No where was I ever on board the you'd be speaking German train. Sorry, of course I should have been clearer. I was quoting you because it had the most content - but you didn't make that claim. Maybe there should be an up arrow emoticon allowed designating "all previous idiots who made the preceding claim" or something!
Bozo claims snorkel detection defeats the U-Boats, I refute it, and you lecture me that it was due to defeating crypto - which it was. By the British. Yes, Bletchley Park was fabulous and how about that Turing? If you were mention anything on-spot for the UK, you might have mentioned the HMS Petard, history buff that you are. Oh - did you forget the Polish contribution to Bletchley Park - no, probably not. No, in fact none of the posts mentioning snorkel detection or ASDIC were there when this conversation started.
The details of bletchley park I didn't feel were 100% relevant to the discussion
I'd like to rail further about resupply and your other views, but it comes to this. Someone else was slagging the contribution of a country, the US, who gave a half-million men dead to help liberate Europe - but according to you, I somehow said that we saved you - which I never did. Of course the logistics were important. It is almost certain, in my opinion, that the major contribution of the US to the war in Europe was logisitcal (tanks, planes, weapons, ammo and food for the british and the soviets). Your numbers seem off, though - the US lost a half million men on all fronts in the war, so saying "gave a half-million dead to help liberate Europe" is a bit disingenuous.
As far as the "blinkered" view of two fronts, it was only something Hitler used to refer in general to the problems he faced from the Western Democracies as well as the Communists, very well documented in The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich - perhaps you've heard of it? Well, I've either studied it as well as a number of texts, primarily by European authors - or I lack the skills to see the compass points and just have no knowledge whatsoever of what I'm talking about. You seem to be taking this as a personal attack on you, which it isn't. Hitler was WRONG when he thought of two fronts, East and West. And make no mistake, he really did think of it in those terms. It's a major reason why the Germans lost - that and the fact that of the two, the Eastern one was far more important to him ideologically and he was unable to think clearly about it.
Interestingly, the British Commonwealth had roughly the same number of servicemen as the US - at 11 million or so. I hadn't realised it was quite so extensive.
Also, seriously, it's an internet messageboard. Relax
OK, I've been a bit irritated by the knee-jerk "you'd all be speaking German/Russian" responses from ignorant posters as well, so I'll bite...
I would like to make it clear, though, that the contribution of the US to WWII was truly great and gained political capital and general goodwill that lasted for a long, long time (except in France - they're the reason that there's a NATO and no centralised European defence force).
This excludes the Pacific theatre, but bear in mind that the Japanese had been fighting in China for some time already and were skirmishing with a woefully under equipped British army for some time. Also bear in mind that despite the wishes of the US administrations of the time, the US population had no notion of going to war until the attack on Pearl Harbour. The US population was, and still is, rather isolationist. It's amazing that their foreign policy is so active:)
> The Brits did quite a bit of damage with Bomber Command, but the US Army Air Force effect > was quite substantial.
True, and the combined air-fleets caused massive damage. But the Battle of Britian was over and the air war was won - by the British. Largely because they'd manage to piss Hitler off enough that he stopped bombing their airfields, and due to radar.
> Prior to D-Day, it was Hitler's Fortress Europa, as I recall. How was that to fall without > the US?
Umm, the same way it did WITH the US - with some misdirection, tactics, and lots of casualties. It would not have been practical at the time, however. It wasn't really practical anyway but the USSR was getting rather pissed and making noises about a seperate peace. This almost certainly would not have happened, Hitler was obsessed.
> No question the Corporal fucked up royally in his Soviet invasions - but are you saying he > wouldn't have been fighting a war on two fronts had America not been in the war?
Okay, here's where the blinkered view of history accusation can be levelled at you - Germany was fighting on many fronts - Eastern, North African (El Alamein, etc.), English (a large force of aircraft and invasion preparations), Balkan (Tito's yugoslavians would not stop), Eritrea, and smaller scale engagements all over Africa - already.
Of course, the British were fighting them on all those fronts as well as in south east asia too. The Australians and Canadians were involved, too. And DeGaulle's free French. And Indian auxiliaries, and Irish volunteers, and American volunteers, too. A previous poster made the valid point that the British bankrupted their empire - leading to it's eventual dissolution - fighting the Germans on a point of principle. They didn't have to, Hitler admired the British and was hoping for an alliance against the Russians right up until D-Day.
