"Nuclear power makes sense for carriers and the three classes of subs we operate, SSN, SSBN, and SSGN, but it's never really taken off for surface ships. The last non-carrier nuclear surface boat was the Long Beach, I believe, an escort cruiser."
Different missions.
Submarines are supposed to stay hidden for long periods of time, and they can't do that if they have to pop up ever few days at the local fuel depot. The carriers are supposed to be out there doing the whole power-projection thing, but (again) it's hard to be out there projecting power when your planes spend a few days every month pwning the airspace around Ye Olde Coaling Station. Really, there's nothing interesting going on at Diego Garcia.
As for the not-so-capital capital ships (at least those not tied to a carrier battlegroup), their job is more or less to fly the flag, preferably in places where people can see it, and people have a tendency to live on land. So your frigates and your destroyers have a bit of a diplomatic role to play when they come to a port, disgorging the crew to partake of the local breweries and sex workers, as a way of telling everybody "Yeah, we're still here. And this is our boom stick." And if you're going to be hanging out anyway, why invest in a technology meant to help you avoid doing so? And on top of that, there are people like the Kiwis still squeamish about the whole "nukular" thing.
Once you decide nuclear isn't worth it on these vessels, the only question remaining is whether to pay money to build a whole separate class of nuclear fun-sized ships for escorting the CVNs (and there's only so many), or to pay money to throw a tanker or two into the mix of a battlegroup.
"MSFT is selling Vista for 2-4 times what XP went for."
Where are you getting your numbers? Last time I looked, the full and upgrade prices at retail of Vista Business and Vista Home Premium were the same as XP Professional and XP Home Edition, respectively. Yes, Vista Ultimate costs more, but on the flip side Home Basic costs less. And really, who needs to have their media center join a domain?
Hitler vs. Stalin: No matter who wins, everybody loses.
Well, personally, I think that the Iran-Iraq war makes a better metaphor; it's all happening in a rather insignificant corner of the home movie market anyway.
"Son, no one can resist the great, refreshing taste of Coca-Cola classic"
You forgot "Hostess Fruit Pies."
"Hurry, while they're destracted we can use the Dodge Particle Cannon"
I don't remember Chrysler off the top of my head, but I know BattleTech has GM (not to mention Nissan and Mitsubishi) making weapons and battlemechs in the 31st century.
Re:Getting in ahead of the crowd...
on
Geekonomics
·
· Score: 1
""This book could be summed up in three words: 'don't use windows'""
Microsoft can afford to defend themselves against a few liability lawsuits. Can Linus?
"We hear from our customers directly and indirectly... I think our company is very, very sensitive to customer attitude -- we have to consider this," Jim Cicconi told Slyck.com"
They hear from their customers by tapping their phone lines without a warrant. What better way to stay in tune with customer attitudes by recording them directly and without their knowledge?
Tell me about it. I got mine back in Spring '06, and now the DVD tray doesn't want to open while the system is vertical, but the warranty extension only applies to RRoD issues. On top of that, I wouldn't mind trading up to an HDMI port without having to deal with the DRM issues of transferring consoles.
I've learned with the PS2 to get my Sony console as early as possible, before they remove features, and the removal of PS2 hardware from the PS3 affirms my decision to get a 60 GB model. But I've now learned that I need to give Microsoft consoles the opposite treatment: wait until the end of its life to buy one, after they've fixed all the problems and stopped upgrading the feature set.
I mean, I can imagine cloning being an advantage when it comes to breeding a particular pedigree of animal for pets or other kinds of show animals, but I don't see the advantage of cloning livestock over the old-fashioned method of making new livestock; more often than not, the latter requires little human intervention if any.
If a particular livestock animal has valuable characteristics, isn't it better to foster those characteristics in successive generations through selective breeding, which lets you improve the traits over succeeding generations, than to try to clone the animal and end up with more of the same and nothing better?
But that would cause a long-term problem for the format. Already both BluRay and HD-DVD run the risk of aggravating and alienating early HDTV adopters, whose televisions don't have an HDMI socket, when they activate the HDCP. If this price cut really does spur HD-DVD into something resembling life, not only will they have to contend with angry first-adopters, but also the appreciable fraction of consumers who, through their Xbox 360, have an HD-DVD player by itself that does not support HDCP.
