Look like nvidia finally gave up on getting the x86 or chipset license. Guess the CEO is now going to bet the farm on ARM and Linux and think they can pull it off with closed source drivers! Either that or ARM windows which in my opinion will be DOA. Those patents where nVidia's best hope for an x86 license, Intel appears to have bargained with the bottom line being no x86.
Milk cows have been selected to produce so much milk that if they aren't commercially milked they will die from not being milked. The average modern milk cow must be milked 2 - 3 times a day at several gallons per sitting. It's triple to quadruple what the average calf can consume and the overproduction would kill them if they weren't milked by humans. A modern milk cow simply cannot survive without humans milking them.
That's the wrong logic. If someone would like you dead and they don't have a gun then the obstacles are nearly always insurmountable and the feeling passes. With a gun you can do it any time you want, and that increases the temptation.
Nearly insurmountable? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If you want someone dead there are a LOT of ways to accomplish it without the need for a gun. If murder was at all difficult there wouldn't be so many of them around the world. Poisonings to sabotage all the way to just plain sticking a knife in their back. The number of physical altercations in the UK are nearly identical to the US, firearms simply make more of the attacks successful in the US. This isn't even considering that most of the attacks in the US are drug related and a result of gang warfare where the majority of those killed are involved in gangs.
I'm not a criminal, nor will I ever be. My ownership of a firearm is none of your business or anyone else's. What I don't understand is why all you anti-gun nuts think anyone that would own a firearm is somehow deranged or a criminal in someway. The incredibly small number of firearms (vs the total) used in crime in the US are almost always illegally acquired. Conversely, the number of legally owned and purchased firearms used in criminal acts is mind numbingly small. Hundreds of millions of firearms are purchased, owned and used regularly in a responsible manner in the US. As an anti-gun nut you might find this hard to believe but those of us that like fire arms like them for lots of reasons, from target shooting (a hobby that requires a lot of skill) to hunting to simple collecting and to a more minor extent self defense. But the most important point is that my ownership is none of your fucking business. What I own, what I do in my free time is not your concern and this belief by you anti-gun nuts that you are somehow entitled to dictate who can and can't own a product is the most amazingly stupid and fascist point of view. And the most evil thing about it is that you assume anyone that would own a gun is violent or is capable of murder, frankly that's offensive. In my mind that's what makes you more dangerous than anyone that owns a fire arm. You judge someones intent and capability for violence by a product they own. I'd consider you more of a danger to society than any law abiding gun owner.
Or they will find diamonds then some enterprising mercenary and a doctor will kill everyone they can and hide the diamonds inside the corpses only to be found out by a very attractive FBI woman.
I supported the goals of WikiLeaks, supported the war diary releases and the believe openness in government is essential. But Assange is the weak leak. While he was in jail little to nothing was posted. All the Money donated is donated directly to him, not some foundation. He's claimed it's so he can be the lighting rod the face of wikileaks. But what I really see is an egotistical asshole that's motivated more by self interest that anything else. There is a very noble goal in trying to give the public access to government secrets with care taken not to reveal irrelevant information that can only be used to harm. And I support anyone trying to do that.
But Assange has put himself in the position of gatekeeper for the whole organization. He's essential to releases, access to funds and websites. He thinks his little insurance packet he released will protect him. But ask yourself this: what good is his insurance package if he's the only one that knows the key and no one can talk to him because he's dead or in solitary confinement with no access to any living person. That gives the governments of the world motivation to hit the organization at it's weak point, Assange himself. He's also demonstrated a significant lack of judgement and if this story is true he thinks he personally has sole control of the material which he doesn't own and the US government labels as stolen.
Ever since the decision to release all the diplomatic cables without any kind of filter on information that might be sensible to just let drop I've personally felt he's a danger to this cause. This was exacerbated by his conduct in promiscuous (and irresponsible, god who has unprotected sex these days and then refuses to be tested for STD's) conduct in Sweden, his lack of foresight to line up the press credentials before he decided to piss off every western government and his general actions limiting himself to the only one with control or access to donated money, his reaction to his own police report leaking and now this belief that he is the owner of this material.
Assange is the weak point at wiki-leaks. Make no mistake there are people that know this and will use it, as other posters have said other organizations will take over once this one is destroyed and it will be. I also think he's the type to take others down with him, so if you've worked with him at nefarious purposes you better be very afraid because he will spill the beans on you.
Before anyone runs around talking about ghosts they need to step into the real world. That house you live in is constructed of several thousand components, and several dozen different materials. Concrete, steel, Brick, Stucco, Wood (even different species and the fineness of the grain affect the rates), Wire, and even the carpet pad and carpet expand and contract at different rates under thermal pressure. Every single building in the world has thermal zones with differing temperatures and combined with seasons, sun, cloud cover, night time, wind and precipitation every house is under constant thermal change. Modern houses are sealed tighter, the older the house the more holes in the insulation and the more the house breathes with the outside and the faster thermal shifts will affect the structure.
