FOIA doesn't mean that you need up to the minute pictures of dead afgans. Who can say from space who is a civilian and who is not? How will you tell from space who killed those people? Us, them, themselves? Hard to tell from space.
However, it is fairly easy to see troop movements. Do you want bin Laden to be able to buy American satelite images and then use them to kill americans? We are at war. If you don't agree with the war, fine. But don't be stupid.
And for all of you whining about civil liberties being eroded forever, what were civil liberties like during WWII? And yet somehow when the threat passed the liberties slowly returned. I swear that most politicians (liberal AND conservative) are just desperate for super-villians so that they can yell and scream to rally people around them. They don't care who the villian is, just so long as they can use the villians presence to make themselves powerful.
The most impressive way to do this would be to have every surface of the ball be a lens, each one recording all the time and broadcasting all the results to a base station. Then the base station could choose which of all the cameras was currently facing forward and digitally rotate and merge the images from all of the cameras to produce a smooth flowing, forward looking shot from an otherwise crazily spinning ball.
We are at war.
Here is a company that for whatever reason we think is helping the enemy.
Do we:
A) Ignore the problem and hope it goes away, thereby supporting the communications infrastructure of a country who's people are actively against us?
B) Shut down the connection to that company until the crisis is over, playing it safe rather than sorry.
War's not pretty. If people don't like the USA then they shouldn't be doing business with the USA.
Let's make the example personal.
Pretend I work for a financial company and support five children. I start making loud threats against my boss any my company. At the same time imagine that credit card numbers which I work with are mysteriously appearing on the internet for public use. Do you as a client of the company want me fired, or tolerated?
Come on now. We all know that the only reason
90% of slashdot cares about wireless networks is
so we can surf the internet from a backyard hammock.
I want to throw a party in my back yard with speakers sprinkled through the bushes all feeding from a laptop which is streaming music from the internet. I will sit amongst my friends, smiling at the glorious sound and they will know that I am the alpha geek.
We will have an outdoor lan party arranged so each team can see their team mates monitors ala aliens without having to worry about getting all the ethernet plugs right. Are the wired plugs a hassle? No. But That Is Not The Point.
Technology is its own reward. Anyone complaining that 11a is overkill has forgetten their childlike glee.:]
I agree that slashdot does not hold up journalistic standards. But that is exactly why I read slashdot. If I want to read 'scared to have an opinon' journalism, I'll go read C-Net.
Sorry, your sig set off a comment in me:
Re: "A jack of all trades is a master of none"
Imagine the 80/20 rule. I.E. the last 20% of a goal generally requires 80% of the effort.
Let's imagine 5 'trades' of interest and for clarity we'll split them into 10 levels. (D&D!)
Using 10 'units' of training, you would learn one trade to level 10 while I would learn five trades to level 8. This gives you a total of 10 levels and me a total of 40 levels. So if there is a problem in your area of expertise there is an 80% chance I can solve it. However if there is a problem in any one of my five areas of expertise there is only a 20% chance you can solve it. (that 20% coming from the blind hope that the problem happens to lie in your field of expertise)
On top of that, I can benefit from cross disciplinary learning (which is where nearly all discoveries are made). You as an 'expert' can only expound on one thing. You wouldn't want to spend any time learning any other topic for fear of loosing out on that.001 bit of knowledge that you might not have gotten from your master trade. Meanwhile I am learning how to do interesting things and learning more about a specific topic as needed instead of through tunnel visioned devotion.
Look at the law of diminishing returns and maximize the area under your curve. A jack of all trades is almost always more useful that a one trick pony.
Heinlein said it best: "Specialization is for insects."
Sorry to rant, but I've heard that reason-free little jingle one too many times recently.
(I already made this as a reply to comment, but I'm irked about this enough that I want to post it to the main thread in hopes that people read it)
I bet you have security guards, fences and cameras to protect your buildings from 14 year old kids.
Why don't you have a secure firewall to protect your servers?
We are living in the time that 100 years from now people will look back and think we must not yet have evolved properly. They will look back and think, "Why did they put up with that idiocy? Were they just stupid back then?" And parents will shrug and grandparents will say "It was like the frontier!" and kids will think "Wow. Those guys were stupid."
Don't bitch about the lack of govenment protection when all you have to do is install appropriate security which costs NOTHING. I don't want my taxes paying to protect you from your own laziness.
