And I explained to him that the same logical thought processes that go into higher math (and by that I mean maybe college-level calculus 101) are required to do solid, efficient coding of any kind. He was absolutely horrible at math, and his attempts at coding were predictably terrible.
To be fair, I only discovered Cyanogenmod about two months ago when my boss handed me a case of HP TouchPads and asked me if we could do anything with them. I'm a Windows Server monkey, but searching for "Android on TouchPad" led me straight to it.
I've been running 10.1 experimental on my HP TouchPad for a while and it's been fairly stable. Can't wait for the RC! My company has resurrected about two dozen TouchPads thanks to Cyanogenmod. Ghu love the folks who put their time and effort into this project!
Oh, I'll grant you that, certainly- an OS that requires a greater knowledge than that possessed by your average computer-savvy individual in order to properly configure is not *good* by any definition. Myself, having had to deploy it in a business setting (Bitlocker for laptops was the major reason), I was able to provide a satisfying experience to the users, but that's because I'd been playing with it for a year before it was made available to the general public. I may be a Vista fan, but I'm not a Vista fool;).
They are also skillfully playing the psychology of all the Windows fanboys who know deep down in their heart that they don't really like Vista, and Windows 7 is really just a slightly updated Vista, but are desperate to not be embarrassed about Windows anymore, so you KNOW they are gonna say its the greatest thing ever even if it really isn't.
Not to get my hackles up (or yours for that matter), but any Windows 'Fanboy' knew how to straighten out a Vista installation a long, long time ago and has no incentive to praise 7 just to get over Vista embarassment. That said, if you are running Vista and are happy with it Windows 7 only offers a single advantage in expanded 64 bit support. Beyond that there is no real reason to make the switch. The real target are the XP holdouts (mentioned here ad nauseum so we won't bother going there now other than to say with 64 bit becoming more and more a reality in the desktop space XP has a very limited lifespan remaining.
Re:The most important thing developers must note:
on
The Future of MMORPGs
·
· Score: 1
As an Asheron's Call player for 2 years running, I've seen that team come close, tantalizingly close. There were game plots where groups of players were pitted against each other, one set trying to prevent the onset of doom while others actively sought to unleash it. The mechanics of it were very, very interesting, particualrly on the PK-only server, Darktide.
It is possible to be other than a camp/kill/level player in AC (and in other games, I'd wager), but it requires dedication and patience. The temptation to go out and do some adventuring just to pick up quick points in order to move you towards your "real" goal is alwasy there.
In the end, I think the games are moving in the direction you would like, but it is going to be incremental for some time to come. What is really required is a technological breakthrough that povides an order of magnitude increase in base computing power across the board (at the server, PC and Console levels) as well as a wide, reliable, CHEAP data pipe to the consumer. Until those choke points are overcome the limitations placed on game design will stand squarely in the path of designing a truly dynamic, engaging total game experience.
Now, if I could just plug the game interface in to a socket in the back of my skull...
New.net was the bane of my existence for a while there. At my company several folks decided to install Kazzaa, which carries the new.net virus/component. Never mind the fact that they were not supposed to be doing this, the point is that when IT investigated the high bandwidth consumption and removed Kazzaa, new.net remained. Removing new.net was a screaming nightmare and their tech support people were at best arrogant in response to our questions as to why when the uninstall was complete, did we have to completely reinstall tcp/ip? We were repeatedly told that we had incorrectly removed the plug-in. We uninstalled it from two machines, then said "screw it" and erased and reinstalled the other five.
I cruise the Tek-Tips forum quite a bit and new.net has come up repeatedly as a source of major problems. When the author mentioned this pernicious, unstable pile of drek I just nodded in sympathy because I knew he'd been through hell...
In the very early Eighties my older sister went to Smith College in Northampton, MA. Back then as now Smith was a hot bed of leftist True Think with a frightening mixture of rabid feminism and incipient Political Correctness. For four years she slaved away after her degree in Mathematics, finally returning home with her diploma.
As you might imagine, she also came home with a slightly more left-of-center worldview than she had departed with. My father, a curmudgeonly fiscal Conservative, alternated between amusement and despair whenever politics were discussed at dinner. He finally fell back in to the old standby of "when you can't show 'em, shock 'em." One exchange I remember quite clearly came when my sister and her live-in boyfriend of the time stopped by for dinner. My parents are not prudes so this was not an unusual thing, and they actually liked Geoffrey a lot, despite his socialist take on the human condition.
That evening we were digging in to Chicken Parmigiana while Geoffrey waxed philosophical on the failure of government to effectively deal with poverty. Dad, never one to pass up a good straight line, began taking him to task over the multiple billions of dollars already spent to aid the poor. What did Geoffrey want to do, throw more good money after bad? Then Geoffrey made the mistake: he asked my father what he thought the government should do.