With all that in mind, the older the house the more it's going to creak, groan and make noises as the thermal changes cause expansion/contraction and that thermal movement then causes load shifts resulting in shifting stress and strain. But even modern homes with solid insulation will have movement when something as simple as the furnace turns on. A rapid shift to cold in the room could be simply thermal changes opening a gap in the outside envelope that causes outside temperatures to penetrate the structure quickly at that location and is actually a good indicator of a problem that could lead to water penetration, termites or other severe structural damage.
I'd suggest if the OP wants to excise the ghosts he should simply suggest that the current home owners spend some money on better insulating their home and sealing the outer envelope. Cutting access holes in drywall and spraying an expanding foam (like Icynene) or other retrofit expanding and sealing insulation in the stud cavities that would effectively seal all the little holes would do far more to get rid of their "ghosts" than any investigation or exorcism. It's Occam's razor people, ghosts have been speculated about for years, many many man years have went into trying to prove them, but in all that has there been any real scientific proof? If not it's not a lack of skepticism to say there aren't ghosts, it's a lack of any real proof over thousands of experiments trying to prove they do exist. No the reality of mosts ghosts has been known since the accumulated knowledge of civil and mechanical engineering provided the real reason behind ghosts and it's not anything more fancy than thermal stress and strain that was discovered when thermal dynamics and their principles were crafted into scientific theory.
To rid a home of ghosts you don't need holy water and a priest, you need insulation and construction workers.
And you don't think that the Chinese can come up with comparable electronics, or perhaps even superior electronics?
Nope. This isn't MP3 player technology using off the shelf processors. This is EMP hardened electronics dealing with radar, EM countermeasures, target tracking, flight assistance and stealthing technology.
You don't buy this shit off the shelves. The designs used in US war fighters are one-off designs. Everything from the microprocessors to the software code is all very highly classified and never leaves US soil except in fighters piloted by the US military. The very existence of most of the technology isn't even common knowledge.
I didn't say anyone was inferior, what I said is the US has a 30 year lead in this technology and less that 5% of it ever makes it to the commercial market that the Chinese have access to. Why do you think the Russians won't sell the Chinese their most advanced stuff anymore? For the same reason any fighter the Chinese make isn't going to be as good as the US or Russian made fighters and that's because there is a technology deficit that the Chinese must hurdle before they can exceed US and Russian tech. They have been trying to use espionage to get past this because their research and development institutions are full of people writing either fraudulent papers or downright plagiarizing western research.
There is no doubt real research is being done but even if it's twice the amount as the US it's going to take them decades to catch up to both the US and Russian state of the art. You appear to have difficulty accepting the fact that China is still just barely moving beyond a purely industrial economy. They can take all the pictures of the F-22 and copy the look of the airframe, but without all the technology under-pining the US design the airframe probably isn't even better than the F-16.
FWIW the King tiger couldn't be killed by any self propelled weapon fielded by any of the allies. The British found they could kill one with an towed 80mm anti-aircraft but only with multiple shots. Had the Germans had the fuel to run them the war might have turned out differently. The Allies strategy of starving Germany of resources was far more effective than any mass produced tank.
More than 1000 F-35 export versions have confirmed orders. It's not being canceled. So many are being sold to foreign countries that with the development costs ammortorized into the cost the total cost to produce each will be less than 50 million which is close to 20 year old aircraft. No the F-35 won't be canceled, though it's likely to be the last fighter aircraft the US ever designs.
The problem is they don't invent any of it. They simply negotiate smartly to steal the existing technology with little to no improvement. The problem with military equipment like a fighter jet is that the US doesn't export the technology, even to very friendly countries like Britain and Israel. It's built in the US and the export versions are sufficiently degraded to the point that the receiving countries frequently install their own systems because the export US versions are shit.
So what the Chinese have, they have stolen from countries that will give them access, basically Russian and maybe some French tech and the Russians learned their lesson, they now have a policy of transferring or selling nothing to China because they just steal the design. So the design is probably nothing more than copies of some of the concept Sukoi aircraft that were proposed when the US announced the YF-22 that are nothing more than some simple modifications to Mig-35's. Might look interesting but it's not the airframe that's important anymore, it's the electronics because dog fights don't exist anymore, the missile technology is so good that fighters just launch missiles while the target is still over the horizon and invisible.
What exactly is the reason for indicating you've never owned a firearm? And what exactly does living in "flyover" country have to do with anything? Do you have this impression that everyone not living on the coasts is some radical gun touting redneck? Because that is how your statement reads to me and that indicates to me that you are one ignorant asshole. Not exactly a ringing endorsement to read your books, but I guess you really aren't targeting those millions that live in "flyover" country eh?
The XBox didn't turn a profit in 2008. The XBox 360 did, but only against the costs expended that year. That profit will never ever come close to obliterating the total losses on the Xbox and early years of the Xbox 360. (as stated by the OP the total losses exceed 5 Billion) Considering that the life of the Xbox 360 is nearly over with a new console cycle due within the next couple years it's astounding that anyone would assert that they made a profit.