I don't see myself buying a standalone HD-DVD player at any point in the future, no matter what its potential life may be or what titles are offered on the format; after all, I've never owned a standalone DVD player. So even if I do go this route and even if HD-DVD survives, turning on HDCP means I stop buying HD-DVDs (at least until a new whiz-bang console comes out that supports HD-DVD over HDMI from the get-go), and I doubt I'd be the only one. On the market end, it would hurt HD-DVD more to turn on HDCP than it would BluRay, but on the content end HD-DVD must turn on HDCP as soon as BluRay does or they lose studio support.
All this price cut ultimately does is buy a finite amount of time; BluRay doesn't have to do anything different and it will still win. To actually perpetuate this format struggle as you suggest, it'd take something far more spectacular than a price drop. The only way I can see this happening is if HDCP is abandoned entirely, and while it's true we've seen the day come that Sony is selling DRM-free MP3s on Amazon, I suspect the movie industry has too much inertia to be convinced to abandon (even only) HDCP in time to save the ailing format.
I've been mulling over getting the HD-DVD add-on for my 360 ever since I saw Galactica advertised on HD-DVD, but I've been holding back because my 360 doesn't have an HDMI port (no HDCP) and I've already decided against "upgrading" to a newer 360 (no way to transfer DRM). However, if the price on the add-on is also going to be slashed (and if the HD-DVD format will soon be deader than BSD anyway, before they start enforcing HDCP), then I might consider buying it in spite of my non-future-proofed 360.
"But, isn't elemental hydrogen two protons and elemental helium two protons and two neutrons?"
Hydrogen just has one proton at its nucleus, while helium has two protons (and usually two neutrons). What the poster meant by "diatomic molecule," though, is that hydrogen really doesn't like being alone and usually exists as H2, two hydrogen atoms stuck together to form a single molecule.
"Is the smaller size a result of the size of the electron cloud?"
You're confusing molecular bonding with nuclear fusion. If there are two protons sharing the same nucleus, it's helium, not hydrogen. The two protons in an H2 molecule, both sharing a positive electrical charge, are nowhere near each other (on the atomic scale), and the two electrons are wandering around between/among the two disparate protons.
Since they tend to predate the GPS constellation, I'd imagine so.
"Any war by the US against a significantly developed nation runs the risk of rendering space completely useless for the next century."
If satellites require constant readjustment to compensate for drag (atmospheric, gravitational, etc.) and eventually have to be replaced after a few years as they run out of maneuvering fuel and fall out of orbit, why shouldn't the same be true of the debris?
"The economic damage from that stupidity would be huge."
"It should be handed to you? Some sort of divine right?"
More like "inalienable."
"We older people feel like that too. Very few people throughout history have been able to evade that feeling."
And that makes it OK to put up with it?
"And the inevitable result of your pathological lethargy will be the fading of America as a country of importance."
Because it is so much better and nobler to suffer in the name of the state than it is to, say, live someplace with less stature but a better standard of living? No nation's stature should be considered to be more important than the well-being of its citizens.
"They are tougher, meaner, smarter, more experienced, better talkers, better programmers, better negotiators, better strategists, etc.., than their younger colleagues."
And that works so well for them when they get let go just short of retirement and find themselves unable to get a new job because of their advanced age. You're assuming that management actually cares about those qualities, or at least is willing to pay for them.
"So stop being a spoiled brat and go do the grunt work. You aren't yet up to the task of the higher profile stuff."
And the point of "degree required" on the want ads is what exactly? If the low-paying grunt work has such a high barrier to entry, in spite of having the same working conditions as jobs that doesn't require the degree, why shouldn't they be pissed off and demanding more?
"as a green kid, the company is investing in you"
Bullshit. This isn't the 1950's, there are no meaningful IT unions. The company expects each and every employee to be worth more than they're being paid within a month at the longest, otherwise there'd be no quarterly profits to show to the shareholders. And while these managers are bemoaning the problems of managing younger workers, the accountants see the advantage of a status quo where a high churn means fewer people qualifying for costly benefits.