I bet you have security guards, fences and cameras to protect your buildings from 14 year old kids.
Why don't you have a secure firewall to protect your servers?
We are living in the time that 100 years from now people will look back and think we must not yet have evolved properly. They will look back and think, "Why did they put up with that idiocy? Were they just stupid back then?" And parents will shrug and grandparents will say "It was like the frontier!" and kids will think "Wow. Those guys were stupid."
Don't bitch about the lack of govenment protection when all you have to do is install appropriate security which costs NOTHING. I don't want my taxes paying to protect you from your own laziness.
The analysis was a historical perspective. It talked about parallels between the present time and the past. Israel as a country didn't exist during 1812 and thus is not mentioned in the article.
If you don't pay attention to history you'll be doomed to repeat it. Sometimes, you'll be doomed to repeat it anyways.
It is very important that we all get back to 'business as usual' as quickly and calmly as possible. If we give in to terrified speculation, hording gas, selling our stock or other panic moves that will fsck our country then we may as well throw up our hands and say, "Terrorists Win!"
If we get back to business and focus on providing support for families and blood for the wounded we will come out of this OK.
If there existed software based on open standards
and of excellent quality that could be used to
complete our projects, we would not bother to
write open source. However, software companies
are motivated not just by profit, but by
short term, short sighted, ideals of 'easy to do'.
If a software company finds it can make 80% of the
money with 80% of the quality, they will do that.
The people who require software capable of working
in that top 20% have no choice but to write their
own.
I wrote a trivial test app using the java sound API to make a VoIP program. It didn't implement any kind of standard, and it was completely insecure, but it worked after a relatively small amount of effort and it performed really well.
Java Sound passes just about everything through to the card so Java vs C didn't really come in to play much. All I did was decide that one machine was going to play server, and then everyone who connected to that machine got their byte streams mixed using the java Mixer and then sent back the mixed stream.
I'm up to my neck it projects right now, but if someone wanted to lead it up, I'd submit code and experience. Then we wouldn't have to worry about platform at all.
The way to handle cheats is not to prevent cheating, but to make the cheaters accountable. For example, if every copy of half-life sent the players hardware ethernet card ID to the server, it would have a real list of who is who.
In addition to that, every player should be able to mark a please kick vote by every player that pisses them off. When the number of people who want a player kicked is greater than two thirds, the player is kicked and their ethernet card ID is banned. Problem solved, no server admin required.
The two problems with this are people who mod the client to send up a fake ethernet ID. That can be combated through encryption, but not solved. If you want to get really crabby, you could try some kind of trace route and ban everyone who goes through the persons next gateway IP number for 30 minutes. You'd disconnect more people than just the cheater, but there would be enough complaints that the cheaters ISP might do something meaningful, like unplug the guy. More likely, the little brat would just get bored.
The other problem is privacy. Lets face facts. Privacy does not exist in a public arena such as the internet. If you want privacy, log in only from public terminals or don't log in at all. Otherwise accept the fact that a unique ID is a requirement for a modern society. That is why you dont see people running around wearing masks all the time. Your face is your ultimate unique ID and in polite society you are not allowed to hide it. Since I can't see your face on-line, I have to make do with your unique ID number.
Drake42
You are the nay-sayers that you've always hated.
on
To the Moon, Alice
·
· Score: 1
Think about it. You're the people that future generations will look back at and say "Boy, it's a good thing Mr.SoAndSo didn't listen to all those idiots who said it was impossible. We'd still be back at the turn of the century if he did!"
If you have a technical argument, bring it. If you have a bunch of "I don't think he can do it, because I know I can't do it." type of whining then, don't bother posting it.
Personally, I think the whole thing is a hoax, of the 'move it all to Mexico' statement. However, that doesn't mean a non-NASA person couldn't make something like this happen.
Really people, the new card is cool! Remember back in the day when that was enough?
Did the people who created the Altair bitch because there was no pre-existing software for it?
Of course not you dolts, the hardware hadn't been released yet. OBVIOUSLY the software will take time to develop. It's like you have to bitch about something in order to be cool so you bitch about the fundimental law of the universe that cause must predate effect! Either buy the card for the memory speed up and be happy when the software comes out, or wait until the software arrives and buy the card then. Sniveling is not required!
