Yes, not only are we going to need increasing energy supplies going forward, both for expanding first world needs and increasing third world needs, but we need nuclear power for practical planetary space travel. Nuclear can be done very safely, and is already demonstrably the safest large-scale power source save perhaps solar.
As to Germany, it is about to start importing power from France, mainly generated by nuclear plants. It's a good deal for France I'm sure.;-)
There is a very simple time-saving metric which allows you do discover whether someone knows what they are talking about, or are living in fantasy-land making stuff up.
If discussing CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) there is a superior metric for this.
Simply ask the climate alarmist you're talking to if he or she supports vastly increased nuclear power generation, along with a reduction in fossil fuel power generation. If not, it's "fantasy-land" time.
Either the problem is severe enough to warrant the only workable solution, or it's not a real concern. Simple enough.
You want Intel to make an ARM chip that is competitive with x86. Intel will never, ever do that if they can possibly avoid it.
Intel dominates in x86, and they make good profits on x86 chips. As noted in TFA, Intel would be just another ARM source out of many, and they would make less on an ARM than on x86. nVidia, on the other hand, is no longer friendly with Intel and has no reason not to build a super ARM as you would like; and in fact they seem to be working on it. Google search for "Project Denver".
The first Project Denver silicon is rumored to be 8 ARM cores, 64-bit, with a 256 CUDA core GPU on the same die. I would love a smartbook with that chip, but I think they will be able to sell that as a blade server platform as well.
steveha
I'm glad you brought up Project Denver. It sounds exciting, but NVIDIA is sure being quiet about it. Have you seen any updates recently?
The results of Project Denver just might be enough for Apple to look at ARM for MacOS systems as well as iOS. Rumor has it that NVIDIA GPUs are back in favor at Apple these days.
At least according the Wikipedia China is estimated to have between 180 and 240 nuclear warheads.
China don't do the MAD thing, their doctrine is set up to work by the Minimal Deterrence thing.
The interesting thing about the Chinese nuclear program is that nobody outside of China knows much about it. If there is a large government on Earth that can run a secret program effectively, it's the Chinese - for a number of reasons.
How many nukes do the Chinese really have? Nobody actually knows besides some high-ranking Chinese.
To quote the Wikipedia article you referenced:
Because of strict secrecy it is very difficult to determine the exact size and composition of China's nuclear forces.
Not really, since the 747 flies above almost all weather. As long as it avoids thunderheads it should be effective. Granted, it would be better to put it on a specialty airframe (possibly a re-engineered 747 with much more wing surface and different engines) that could cruise at 70,000 feet or so - the thinner the atmosphere, the greater the effective range.
and even if the US did develop a working weapon all it would do is spur North Korea to build more and more missiles until a few were sure to get through. That's how MAD works, you keep building more and more missiles until the enemy can't hope to stop them all.
Sure, that's how MAD works - and it's how we successfully defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot. They couldn't afford more defense buildup.
North Korea is a poster child for such an approach. Even with its current level of military spending, it can't afford basic necessities for it's people.
It's pretty difficult to make a stealth platform out of something that is constantly transmitting regardless of how secure and reliable that connection is. If your solution is to make the drone-based system autonomous (no communications required), then you might as well skip the whole drone bomber platform altogether and just use ballistic missiles.
Wrong, for a couple of reasons. First off, reusable autonomous bombers would be much less expensive than missiles per ton of delivered ordinance. Second, you can communicate with autonomous aircraft without compromising their stealth. Even if they send data back, it can be quite stealthy (directional satcom), but this would likely not be needed continuously, or even often. Damage assessment could be done with video stored on the vehicle until landing, for instance.
Personally I would be cautious about allowing remote retargeting, since if your encryption scheme was compromised your own weapons could be turned against you. You could still enable a 'recall' command. If you did allow retargeting, that would seem to be the perfect spot for one time pad encryption.
The US Navy is already developing an autonomous bomber, based on the X-47 program.
The B-1 Lancer has nearly double the bomb load of the B-52, higher speed and better stealth. Also the B-1 has excellent loiter times so it can sit near a target area and when a high priority target is identified, accelerate in at high speed and take out the target with a heavy bomb load in minutes.
Unfortunately all this increased capability has a tradeoff of increased complexity, and from what I hear poor and low cost construction, so costs and maintenance time are greatly increased.
The B-1 is a very underrated platform. I love the B1-R concept, which would upgrade the B-1 with F-22 engines, improved radar and a new rotary launcher for around 20 AMRAAM missiles. That would let it supercruise (possibly along with F-22 escorts) at around Mach 1.5 as it was originally designed to do, and it would have an insane air-to-air capability if needed as well.
The B-1 is already fairly stealthy, if new airframes were built for the B1-R program fairly minor enhancements could get it within shouting distance of the B-2. That kind of capability would be invaluable when (not if) we have to deal with a first-tier adversary.
Wikipedia quotes the unit cost at under $750m introductory in 1997, and with current inflation just over $1b. Where did the $3b number come from?
The "problem" with the B-2 is that only 20 were built. That's an insanely low number given the engineering investment to produce them at all. When you have bombers named after states, you have far too few bombers. Just normal attrition is a big problem, we've lost at least one (5% of the total number) due to mechanical problems. Sadly, at this point I don't think there's any economical way to build more B-2s. The likely replacement will be an unmanned aircraft, which would lower costs quite a bit and provide better performance.