> As far as the Soviets losing another 5 million without the US - well, maybe - but have > you taken into account the aircraft America provided to the USSR in that assessment? > The Wolf Pack was sinking GB's supply shipping at an alarming rate before (and for sometime > after) the US involvement. However, except for one (published) secret U-Boat sinking before > the US entry into the war, Roosevelt maintained strict orders for the US Navy to not engage > U-Boats, per US law. How was GB re-supply shipping to work out without the US Merchant Marine > and the US Navy? GB may have been safe, established after Fighter Command's outstanding > performance in the Battle of Britain, and GB may have been safe from invasion - re: Hitler's > famous statement, "On land, I'm a lion, but at sea, I'm a coward" - but what else was > supposed to overturn the Wehrmacht's control of Europe in your assessment? Wasn't Rommel's > recall from Africa due to Hitler not wanting to lose his favorite general - because he was > fighting a war on two fronts?
Two fronts discussed above. What changed the battle at sea was decryption of german codes (largely d
The truly impressive part is that the Ulysses probe managed to get a look at both poles. I don't know if this fulfilled the original mission parameter, but it was well cool
"Technology as magic" is a well explored theme - from quotes such as "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" to Babylon 5.
No. The US allows gambling on a state by state and city by city basis. This isn't Germany. All 50 states set their own standards. Yes, I am aware of that. It's why there can be gambling in Nevada but not in Washington. The problem is that interstate online gambling IS allowed, for instance for horseracing.
Interstate online "commerce" has been running afoul of local laws for 20 years. That's an internal American disagreement and not our problem. Congress ratified the GATS. On the international stage, the states have agreed to let the federal government represent them, so the treaty is binding. If a state does not allow gambling, that's up to them. But some states do, and some online gambling crosses state lines, so there a market exists, and the GATS says you can't keep it to yourselves. The unique problems arising from your internal political wrangling should not affect your international treaty obligations. The unique problems arising from the fact that the gambling is online is a different problem entirely.
Sugar and Wood are in no means comparable. It's highly dishonest to even attempt to conflate the two. Actually, I was not conflating them, they were examples given to illustrate "less blatant" forms of protectionism as an aside. I trust others found them illuminating.
The whole "indian reservation" thing has arisen because many states ban most forms of gambling and Indian land is sovereign territory. Yes, I'm also aware of that. It's immaterial to the current case, which involves online gambling.
Let the complaining party come to my town and bring it up with the local DA. The results should be rather amusing. The complainant doesn't have to. Unless the US wants to lose it's status as a member of the WTO, and the protections provided by that membership, then they will HAVE TO ACCEDE. The economy is based on intangibles that require the protection provided, not physical goods which don't require them to the same extent. But in this digital age, any of the IP that the States lets out can be copied easily and cheaply and in massive quantities. The bulk of the US' exports are IP, the US trade balance is not good and the national debt is staggeringly high. It's my belief the US cannot afford a judgement that would strip the IP protections afforded by the WTO commitments. For the same reasons, I also believe that the US cannot back out of the WTO. Between a rock and a hard place.
All of my comments are just my opinions, of course. As an aside, the ban on gambling is baffling. Why not regulate it and tax it? Get some income instead of none, and don't have Americans sneaking illegally about to circumvent their own laws requiring expensive and extensive policing. It's a misguided policy that, like prohibition, is destined to fail.
You don't appear to understand the nature of the dispute. The gambling laws in Antigua (and in most of Europe) are pretty strict, and would conform to or exceed any similar laws on the American books. If the laws to protect gamblers in a country aren't strict enough for the States, I'm pretty sure that they can make an issue out of that (this is an area I'm not too clear on. Feel free to correct).
The problem is that the US allows online gambling internally, but won't allow the same thing from an external source. This is called protectionism and is a no-no under WTO rules. This is a particularly blatant example of it, too (usually it's done through subsidies or unreasonable import taxes so it's not so obvious - see sugar in Europe and wood in the US). Because it's so blatant, and because the US have been really aggressive about it (jailing people who run online gambling sites and requiring payment processors to not allow payments to online gambling firms) it has pissed a load of people off, because the US not only signed the GATS, but basically wrote it and pushed it hard. Suddenly don't like something about it and instead of trying to negotiate or giving in, they unilaterally withdrew an entire section of their economy from the treaty.
This allows all the other signatories with interests in that sector to claim damages ore recompense and if the US don't pay, the WTO can do things like suspend other countries intellectual property obligations to the US. Hint: how much of the US' current exports are IP and how's the trade balance.
The US will have to settle this, and being pig-headed won't be the long-term answer. Most likely, Bush is lining this up for the poor b*stards that are going to follow him giving the probability that the next administration will be democrat. Either that or he doesn't care.
It was explained in one of the books that the planet Kessel (illegal spice production, etc.) was near a group of black holes called the Maw that limited the run to/from the planet to a very few extremely hazardous lanes. The Millenium Falcon was able to make the run in that distance (start of run to end of run) in a short distance because it was fast enough to cut the wash from the black holes.