They are claiming a profit against only the expenditures of that year, not the total expenditures over the life of the program. They aren't even close against the total net loses.They would need to sell the Xbox 360 with the same 165 million profit per year for about 5 decades to recoup the total expenditure or raise profit to exceed a billion a year. The Xbox has been a collasal money sink for MS, as the OP stated they would have been far better to simply give the money to shareholders rather than waste billions on a product that was 3 years into it's life with nearly zero expenditure on development before they could turn a yearly profit. Think about how scary that is, it took them 3 years after the product was produced and sold and near zero development was ongoing before they could reduce costs to the point that they actually made money.
Scary book if you ask me, the first part of the book they discuss holding seminars with thousands of attendants in New York and that this was possibly used to discriminate against millions of people before WWII. The "science" is absurd, they assert because they asked a single candy shop owner how much of their sales was the result of fat people (and that most Hebrew's are fatties) and that's considered evidence is just scary. Eugenics was a very scary movement, it led to a LOT of bad things not the least of which was Germany's move to extinguish certain ethnic groups.
My memory is flaky too so you are probably right, didn't notice that hole in the plot previously. In answer to your DNA thing that's why Ethan scrubbed all his skin and hair aggressively every day (including using a rock and a stream after he borked Umma) so that he didn't inadvertently spill DNA anywhere.
Eugenics and the concepts predicted in star trek have far more mundane origins with the real eugenics movement of the 20's and 30's that was partly the basis for Hitler's assertions about racial purity. There is a book on the Guttenberg project called How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30601) that was likely one of the key publications in the eugenics movement (I'm not sure on that, but if you read it you will see how absurd the "science" is). The entire premise of the book is that you can tell everything you want to know about someone by their body structure. Simply reading about the "Alimentive" type (or Fatty as the book calls them frequently) and you will see just how absurd eugenics was.
This all predated the discovery of DNA and I'm not sure of the time-line of the star trek episode with the discovery of the double helix but there was likely very little real DNA information when the episode was produced and it's origins are far more likely tied to the previous eugenics movement which was used as the basis for a LOT of discrimination, a topic Gene Roddenberry liked to tackle very frequently with his social commentary masked as sci-fi.
I thought it was 2 years until the mission launched? Yes he was selected, but IIRC the plot was the new director that was murdered was going to cut funding and the mission would never go forward. Now if they were at the stage where they could still cut funding and actually save money the rocket couldn't have been built even if the mission team was selected. Hence the actual launch would take place in 2 years and the blood an urine would be needed until the launch where he could do his ahah moment and reveal his real genetics.
But you do not get to a $300B stock without real metrics showing real growth and success. Apple has that. No other stock in Apple's class is pure hype.
Says the person with no perspective! Look back 20 years, you find a dozen companies that exceeded $200 Billion in market cap and are now worth significantly less if they are still around. In fact the best example is Cisco. Topped out with the highest market cap in the market during the dotcom bomb, had real earnings, real growth and much larger sales than Apple. Another example, GE, probably the largest manufacturing conglomerate in the world, had a market cap upwards of 200 Billion.
I'd suggest you don't invest in products you are passionate about. I have a test I like to use, it's called the Walmart test. Walmart is the largest retailer in the world. They are in many parts of the US the only retailer. They push trillions of dollars in inventory with gross revenue (that means the cost they paid for the products is subtracted) of +400Billion. They have gross profit (take gross revenue and subtract everything but taxes and dividends) of +100Billion. Walmart is very slow growing because they have mostly saturated their growth prospects, so they have a relatively low PE of 13ish (probably too high with an EPS of ~3%) and pay an annual dividend of less than 1%.
Now to do the test you take the Market Cap of Walmart and compare it against the market cap of whatever company you want to invest in. If this company is higher you need to look at the key revenue figures and compare them. There is no set formula, but if it's not at least similar or higher (as percentage) than the company is severely overvalued. I mentioned Cisco above, they crashed big time, nearly a 10 fold loss of value. Will a 10 fold drop happen to Apple? Not unless there is a similar corresponding drop in revenue but I can't help when looking at their numbers to say there are a lot of people investing in the company because they like the products and that is a VERY bad strategy and why most people lose money in the stock market. But from looking at their statistics I can say they look very overvalued to me with a big drop the first time they disappoint or if Steve dies.
I made a lot of money on a Cisco investment in the 90's and I've subsequently made my best investments by investing in boring high dividend stocks, things like Phillip Morris and Oil. I'm dispassionate about them and made good investments, early in my investing I invested in companies I was passionate about, and in nearly every situation I lost money. You don't have perspective and that's dangerous in investing, you need to be cold and clinical when investing.