You'd think that slashdot was run by nVidia competitors the way you people are complaining about the doom of hardware market. Why doesn't anybody complain about the near monopoly Oracle has on databases? Because Oracle products generally kick ass! Why doesn't anyone complain about the near monopoly nVidia has? The exact same reason. If you don't like that nVidia has the biggest market share, then go make a better card. Otherwise, shut your trap. I would be right with you in complaint if they had a disengenuous monopoly based largely on cheating, but they don't! I have never been unhappy with an nVidia purchase and the market reflects that.
And for all of you twits who whine that there isn't a driver for your 27 year old, vacuum tube driven, monochrome graphics card, please shut the hell up! You bought a card that came with a driver. That's what you paid for. ANYTHING ELSE YOU GET IS A GIFT FROM THE COMPANY! And that company exists to be profitable, not to feed your whining ass with legacy driver releases. If you want a driver for a new OS with an old card, you have a pair of well known choices: Buy a new card, or write your own damn driver. If you're unwilling to do either of those two things then you're just being a bitch.
I bought my wifes enagaement ring through them. It came in a beautiful little polished wood box, they had exactly the specifications I wanted, the independend gemologist agreed that it was exactly what I had asked for, and he appraised it as being worth 1.5 times what I paid for it.
Of course that's all great for me. If blue nile is giving away diamonds and losing money then that's obviously a poor way to do business, but if they're profitable enough to stick around until I need to buy aniversary shtuf, I would definitely buy from them again.
NON-DISCLAIMER: I do NOT work for blue nile or anyone associated with them.
If you want to see the ring and how I presented it (i.e., if you want to sniff at the nuclear bomb of cute I threw at this girl to make sure she'd marry me) click the link below and look for the engagement story.
Some thoughts that no one else seems to have mentioned:
No one in the game said "Red attacks Blue!" they said "Red attacks BROWN, who asks for help"
Who is brown? Taiwan? Kuwait? India? Japan? I would say any of those countries and many others would be deserving of help if they had to ask for it.
This BULLSHIT about war games being a waste of money is amazing. After humanitarian efforts, war games are the most important thing the peace-time military can do! If the military doesn't think, "what if?" how do you expect the military to plan a defense? Or are you the guys the ones who play CounterStike like it was DukeNukem, die immediately and leave me to try and get the job done while hopelessly outnumbered?
AND ANOTHER THING! The military leadership doesn't give a fuck what the slashdot community thinks of their games any more they the community cares what military leaders thing of C++ vs C. The military leadership isn't qualified to comment on that any more that most of us are qualified to comment on intelligent use of military funds. If you want to post a contrary comment, excellent, but don't just bitch "That's Stupid" when you've thought about your response for less than.5 seconds. Even the military knows that war is a bad thing. On many of the air force hangers I've seen there are signs saying "Peace is our Profession". The military doesn't want to go to war. It wants to make sure that if YOUR ELECTED LEADERSHIP DECLARES WAR then we will win. Don't be pissed at the military about war or spending, be pissed at all the people who didn't vote in the last election and thus gave us W for a president.
ALSO, if they don't care about you knowing why did they invite the press? So any potential enemies know we're studying space based combat and (hopefully) decide not to persue the idea with as much vigor as they might have if they thought we were completely unprepared. That's why you put big naval ships by a potential target. Just to remind a potential enemy that it's a lot less painful to be friends.
Ok, that's enought venting for me. Sorry to all of you who think my comments are obvious.
easy & dangerous. Like sirens?
on
MySQL FS
·
· Score: 1
Ok, ease of use I totally buy. It would be cool to open a file and have it stored in the DB.
BUT: The dangers seem really really high. What about foreign keys? If I'm just blasting out a byte stream who is checking the constraints and triggers? If I do something illegal, there's no way to let my program know?
As for people worried about performance, don't get so excited. Performance is vital when tools are going to be built on top of other tools, but if you're building software specifically for people who are tools (i.e. marketdroids that are unwilling to manipulate a DB directly) then they can pay a cost in performance in exchange for the addded simplicity of interface.
While you bring up points that might have been a problem, I really don't they they are. That drive in my camera can run all day long, and since we're already charging our palms on the cradle, plus the drive doesn't take power when sleeping.