If more had been built, they would have approached your $750 million figure - which is really not such a bad deal considering a mundane 747 costs around $200 million.
Finally, "without evidence to the contrary, the police were legally prohibited from doing anything but taking the shooter at his word". Fair enough. But what do you consider evidence to the contrary? Assume for a second that the shooter's word is unreliable (motive in case shooting was unwarranted). What would constitute evidence that the shooter was not acting in self-defense? Wounds to the shooter's head? Could as well have been self-defense on the part of the dead guy. The point is that we really don't know what the police deemed lack of evidence, because the only thing that was in the police report was some bruises on the shooter. For me, identifying lack of evidence requires that there is at least evidence for searching - not just taking a look at a scene and going "yep, self-defense."
The scene of the shooting was forensically examined, and GZ was questioned for several hours. There was also at least one eye-witness who corroborated GZ's story. So the decision of the police to not hold him was a lot less cavalier than you're making it out to be.
I'm also not sure if you're aware that at least one DA wanted to go forward with a prosecution, but it was also decided at that level that there wasn't enough evidence to convict.
Stand your ground laws are doubly dangerous: they allow for confrontations to escalate quickly, and for the shooter to go away free as long as there are no witnesses to the shooting.
"Stand your ground" is completely irrelevant to the situation. With no witnesses, the shooter could just as well claim to have retreated first before firing. "Stand your ground" does nothing but eliminate the requirement to attempt retreat before acting in self defense. Further, if the shooter was on the ground being beaten, he would likely claim an attempt was made to get away before shooting but it was impossible.
You don't even known the legal meaning of the word "assault". Assault is threatening violence. So someone coming up to you saying "I'm going to beat the tar out of you!" is assaulting you, by definition.
Point for you, I should have known better than to think that legalese would track the normal use of a term. Military assault always involves more than words.
I pose you a few scenarios.
1) A threatens B, B responds with force, confrontation ensues
2) A threatens B, B responds with force, A backs off
3) A threatens B, B responds with force, A backs off, B continues
Typically, they'd all go to trial (or not even that far, depending), and all but the third would result in nothing for B.
I'm sure you're in the wrong in saying that physically attacking someone who merely said something to you will result in no penalty. As we've established, I'm not a lawyer, perhaps one will clarify.
Let's say somebody shoots at you, but misses, and you shoot him back and kill him. Technically, since he never hit you, it's only aggravated assault. Under your rules, he'd have to hit you in order for you to respond in kind, but nobody in their right mind is going to convict somebody for killing a guy that just shot at him. It's not really that different if a guy comes up to you and is about to restrain you (he doesn't even need to be about to fight you).
Nope, even if someone misses (with fist or bullet) there is still a physical attempt to do harm, rather than harmless words. Self defense is justified in such situations, as the person might not miss on the next attempt.
My big problem here is this: there was absolutely no interest oh the part of the authorities in investigating this even after it became a big deal.
The ONLY witness was Zimmerman,
Not true, so you're not off to a good start...
and it is undeniable that he has a huge motive to lie about what happened in order to save his skin. The evidence that exists, such as it is, is not clear cut at all - and certainly isn't enough to exonerate Zimmerman on the face of it.
As you know full well, since you've seen all of it, including his initial injuries up close? Sure...
Yet the police barely i looked into it before dropping it.
Not so, a DA wanted to bring a manslaughter charge but it was decided there wasn't enough evidence. You're batting 1000 so far though.;-)
Since you felt like playing a hypothetical by bringing up what you believe would have happened had things ended with Zimmerman dead, I will ask you a hypothetical: do you think had Trayvon killed Zimmerman the police would have walked away without investigating much and been so quick to say it was self-defense?
In the exact same circumstances, I would guess so.
Before you answer, please look at the legal disposition of crimes in this country and pay specific attention to just how much more frequently people of color are convicted vs. whites accused of similar crimes and how much longer sentences are after conviction for offenders of color than white offenders.
Aren't you making a huge assumption that blacks (not "people of color", other colors such as "yellow" don't have the same problem) don't commit crimes at higher rates? Regardless of the reason, both statistics and "common knowledge" indicate they do.
This whole incident and the reaction after the fact by the police smells fishy as hell, and I cannot fault those who are suspicious.
I think all the facts need to come to light. On the other hand, many involved seem less interested in facts than promoting their own agenda. JJ and AS come to mind, not to mention 0.
On the issue of political hay being made from this: well, duh, it's an election year. Of course people are going to try to tie things to this story if it helps their narrative.
Of course! Naturally any politician would exploit a murder, completely ignoring the facts of the case, and in the case of the President seriously tainting the jury pool, just for personal gain.
Actually, unlike yourself, I think most politicians are better than that.
As for your statement that the President's comments were beneath the office, well, I daresay In the scope of things American presidents have done this century to demean the office it barely registers. I will take a thousand incidents of Obama fumbling an attempt to connect to his constituency over a single incident of George Bush making a mockery of a war he started, the memories of the soldiers hurt and killed, and the thousands of civilians left dead in a completely unnecessary war by releasing a video of him trying to find WMDs in the White House. You'll have to forgive me if I find it hard to even register something like Obama's comment.
Oh, of course! It's BUSH'S FAULT!
Actually, the line of crap you just spewed is rather divorced from the actual facts. Let's not forget that every other country in the coalition was sure that Iraq had WMDs, because UN inspectors had seen them, including thousands of liters of anthrax solution!