Mind you, Star Wars is so full of revisionism that all the stuff you "know" has been changed a million times. Like the mitichlorian and the force - this was revised with the explanation that "the don't CAUSE the force, they feed on force strength so the more of them there are, the stronger in the force that individual is" or the great "sith use red lightsabers" revision - wouldn't it suck at Jedi Academy - "What colour's your lightsaber" (building one was one of the tests) "Green", "Blue", "Purple", "Red - awww crap" and then everyone else turns to the unfortunate one and switches on their lightsaber.
On a serious note I've heard it argued that the ease of travel is slowing the rate of human evolution (or if you don't believe in it, human natural selection) as the chances of a even an improving mutation/trait being successful over time is much lessened in a greater pool of individuals.
Along with artists I've noticed that FOSS overall suffers from a lack of really good UI designers. I think that we'll continue to see a lack of great UI and great Art because there are so few that do a truly great job and they enjoy compensation. There are no really good UI designers working on desktops. If there were, there wouldn't be mixed metaphors and the whole thing would be a lot more intuitive. The colours wouldn't blind you and curves would be easy. Engineers (both electrical and software) made all the stuff we base our designs on today, by which I mean the UI metaphors we're used to and the frameworks we build on. And they may have been artists but they didn't understand interaction. It's not really something you can learn, either.
Bit harsh on FOSS developers, too. It's a truism that there are more mediocre developers than good ones and that resources are wasted, but that's EVERYWHERE, not just FOSS.
This should make the individual components cheaper allowing them to use cheaper micro-controllers. Cars are increasingly comprised of smart components which communicate electronically, as opposed to analog or mechanical signals. Bing! This is what it's all about. The motor industry is a amorphous blob of highly competitive car makers (called OEM's) who buy from component manufacturers. As cars get more complicated more code is required (and as I work with this a bit, I can tell you it's a LOT of code). But it's on ECU's which have to work together in some odd combinations. Because you can order functionality (or not order it) in many ways per model of car, and most of it is software controlled, the communication between the components gets increasingly complicated. The component manufacturers responded by selling complete systems, which could be tested together and kludged for performance and all sorts of other stuff. The problem now is that these manufacturers have a lot of leverage, because if you want one component from them, you're stuck with a whole system.
The international version of this is called AUTOSAR and is a 2,000 page specification that details the communication interfaces between ECU's. The ideal is that you could take an AUTOSAR compliant ECU and plug it into an AUTOSAR enabled car, and magically things will just work. It's still at the early stages despite it being around for years, and most of the major manufacturers are involved. They fight like cats and dogs, so this could be a splinter group of OEM's doing their own thing because they're sick of AUTOSAR.
I've no problem with the "no child left behind" but how about a "no child slowed down" program?
Facilities in the US are good, but a lot of research seems to be funded by military sources, which some might have an objection to, and in the US the focus is far to narrow - it's on getting a marketable product ASAP. It's been reported here that because universities in the US are now responsible for their own IP, they have IP lawyers hanging around. This is not an atmosphere conducive to innovative research.
Another problem, which is a problem in the EU also, is that funding from corporations is required for most research projects. This means that any research goals have to be watered down to make them acceptable to shareholders. This is also not conducive to innovative research. Neither is the simplistic "Paper Counting" which values number of publications over anything and everything else (it's very frustrating and slows down actual work a lot).
Micheal Crichton, in a talk, suggested that companies who want to donate to research donate to an anonymous fund. They can specify in what areas it goes, but the researchers never know who donated, and the results are public. This makes more sense than the short-term profit view of companies influencing research.
I remember hearing that it's been proven genetically that there is one common male ancestor and one common female ancestor for humans. the problem was, they were about 100,000 years apart.
If you are updating a book, it's well worth the effort to convert it to TeX/LaTeX (which does everything you want, is free, and is pretty much a standard for large documents of any kind).
Other than that, I believe that Master Document can do the linking, but not sure about numbering etc.
Having done tutorial work with first year to fourth year college students on "advanced" office, I can tell you that you are entirely wrong. We are used to the paradigms and metaphors presented to us. Some people are not and it takes them so long to do anything that the word "productivity" cannot be applied! There's a reason this is taught.
Tourism is obvious, but for instance - walk into a shop and get a list of current stock, or driving down the motorway, as you pass into a zone you get relevant information, in a office building, get the location of each of the companies, perhaps down to locations individual desk.
The cynic in me sees the potential for ads everywhere, but there are intriguing possibilities. Nevertheless, the article was still wandering around the periphery of the whole idea and missed the core.
Good point, the tagging/categorisation/everything-else-the-article -talks-about is rubbish without the one thing he forgot to mention, which is a branch of ubiquitous computing where there are small devices everywhere (well, everywhere important) that your own device connects to and gets any "relevant information". This is called "pervasive computing".
