Same with nuclear weapons. Einstein basically told U.S. representatives, "yes, splitting atoms will work, but don't do it. It has disasterous consequences."
Uh, IIRC Einstein urged the US government to start working on the Bomb, the sooner the better, so that the Nazis wouldn't get there first.
South Park fans, of course, would be more interested to know: "What would Brian Boitano do to be on Slashdot?". He'd kick himself an ass or two, that's what Brian Boitano'd do...
Shouldn't they be tools that will also be usable under Linux? (Pardon me. *GNUUUUUUUU*/Linux.) Like AbiWord and Mozilla are? What's the sense of getting someone hooked on CDex, only to have to turn around and tell them they can't use it once they make the switch?
In this case, it is not newsworthy that banning certain Internet sites will drive Internet-based companies out of business. The macroscopic effect on the entire society is the only thing that concerns the economist
Really? Last I heard, macroeconomics was merely one branch of economics. I would imagine that the effects on individual business would be of interest to microeconomists, not to mention the business owners, the employees, their dependent children (we must not forget the children!!), etc.
Actually, it is correct. In 1998, the influential New Oxford Dictionary of English admitted that "in standard English the principle of allowing split infinitives is broadly accepted as both normal and useful."
Yet another example of the English language devolving into a pidgin lingua franca. "Normal"? Probably, at least in the US. "Useful"? Why? In what way is splitting an infinitive more "useful" than putting the words in the correct order?
More to the point, they don't want you to have a VCR. They want you to have a VCP. Remember them?
I rented one once, from U-Haul of all places. Came in a huge ugly plastic case that you couldn't take off.
Anyhow -- Would DMCA-ified digital TV prevent analog recording with a VCR, or just digital copying? The latter would clearly be a lot easier to implement.
Absolutism is a slippery slope. What do you do if there is a riot in the town, and you know that if you falsely prosecute and imprison this one man (although you know him to be innocent) many lives will be saved and the riot will end? What if you know that the riot will only end if the innocent man is lynched, thus saving ten other innocents?
This is ridiculous. For most people, life does not consist of an endless string of ludicrous emergencies of this sort. Therefore it doesn't make sense to use situations that might occur 0.001% of the time to justify a manner of behavior for the other 99.999% of the time.
Would YOU sit in an untested prototype plane and throw the throttle to the stops without having any idea what was going to happen? Any problem you might encounted at 0 feet AGL is a lot more serious at 1000 feet AGL.
Of course. But still, does that make this newsworthy? When they've at least been in the air for a few minutes, then it'll be interesting.
So are you suggesting that we're going to start seeing general-aviation craft with Mr. Fusions mounted inside? 'Cause otherwise, the equation above is a non sequitur for this discussion.
And as an anonymous coward already pointed out: If you claim hydrogen is merely a storage medium for energy, then you must also claim natural gas, coal, and oil are merely storage mediums.
One small difference: The energy is already present in the fossil fuels; it merely needs to be liberated (which also happens to be very easy to do). We have to put the energy into the hydrogen before we can use it (unless you happen to know of a plentiful source of naturally existing gaseous hydrogen). That energy still has to come from somewhere.
Seems to be the point of the poster was that Japan had a long history of agressive & atrocious behavior which stopped soon after some very firm and significant pressure was applied in the form of several megatons of explosives.
15 kilotons total, actually. Fat Man was 5KT, and Little Boy was 10KT, IIRC. (Makes you wonder what a one-megaton device would do to a civilian population, eh? Any remember that link to Scientific American where you could get a map of the damage to a specified location from a nuclear blast?)
What if we found that by increased security since 9/11 they prevented just *one* death per year. Just one. Is your convienence worth that measly one death? Would you be willing to be that one person? How about your mother? Have a wife? Kids? Well, I do, and I'm here to say that the minor inconvienence we're talking here is NOT worth human lives.
Yeah, you're right. Let's strip- and cavity-search and x-ray every single person that crosses the border. After all, that might save one more life, so it's worth it, right? Better yet, let's close the border altogether and require visas applied for a year in advance to travel to Canada. Maybe psychiatric evaluations would be in order as well? And a signed statement swearing eternal fealty to Father Amerika?
Not reasonable, you say? But why is your definition of "reasonable" any more valid than mine?
Shouldn't that be "Maxtor has once again shown the world that we need more porn in order to fill the available space"?
Oh, come on. There are probably 320GB of bestiality videos (or insert-another-bizarre-kind-of-porn) alone out there, never mind just "regular" porn. We could never possibly need more porn. (And yet, it always seems like there's never enough...)