The war was justifiable at the time, and even if said WMDs were hidden or moved before the war (say, to Syria) they were still a potential major threat to the US and US interests. Also, the Iraq War will likely have a better long-term outcome than 0's "good war" in Afghanistan.
At any rate, we'll see who's paying attention to what come November!:-)
The 48% match isn't a probability figure, it's based on measurable traits. According to TFA, if the screams were Zimmerman's, they would expect a 90% or better match.
OB car analogy, if you're looking for a black sedan w/ a sunroof and whitewalls, a black sedan with no sunroof and whitewall tires is a 75% match but 0% likely to be the same car.
Let's pull a few quotes from TFA, they may be helpful.
Primeau, who said he uses a combination of critical listening skills and spectrum analysis, called voice identification "an exact science" that can help a legal team in court.
Yet standards set by the American Board of Recorded Evidence, which Owen once chaired, indicate "there must be at least 10 comparable worlds between two voice samples to reach a minimal decision criteria."
While Zimmerman says more than that many words on his 911 call, the only one heard -- in the distant background -- on the second is a cry for "help."
David Faigman, a professor of law at the University of California-Hastings and an expert on the admissibility of scientific evidence, said courts and the overall scientific community have mixed opinions about the reliability of such "voiceprint" analysis.
...and...
Still, he said, it wouldn't be too hard for Zimmerman's attorneys to find an audio expert to offer an opposing opinion.
"These expert witnesses come out of the woodwork when money is concerned," he said.
As I'm sure these 'experts' did, when CNN offered them the big bucks.;-)
At any rate, this analysis seems far from definitive, I'm sure there will be more to come.
RTFA, Zimmerman wasn't doing the screaming for help.
I'm sure what you meant to say that, contrary to an eyewitness account, some software assigns a 52% probability to it not being Zimmerman screaming for help.
I agree. Whether or not he's guilty/innocent or should be tried is not necessarily connected with whether his actions were intelligent. The former is a matter of law. But even if he is tried and acquitted, or never even tried, I think I'm still justified in thinking this outcome was not inevitable, and that he is responsible for the outcome.
Given that you have the advantage of infallible 20/20 hindsight... It seems to have been swept under the carpet lately that Zimmerman's neighborhood had a recent rash of breakins, and he was concerned about losing a possible suspect. When it's a matter of seconds, the police are only minutes away...
Yep, too bad it's not possible to get a CCWP in DC. Then you might have been able to defend yourself.
I think you're missing my point. I was able to defend myself. I did not escalate the situation, and no one was injured.
I congratulate you on your good fortune, as well as the benefit of infallible 2/20 hindsight.;-)
On the other hand, if either of us had a gun, including a legal one, one or both of us might have ended up injured or dead (or, bystanders might have been injured or dead).
On the gripping hand (sorry couldn't resist) if your assailant had a knife, pipe, baseball bat or one of any number of potential weapons and the inclination to use it, you could have ended up permanently injured or dead, in the absence of your own weapon. Concealed carry is intended to provide a last resort if there is no better way to ensure your safety.
I fail to understand how the end result of my situation, in which no one was injured, is worse than me being "able to defend myself" and someone ending up injured or dead.
It's not, however you should also recognize that wasn't the only possible outcome.
The main point of self-defense is to avoid injury or death...right?
Sure, and on that count, I ended up fine, and so did he. If I had aggravated the situation, I expect that one or both of us would have ended up in the hospital and/or jail. I don't see how that's better than what actually happened.
You're not considering what might have happened had he aggravated the situation.
Allegedly, for committing a felonious assault on the wrong person.
I think the DA would be doing Zimmerman a favor if they tried him now. It'd take the heat off, the evidence could get presented, he'd be exonerated in court and this shit would be over. As it is he's going to be stalked by the media the rest of his life.
Right. As we know, OJ Simpson leads an idyllic and untroubled existence...well at least he did before he moronically got himself convicted after all...
Hrm, hard to know exactly where to start with this beauty...
Someone is trying to start a race war in this country and I'd sure like to know why.
Because the whites declared equality was achieved, and the minorities know that to be a lie.
Really, care to cite a source?
I'm pretty sure I can name several areas where minorities receive preferential treatment, as opposed to no such programs for "white folk". If anything, at a government level, things are not equal - in favor of the minorities.
The whites are causing the race war by defending the racists like Zimmerman who killed the boy because he was Black. If Martin hadn't been black, he wouldn't have been followed and attacked by Zimmerman and would still be alive, so Black is what killed him, and the system seems to be defending Zimmerman for killing some Black person.
You're making huge assumptions in the face of zero evidence...seems you might be one of the reporters writing for AP.;-)
Even if Zimmerman's actions were legally justified, it doesn't mean they were right or intelligent.
Which of course has nothing to do with whether or not he should be tried...
I was assaulted in downtown Washington, DC in the middle of the day. I could have escalated the situation and probably have been legally justified in doing so, but for all I know I might have gotten myself stabbed or run down by the car the asshole was driving.
Yep, too bad it's not possible to get a CCWP in DC. Then you might have been able to defend yourself.
And for what?
The main point of self-defense is to avoid injury or death...right?
And here, Martin is dead--for what?
Allegedly, for committing a felonious assault on the wrong person.
It doesn't matter if Trayvon beat the hell out of Zimmerman - frankly, he should've, he was being assaulted (the threat of violence). But instead Zimmerman shoots him.