Ignore the plot of Gattaca, the morality lecture on genetic engineering and ask yourself this: In the future are human beings going to start tampering with the human genome? If the answer at any point in the future is yes, then the science in Gattaca is likely realistic. I actually agree with their assessment, the future portrayed in Gattaca where genetic information is used to discriminate and people begin to improve the human genome is VERY realistic. It will start with where they said it would start in the movie, the first tampering will be to remove disease, then it will be a slippery slope to make people smarter, stronger and more gifted. As the techniques improve testing will become so quick and routine that a microchip that can read out your entire individual genome in seconds is possible. Once improvements are made those that are "improved" begin to discriminate against those that aren't. From the first time I saw Gattaca I realized they accurately predicted the future of genetic engineering.
But, please consider for a moment that in the movie, that the US governments science agencies were aware of the impending disaster several years before it occurred. Now take a relatively uneducated person and expose them to that and they might start wondering if the bogus science in the movie was actually real and that some hollywood script writer was privvy to this secret information because they were going to be on one of the "arks". Also take into account the massive publicity the studio threw at the thing and those that didn't even see the movie are now aware of this silly Mayan "prophecy" (ironically made by non-Mayan's).
If anything is to blame it's the atrocious lack of science education in this country.
You have assurances from Valve that they've made publicly. These are relatively easy to find. For what it's worth I trust Gabe and by extension I trust Valve. That trust means I accept the tradeoff's of Steam (realizing I gave up several rights to get several benefits) and have the assurance that if steam ever goes down they will release the tools to crack the DRM off the games as they promised.
Valve isn't some faceless corporation, it's owners and managers are very well known and reachable. Maybe I'm a fool for trusting someone, but I trust Gabe to do the right thing and that means I trust Valve and Steam by extension. Maybe that's a dumb idea, but I don't think it's real nice of you detractors to point and steam and talk about evil that's never happened while slighting the character of Valve and Gabe. Because that's what it boils down to, that you think Valve and it's managers would some day be willing participators in fucking over every gamer in the world. Maybe we shouldn't trust anyone to do the right thing, but I don't like the idea of world where we can't trust anyone to do the right thing.
In your ranting you might have overlooked a key factor here. When you join the military you agree to waive civilian rights and accept the UCMJ and the subset of rights it allows. Manning is being detained under provisions of the UCMJ that allow what is happening. You might argue that he can't surrender basic rights by joining the military but he can and the supreme court has upheld the UCMJ numerous times. In fact in battle the UCMJ allows things like drumhead trials and field executions. In addition simple things like criticizing the current president can get you court martialed. In some aspects the UCMJ has stricter controls on the government and in others it allows more abuse, but the Supreme court has upheld the UCMJ and the ability of an enlistee to waive their rights and accept the UCMJ.
The key point here is, if you don't want to abide the UCMJ don't join the military. Manning was a member of the military and allegedly disobeyed an order. That makes him susceptible to military justice, not civilian justice.
Ignorance of the law is NEVER an excuse that will work in court. You might argue it's not fair, which is what your post is (a great big whine), but that doesn't change the fact that you are using a system and are completely unaware of how that system works. That should scare you, and it should scare you even more that you think someone else is somehow responsible to tell you how the system you are using works when it's a published standard.
Costco ALWAYS clearly labeled grey market products. They back them with their 100% satisfaction guarantee. I bought a Denon Receiver from them and they were very clear that they were not an authorized retailer and that Denon would not service the product or warranty. I was a fully informed consumer when I purchased it.
The pentagon isn't pretending war is as clean as a hospital room. They never have. From their viewpoint they are pointing out how little collateral damage there is today versus what it was even 10 years ago. Please understand, 20 years ago if they wanted to bomb a building full of people they probably would have had to carpet bomb the area to hit the building, and killed everyone within 300-600 yards as a result. In WWII and even Vietnam to take out a single target many many munitions would fall that would miss their target, hell in WWII we routinely dropped a several dozen bombs on a concentration camps by mistake, talk about innocent civilians.
So when the Pentagon is talking about surgical strikes, what they are talking about is in context with the past. The fact that we can drop a single bomb on an object and actually hit it IS an amazing advancement in precision and from the Pentagon perspective IS surgical. Whether that bomb kills dozens of innocent civilians isn't what they mean by surgical (as this isn't a discussion of quality of target but precision of strike), it's a discussion of the amount of munitions and sorties to hit a target and is entirely in the context of what they work towards. It never fails to amaze me that people think the military could even if they wanted to avoid killing innocent people in a warzone. They deal constantly with the fog of war and not fully understanding who or what is going on at any particular moment. Within that context decisions have to be made without full information and sometimes innocent people or even friendly troops are killed.
Collateral damage is a fact of war, something the pentagon IS trying to reduce as much as possible (they spend several billion in research every year on battlefield awareness) but it's fairly ignorant to accuse them of lying about precision when they are constantly trying to improve it and their press junkets are to point out how much they have improved. But people like you come in and without the context of history accuse them of lying. Frankly it's offensive.