8. calcualte pi to the 320,000,000,000 th digit, and store it on your HD. At one byte per digit in uncompressed format that's how many characters a 320 GB HD can hold (because of the HD industry standard of using units of 1,000 instead of 1024)
Why use a whole byte per digit? Even if you're stuck on decimal, you could represent the result as BCD and get 640 million digits. To pack 'em in even tighter, use 10-bit chunks to represent 3-digit groups, to get 768 million digits.
"Has frozen methane ever been released before? 55 million years ago, 20% of the world's frozen methane reserves melted. This sparked cataclysmic changes in the atmosphere: global temperatures rose by 13 degrees Fahrenheit, melting the ice cps and forcing many species to extinction. 80% of all deep-sea creatures became extinct, and there were severe consequences for land animals. If vast amounts of methane were released, the highly explosive gas would be ignited by lightning, scorching huge area in a fiery hell-on-earth."
Now, do you want them to touch it?:))
Hell, yes! I want "them" to get all of it off the ocean floor to prevent something like that from happening again! (And providing us with a nice fat cushion of clean-burning fossil fuel [relative to oil, anyway] in the process.)
WTF is it that we'll bitch about the **AA putting down the little guy, but we're pooh-poohing someone who's trying to stand up to Big Oil and the Automakers?
Slashdot Mirror
Same with nuclear weapons. Einstein basically told U.S. representatives, "yes, splitting atoms will work, but don't do it. It has disasterous consequences."
Uh, IIRC Einstein urged the US government to start working on the Bomb, the sooner the better, so that the Nazis wouldn't get there first.
Hey, most operating systems don't bring you lasagna at work. Most of 'em just cheat on you.
South Park fans, of course, would be more interested to know: "What would Brian Boitano do to be on Slashdot?". He'd kick himself an ass or two, that's what Brian Boitano'd do...
Shouldn't they be tools that will also be usable under Linux? (Pardon me. *GNUUUUUUUU*/Linux.) Like AbiWord and Mozilla are? What's the sense of getting someone hooked on CDex, only to have to turn around and tell them they can't use it once they make the switch?
In this case, it is not newsworthy that banning certain Internet sites will drive Internet-based companies out of business. The macroscopic effect on the entire society is the only thing that concerns the economist
Really? Last I heard, macroeconomics was merely one branch of economics. I would imagine that the effects on individual business would be of interest to microeconomists, not to mention the business owners, the employees, their dependent children (we must not forget the children!! ), etc.
The ability to arrive at a sound moral decision plays on a delicate balance of faith and reason.
A bald assertion, which I'm sure you can justify (presumably with a delicate balance of faith and reason)...?
Actually, it is correct. In 1998, the influential New Oxford Dictionary of English admitted that "in standard English the principle of allowing split infinitives is broadly accepted as both normal and useful."
Yet another example of the English language devolving into a pidgin lingua franca. "Normal"? Probably, at least in the US. "Useful"? Why? In what way is splitting an infinitive more "useful" than putting the words in the correct order?
While perhaps syntactically correct, "to not know correct English" is clumsy...
It's not syntactically correct. "To not know" is a split infinitive. (Remember those?)
More to the point, they don't want you to have a VCR. They want you to have a VCP. Remember them?
I rented one once, from U-Haul of all places. Came in a huge ugly plastic case that you couldn't take off.
Anyhow -- Would DMCA-ified digital TV prevent analog recording with a VCR, or just digital copying? The latter would clearly be a lot easier to implement.
Absolutism is a slippery slope. What do you do if there is a riot in the town, and you know that if you falsely prosecute and imprison this one man (although you know him to be innocent) many lives will be saved and the riot will end? What if you know that the riot will only end if the innocent man is lynched, thus saving ten other innocents?
This is ridiculous. For most people, life does not consist of an endless string of ludicrous emergencies of this sort. Therefore it doesn't make sense to use situations that might occur 0.001% of the time to justify a manner of behavior for the other 99.999% of the time.
Well, that and its all tax deductable - so it doesn't actually cost him a penny (in fact it saves him money)
Too bad this can't be modded -1: Please Smack With Clue-By-Four.
A foundation that will give money to people who end up buying his products for a long time. Thats not a gift, its a loss leader.
So it's a win-win situation, what the hell is wrong with that?
The parent posts mentioned he's only given about 400 mil to charities where there is no long term financial advanage
Sheesh. "Only". Where do you get off, anyway? When you give away $400M, then you can complain, 'kay?
and even some of that could be questioned (like giving money for vaccines made by compaines he owns)
Oh, gee, again with that whole "win-win" thing. How horrible.