"Just setup a RADIUS server and get an AP that supports it."
RADIUS may be good for corporate networks, but home networks feature an entirely different set of clients. Most of the clients on my network are video game consoles, and many of them don't even support WPA2; there's no way in hell anybody will commit the resources to make a piece of home electronics function as such a full-featured network client.
RADIUS will only help with your PC clients, and I'm coming to the conclusion that it's probably best to leave them wired to begin with (higher bandwidth and reliability in addition to simpler security) and leave wireless for the consoles/media extenders/etc that don't have anything worth compromising. Maybe some port filtering for them to ensure that cloning one of their MACs gives no useful access...
"But more importantly, what's _his_ problem there? It's not like anyone forces him to play or buy those anyway. Plus, being that they're ancient games, he should be able to find tons of reviews and whatnot."
Personally, I'm tired of seeing games like Ys: Books I & II and Phantasy Star II, good games that have already been released in English (multiple times) continue to be Japanese exclusives on the Virtual Console. And I've been less than impressed with Sony's PS1 offerings on the PlayStation Store as well. At this point, there are more Japan exclusives for the Virtual Console that I'd be willing to pay money for than there are North American releases that I already have paid for.
Alright, this may fall more under the "fewer Japanese exclusives" argument, but between the three major players, Nintendo has the best ability to tap into the golden age of video games, and all us filthy gaijins are getting is shovelware. All that's left is a major announcement that Acclaim games will be available. Can we at least get Mother already?
Slashdot Mirror
The important question is if the railgun can sustain a rate of fire equal to that of ten Libraries of Congress.
"Non-solar fusion won't produce that much energy any time soon."
I was going to mention Ivy Mike and friends, but now that I think about it, I dearly hope you prove correct.
"Nuclear power makes sense for carriers and the three classes of subs we operate, SSN, SSBN, and SSGN, but it's never really taken off for surface ships. The last non-carrier nuclear surface boat was the Long Beach, I believe, an escort cruiser."
Different missions.
Submarines are supposed to stay hidden for long periods of time, and they can't do that if they have to pop up ever few days at the local fuel depot. The carriers are supposed to be out there doing the whole power-projection thing, but (again) it's hard to be out there projecting power when your planes spend a few days every month pwning the airspace around Ye Olde Coaling Station. Really, there's nothing interesting going on at Diego Garcia.
As for the not-so-capital capital ships (at least those not tied to a carrier battlegroup), their job is more or less to fly the flag, preferably in places where people can see it, and people have a tendency to live on land. So your frigates and your destroyers have a bit of a diplomatic role to play when they come to a port, disgorging the crew to partake of the local breweries and sex workers, as a way of telling everybody "Yeah, we're still here. And this is our boom stick." And if you're going to be hanging out anyway, why invest in a technology meant to help you avoid doing so? And on top of that, there are people like the Kiwis still squeamish about the whole "nukular" thing.
Once you decide nuclear isn't worth it on these vessels, the only question remaining is whether to pay money to build a whole separate class of nuclear fun-sized ships for escorting the CVNs (and there's only so many), or to pay money to throw a tanker or two into the mix of a battlegroup.
Would Monster.com even still exist if it weren't for scams like these?
"MSFT is selling Vista for 2-4 times what XP went for."
Where are you getting your numbers? Last time I looked, the full and upgrade prices at retail of Vista Business and Vista Home Premium were the same as XP Professional and XP Home Edition, respectively. Yes, Vista Ultimate costs more, but on the flip side Home Basic costs less. And really, who needs to have their media center join a domain?
Hitler vs. Stalin: No matter who wins, everybody loses.
Well, personally, I think that the Iran-Iraq war makes a better metaphor; it's all happening in a rather insignificant corner of the home movie market anyway.
"Son, no one can resist the great, refreshing taste of Coca-Cola classic"
You forgot "Hostess Fruit Pies."