Slashdot Mirror
Look like nvidia finally gave up on getting the x86 or chipset license. Guess the CEO is now going to bet the farm on ARM and Linux and think they can pull it off with closed source drivers! Either that or ARM windows which in my opinion will be DOA. Those patents where nVidia's best hope for an x86 license, Intel appears to have bargained with the bottom line being no x86.
Milk cows have been selected to produce so much milk that if they aren't commercially milked they will die from not being milked. The average modern milk cow must be milked 2 - 3 times a day at several gallons per sitting. It's triple to quadruple what the average calf can consume and the overproduction would kill them if they weren't milked by humans. A modern milk cow simply cannot survive without humans milking them.
Nearly insurmountable? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. If you want someone dead there are a LOT of ways to accomplish it without the need for a gun. If murder was at all difficult there wouldn't be so many of them around the world. Poisonings to sabotage all the way to just plain sticking a knife in their back. The number of physical altercations in the UK are nearly identical to the US, firearms simply make more of the attacks successful in the US. This isn't even considering that most of the attacks in the US are drug related and a result of gang warfare where the majority of those killed are involved in gangs.
I'm not a criminal, nor will I ever be. My ownership of a firearm is none of your business or anyone else's. What I don't understand is why all you anti-gun nuts think anyone that would own a firearm is somehow deranged or a criminal in someway. The incredibly small number of firearms (vs the total) used in crime in the US are almost always illegally acquired. Conversely, the number of legally owned and purchased firearms used in criminal acts is mind numbingly small. Hundreds of millions of firearms are purchased, owned and used regularly in a responsible manner in the US. As an anti-gun nut you might find this hard to believe but those of us that like fire arms like them for lots of reasons, from target shooting (a hobby that requires a lot of skill) to hunting to simple collecting and to a more minor extent self defense. But the most important point is that my ownership is none of your fucking business. What I own, what I do in my free time is not your concern and this belief by you anti-gun nuts that you are somehow entitled to dictate who can and can't own a product is the most amazingly stupid and fascist point of view. And the most evil thing about it is that you assume anyone that would own a gun is violent or is capable of murder, frankly that's offensive. In my mind that's what makes you more dangerous than anyone that owns a fire arm. You judge someones intent and capability for violence by a product they own. I'd consider you more of a danger to society than any law abiding gun owner.
Or they will find diamonds then some enterprising mercenary and a doctor will kill everyone they can and hide the diamonds inside the corpses only to be found out by a very attractive FBI woman.
I supported the goals of WikiLeaks, supported the war diary releases and the believe openness in government is essential. But Assange is the weak leak. While he was in jail little to nothing was posted. All the Money donated is donated directly to him, not some foundation. He's claimed it's so he can be the lighting rod the face of wikileaks. But what I really see is an egotistical asshole that's motivated more by self interest that anything else. There is a very noble goal in trying to give the public access to government secrets with care taken not to reveal irrelevant information that can only be used to harm. And I support anyone trying to do that.
But Assange has put himself in the position of gatekeeper for the whole organization. He's essential to releases, access to funds and websites. He thinks his little insurance packet he released will protect him. But ask yourself this: what good is his insurance package if he's the only one that knows the key and no one can talk to him because he's dead or in solitary confinement with no access to any living person. That gives the governments of the world motivation to hit the organization at it's weak point, Assange himself. He's also demonstrated a significant lack of judgement and if this story is true he thinks he personally has sole control of the material which he doesn't own and the US government labels as stolen.
Ever since the decision to release all the diplomatic cables without any kind of filter on information that might be sensible to just let drop I've personally felt he's a danger to this cause. This was exacerbated by his conduct in promiscuous (and irresponsible, god who has unprotected sex these days and then refuses to be tested for STD's) conduct in Sweden, his lack of foresight to line up the press credentials before he decided to piss off every western government and his general actions limiting himself to the only one with control or access to donated money, his reaction to his own police report leaking and now this belief that he is the owner of this material.
Assange is the weak point at wiki-leaks. Make no mistake there are people that know this and will use it, as other posters have said other organizations will take over once this one is destroyed and it will be. I also think he's the type to take others down with him, so if you've worked with him at nefarious purposes you better be very afraid because he will spill the beans on you.
Before anyone runs around talking about ghosts they need to step into the real world. That house you live in is constructed of several thousand components, and several dozen different materials. Concrete, steel, Brick, Stucco, Wood (even different species and the fineness of the grain affect the rates), Wire, and even the carpet pad and carpet expand and contract at different rates under thermal pressure. Every single building in the world has thermal zones with differing temperatures and combined with seasons, sun, cloud cover, night time, wind and precipitation every house is under constant thermal change. Modern houses are sealed tighter, the older the house the more holes in the insulation and the more the house breathes with the outside and the faster thermal shifts will affect the structure.