That was fairly lazy journalism. Without the aforementioned pervasive computing, how the hell does your mobile device know where you are? GPS (or Galileo/GPS)? That would be a poor solution for a problem that doesn't yet exist. Everything after that already exists, the only decision is whether to use "expert categorisation" or "democratic (or mob) categorisation".
1. The test satellite is not only alive and well, but all the control systems are being calibrated off it. The company in the same building as me in Ireland are doing data analysis from the (rather large amounts of) information that are coming from that satellite. As a result of this, the control software is also being tweaked for better performance.
2. Yup. Which is why all the problems cropped up in the first place. Loads of companies were meant to buy in (everything in the EU at the moment has to be public/private partnership, it's trendy) but they all said "thanks, but no thanks". Galileo is going ahead anyway, too much has been invested and no-one's going to back down in the EU Commission. So the UK do the usual "talking tough at home" while giving the nod in Brussels and everyone else involved has basically agreed to stump up the cash.
3. Er - yeah. Similar to how the US can shut down NAVSTAR - GPS and the Russians can shut down theirs. On the other hand, if they're all operational wouldn't it make sense for the systems to work together? Also GPS is a bit flaky over nothern europe, apparently, so it makes sense that Galileo will sort this out. Why cut GPS consumers from the states out? Or for that matter, force people to buy two receivers "just in case".
Concorde was killed because it could never be "proven" to be safe without a massive and expensive upgrade program. If we want another super-sonic passenger plane, I'm sure someone'll build one. Remember that the Concorde lasted a long time - it's first flight was in 1976! If we're point scoring, where did the concorde come from? I don't remember AA and Delta running them.
Airbus is going fine and dandy, thanks (or it will be if the A380 wiring issues get sorted). It can mostly support itself, although the factory locations are quite wide-flung, which is a PITA.
Don't know what the hell you're talking about with the "what Euro's do best"
We WILL keep using GPS for free, because we're not idiots. We will also keep bitching about your current administration, because they have failed to live up to their obligations under international treaty, and they've run rough-shod over contrary opinion since 9/11. The amount of goodwill that existed towards the US was a deep, deep well, from 1918 on, but the current administration managed to drain it, which is a pity. Lastly, we've figured out a way to keep ourselves out of deep shit in the future but for various reasons we've decided, collectively, that if we get involved in fighting outside our own borders, we better have some DAMN good reasons for it. It has something to do with the fact that Europe has been a major battleground for much of this century. Mainland US hasn't, so the scars don't run so deep. It's an interesting psychological difference.
I cannot believe that the parent post got repeatedly modded troll. Clearly, it was by someone who's never heard of crop rotation or any of the history of agriculture.
If you are only using one crop, or even similar crops, to create your biofuel, and if you want to do it in large scale, it will involve the massive use of fertilizer, which can cause local eco-system problems as well as water table pollution. On top of that, there's the scale problem, which hopefully this cellulite extraction method will help with. The estimates of the land required to produce enough fuel for the States alone is quite daunting. This paper[PDF] estimates that upwards of 50 million acres of forests would have to be cleared, and "the only large reservoir of underused cropland in America is about 30 million acres of land--too dry for corn--enrolled in the Conservation Reserve." Other publications, such as "Energy and American Society - Thirteen Myths" have entire chapters devoted to this problem. So a 13 fold increase in efficiency is certainly welcome. and may help to mitigate these problems
Please note that I am typing this from a terminal with access to a number of subscription based academic services, so if the PDF link doesn't work, sorry!
Actually, MS had $43 billion in cash reserves in 2003, no reason to expect it's dropped. And only paid their first dividend in 2003 (by managing to successfully argue that the IT business was so competitive that they needed that kind of cash to be agile).
Also, an article in the Economist around the same time (no link, sorry) explained that most of MS's stockholders were employees, and that the employees share payment program was essentially propping up MS's share price. They're all terrified that if they kick up too much of a fuss they'll lost a lot of value (and possibly their jobs) and the company doesn't care, because of the massive cash reserve.
A lot of this discussion has wandered waaaay off track. HCI is simply a different discipline to CS these days. There's more cognitive and perceptual psychology in it than CS and this cannot be described mathematically because of it's nature. Take the area that I work in - information visualisation. Looking for a definition will get you something like "representing (abstract) data in a visual form" or the more detailed wikipedia definition. The definition of the field and it's goals are different though - the goal is generally described as "to improve understanding of the data" or "to improve insight". That is not measurable without human input, and the measures used are largely arbitrary (or rather based on intuition, which is also not measurable or provable:) ).
Computer Science, on the other hand, tends to deal with measurables, and a lot of work goes on to improve algorithmic performance or to design new algorithms. The performance of an algorithm CAN be measured and the types of measurement have been agreed. The proof is in the maths. Modelling systems requires a modelling language which is inevitably maths based (because it needs to be precise). Heck, even requirements engineering is subjected to mathematical processes to ensure the validity of requirements these days.
