chain of everything from the sender to the receiver, from everyday PCs infected with malware to buggy implementations of code to side channel leakage, etc. Odds are that somewhere along the chain there is a fairly easily exploitable weakness.
Why bother breaking into the vault the hard way when the bank manager has drinking problems and is frequently down at the local pub with the keys, barely able to stand upright?
Dude, it's China.
XKCD explains this situation well.
Uhhh...with a show called "The Guiding Light", wouldn't you figure maybe SONET/SDH instead?
What, no WAIS or TN3270? How do you expect people to get work done?!
Not that it is totally relevant, but your comment reminded me of a cartoon I once saw in a book when I was too young to understand what I was reading.
Heavy googling brings back that Bill Mauldin was probably the artist, but I can't find the actual cartoon.
It was one heavily decorated, pompous military type telling another one "We call it our anti-anti-missile-missile". They were standing in front of a missile mounted on a launcher. There was a little arm off it with another missile pointing at the first. That, in turn, had another little arm with a missile pointing at the second.
This must've been 30 years ago I was reading thru it, and it was probably drawn 10+ years before that. Same shit, different decade.
...that a species capable of interstellar flight...
Well, there is interstellar flight, and then there is Interstellar Flight. Considering there are 50 known star systems within 16.3 LY of Earth, all it would take to qualify is the ability to accelerate a mass to a good fraction of c and either a long lifespan, patience of a generation or two, and/or some form of suspended animation.
If we, as a planet, dropped everything and put our minds to it, we could send people over to Proxima Centauri in their lifetime. Granted, there may not be anything there for a rest stop...
Interstellar Flight, however -- as in the sci-fi traditional "warp" -- is a whole 'nuther story. If they figured that out, then yeah, they probably don't need anything we have except for a few potential slaves to battle for their amusement. If Star Trek (and Quake III Arena) taught us nothing else it is superior alien races love multi-species gladiatorial combat!