With all that in mind, the older the house the more it's going to creak, groan and make noises as the thermal changes cause expansion/contraction and that thermal movement then causes load shifts resulting in shifting stress and strain. But even modern homes with solid insulation will have movement when something as simple as the furnace turns on. A rapid shift to cold in the room could be simply thermal changes opening a gap in the outside envelope that causes outside temperatures to penetrate the structure quickly at that location and is actually a good indicator of a problem that could lead to water penetration, termites or other severe structural damage.
I'd suggest if the OP wants to excise the ghosts he should simply suggest that the current home owners spend some money on better insulating their home and sealing the outer envelope. Cutting access holes in drywall and spraying an expanding foam (like Icynene) or other retrofit expanding and sealing insulation in the stud cavities that would effectively seal all the little holes would do far more to get rid of their "ghosts" than any investigation or exorcism. It's Occam's razor people, ghosts have been speculated about for years, many many man years have went into trying to prove them, but in all that has there been any real scientific proof? If not it's not a lack of skepticism to say there aren't ghosts, it's a lack of any real proof over thousands of experiments trying to prove they do exist. No the reality of mosts ghosts has been known since the accumulated knowledge of civil and mechanical engineering provided the real reason behind ghosts and it's not anything more fancy than thermal stress and strain that was discovered when thermal dynamics and their principles were crafted into scientific theory.
To rid a home of ghosts you don't need holy water and a priest, you need insulation and construction workers.
And you don't think that the Chinese can come up with comparable electronics, or perhaps even superior electronics?
Nope. This isn't MP3 player technology using off the shelf processors. This is EMP hardened electronics dealing with radar, EM countermeasures, target tracking, flight assistance and stealthing technology.
You don't buy this shit off the shelves. The designs used in US war fighters are one-off designs. Everything from the microprocessors to the software code is all very highly classified and never leaves US soil except in fighters piloted by the US military. The very existence of most of the technology isn't even common knowledge.
I didn't say anyone was inferior, what I said is the US has a 30 year lead in this technology and less that 5% of it ever makes it to the commercial market that the Chinese have access to. Why do you think the Russians won't sell the Chinese their most advanced stuff anymore? For the same reason any fighter the Chinese make isn't going to be as good as the US or Russian made fighters and that's because there is a technology deficit that the Chinese must hurdle before they can exceed US and Russian tech. They have been trying to use espionage to get past this because their research and development institutions are full of people writing either fraudulent papers or downright plagiarizing western research.
There is no doubt real research is being done but even if it's twice the amount as the US it's going to take them decades to catch up to both the US and Russian state of the art. You appear to have difficulty accepting the fact that China is still just barely moving beyond a purely industrial economy. They can take all the pictures of the F-22 and copy the look of the airframe, but without all the technology under-pining the US design the airframe probably isn't even better than the F-16.
FWIW the King tiger couldn't be killed by any self propelled weapon fielded by any of the allies. The British found they could kill one with an towed 80mm anti-aircraft but only with multiple shots. Had the Germans had the fuel to run them the war might have turned out differently. The Allies strategy of starving Germany of resources was far more effective than any mass produced tank.
More than 1000 F-35 export versions have confirmed orders. It's not being canceled. So many are being sold to foreign countries that with the development costs ammortorized into the cost the total cost to produce each will be less than 50 million which is close to 20 year old aircraft. No the F-35 won't be canceled, though it's likely to be the last fighter aircraft the US ever designs.
The problem is they don't invent any of it. They simply negotiate smartly to steal the existing technology with little to no improvement. The problem with military equipment like a fighter jet is that the US doesn't export the technology, even to very friendly countries like Britain and Israel. It's built in the US and the export versions are sufficiently degraded to the point that the receiving countries frequently install their own systems because the export US versions are shit.
So what the Chinese have, they have stolen from countries that will give them access, basically Russian and maybe some French tech and the Russians learned their lesson, they now have a policy of transferring or selling nothing to China because they just steal the design. So the design is probably nothing more than copies of some of the concept Sukoi aircraft that were proposed when the US announced the YF-22 that are nothing more than some simple modifications to Mig-35's. Might look interesting but it's not the airframe that's important anymore, it's the electronics because dog fights don't exist anymore, the missile technology is so good that fighters just launch missiles while the target is still over the horizon and invisible.
What exactly is the reason for indicating you've never owned a firearm? And what exactly does living in "flyover" country have to do with anything? Do you have this impression that everyone not living on the coasts is some radical gun touting redneck? Because that is how your statement reads to me and that indicates to me that you are one ignorant asshole. Not exactly a ringing endorsement to read your books, but I guess you really aren't targeting those millions that live in "flyover" country eh?
The XBox didn't turn a profit in 2008. The XBox 360 did, but only against the costs expended that year. That profit will never ever come close to obliterating the total losses on the Xbox and early years of the Xbox 360. (as stated by the OP the total losses exceed 5 Billion) Considering that the life of the Xbox 360 is nearly over with a new console cycle due within the next couple years it's astounding that anyone would assert that they made a profit.