Furthermore, I think the drive is plenty dependable. I beat my camera to hell, drop it, turn it on and off,etc. While I don't recommend that behaviour, my drive stood up to it just fine
It's also MUCH cheaper. I don't see any flash ram in the 300MB range for only $600. (Probably less now, I bought my drive when it was brand new)
On top of all that, I could swap application sets without needing a computer. I could put a bunch of mpegs and an mpeg player on one drive, but swap to another drive when I wanted to see my travel log, expenses, whatever else I use. (More likely I'd have one drive full of metal MP3s and another full of stuff my girlfriend would like)
If you think drives aren't coming to the plam top, I think you're the one whose mistaken. They are just too sexy to ignore.
Once we have an HD in place, the contraints will be loosened and a more realistic interface will be possible, rendering a lot of this squeezing effort unnecessary. (I thought that would obviously be what I meant, but re-reading it, I thought I should clarify)
I own a digital camera with a 340MB micro drive from IBM in it. I can take 500 1200x1000, quality 10, JPEGS with it before it runs out of room. Then to sync I just slip the microdrive into the PC card in my laptop and the laptop recognizes it as just another hard drive, allowing me to copy files as I see fit.
While I would much prefer to buy a hand held running linux, I'm not going to buy anything until flash memory and the like has been replace by a micro drive.
This is a plea to the slashdot community to become involved in the demonstrations being coordinated at www.countercoup.org
They are non-partisan rallies dedicated to the belief that when it comes to determining the results of our presdiential election delay is perferable to error. These rallies are going on in every major city and should be easilly accessible to nearly everyone reading this that lives in the United States.
It is VITAL that the voting process be trusted in order for a democracy to maintain the peoples faith. It doesn't matter wether you voted for Bush, Gore, Nader, Hemos or anybody else. If you believe that the vote should be respected, open and trust worthy you should attend this rally and show the government that this is an issue on which you have no tolerance for error.
There was a pre-rally in San Francisco that I attended. It is the very first rally I've ever attended. It was safe, interesting, even fun. Demos, Reps and Greens all got to speak. Even a person who thought the whole group was wrong and should go home was given his five minutes with the mic to speak his mind. Later we walked to the city federal building, made some more little speeches to each other and then peacefully dispersed.
Please, come show your support for democracy in America.
For more information go to
http://www.countercoup.org
Slashdot Mirror
FOIA doesn't mean that you need up to the minute pictures of dead afgans. Who can say from space who is a civilian and who is not? How will you tell from space who killed those people? Us, them, themselves? Hard to tell from space.
However, it is fairly easy to see troop movements. Do you want bin Laden to be able to buy American satelite images and then use them to kill americans? We are at war. If you don't agree with the war, fine. But don't be stupid.
And for all of you whining about civil liberties being eroded forever, what were civil liberties like during WWII? And yet somehow when the threat passed the liberties slowly returned. I swear that most politicians (liberal AND conservative) are just desperate for super-villians so that they can yell and scream to rally people around them. They don't care who the villian is, just so long as they can use the villians presence to make themselves powerful.
The most impressive way to do this would be to have every surface of the ball be a lens, each one recording all the time and broadcasting all the results to a base station. Then the base station could choose which of all the cameras was currently facing forward and digitally rotate and merge the images from all of the cameras to produce a smooth flowing, forward looking shot from an otherwise crazily spinning ball.
Now THAT would be cool.
We are at war.
Here is a company that for whatever reason we think is helping the enemy.
Do we:
A) Ignore the problem and hope it goes away, thereby supporting the communications infrastructure of a country who's people are actively against us?
B) Shut down the connection to that company until the crisis is over, playing it safe rather than sorry.
War's not pretty. If people don't like the USA then they shouldn't be doing business with the USA.
Let's make the example personal.
Pretend I work for a financial company and support five children. I start making loud threats against my boss any my company. At the same time imagine that credit card numbers which I work with are mysteriously appearing on the internet for public use. Do you as a client of the company want me fired, or tolerated?
Come on now. We all know that the only reason
:]
90% of slashdot cares about wireless networks is
so we can surf the internet from a backyard hammock.
I want to throw a party in my back yard with speakers sprinkled through the bushes all feeding from a laptop which is streaming music from the internet. I will sit amongst my friends, smiling at the glorious sound and they will know that I am the alpha geek.
We will have an outdoor lan party arranged so each team can see their team mates monitors ala aliens without having to worry about getting all the ethernet plugs right. Are the wired plugs a hassle? No. But That Is Not The Point.
Technology is its own reward. Anyone complaining that 11a is overkill has forgetten their childlike glee.
I agree that slashdot does not hold up journalistic standards. But that is exactly why I read slashdot. If I want to read 'scared to have an opinon' journalism, I'll go read C-Net.