"Hurry, while they're destracted we can use the Dodge Particle Cannon"
I don't remember Chrysler off the top of my head, but I know BattleTech has GM (not to mention Nissan and Mitsubishi) making weapons and battlemechs in the 31st century.
""This book could be summed up in three words: 'don't use windows'""
Microsoft can afford to defend themselves against a few liability lawsuits. Can Linus?
"We hear from our customers directly and indirectly... I think our company is very, very sensitive to customer attitude -- we have to consider this," Jim Cicconi told Slyck.com"
They hear from their customers by tapping their phone lines without a warrant. What better way to stay in tune with customer attitudes by recording them directly and without their knowledge?
Except the first version of NT was branded 3.1.
Tell me about it. I got mine back in Spring '06, and now the DVD tray doesn't want to open while the system is vertical, but the warranty extension only applies to RRoD issues. On top of that, I wouldn't mind trading up to an HDMI port without having to deal with the DRM issues of transferring consoles.
I've learned with the PS2 to get my Sony console as early as possible, before they remove features, and the removal of PS2 hardware from the PS3 affirms my decision to get a 60 GB model. But I've now learned that I need to give Microsoft consoles the opposite treatment: wait until the end of its life to buy one, after they've fixed all the problems and stopped upgrading the feature set.
"Mains?" "Earthed?" Don't they speak English over in England?
He whose tab key is worn down.
I mean, I can imagine cloning being an advantage when it comes to breeding a particular pedigree of animal for pets or other kinds of show animals, but I don't see the advantage of cloning livestock over the old-fashioned method of making new livestock; more often than not, the latter requires little human intervention if any.
If a particular livestock animal has valuable characteristics, isn't it better to foster those characteristics in successive generations through selective breeding, which lets you improve the traits over succeeding generations, than to try to clone the animal and end up with more of the same and nothing better?
But that would cause a long-term problem for the format. Already both BluRay and HD-DVD run the risk of aggravating and alienating early HDTV adopters, whose televisions don't have an HDMI socket, when they activate the HDCP. If this price cut really does spur HD-DVD into something resembling life, not only will they have to contend with angry first-adopters, but also the appreciable fraction of consumers who, through their Xbox 360, have an HD-DVD player by itself that does not support HDCP.
I don't see myself buying a standalone HD-DVD player at any point in the future, no matter what its potential life may be or what titles are offered on the format; after all, I've never owned a standalone DVD player. So even if I do go this route and even if HD-DVD survives, turning on HDCP means I stop buying HD-DVDs (at least until a new whiz-bang console comes out that supports HD-DVD over HDMI from the get-go), and I doubt I'd be the only one. On the market end, it would hurt HD-DVD more to turn on HDCP than it would BluRay, but on the content end HD-DVD must turn on HDCP as soon as BluRay does or they lose studio support.
All this price cut ultimately does is buy a finite amount of time; BluRay doesn't have to do anything different and it will still win. To actually perpetuate this format struggle as you suggest, it'd take something far more spectacular than a price drop. The only way I can see this happening is if HDCP is abandoned entirely, and while it's true we've seen the day come that Sony is selling DRM-free MP3s on Amazon, I suspect the movie industry has too much inertia to be convinced to abandon (even only) HDCP in time to save the ailing format.
I've been mulling over getting the HD-DVD add-on for my 360 ever since I saw Galactica advertised on HD-DVD, but I've been holding back because my 360 doesn't have an HDMI port (no HDCP) and I've already decided against "upgrading" to a newer 360 (no way to transfer DRM). However, if the price on the add-on is also going to be slashed (and if the HD-DVD format will soon be deader than BSD anyway, before they start enforcing HDCP), then I might consider buying it in spite of my non-future-proofed 360.
"But, isn't elemental hydrogen two protons and elemental helium two protons and two neutrons?"
Hydrogen just has one proton at its nucleus, while helium has two protons (and usually two neutrons). What the poster meant by "diatomic molecule," though, is that hydrogen really doesn't like being alone and usually exists as H2, two hydrogen atoms stuck together to form a single molecule.
"Is the smaller size a result of the size of the electron cloud?"