They are claiming a profit against only the expenditures of that year, not the total expenditures over the life of the program. They aren't even close against the total net loses.They would need to sell the Xbox 360 with the same 165 million profit per year for about 5 decades to recoup the total expenditure or raise profit to exceed a billion a year. The Xbox has been a collasal money sink for MS, as the OP stated they would have been far better to simply give the money to shareholders rather than waste billions on a product that was 3 years into it's life with nearly zero expenditure on development before they could turn a yearly profit. Think about how scary that is, it took them 3 years after the product was produced and sold and near zero development was ongoing before they could reduce costs to the point that they actually made money.
The First DirecTV DVR was powered by Microsoft and still has fanboi's that rave about it being better than everything else including Tivo.
Scary book if you ask me, the first part of the book they discuss holding seminars with thousands of attendants in New York and that this was possibly used to discriminate against millions of people before WWII. The "science" is absurd, they assert because they asked a single candy shop owner how much of their sales was the result of fat people (and that most Hebrew's are fatties) and that's considered evidence is just scary. Eugenics was a very scary movement, it led to a LOT of bad things not the least of which was Germany's move to extinguish certain ethnic groups.
My memory is flaky too so you are probably right, didn't notice that hole in the plot previously. In answer to your DNA thing that's why Ethan scrubbed all his skin and hair aggressively every day (including using a rock and a stream after he borked Umma) so that he didn't inadvertently spill DNA anywhere.
Eugenics and the concepts predicted in star trek have far more mundane origins with the real eugenics movement of the 20's and 30's that was partly the basis for Hitler's assertions about racial purity. There is a book on the Guttenberg project called How to Analyze People on Sight by Elsie Lincoln Benedict and Ralph Paine Benedict (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30601) that was likely one of the key publications in the eugenics movement (I'm not sure on that, but if you read it you will see how absurd the "science" is). The entire premise of the book is that you can tell everything you want to know about someone by their body structure. Simply reading about the "Alimentive" type (or Fatty as the book calls them frequently) and you will see just how absurd eugenics was.
This all predated the discovery of DNA and I'm not sure of the time-line of the star trek episode with the discovery of the double helix but there was likely very little real DNA information when the episode was produced and it's origins are far more likely tied to the previous eugenics movement which was used as the basis for a LOT of discrimination, a topic Gene Roddenberry liked to tackle very frequently with his social commentary masked as sci-fi.
I thought it was 2 years until the mission launched? Yes he was selected, but IIRC the plot was the new director that was murdered was going to cut funding and the mission would never go forward. Now if they were at the stage where they could still cut funding and actually save money the rocket couldn't have been built even if the mission team was selected. Hence the actual launch would take place in 2 years and the blood an urine would be needed until the launch where he could do his ahah moment and reveal his real genetics.
Says the person with no perspective! Look back 20 years, you find a dozen companies that exceeded $200 Billion in market cap and are now worth significantly less if they are still around. In fact the best example is Cisco. Topped out with the highest market cap in the market during the dotcom bomb, had real earnings, real growth and much larger sales than Apple. Another example, GE, probably the largest manufacturing conglomerate in the world, had a market cap upwards of 200 Billion.
I'd suggest you don't invest in products you are passionate about. I have a test I like to use, it's called the Walmart test. Walmart is the largest retailer in the world. They are in many parts of the US the only retailer. They push trillions of dollars in inventory with gross revenue (that means the cost they paid for the products is subtracted) of +400Billion. They have gross profit (take gross revenue and subtract everything but taxes and dividends) of +100Billion. Walmart is very slow growing because they have mostly saturated their growth prospects, so they have a relatively low PE of 13ish (probably too high with an EPS of ~3%) and pay an annual dividend of less than 1%.
Now to do the test you take the Market Cap of Walmart and compare it against the market cap of whatever company you want to invest in. If this company is higher you need to look at the key revenue figures and compare them. There is no set formula, but if it's not at least similar or higher (as percentage) than the company is severely overvalued. I mentioned Cisco above, they crashed big time, nearly a 10 fold loss of value. Will a 10 fold drop happen to Apple? Not unless there is a similar corresponding drop in revenue but I can't help when looking at their numbers to say there are a lot of people investing in the company because they like the products and that is a VERY bad strategy and why most people lose money in the stock market. But from looking at their statistics I can say they look very overvalued to me with a big drop the first time they disappoint or if Steve dies.
I made a lot of money on a Cisco investment in the 90's and I've subsequently made my best investments by investing in boring high dividend stocks, things like Phillip Morris and Oil. I'm dispassionate about them and made good investments, early in my investing I invested in companies I was passionate about, and in nearly every situation I lost money. You don't have perspective and that's dangerous in investing, you need to be cold and clinical when investing.