It's clear you're not a lawyer, and in fact don't even know the law at all.
There is no circumstance in which it's legally justified to assault someone if you are not yourself in physical danger. In other words, if someone walks up to you and says "I don't like your looks, I think I'm going to beat the tar out of you!", if you take the first punch you will be the aggressor, and go to jail for assault. The person making the threat may also be guilty of a crime, but that doesn't mean you've got the right to attack him. Defending yourself after being attacked is of course different, and what the "stand your ground" law means is that you're not required to try to retreat before defending yourself. Seems reasonable enough to me...
The one thing that's questionable (if Zimmerman's story more or less holds up) is that deadly force isn't justified if you can overpower your assailant physically. However, given the way the fight allegedly went for Zimmerman, his handgun may have been his last resort before serious injury or death.
Then again, maybe Florida is different. Maybe in Florida they tell guys who have zero law enforcement training and no official standing what-so-ever to feel free to attempt to detain potentially dangerous people who are simply walking down the street, and suggest having the capacity for lethal force while doing so. Maybe they're that fucking stupid down there.
I haven't seen anyone anywhere claim that Zimmerman "attempted to detain" Martin. His story is that he lost sight of him, was headed back to his vehicle, and was approached by Martin.
If Zimmerman's account is accurate (which sadly we may never know for sure), Martin was absolutely at fault for instigating contact, and then feloniously assaulting Zimmerman. The fact that Zimmerman was carrying a concealed weapon is completely irrelevant to those two actions. However, you might want to reflect on the idea that we almost certainly would never have heard of this altercation if it had ended with Zimmerman dead on the sidewalk with a shattered skull.
From my perspective the very sad initial event is now being ruthlessly exploited to turn up racial tension, and to try to spur support for anti-gun efforts. Oh, and to get the "base" charged up for 0's re-election attempt - his "my son would have looked like..." remarks were shameless, beneath the office of the Presidency, and uttered well before even the basic facts of the case were clear.
What is the Android equivalent of DirectX? Or do you not remember PC gaming before DirectX, with its horrid mess of graphics cards, proprietary APIs like Glide and memory extender juggling?
The "Android equivalent of DirectX" is OpenGL ES, along with the various other APIs for sound, input and so forth.
That is where Android development is at now.
Nope...
Android developers are caught in the twisty little maze of missing devices, different/buggy drivers, different amounts of memory, and different hardware capabilities. iOS pretty well deals with all of those issues, and also uses OpenGL ES.
That is correct. As a result of those "serious" dev's requests, the rest have to spend a month just to understand how to write a simple rotating triangle program. These serious devs are all nuts mathematicians, with no exceptions. And they have hijacked the process. openGL should have been flexible, not crazy like now.
Here's a quarter, kid. Buy yourself an abstraction layer...
You are right if you are talking about Java SE. There is a real-time Java specification if you really need it.
Is RT Java even available on Android? I doubt it.
Plus, even with Java SE you are not limited by the Sun/Oracle/OpenJDK implementation. What matters is programming to the interface, not the particular implementation. For example, you could use the gcj implementation which essentially has C runtime performance.
Wow is this a straw man argument! Gcj suffers from the same problems as most SE implementations, garbage collection pauses. It also generally loses head-to-head shootouts versus the Sun/Oracle implementation.
Is C too slow for you?
Another straw man. Gcj and C have very different performance characteristics due to Java language design.
You can have multi-platform implementation (Java) as well as deterministic performance.
Perhaps, but on Android? Citation please..
With Apple technologies you get what they give you and if they decide to withdraw it (which they do from time to time, still using Hypercard? Carbon? even Cocoa will die).
Cocoa may in fact die - when MacOS X is perhaps replaced by some next-gen OS decades from now. All OS have some level of API churn, but Apple has generally handled it well by giving its developers transition technologies that stick around for years. We'll see how Android does in that regard, just judging by how the fragmentation issue is being handled it won't be pretty.
By tying[sic] yourself to some niche you are guaranteeing that your future growth will be constrained - as any significant product cannot be re-written on a whim. While mobile is hot now its growth will slow and picking to develop for iOS-only you choose short-term profit (which can be a legitimate goal) at the expense of a business model that can be maintained in the long term (we've seen the same crap in the past with those that chose Mac-only products in the past).
I'd have to say that focusing on iOS is just as much of a long-term strategy as any other. Don't forget that writing as much of your app as practical in portable C++ will allow you to target both iOS and Android more easily, btw.
Also, many of those who've focused on "Mac-only" products are crying all the way to the bank just now...
Incidentally, the latency of Java can be negligible compared to the latency the operating system introduces - so you will always suffer poor real-time performance on any desktop OS. If you are serious about real-time you use Solaris, one of the dedicated real-time OSes (VxWorks etc), or use hardware. Your argument doesn't really hold water under close scrutiny.
Wow, another major straw man. Yeah, you're right, games don't work well on Windows, MacOS X, iOS or Android. We've all just been confused all this time.
With today's electronics, devices are fast enough in general to nicely make up for the lack of hard realtime.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent suggestion.
The entire "secure" approach to computing seems to be as much about extracting every possible dollar as it is anything else.
The existence of Windows 8 should NOT end the manufacture of sane, open computer systems. Period.
Yes, not only are we going to need increasing energy supplies going forward, both for expanding first world needs and increasing third world needs, but we need nuclear power for practical planetary space travel. Nuclear can be done very safely, and is already demonstrably the safest large-scale power source save perhaps solar.