Sorry, your sig set off a comment in me:
.001 bit of knowledge that you might not have gotten from your master trade. Meanwhile I am learning how to do interesting things and learning more about a specific topic as needed instead of through tunnel visioned devotion.
Re: "A jack of all trades is a master of none"
Imagine the 80/20 rule. I.E. the last 20% of a goal generally requires 80% of the effort.
Let's imagine 5 'trades' of interest and for clarity we'll split them into 10 levels. (D&D!)
Using 10 'units' of training, you would learn one trade to level 10 while I would learn five trades to level 8. This gives you a total of 10 levels and me a total of 40 levels. So if there is a problem in your area of expertise there is an 80% chance I can solve it. However if there is a problem in any one of my five areas of expertise there is only a 20% chance you can solve it. (that 20% coming from the blind hope that the problem happens to lie in your field of expertise)
On top of that, I can benefit from cross disciplinary learning (which is where nearly all discoveries are made). You as an 'expert' can only expound on one thing. You wouldn't want to spend any time learning any other topic for fear of loosing out on that
Look at the law of diminishing returns and maximize the area under your curve. A jack of all trades is almost always more useful that a one trick pony.
Heinlein said it best: "Specialization is for insects."
Sorry to rant, but I've heard that reason-free little jingle one too many times recently.
(I already made this as a reply to comment, but I'm irked about this enough that I want to post it to the main thread in hopes that people read it)
I bet you have security guards, fences and cameras to protect your buildings from 14 year old kids.
Why don't you have a secure firewall to protect your servers?
We are living in the time that 100 years from now people will look back and think we must not yet have evolved properly. They will look back and think, "Why did they put up with that idiocy? Were they just stupid back then?" And parents will shrug and grandparents will say "It was like the frontier!" and kids will think "Wow. Those guys were stupid."
Don't bitch about the lack of govenment protection when all you have to do is install appropriate security which costs NOTHING. I don't want my taxes paying to protect you from your own laziness.
25K lost? Serves you right.
I bet you have security guards, fences and cameras to protect your buildings from 14 year old kids.
Why don't you have a secure firewall to protect your servers?
We are living in the time that 100 years from now people will look back and think we must not yet have evolved properly. They will look back and think, "Why did they put up with that idiocy? Were they just stupid back then?" And parents will shrug and grandparents will say "It was like the frontier!" and kids will think "Wow. Those guys were stupid."
Don't bitch about the lack of govenment protection when all you have to do is install appropriate security which costs NOTHING. I don't want my taxes paying to protect you from your own laziness.
25K lost? Serves you right.
The analysis was a historical perspective. It talked about parallels between the present time and the past. Israel as a country didn't exist during 1812 and thus is not mentioned in the article.
If you don't pay attention to history you'll be doomed to repeat it. Sometimes, you'll be doomed to repeat it anyways.
It is very important that we all get back to 'business as usual' as quickly and calmly as possible. If we give in to terrified speculation, hording gas, selling our stock or other panic moves that will fsck our country then we may as well throw up our hands and say, "Terrorists Win!"
If we get back to business and focus on providing support for families and blood for the wounded we will come out of this OK.
God Bless,
Jason Henriksen
If there existed software based on open standards
and of excellent quality that could be used to
complete our projects, we would not bother to
write open source. However, software companies
are motivated not just by profit, but by
short term, short sighted, ideals of 'easy to do'.
If a software company finds it can make 80% of the
money with 80% of the quality, they will do that.
The people who require software capable of working
in that top 20% have no choice but to write their
own.
Hi All,
I wrote a trivial test app using the java sound API to make a VoIP program. It didn't implement any kind of standard, and it was completely insecure, but it worked after a relatively small amount of effort and it performed really well.
Java Sound passes just about everything through to the card so Java vs C didn't really come in to play much. All I did was decide that one machine was going to play server, and then everyone who connected to that machine got their byte streams mixed using the java Mixer and then sent back the mixed stream.
I'm up to my neck it projects right now, but if someone wanted to lead it up, I'd submit code and experience. Then we wouldn't have to worry about platform at all.
Jason
The way to handle cheats is not to prevent cheating, but to make the cheaters accountable. For example, if every copy of half-life sent the players hardware ethernet card ID to the server, it would have a real list of who is who.