Ignore the plot of Gattaca, the morality lecture on genetic engineering and ask yourself this: In the future are human beings going to start tampering with the human genome? If the answer at any point in the future is yes, then the science in Gattaca is likely realistic. I actually agree with their assessment, the future portrayed in Gattaca where genetic information is used to discriminate and people begin to improve the human genome is VERY realistic. It will start with where they said it would start in the movie, the first tampering will be to remove disease, then it will be a slippery slope to make people smarter, stronger and more gifted. As the techniques improve testing will become so quick and routine that a microchip that can read out your entire individual genome in seconds is possible. Once improvements are made those that are "improved" begin to discriminate against those that aren't. From the first time I saw Gattaca I realized they accurately predicted the future of genetic engineering.
There is no question the movie was absurd.
But, please consider for a moment that in the movie, that the US governments science agencies were aware of the impending disaster several years before it occurred. Now take a relatively uneducated person and expose them to that and they might start wondering if the bogus science in the movie was actually real and that some hollywood script writer was privvy to this secret information because they were going to be on one of the "arks". Also take into account the massive publicity the studio threw at the thing and those that didn't even see the movie are now aware of this silly Mayan "prophecy" (ironically made by non-Mayan's).
If anything is to blame it's the atrocious lack of science education in this country.
You have assurances from Valve that they've made publicly. These are relatively easy to find. For what it's worth I trust Gabe and by extension I trust Valve. That trust means I accept the tradeoff's of Steam (realizing I gave up several rights to get several benefits) and have the assurance that if steam ever goes down they will release the tools to crack the DRM off the games as they promised.
Valve isn't some faceless corporation, it's owners and managers are very well known and reachable. Maybe I'm a fool for trusting someone, but I trust Gabe to do the right thing and that means I trust Valve and Steam by extension. Maybe that's a dumb idea, but I don't think it's real nice of you detractors to point and steam and talk about evil that's never happened while slighting the character of Valve and Gabe. Because that's what it boils down to, that you think Valve and it's managers would some day be willing participators in fucking over every gamer in the world. Maybe we shouldn't trust anyone to do the right thing, but I don't like the idea of world where we can't trust anyone to do the right thing.
In your ranting you might have overlooked a key factor here. When you join the military you agree to waive civilian rights and accept the UCMJ and the subset of rights it allows. Manning is being detained under provisions of the UCMJ that allow what is happening. You might argue that he can't surrender basic rights by joining the military but he can and the supreme court has upheld the UCMJ numerous times. In fact in battle the UCMJ allows things like drumhead trials and field executions. In addition simple things like criticizing the current president can get you court martialed. In some aspects the UCMJ has stricter controls on the government and in others it allows more abuse, but the Supreme court has upheld the UCMJ and the ability of an enlistee to waive their rights and accept the UCMJ.
The key point here is, if you don't want to abide the UCMJ don't join the military. Manning was a member of the military and allegedly disobeyed an order. That makes him susceptible to military justice, not civilian justice.
Ignorance of the law is NEVER an excuse that will work in court. You might argue it's not fair, which is what your post is (a great big whine), but that doesn't change the fact that you are using a system and are completely unaware of how that system works. That should scare you, and it should scare you even more that you think someone else is somehow responsible to tell you how the system you are using works when it's a published standard.
Costco ALWAYS clearly labeled grey market products. They back them with their 100% satisfaction guarantee. I bought a Denon Receiver from them and they were very clear that they were not an authorized retailer and that Denon would not service the product or warranty. I was a fully informed consumer when I purchased it.
The pentagon isn't pretending war is as clean as a hospital room. They never have. From their viewpoint they are pointing out how little collateral damage there is today versus what it was even 10 years ago. Please understand, 20 years ago if they wanted to bomb a building full of people they probably would have had to carpet bomb the area to hit the building, and killed everyone within 300-600 yards as a result. In WWII and even Vietnam to take out a single target many many munitions would fall that would miss their target, hell in WWII we routinely dropped a several dozen bombs on a concentration camps by mistake, talk about innocent civilians.
So when the Pentagon is talking about surgical strikes, what they are talking about is in context with the past. The fact that we can drop a single bomb on an object and actually hit it IS an amazing advancement in precision and from the Pentagon perspective IS surgical. Whether that bomb kills dozens of innocent civilians isn't what they mean by surgical (as this isn't a discussion of quality of target but precision of strike), it's a discussion of the amount of munitions and sorties to hit a target and is entirely in the context of what they work towards. It never fails to amaze me that people think the military could even if they wanted to avoid killing innocent people in a warzone. They deal constantly with the fog of war and not fully understanding who or what is going on at any particular moment. Within that context decisions have to be made without full information and sometimes innocent people or even friendly troops are killed.
Collateral damage is a fact of war, something the pentagon IS trying to reduce as much as possible (they spend several billion in research every year on battlefield awareness) but it's fairly ignorant to accuse them of lying about precision when they are constantly trying to improve it and their press junkets are to point out how much they have improved. But people like you come in and without the context of history accuse them of lying. Frankly it's offensive.