As to Germany, it is about to start importing power from France, mainly generated by nuclear plants. It's a good deal for France I'm sure. ;-)
There is a very simple time-saving metric which allows you do discover whether someone knows what they are talking about, or are living in fantasy-land making stuff up.
If discussing CAGW (Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming) there is a superior metric for this.
Simply ask the climate alarmist you're talking to if he or she supports vastly increased nuclear power generation, along with a reduction in fossil fuel power generation. If not, it's "fantasy-land" time.
Either the problem is severe enough to warrant the only workable solution, or it's not a real concern. Simple enough.
You want Intel to make an ARM chip that is competitive with x86. Intel will never, ever do that if they can possibly avoid it.
Intel dominates in x86, and they make good profits on x86 chips. As noted in TFA, Intel would be just another ARM source out of many, and they would make less on an ARM than on x86. nVidia, on the other hand, is no longer friendly with Intel and has no reason not to build a super ARM as you would like; and in fact they seem to be working on it. Google search for "Project Denver".
The first Project Denver silicon is rumored to be 8 ARM cores, 64-bit, with a 256 CUDA core GPU on the same die. I would love a smartbook with that chip, but I think they will be able to sell that as a blade server platform as well.
steveha
I'm glad you brought up Project Denver. It sounds exciting, but NVIDIA is sure being quiet about it. Have you seen any updates recently?
The results of Project Denver just might be enough for Apple to look at ARM for MacOS systems as well as iOS. Rumor has it that NVIDIA GPUs are back in favor at Apple these days.
At least according the Wikipedia China is estimated to have between 180 and 240 nuclear warheads. China don't do the MAD thing, their doctrine is set up to work by the Minimal Deterrence thing.
The interesting thing about the Chinese nuclear program is that nobody outside of China knows much about it. If there is a large government on Earth that can run a secret program effectively, it's the Chinese - for a number of reasons.
How many nukes do the Chinese really have? Nobody actually knows besides some high-ranking Chinese.
To quote the Wikipedia article you referenced:
The 300km range is also dependent on the weather,
Not really, since the 747 flies above almost all weather. As long as it avoids thunderheads it should be effective. Granted, it would be better to put it on a specialty airframe (possibly a re-engineered 747 with much more wing surface and different engines) that could cruise at 70,000 feet or so - the thinner the atmosphere, the greater the effective range.
and even if the US did develop a working weapon all it would do is spur North Korea to build more and more missiles until a few were sure to get through. That's how MAD works, you keep building more and more missiles until the enemy can't hope to stop them all.
Sure, that's how MAD works - and it's how we successfully defeated the Soviet Union without firing a shot. They couldn't afford more defense buildup.
North Korea is a poster child for such an approach. Even with its current level of military spending, it can't afford basic necessities for it's people.
That's probably the best answer he could have given under the circumstances, though I can understand why he was loathe to give it.
Absolutely not!
At a minimum, he should have requested a clarification first: "Do you mean free as in beer, or free as in freedom?" :-)
It's pretty difficult to make a stealth platform out of something that is constantly transmitting regardless of how secure and reliable that connection is. If your solution is to make the drone-based system autonomous (no communications required), then you might as well skip the whole drone bomber platform altogether and just use ballistic missiles.
Wrong, for a couple of reasons. First off, reusable autonomous bombers would be much less expensive than missiles per ton of delivered ordinance. Second, you can communicate with autonomous aircraft without compromising their stealth. Even if they send data back, it can be quite stealthy (directional satcom), but this would likely not be needed continuously, or even often. Damage assessment could be done with video stored on the vehicle until landing, for instance.
Personally I would be cautious about allowing remote retargeting, since if your encryption scheme was compromised your own weapons could be turned against you. You could still enable a 'recall' command. If you did allow retargeting, that would seem to be the perfect spot for one time pad encryption.
The US Navy is already developing an autonomous bomber, based on the X-47 program.
The B-1 Lancer has nearly double the bomb load of the B-52, higher speed and better stealth. Also the B-1 has excellent loiter times so it can sit near a target area and when a high priority target is identified, accelerate in at high speed and take out the target with a heavy bomb load in minutes. Unfortunately all this increased capability has a tradeoff of increased complexity, and from what I hear poor and low cost construction, so costs and maintenance time are greatly increased.
The B-1 is a very underrated platform. I love the B1-R concept, which would upgrade the B-1 with F-22 engines, improved radar and a new rotary launcher for around 20 AMRAAM missiles. That would let it supercruise (possibly along with F-22 escorts) at around Mach 1.5 as it was originally designed to do, and it would have an insane air-to-air capability if needed as well.
The B-1 is already fairly stealthy, if new airframes were built for the B1-R program fairly minor enhancements could get it within shouting distance of the B-2. That kind of capability would be invaluable when (not if) we have to deal with a first-tier adversary.
Wikipedia quotes the unit cost at under $750m introductory in 1997, and with current inflation just over $1b. Where did the $3b number come from?
The "problem" with the B-2 is that only 20 were built. That's an insanely low number given the engineering investment to produce them at all. When you have bombers named after states, you have far too few bombers. Just normal attrition is a big problem, we've lost at least one (5% of the total number) due to mechanical problems. Sadly, at this point I don't think there's any economical way to build more B-2s. The likely replacement will be an unmanned aircraft, which would lower costs quite a bit and provide better performance.