Typical American assh*le syndrome. Where's a moderator when you need one?
Typical European my-turds-don't-stink syndrome. Where's a moderator when you need one?
No, no! The cast has to be British, otherwise the voices will clash with the way they sound in my head!
When my '72 Bonneville hits one of these things at 15 MPH. "Sorry, the fuel cell is cracked, gonna need to total it"
By the time this thing gets to market, you'll have sold your (then fifty-year-old) '72 Bonneville at auction for phat money.
Would YOU sit in an untested prototype plane and throw the throttle to the stops without having any idea what was going to happen? Any problem you might encounted at 0 feet AGL is a lot more serious at 1000 feet AGL.
Of course. But still, does that make this newsworthy? When they've at least been in the air for a few minutes, then it'll be interesting.
Counter-example:
4H -> He + neutrinos + energy
So are you suggesting that we're going to start seeing general-aviation craft with Mr. Fusions mounted inside? 'Cause otherwise, the equation above is a non sequitur for this discussion.
And as an anonymous coward already pointed out: If you claim hydrogen is merely a storage medium for energy, then you must also claim natural gas, coal, and oil are merely storage mediums.
One small difference: The energy is already present in the fossil fuels; it merely needs to be liberated (which also happens to be very easy to do). We have to put the energy into the hydrogen before we can use it (unless you happen to know of a plentiful source of naturally existing gaseous hydrogen). That energy still has to come from somewhere.
Seems to be the point of the poster was that Japan had a long history of agressive & atrocious behavior which stopped soon after some very firm and significant pressure was applied in the form of several megatons of explosives.
15 kilotons total, actually. Fat Man was 5KT, and Little Boy was 10KT, IIRC. (Makes you wonder what a one-megaton device would do to a civilian population, eh? Any remember that link to Scientific American where you could get a map of the damage to a specified location from a nuclear blast?)
What if we found that by increased security since 9/11 they prevented just *one* death per year. Just one. Is your convienence worth that measly one death? Would you be willing to be that one person? How about your mother? Have a wife? Kids? Well, I do, and I'm here to say that the minor inconvienence we're talking here is NOT worth human lives.
Yeah, you're right. Let's strip- and cavity-search and x-ray every single person that crosses the border. After all, that might save one more life, so it's worth it, right? Better yet, let's close the border altogether and require visas applied for a year in advance to travel to Canada. Maybe psychiatric evaluations would be in order as well? And a signed statement swearing eternal fealty to Father Amerika?
Not reasonable, you say? But why is your definition of "reasonable" any more valid than mine?
Now, which is more difficult to bare? The inconvenience of the search, or another 9/11 style attack?
I take it you've been lulled into believing that the searches will prevent such an attack.
Shouldn't that be "Maxtor has once again shown the world that we need more porn in order to fill the available space"?
Oh, come on. There are probably 320GB of bestiality videos (or insert-another-bizarre-kind-of-porn) alone out there, never mind just "regular" porn. We could never possibly need more porn. (And yet, it always seems like there's never enough...)
8. calcualte pi to the 320,000,000,000 th digit, and store it on your HD. At one byte per digit in uncompressed format that's how many characters a 320 GB HD can hold (because of the HD industry standard of using units of 1,000 instead of 1024)
Why use a whole byte per digit? Even if you're stuck on decimal, you could represent the result as BCD and get 640 million digits. To pack 'em in even tighter, use 10-bit chunks to represent 3-digit groups, to get 768 million digits.
"Has frozen methane ever been released before? 55 million years ago, 20% of the world's frozen methane reserves melted. This sparked cataclysmic changes in the atmosphere: global temperatures rose by 13 degrees Fahrenheit, melting the ice cps and forcing many species to extinction. 80% of all deep-sea creatures became extinct, and there were severe consequences for land animals. If vast amounts of methane were released, the highly explosive gas would be ignited by lightning, scorching huge area in a fiery hell-on-earth."
:))
Now, do you want them to touch it?
Hell, yes! I want "them" to get all of it off the ocean floor to prevent something like that from happening again! (And providing us with a nice fat cushion of clean-burning fossil fuel [relative to oil, anyway] in the process.)
WTF is it that we'll bitch about the **AA putting down the little guy, but we're pooh-poohing someone who's trying to stand up to Big Oil and the Automakers?
'Cuz it's a hoax , fer Chrissakes.
In my opinion everything online is a shadow of the same thing in real life - even emotions.
I suppose. But isn't that still better than nothing? Better to have known someone online than to have never met at all?