One of the best examples of the difference is HTML - it was clearly designed by scientists and engineers. If it hadn't been, there would have been curves. But it wasn't, and there isn't (and, in my own opinion, there should be).
It's time to separate interface design - which a lot of previous comments are talking about - from the internals of the system and acknowledge that these are two very, very different fields. The first is HCI which is closer to an art than a science (i.e. it's not exact, no offense to the HCI crowd!) where as CS is very exact. This change in perception is underway at the moment, and I'm sure the tools are being developed that better suit interface design (not my area, so I don't know for sure). For performance, provability and plain ol' algorithmic programming, there's still [insert favourite programming language here].
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The details of bletchley park I didn't feel were 100% relevant to the discussion I'd like to rail further about resupply and your other views, but it comes to this. Someone
else was slagging the contribution of a country, the US, who gave a half-million men dead to
help liberate Europe - but according to you, I somehow said that we saved you - which I never
did. Of course the logistics were important. It is almost certain, in my opinion, that the major contribution of the US to the war in Europe was logisitcal (tanks, planes, weapons, ammo and food for the british and the soviets).
Your numbers seem off, though - the US lost a half million men on all fronts in the war, so saying "gave a half-million dead to help liberate Europe" is a bit disingenuous. As far as the "blinkered" view of two fronts, it was only something Hitler used to refer in general to the problems he faced from the Western Democracies as well as the Communists, very well documented in The Rise and Fall of The Third Reich - perhaps you've heard of it? Well, I've either studied it as well as a number of texts, primarily by European authors - or I lack the skills to see the compass points and just have no knowledge whatsoever of what I'm talking about. You seem to be taking this as a personal attack on you, which it isn't. Hitler was WRONG when he thought of two fronts, East and West. And make no mistake, he really did think of it in those terms. It's a major reason why the Germans lost - that and the fact that of the two, the Eastern one was far more important to him ideologically and he was unable to think clearly about it.
Interestingly, the British Commonwealth had roughly the same number of servicemen as the US - at 11 million or so. I hadn't realised it was quite so extensive.
Also, seriously, it's an internet messageboard. Relax
OK, I've been a bit irritated by the knee-jerk "you'd all be speaking German/Russian" responses from ignorant posters as well, so I'll bite...
:)
I would like to make it clear, though, that the contribution of the US to WWII was truly great and gained political capital and general goodwill that lasted for a long, long time (except in France - they're the reason that there's a NATO and no centralised European defence force).
This excludes the Pacific theatre, but bear in mind that the Japanese had been fighting in China for some time already and were skirmishing with a woefully under equipped British army for some time. Also bear in mind that despite the wishes of the US administrations of the time, the US population had no notion of going to war until the attack on Pearl Harbour. The US population was, and still is, rather isolationist. It's amazing that their foreign policy is so active
> The Brits did quite a bit of damage with Bomber Command, but the US Army Air Force effect
> was quite substantial.
True, and the combined air-fleets caused massive damage. But the Battle of Britian was over and the air war was won - by the British. Largely because they'd manage to piss Hitler off enough that he stopped bombing their airfields, and due to radar.
> Prior to D-Day, it was Hitler's Fortress Europa, as I recall. How was that to fall without
> the US?
Umm, the same way it did WITH the US - with some misdirection, tactics, and lots of casualties. It would not have been practical at the time, however. It wasn't really practical anyway but the USSR was getting rather pissed and making noises about a seperate peace. This almost certainly would not have happened, Hitler was obsessed.
> No question the Corporal fucked up royally in his Soviet invasions - but are you saying he
> wouldn't have been fighting a war on two fronts had America not been in the war?
Okay, here's where the blinkered view of history accusation can be levelled at you - Germany was fighting on many fronts - Eastern, North African (El Alamein, etc.), English (a large force of aircraft and invasion preparations), Balkan (Tito's yugoslavians would not stop), Eritrea, and smaller scale engagements all over Africa - already.
Of course, the British were fighting them on all those fronts as well as in south east asia too. The Australians and Canadians were involved, too. And DeGaulle's free French. And Indian auxiliaries, and Irish volunteers, and American volunteers, too. A previous poster made the valid point that the British bankrupted their empire - leading to it's eventual dissolution - fighting the Germans on a point of principle. They didn't have to, Hitler admired the British and was hoping for an alliance against the Russians right up until D-Day.
> As far as the Soviets losing another 5 million without the US - well, maybe - but have
> you taken into account the aircraft America provided to the USSR in that assessment?