If more had been built, they would have approached your $750 million figure - which is really not such a bad deal considering a mundane 747 costs around $200 million.
Finally, "without evidence to the contrary, the police were legally prohibited from doing anything but taking the shooter at his word". Fair enough. But what do you consider evidence to the contrary? Assume for a second that the shooter's word is unreliable (motive in case shooting was unwarranted). What would constitute evidence that the shooter was not acting in self-defense? Wounds to the shooter's head? Could as well have been self-defense on the part of the dead guy. The point is that we really don't know what the police deemed lack of evidence, because the only thing that was in the police report was some bruises on the shooter. For me, identifying lack of evidence requires that there is at least evidence for searching - not just taking a look at a scene and going "yep, self-defense."
The scene of the shooting was forensically examined, and GZ was questioned for several hours. There was also at least one eye-witness who corroborated GZ's story. So the decision of the police to not hold him was a lot less cavalier than you're making it out to be.
I'm also not sure if you're aware that at least one DA wanted to go forward with a prosecution, but it was also decided at that level that there wasn't enough evidence to convict.
Stand your ground laws are doubly dangerous: they allow for confrontations to escalate quickly, and for the shooter to go away free as long as there are no witnesses to the shooting.
"Stand your ground" is completely irrelevant to the situation. With no witnesses, the shooter could just as well claim to have retreated first before firing. "Stand your ground" does nothing but eliminate the requirement to attempt retreat before acting in self defense. Further, if the shooter was on the ground being beaten, he would likely claim an attempt was made to get away before shooting but it was impossible.
The Wasp UAV that you linked has another problem besides probably being DoD sales only. According to Wikipedia:
Ouch.
You don't even known the legal meaning of the word "assault". Assault is threatening violence. So someone coming up to you saying "I'm going to beat the tar out of you!" is assaulting you, by definition.
Point for you, I should have known better than to think that legalese would track the normal use of a term. Military assault always involves more than words.
I pose you a few scenarios.
1) A threatens B, B responds with force, confrontation ensues 2) A threatens B, B responds with force, A backs off 3) A threatens B, B responds with force, A backs off, B continues
Typically, they'd all go to trial (or not even that far, depending), and all but the third would result in nothing for B.
I'm sure you're in the wrong in saying that physically attacking someone who merely said something to you will result in no penalty. As we've established, I'm not a lawyer, perhaps one will clarify.
Let's say somebody shoots at you, but misses, and you shoot him back and kill him. Technically, since he never hit you, it's only aggravated assault. Under your rules, he'd have to hit you in order for you to respond in kind, but nobody in their right mind is going to convict somebody for killing a guy that just shot at him. It's not really that different if a guy comes up to you and is about to restrain you (he doesn't even need to be about to fight you).
Nope, even if someone misses (with fist or bullet) there is still a physical attempt to do harm, rather than harmless words. Self defense is justified in such situations, as the person might not miss on the next attempt.
My big problem here is this: there was absolutely no interest oh the part of the authorities in investigating this even after it became a big deal.
The ONLY witness was Zimmerman,
Not true, so you're not off to a good start...
and it is undeniable that he has a huge motive to lie about what happened in order to save his skin. The evidence that exists, such as it is, is not clear cut at all - and certainly isn't enough to exonerate Zimmerman on the face of it.
As you know full well, since you've seen all of it, including his initial injuries up close? Sure...
Yet the police barely i looked into it before dropping it.
Not so, a DA wanted to bring a manslaughter charge but it was decided there wasn't enough evidence. You're batting 1000 so far though. ;-)
Since you felt like playing a hypothetical by bringing up what you believe would have happened had things ended with Zimmerman dead, I will ask you a hypothetical: do you think had Trayvon killed Zimmerman the police would have walked away without investigating much and been so quick to say it was self-defense?
In the exact same circumstances, I would guess so.
Before you answer, please look at the legal disposition of crimes in this country and pay specific attention to just how much more frequently people of color are convicted vs. whites accused of similar crimes and how much longer sentences are after conviction for offenders of color than white offenders.
Aren't you making a huge assumption that blacks (not "people of color", other colors such as "yellow" don't have the same problem) don't commit crimes at higher rates? Regardless of the reason, both statistics and "common knowledge" indicate they do.
This whole incident and the reaction after the fact by the police smells fishy as hell, and I cannot fault those who are suspicious.
I think all the facts need to come to light. On the other hand, many involved seem less interested in facts than promoting their own agenda. JJ and AS come to mind, not to mention 0.
On the issue of political hay being made from this: well, duh, it's an election year. Of course people are going to try to tie things to this story if it helps their narrative.
Of course! Naturally any politician would exploit a murder, completely ignoring the facts of the case, and in the case of the President seriously tainting the jury pool, just for personal gain.
Actually, unlike yourself, I think most politicians are better than that.
As for your statement that the President's comments were beneath the office, well, I daresay In the scope of things American presidents have done this century to demean the office it barely registers. I will take a thousand incidents of Obama fumbling an attempt to connect to his constituency over a single incident of George Bush making a mockery of a war he started, the memories of the soldiers hurt and killed, and the thousands of civilians left dead in a completely unnecessary war by releasing a video of him trying to find WMDs in the White House. You'll have to forgive me if I find it hard to even register something like Obama's comment.
Oh, of course! It's BUSH'S FAULT!