In addition to that, every player should be able to mark a please kick vote by every player that pisses them off. When the number of people who want a player kicked is greater than two thirds, the player is kicked and their ethernet card ID is banned. Problem solved, no server admin required.
The two problems with this are people who mod the client to send up a fake ethernet ID. That can be combated through encryption, but not solved. If you want to get really crabby, you could try some kind of trace route and ban everyone who goes through the persons next gateway IP number for 30 minutes. You'd disconnect more people than just the cheater, but there would be enough complaints that the cheaters ISP might do something meaningful, like unplug the guy. More likely, the little brat would just get bored.
The other problem is privacy. Lets face facts. Privacy does not exist in a public arena such as the internet. If you want privacy, log in only from public terminals or don't log in at all. Otherwise accept the fact that a unique ID is a requirement for a modern society. That is why you dont see people running around wearing masks all the time. Your face is your ultimate unique ID and in polite society you are not allowed to hide it. Since I can't see your face on-line, I have to make do with your unique ID number.
Drake42
Think about it. You're the people that future generations will look back at and say "Boy, it's a good thing Mr.SoAndSo didn't listen to all those idiots who said it was impossible. We'd still be back at the turn of the century if he did!"
If you have a technical argument, bring it. If you have a bunch of "I don't think he can do it, because I know I can't do it." type of whining then, don't bother posting it.
Personally, I think the whole thing is a hoax, of the 'move it all to Mexico' statement. However, that doesn't mean a non-NASA person couldn't make something like this happen.
Really people, the new card is cool! Remember back in the day when that was enough?
Did the people who created the Altair bitch because there was no pre-existing software for it?
Of course not you dolts, the hardware hadn't been released yet. OBVIOUSLY the software will take time to develop. It's like you have to bitch about something in order to be cool so you bitch about the fundimental law of the universe that cause must predate effect! Either buy the card for the memory speed up and be happy when the software comes out, or wait until the software arrives and buy the card then. Sniveling is not required!
You'd think that slashdot was run by nVidia competitors the way you people are complaining about the doom of hardware market. Why doesn't anybody complain about the near monopoly Oracle has on databases? Because Oracle products generally kick ass! Why doesn't anyone complain about the near monopoly nVidia has? The exact same reason. If you don't like that nVidia has the biggest market share, then go make a better card. Otherwise, shut your trap. I would be right with you in complaint if they had a disengenuous monopoly based largely on cheating, but they don't! I have never been unhappy with an nVidia purchase and the market reflects that.
And for all of you twits who whine that there isn't a driver for your 27 year old, vacuum tube driven, monochrome graphics card, please shut the hell up! You bought a card that came with a driver. That's what you paid for. ANYTHING ELSE YOU GET IS A GIFT FROM THE COMPANY! And that company exists to be profitable, not to feed your whining ass with legacy driver releases. If you want a driver for a new OS with an old card, you have a pair of well known choices: Buy a new card, or write your own damn driver. If you're unwilling to do either of those two things then you're just being a bitch.
I need a Gin and Tonic.
The words anger management float through the air...
that was tremendously funny. good post.
I bought my wifes enagaement ring through them. It came in a beautiful little polished wood box, they had exactly the specifications I wanted, the independend gemologist agreed that it was exactly what I had asked for, and he appraised it as being worth 1.5 times what I paid for it.
Of course that's all great for me. If blue nile is giving away diamonds and losing money then that's obviously a poor way to do business, but if they're profitable enough to stick around until I need to buy aniversary shtuf, I would definitely buy from them again.
NON-DISCLAIMER: I do NOT work for blue nile or anyone associated with them.
If you want to see the ring and how I presented it (i.e., if you want to sniff at the nuclear bomb of cute I threw at this girl to make sure she'd marry me) click the link below and look for the engagement story.
Some thoughts that no one else seems to have mentioned:
.5 seconds. Even the military knows that war is a bad thing. On many of the air force hangers I've seen there are signs saying "Peace is our Profession". The military doesn't want to go to war. It wants to make sure that if YOUR ELECTED LEADERSHIP DECLARES WAR then we will win. Don't be pissed at the military about war or spending, be pissed at all the people who didn't vote in the last election and thus gave us W for a president.
No one in the game said "Red attacks Blue!" they said "Red attacks BROWN, who asks for help"
Who is brown? Taiwan? Kuwait? India? Japan? I would say any of those countries and many others would be deserving of help if they had to ask for it.