> The Wolf Pack was sinking GB's supply shipping at an alarming rate before (and for sometime
> after) the US involvement. However, except for one (published) secret U-Boat sinking before
> the US entry into the war, Roosevelt maintained strict orders for the US Navy to not engage
> U-Boats, per US law. How was GB re-supply shipping to work out without the US Merchant Marine
> and the US Navy? GB may have been safe, established after Fighter Command's outstanding
> performance in the Battle of Britain, and GB may have been safe from invasion - re: Hitler's
> famous statement, "On land, I'm a lion, but at sea, I'm a coward" - but what else was
> supposed to overturn the Wehrmacht's control of Europe in your assessment? Wasn't Rommel's
> recall from Africa due to Hitler not wanting to lose his favorite general - because he was
> fighting a war on two fronts?
Two fronts discussed above. What changed the battle at sea was decryption of german codes (largely d
The truly impressive part is that the Ulysses probe managed to get a look at both poles. I don't know if this fulfilled the original mission parameter, but it was well cool
"Technology as magic" is a well explored theme - from quotes such as "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" to Babylon 5.
My favourite description of technology, though, is Strongbad's here: http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail143.html
This isn't Germany. All 50 states set their own standards. Yes, I am aware of that. It's why there can be gambling in Nevada but not in Washington. The problem is that interstate online gambling IS allowed, for instance for horseracing. Interstate online "commerce" has been running afoul of local laws for 20 years. That's an internal American disagreement and not our problem. Congress ratified the GATS. On the international stage, the states have agreed to let the federal government represent them, so the treaty is binding. If a state does not allow gambling, that's up to them. But some states do, and some online gambling crosses state lines, so there a market exists, and the GATS says you can't keep it to yourselves. The unique problems arising from your internal political wrangling should not affect your international treaty obligations. The unique problems arising from the fact that the gambling is online is a different problem entirely. Sugar and Wood are in no means comparable. It's highly dishonest to even attempt to conflate the two. Actually, I was not conflating them, they were examples given to illustrate "less blatant" forms of protectionism as an aside. I trust others found them illuminating. The whole "indian reservation" thing has arisen because many states ban most forms of gambling and Indian land is sovereign territory. Yes, I'm also aware of that. It's immaterial to the current case, which involves online gambling. Let the complaining party come to my town and bring it up with the local DA. The results should be rather amusing. The complainant doesn't have to. Unless the US wants to lose it's status as a member of the WTO, and the protections provided by that membership, then they will HAVE TO ACCEDE. The economy is based on intangibles that require the protection provided, not physical goods which don't require them to the same extent. But in this digital age, any of the IP that the States lets out can be copied easily and cheaply and in massive quantities. The bulk of the US' exports are IP, the US trade balance is not good and the national debt is staggeringly high. It's my belief the US cannot afford a judgement that would strip the IP protections afforded by the WTO commitments. For the same reasons, I also believe that the US cannot back out of the WTO. Between a rock and a hard place.
All of my comments are just my opinions, of course. As an aside, the ban on gambling is baffling. Why not regulate it and tax it? Get some income instead of none, and don't have Americans sneaking illegally about to circumvent their own laws requiring expensive and extensive policing. It's a misguided policy that, like prohibition, is destined to fail.
You don't appear to understand the nature of the dispute. The gambling laws in Antigua (and in most of Europe) are pretty strict, and would conform to or exceed any similar laws on the American books. If the laws to protect gamblers in a country aren't strict enough for the States, I'm pretty sure that they can make an issue out of that (this is an area I'm not too clear on. Feel free to correct).
The problem is that the US allows online gambling internally, but won't allow the same thing from an external source. This is called protectionism and is a no-no under WTO rules. This is a particularly blatant example of it, too (usually it's done through subsidies or unreasonable import taxes so it's not so obvious - see sugar in Europe and wood in the US). Because it's so blatant, and because the US have been really aggressive about it (jailing people who run online gambling sites and requiring payment processors to not allow payments to online gambling firms) it has pissed a load of people off, because the US not only signed the GATS, but basically wrote it and pushed it hard. Suddenly don't like something about it and instead of trying to negotiate or giving in, they unilaterally withdrew an entire section of their economy from the treaty.
This allows all the other signatories with interests in that sector to claim damages ore recompense and if the US don't pay, the WTO can do things like suspend other countries intellectual property obligations to the US. Hint: how much of the US' current exports are IP and how's the trade balance.
The US will have to settle this, and being pig-headed won't be the long-term answer. Most likely, Bush is lining this up for the poor b*stards that are going to follow him giving the probability that the next administration will be democrat. Either that or he doesn't care.
I should trademark "Drink Link", then? And sue all the college students that use it. For one (european) cent.
It was explained in one of the books that the planet Kessel (illegal spice production, etc.) was near a group of black holes called the Maw that limited the run to/from the planet to a very few extremely hazardous lanes. The Millenium Falcon was able to make the run in that distance (start of run to end of run) in a short distance because it was fast enough to cut the wash from the black holes.