Actually, the line of crap you just spewed is rather divorced from the actual facts. Let's not forget that every other country in the coalition was sure that Iraq had WMDs, because UN inspectors had seen them, including thousands of liters of anthrax solution!
The war was justifiable at the time, and even if said WMDs were hidden or moved before the war (say, to Syria) they were still a potential major threat to the US and US interests. Also, the Iraq War will likely have a better long-term outcome than 0's "good war" in Afghanistan.
At any rate, we'll see who's paying attention to what come November! :-)
Anyone But 0bama '12!!!
The 48% match isn't a probability figure, it's based on measurable traits. According to TFA, if the screams were Zimmerman's, they would expect a 90% or better match.
OB car analogy, if you're looking for a black sedan w/ a sunroof and whitewalls, a black sedan with no sunroof and whitewall tires is a 75% match but 0% likely to be the same car.
Let's pull a few quotes from TFA, they may be helpful.
Primeau, who said he uses a combination of critical listening skills and spectrum analysis, called voice identification "an exact science" that can help a legal team in court. Yet standards set by the American Board of Recorded Evidence, which Owen once chaired, indicate "there must be at least 10 comparable worlds between two voice samples to reach a minimal decision criteria."
While Zimmerman says more than that many words on his 911 call, the only one heard -- in the distant background -- on the second is a cry for "help."
David Faigman, a professor of law at the University of California-Hastings and an expert on the admissibility of scientific evidence, said courts and the overall scientific community have mixed opinions about the reliability of such "voiceprint" analysis.
...and...
Still, he said, it wouldn't be too hard for Zimmerman's attorneys to find an audio expert to offer an opposing opinion. "These expert witnesses come out of the woodwork when money is concerned," he said.
As I'm sure these 'experts' did, when CNN offered them the big bucks. ;-)
At any rate, this analysis seems far from definitive, I'm sure there will be more to come.
RTFA, Zimmerman wasn't doing the screaming for help.
I'm sure what you meant to say that, contrary to an eyewitness account, some software assigns a 52% probability to it not being Zimmerman screaming for help.
Not very convincing, IMNSHO.
I agree. Whether or not he's guilty/innocent or should be tried is not necessarily connected with whether his actions were intelligent. The former is a matter of law. But even if he is tried and acquitted, or never even tried, I think I'm still justified in thinking this outcome was not inevitable, and that he is responsible for the outcome.
Given that you have the advantage of infallible 20/20 hindsight... It seems to have been swept under the carpet lately that Zimmerman's neighborhood had a recent rash of breakins, and he was concerned about losing a possible suspect. When it's a matter of seconds, the police are only minutes away...
Yep, too bad it's not possible to get a CCWP in DC. Then you might have been able to defend yourself.
I think you're missing my point. I was able to defend myself. I did not escalate the situation, and no one was injured.
I congratulate you on your good fortune, as well as the benefit of infallible 2/20 hindsight. ;-)
On the other hand, if either of us had a gun, including a legal one, one or both of us might have ended up injured or dead (or, bystanders might have been injured or dead).
On the gripping hand (sorry couldn't resist) if your assailant had a knife, pipe, baseball bat or one of any number of potential weapons and the inclination to use it, you could have ended up permanently injured or dead, in the absence of your own weapon. Concealed carry is intended to provide a last resort if there is no better way to ensure your safety.
I fail to understand how the end result of my situation, in which no one was injured, is worse than me being "able to defend myself" and someone ending up injured or dead.
It's not, however you should also recognize that wasn't the only possible outcome.
The main point of self-defense is to avoid injury or death...right?
Sure, and on that count, I ended up fine, and so did he. If I had aggravated the situation, I expect that one or both of us would have ended up in the hospital and/or jail. I don't see how that's better than what actually happened.
You're not considering what might have happened had he aggravated the situation.
Allegedly, for committing a felonious assault on the wrong person.
It was a rhetorical question.
It was not a rhetorical answer. ;-)
I think the DA would be doing Zimmerman a favor if they tried him now. It'd take the heat off, the evidence could get presented, he'd be exonerated in court and this shit would be over. As it is he's going to be stalked by the media the rest of his life.
Right. As we know, OJ Simpson leads an idyllic and untroubled existence...well at least he did before he moronically got himself convicted after all...
Hrm, hard to know exactly where to start with this beauty...
Someone is trying to start a race war in this country and I'd sure like to know why.
Because the whites declared equality was achieved, and the minorities know that to be a lie.
Really, care to cite a source?
I'm pretty sure I can name several areas where minorities receive preferential treatment, as opposed to no such programs for "white folk". If anything, at a government level, things are not equal - in favor of the minorities.
The whites are causing the race war by defending the racists like Zimmerman who killed the boy because he was Black. If Martin hadn't been black, he wouldn't have been followed and attacked by Zimmerman and would still be alive, so Black is what killed him, and the system seems to be defending Zimmerman for killing some Black person.
You're making huge assumptions in the face of zero evidence...seems you might be one of the reporters writing for AP. ;-)
Even if Zimmerman's actions were legally justified, it doesn't mean they were right or intelligent.
Which of course has nothing to do with whether or not he should be tried...
I was assaulted in downtown Washington, DC in the middle of the day. I could have escalated the situation and probably have been legally justified in doing so, but for all I know I might have gotten myself stabbed or run down by the car the asshole was driving.
Yep, too bad it's not possible to get a CCWP in DC. Then you might have been able to defend yourself.