You're confusing molecular bonding with nuclear fusion. If there are two protons sharing the same nucleus, it's helium, not hydrogen. The two protons in an H2 molecule, both sharing a positive electrical charge, are nowhere near each other (on the atomic scale), and the two electrons are wandering around between/among the two disparate protons.
"it was fun writing C code when you were walking from the bust stop to your EE classes while looking in the LED alphanumeric hud."
Virgin.
"I still have better resolution with my good ol' eyes looking at the real world."
But you're on Slashdot, which means your real world contains no naked women.
"one of pure numbers where the Chinese have the advantage."
Can they swim?
"Do their cruise missiles even work without GPS?"
Since they tend to predate the GPS constellation, I'd imagine so.
"Any war by the US against a significantly developed nation runs the risk of rendering space completely useless for the next century."
If satellites require constant readjustment to compensate for drag (atmospheric, gravitational, etc.) and eventually have to be replaced after a few years as they run out of maneuvering fuel and fall out of orbit, why shouldn't the same be true of the debris?
"The economic damage from that stupidity would be huge."
1913 called, yadda.
"It should be handed to you? Some sort of divine right?"
More like "inalienable."
"We older people feel like that too. Very few people throughout history have been able to evade that feeling."
And that makes it OK to put up with it?
"And the inevitable result of your pathological lethargy will be the fading of America as a country of importance."
Because it is so much better and nobler to suffer in the name of the state than it is to, say, live someplace with less stature but a better standard of living? No nation's stature should be considered to be more important than the well-being of its citizens.
"They are tougher, meaner, smarter, more experienced, better talkers, better programmers, better negotiators, better strategists, etc.., than their younger colleagues."
And that works so well for them when they get let go just short of retirement and find themselves unable to get a new job because of their advanced age. You're assuming that management actually cares about those qualities, or at least is willing to pay for them.
"So stop being a spoiled brat and go do the grunt work. You aren't yet up to the task of the higher profile stuff."
And the point of "degree required" on the want ads is what exactly? If the low-paying grunt work has such a high barrier to entry, in spite of having the same working conditions as jobs that doesn't require the degree, why shouldn't they be pissed off and demanding more?
"as a green kid, the company is investing in you"
Bullshit. This isn't the 1950's, there are no meaningful IT unions. The company expects each and every employee to be worth more than they're being paid within a month at the longest, otherwise there'd be no quarterly profits to show to the shareholders. And while these managers are bemoaning the problems of managing younger workers, the accountants see the advantage of a status quo where a high churn means fewer people qualifying for costly benefits.
"Just setup a RADIUS server and get an AP that supports it."
RADIUS may be good for corporate networks, but home networks feature an entirely different set of clients. Most of the clients on my network are video game consoles, and many of them don't even support WPA2; there's no way in hell anybody will commit the resources to make a piece of home electronics function as such a full-featured network client.
RADIUS will only help with your PC clients, and I'm coming to the conclusion that it's probably best to leave them wired to begin with (higher bandwidth and reliability in addition to simpler security) and leave wireless for the consoles/media extenders/etc that don't have anything worth compromising. Maybe some port filtering for them to ensure that cloning one of their MACs gives no useful access...
Primaries are an internal party matter, less a matter of public concern than the general election. Let the fuckers deal with their own problems.
"But more importantly, what's _his_ problem there? It's not like anyone forces him to play or buy those anyway. Plus, being that they're ancient games, he should be able to find tons of reviews and whatnot."
Personally, I'm tired of seeing games like Ys: Books I & II and Phantasy Star II, good games that have already been released in English (multiple times) continue to be Japanese exclusives on the Virtual Console. And I've been less than impressed with Sony's PS1 offerings on the PlayStation Store as well. At this point, there are more Japan exclusives for the Virtual Console that I'd be willing to pay money for than there are North American releases that I already have paid for.
Alright, this may fall more under the "fewer Japanese exclusives" argument, but between the three major players, Nintendo has the best ability to tap into the golden age of video games, and all us filthy gaijins are getting is shovelware. All that's left is a major announcement that Acclaim games will be available. Can we at least get Mother already?
"GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY!"
As opposed to sitting inside and trolling on Slashdot?