:)
Mind you, Star Wars is so full of revisionism that all the stuff you "know" has been changed a million times. Like the mitichlorian and the force - this was revised with the explanation that "the don't CAUSE the force, they feed on force strength so the more of them there are, the stronger in the force that individual is" or the great "sith use red lightsabers" revision - wouldn't it suck at Jedi Academy - "What colour's your lightsaber" (building one was one of the tests) "Green", "Blue", "Purple", "Red - awww crap" and then everyone else turns to the unfortunate one and switches on their lightsaber.
Er...
On a serious note I've heard it argued that the ease of travel is slowing the rate of human evolution (or if you don't believe in it, human natural selection) as the chances of a even an improving mutation/trait being successful over time is much lessened in a greater pool of individuals.
Not entirely relevant to the article, though.
Engineers (both electrical and software) made all the stuff we base our designs on today, by which I mean the UI metaphors we're used to and the frameworks we build on. And they may have been artists but they didn't understand interaction. It's not really something you can learn, either.
Bit harsh on FOSS developers, too. It's a truism that there are more mediocre developers than good ones and that resources are wasted, but that's EVERYWHERE, not just FOSS.
The international version of this is called AUTOSAR and is a 2,000 page specification that details the communication interfaces between ECU's. The ideal is that you could take an AUTOSAR compliant ECU and plug it into an AUTOSAR enabled car, and magically things will just work. It's still at the early stages despite it being around for years, and most of the major manufacturers are involved. They fight like cats and dogs, so this could be a splinter group of OEM's doing their own thing because they're sick of AUTOSAR.
It could have been worse, it could have been called the Kalorie!
You forgot Duke Nukem Forever!
You bastard. Now I've gone and bought the damn game.
I've no problem with the "no child left behind" but how about a "no child slowed down" program?
Facilities in the US are good, but a lot of research seems to be funded by military sources, which some might have an objection to, and in the US the focus is far to narrow - it's on getting a marketable product ASAP. It's been reported here that because universities in the US are now responsible for their own IP, they have IP lawyers hanging around. This is not an atmosphere conducive to innovative research.
Another problem, which is a problem in the EU also, is that funding from corporations is required for most research projects. This means that any research goals have to be watered down to make them acceptable to shareholders. This is also not conducive to innovative research. Neither is the simplistic "Paper Counting" which values number of publications over anything and everything else (it's very frustrating and slows down actual work a lot).
Micheal Crichton, in a talk, suggested that companies who want to donate to research donate to an anonymous fund. They can specify in what areas it goes, but the researchers never know who donated, and the results are public. This makes more sense than the short-term profit view of companies influencing research.
I remember hearing that it's been proven genetically that there is one common male ancestor and one common female ancestor for humans. the problem was, they were about 100,000 years apart.
It was on television, so no reference.
If you are updating a book, it's well worth the effort to convert it to TeX/LaTeX (which does everything you want, is free, and is pretty much a standard for large documents of any kind).
Other than that, I believe that Master Document can do the linking, but not sure about numbering etc.
Having done tutorial work with first year to fourth year college students on "advanced" office, I can tell you that you are entirely wrong. We are used to the paradigms and metaphors presented to us. Some people are not and it takes them so long to do anything that the word "productivity" cannot be applied! There's a reason this is taught.
Tourism is obvious, but for instance - walk into a shop and get a list of current stock, or driving down the motorway, as you pass into a zone you get relevant information, in a office building, get the location of each of the companies, perhaps down to locations individual desk.
The cynic in me sees the potential for ads everywhere, but there are intriguing possibilities. Nevertheless, the article was still wandering around the periphery of the whole idea and missed the core.
I thought Web2.0 was AJAX!
e -talks-about is rubbish without the one thing he forgot to mention, which is a branch of ubiquitous computing where there are small devices everywhere (well, everywhere important) that your own device connects to and gets any "relevant information". This is called "pervasive computing".
Good point, the tagging/categorisation/everything-else-the-articl
That was fairly lazy journalism. Without the aforementioned pervasive computing, how the hell does your mobile device know where you are? GPS (or Galileo/GPS)? That would be a poor solution for a problem that doesn't yet exist. Everything after that already exists, the only decision is whether to use "expert categorisation" or "democratic (or mob) categorisation".
Good rant! Bit light on reality, though.
1. The test satellite is not only alive and well, but all the control systems are being calibrated off it. The company in the same building as me in Ireland are doing data analysis from the (rather large amounts of) information that are coming from that satellite. As a result of this, the control software is also being tweaked for better performance.
2. Yup. Which is why all the problems cropped up in the first place. Loads of companies were meant to buy in (everything in the EU at the moment has to be public/private partnership, it's trendy) but they all said "thanks, but no thanks". Galileo is going ahead anyway, too much has been invested and no-one's going to back down in the EU Commission. So the UK do the usual "talking tough at home" while giving the nod in Brussels and everyone else involved has basically agreed to stump up the cash.