And for what?
The main point of self-defense is to avoid injury or death...right?
And here, Martin is dead--for what?
Allegedly, for committing a felonious assault on the wrong person.
It doesn't matter if Trayvon beat the hell out of Zimmerman - frankly, he should've, he was being assaulted (the threat of violence). But instead Zimmerman shoots him.
It's clear you're not a lawyer, and in fact don't even know the law at all.
There is no circumstance in which it's legally justified to assault someone if you are not yourself in physical danger. In other words, if someone walks up to you and says "I don't like your looks, I think I'm going to beat the tar out of you!", if you take the first punch you will be the aggressor, and go to jail for assault. The person making the threat may also be guilty of a crime, but that doesn't mean you've got the right to attack him. Defending yourself after being attacked is of course different, and what the "stand your ground" law means is that you're not required to try to retreat before defending yourself. Seems reasonable enough to me...
The one thing that's questionable (if Zimmerman's story more or less holds up) is that deadly force isn't justified if you can overpower your assailant physically. However, given the way the fight allegedly went for Zimmerman, his handgun may have been his last resort before serious injury or death.
Then again, maybe Florida is different. Maybe in Florida they tell guys who have zero law enforcement training and no official standing what-so-ever to feel free to attempt to detain potentially dangerous people who are simply walking down the street, and suggest having the capacity for lethal force while doing so. Maybe they're that fucking stupid down there.
I haven't seen anyone anywhere claim that Zimmerman "attempted to detain" Martin. His story is that he lost sight of him, was headed back to his vehicle, and was approached by Martin.
If Zimmerman's account is accurate (which sadly we may never know for sure), Martin was absolutely at fault for instigating contact, and then feloniously assaulting Zimmerman. The fact that Zimmerman was carrying a concealed weapon is completely irrelevant to those two actions. However, you might want to reflect on the idea that we almost certainly would never have heard of this altercation if it had ended with Zimmerman dead on the sidewalk with a shattered skull.
From my perspective the very sad initial event is now being ruthlessly exploited to turn up racial tension, and to try to spur support for anti-gun efforts. Oh, and to get the "base" charged up for 0's re-election attempt - his "my son would have looked like..." remarks were shameless, beneath the office of the Presidency, and uttered well before even the basic facts of the case were clear.
What is the Android equivalent of DirectX? Or do you not remember PC gaming before DirectX, with its horrid mess of graphics cards, proprietary APIs like Glide and memory extender juggling?
The "Android equivalent of DirectX" is OpenGL ES, along with the various other APIs for sound, input and so forth.
That is where Android development is at now.
Nope...
Android developers are caught in the twisty little maze of missing devices, different/buggy drivers, different amounts of memory, and different hardware capabilities. iOS pretty well deals with all of those issues, and also uses OpenGL ES.
That is correct. As a result of those "serious" dev's requests, the rest have to spend a month just to understand how to write a simple rotating triangle program. These serious devs are all nuts mathematicians, with no exceptions. And they have hijacked the process. openGL should have been flexible, not crazy like now.
Here's a quarter, kid. Buy yourself an abstraction layer...
You are right if you are talking about Java SE. There is a real-time Java specification if you really need it.
Is RT Java even available on Android? I doubt it.
Plus, even with Java SE you are not limited by the Sun/Oracle/OpenJDK implementation. What matters is programming to the interface, not the particular implementation. For example, you could use the gcj implementation which essentially has C runtime performance.
Wow is this a straw man argument! Gcj suffers from the same problems as most SE implementations, garbage collection pauses. It also generally loses head-to-head shootouts versus the Sun/Oracle implementation.
Is C too slow for you?
Another straw man. Gcj and C have very different performance characteristics due to Java language design.
You can have multi-platform implementation (Java) as well as deterministic performance.
Perhaps, but on Android? Citation please..
With Apple technologies you get what they give you and if they decide to withdraw it (which they do from time to time, still using Hypercard? Carbon? even Cocoa will die).
Cocoa may in fact die - when MacOS X is perhaps replaced by some next-gen OS decades from now. All OS have some level of API churn, but Apple has generally handled it well by giving its developers transition technologies that stick around for years. We'll see how Android does in that regard, just judging by how the fragmentation issue is being handled it won't be pretty.
By tying[sic] yourself to some niche you are guaranteeing that your future growth will be constrained - as any significant product cannot be re-written on a whim. While mobile is hot now its growth will slow and picking to develop for iOS-only you choose short-term profit (which can be a legitimate goal) at the expense of a business model that can be maintained in the long term (we've seen the same crap in the past with those that chose Mac-only products in the past).
I'd have to say that focusing on iOS is just as much of a long-term strategy as any other. Don't forget that writing as much of your app as practical in portable C++ will allow you to target both iOS and Android more easily, btw.
Also, many of those who've focused on "Mac-only" products are crying all the way to the bank just now...
Incidentally, the latency of Java can be negligible compared to the latency the operating system introduces - so you will always suffer poor real-time performance on any desktop OS. If you are serious about real-time you use Solaris, one of the dedicated real-time OSes (VxWorks etc), or use hardware. Your argument doesn't really hold water under close scrutiny.
Wow, another major straw man. Yeah, you're right, games don't work well on Windows, MacOS X, iOS or Android. We've all just been confused all this time.
With today's electronics, devices are fast enough in general to nicely make up for the lack of hard realtime.