This BULLSHIT about war games being a waste of money is amazing. After humanitarian efforts, war games are the most important thing the peace-time military can do! If the military doesn't think, "what if?" how do you expect the military to plan a defense? Or are you the guys the ones who play CounterStike like it was DukeNukem, die immediately and leave me to try and get the job done while hopelessly outnumbered?
AND ANOTHER THING! The military leadership doesn't give a fuck what the slashdot community thinks of their games any more they the community cares what military leaders thing of C++ vs C. The military leadership isn't qualified to comment on that any more that most of us are qualified to comment on intelligent use of military funds. If you want to post a contrary comment, excellent, but don't just bitch "That's Stupid" when you've thought about your response for less than
ALSO, if they don't care about you knowing why did they invite the press? So any potential enemies know we're studying space based combat and (hopefully) decide not to persue the idea with as much vigor as they might have if they thought we were completely unprepared. That's why you put big naval ships by a potential target. Just to remind a potential enemy that it's a lot less painful to be friends.
Ok, that's enought venting for me. Sorry to all of you who think my comments are obvious.
Ok, ease of use I totally buy. It would be cool to open a file and have it stored in the DB.
BUT: The dangers seem really really high. What about foreign keys? If I'm just blasting out a byte stream who is checking the constraints and triggers? If I do something illegal, there's no way to let my program know?
try{
db.println("foo,bar,bally");
}
catch(DBFSInvalidColumnException){}
??? How do you do that in C or shell script?
As for people worried about performance, don't get so excited. Performance is vital when tools are going to be built on top of other tools, but if you're building software specifically for people who are tools (i.e. marketdroids that are unwilling to manipulate a DB directly) then they can pay a cost in performance in exchange for the addded simplicity of interface.
While you bring up points that might have been a problem, I really don't they they are. That drive in my camera can run all day long, and since we're already charging our palms on the cradle, plus the drive doesn't take power when sleeping.
Furthermore, I think the drive is plenty dependable. I beat my camera to hell, drop it, turn it on and off,etc. While I don't recommend that behaviour, my drive stood up to it just fine
It's also MUCH cheaper. I don't see any flash ram in the 300MB range for only $600. (Probably less now, I bought my drive when it was brand new)
On top of all that, I could swap application sets without needing a computer. I could put a bunch of mpegs and an mpeg player on one drive, but swap to another drive when I wanted to see my travel log, expenses, whatever else I use. (More likely I'd have one drive full of metal MP3s and another full of stuff my girlfriend would like)
If you think drives aren't coming to the plam top, I think you're the one whose mistaken. They are just too sexy to ignore.
(And what did that have to do with interfaces?)
Once we have an HD in place, the contraints will be loosened and a more realistic interface will be possible, rendering a lot of this squeezing effort unnecessary. (I thought that would obviously be what I meant, but re-reading it, I thought I should clarify)
I own a digital camera with a 340MB micro drive from IBM in it. I can take 500 1200x1000, quality 10, JPEGS with it before it runs out of room. Then to sync I just slip the microdrive into the PC card in my laptop and the laptop recognizes it as just another hard drive, allowing me to copy files as I see fit.
While I would much prefer to buy a hand held running linux, I'm not going to buy anything until flash memory and the like has been replace by a micro drive.
This is a plea to the slashdot community to become involved in the demonstrations being coordinated at www.countercoup.org
They are non-partisan rallies dedicated to the belief that when it comes to determining the results of our presdiential election delay is perferable to error. These rallies are going on in every major city and should be easilly accessible to nearly everyone reading this that lives in the United States.
It is VITAL that the voting process be trusted in order for a democracy to maintain the peoples faith. It doesn't matter wether you voted for Bush, Gore, Nader, Hemos or anybody else. If you believe that the vote should be respected, open and trust worthy you should attend this rally and show the government that this is an issue on which you have no tolerance for error.
There was a pre-rally in San Francisco that I attended. It is the very first rally I've ever attended. It was safe, interesting, even fun. Demos, Reps and Greens all got to speak. Even a person who thought the whole group was wrong and should go home was given his five minutes with the mic to speak his mind. Later we walked to the city federal building, made some more little speeches to each other and then peacefully dispersed.
Please, come show your support for democracy in America.
For more information go to
http://www.countercoup.org
Football (violence), V.S. (sex),
elections (old grumpy guys).
Doesn't exactly inspire a primal response, thus we wont see the driven masses logging in over it.