3. Er - yeah. Similar to how the US can shut down NAVSTAR - GPS and the Russians can shut down theirs. On the other hand, if they're all operational wouldn't it make sense for the systems to work together? Also GPS is a bit flaky over nothern europe, apparently, so it makes sense that Galileo will sort this out. Why cut GPS consumers from the states out? Or for that matter, force people to buy two receivers "just in case".
Concorde was killed because it could never be "proven" to be safe without a massive and expensive upgrade program. If we want another super-sonic passenger plane, I'm sure someone'll build one. Remember that the Concorde lasted a long time - it's first flight was in 1976! If we're point scoring, where did the concorde come from? I don't remember AA and Delta running them.
Airbus is going fine and dandy, thanks (or it will be if the A380 wiring issues get sorted). It can mostly support itself, although the factory locations are quite wide-flung, which is a PITA.
Don't know what the hell you're talking about with the "what Euro's do best"
We WILL keep using GPS for free, because we're not idiots. We will also keep bitching about your current administration, because they have failed to live up to their obligations under international treaty, and they've run rough-shod over contrary opinion since 9/11. The amount of goodwill that existed towards the US was a deep, deep well, from 1918 on, but the current administration managed to drain it, which is a pity. Lastly, we've figured out a way to keep ourselves out of deep shit in the future but for various reasons we've decided, collectively, that if we get involved in fighting outside our own borders, we better have some DAMN good reasons for it. It has something to do with the fact that Europe has been a major battleground for much of this century. Mainland US hasn't, so the scars don't run so deep. It's an interesting psychological difference.
I cannot believe that the parent post got repeatedly modded troll. Clearly, it was by someone who's never heard of crop rotation or any of the history of agriculture.
If you are only using one crop, or even similar crops, to create your biofuel, and if you want to do it in large scale, it will involve the massive use of fertilizer, which can cause local eco-system problems as well as water table pollution. On top of that, there's the scale problem, which hopefully this cellulite extraction method will help with. The estimates of the land required to produce enough fuel for the States alone is quite daunting. This paper[PDF] estimates that upwards of 50 million acres of forests would have to be cleared, and "the only large reservoir of underused cropland in America is about 30 million acres of land--too dry for corn--enrolled in the Conservation Reserve." Other publications, such as "Energy and American Society - Thirteen Myths" have entire chapters devoted to this problem. So a 13 fold increase in efficiency is certainly welcome. and may help to mitigate these problems
Please note that I am typing this from a terminal with access to a number of subscription based academic services, so if the PDF link doesn't work, sorry!
Actually, MS had $43 billion in cash reserves in 2003, no reason to expect it's dropped. And only paid their first dividend in 2003 (by managing to successfully argue that the IT business was so competitive that they needed that kind of cash to be agile).
Also, an article in the Economist around the same time (no link, sorry) explained that most of MS's stockholders were employees, and that the employees share payment program was essentially propping up MS's share price. They're all terrified that if they kick up too much of a fuss they'll lost a lot of value (and possibly their jobs) and the company doesn't care, because of the massive cash reserve.
Well said, mod parent up.
:) ).
A lot of this discussion has wandered waaaay off track. HCI is simply a different discipline to CS these days. There's more cognitive and perceptual psychology in it than CS and this cannot be described mathematically because of it's nature. Take the area that I work in - information visualisation. Looking for a definition will get you something like "representing (abstract) data in a visual form" or the more detailed wikipedia definition. The definition of the field and it's goals are different though - the goal is generally described as "to improve understanding of the data" or "to improve insight". That is not measurable without human input, and the measures used are largely arbitrary (or rather based on intuition, which is also not measurable or provable
Computer Science, on the other hand, tends to deal with measurables, and a lot of work goes on to improve algorithmic performance or to design new algorithms. The performance of an algorithm CAN be measured and the types of measurement have been agreed. The proof is in the maths. Modelling systems requires a modelling language which is inevitably maths based (because it needs to be precise). Heck, even requirements engineering is subjected to mathematical processes to ensure the validity of requirements these days.
One of the best examples of the difference is HTML - it was clearly designed by scientists and engineers. If it hadn't been, there would have been curves. But it wasn't, and there isn't (and, in my own opinion, there should be).
It's time to separate interface design - which a lot of previous comments are talking about - from the internals of the system and acknowledge that these are two very, very different fields. The first is HCI which is closer to an art than a science (i.e. it's not exact, no offense to the HCI crowd!) where as CS is very exact. This change in perception is underway at the moment, and I'm sure the tools are being developed that better suit interface design (not my area, so I don't know for sure). For performance, provability and plain ol' algorithmic programming, there's still [insert favourite programming language here].