My father looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Just make me Emperor for two years. Give me complete control of society and in two years there won't be any more poor people."
Looking for the entire world like a deer in the headlights of an on-rushing Mack truck Geoffrey asked him how that would happen.
"Simple: After two years the malingerers will have jobs and all the others will have starved."
My dad is a nice guy. He paid to have Geoffrey's shirt cleaned after he spit a mouthful of chicken and marinara sauce all over himself. Eventually my sister was forced back to reality by the Great Equalizer: she got a job, saw all that cash being sucked out of what should have been an impressive paycheck for all that hard work and began to wonder just what she was getting for her money. Welcome back, sis.
The reason that particular episode sticks out in my head is that it was the first time I was clued in to a Basic Truth: where governments are concerned tinkering around the edges rarely fixes problems. Even Thomas Jefferson noted that a healthy government probably needs a good revolution every now and then just to keep it fresh and vital. With everything that is and has been going on in Washington I think this idea deserves a new examination, so here I am to toss out a proposal.
First, Presidential Elections piss me off to no end. Screw this Campaign Finance Reform stuff; let's just do away with the election all together. Let the Senate elect the President and then he can appoint a Vice President with the approval of the House of Representatives. Let them serve six or seven years and then they are replaced. We should also ease the rules for removing anyone who turns out to be a bum. This change accomplishes a couple of things: it removes the Presidential Election as a source of corruption, and it restores the proper perspective to the relationship between Congress and the Executive. The Imperial Presidency that most of us have grown up with is a hold over from the end of World War II where the President retained an inordinate amount of power due to the semi-state of war that existed between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This was never the intent of the Founding Fathers who wanted most of the political power to be in the hands of Congress.
As for the Senate, I think it actually works pretty well as is in that it was designed to be the stabilizing force in the Legislative branch. The House of Representatives is where the real change needs to come. People seem to think that because Representatives only serve two-year terms they have no real power, but nothing could be further from the truth. Collectively the House outweighs the Senate and the Presidency and as such it needs to be more accountable to the people. I would make it so by simply returning it to the people. Do away with elected Representatives and institute a draft.
One fine day, there is a knock on your door. There stand two Federal Marshals. One of them hands you a letter. "Congratulations!" the letter would read, "You have been chosen by the Selective Service Administration to serve your Congressional District as its Representative to the House for a period not to exceed three years." They give you five minutes to pack a small overnight bag, kiss the spouse and kids goodbye, and then they bundle you off to do your duty.
We could run a draft every year, replacing a third of the House each time so that there would always be a group of Representatives present who were familiar with the way things worked. As far as restrictions go, I would limit eligibility to any citizen over age 21 who has not been convicted of a crime in the past five years and I would also suggest that no one be allowed to serve consecutive terms. You might be drafted again (unlikely, given the numbers) but never twice in a row. A final restriction that is almost always suggested by anyone with whom I have ever discussed this: no lawyers in the House.
Beyond the very simple restrictions I would add dispensations for extreme medical situations and the like, but I would still make it very difficult to weasel out of serving. We also would need to take a close look at compensation, job retention and the fulfillment of contracts and other obligations that might have been entered in to before the prospective Representative was drafted. While this might seem a daunting task we must remember that we would only need to deal with about 150 people a year. Somehow I have to think that the government has the resources to deal with this.
Why do I like this idea? As I understand it (and I freely admit that I am not a Constitutional scholar) the House of Representatives was supposed to be the voice of the Citizen in our government. It was intended that Representatives be ordinary citizens who served a term or two then returned to their normal lives. As anyone can plainly see this is no longer the case and has not been for some time. A drafted House rectifies this situation in a simple, brute-force fashion. Spare me the smarmy, glad-handing politician seeking my vote- I want my Representative dragged kicking and screaming in to office. They would be housed in comfortable condos in Washington and when in session the Representatives would wear identical lime-green jump suits with their name stenciled on the front and their Congressional District number on the back.
Assuming we could force this idea through the existing political process, what would the over-all effect be? First, the President would at least have the support of the Senate, and he would be very much aware that he served at the Senate's pleasure. The President would be merely Commander-In-Chief and leader of the Executive, as the Constitution intended. The House would be about as non-partisan as one could imagine since the selection process would be free of any consideration of party affiliation. The People (that's you and me) would be spared most of the Election Year displays of Lying and Corruption as the only officials actually elected would be the Senators. The country could save a lot of money and angst.
Another very positive effect would be that a lot less would get done in Washington DC. With the House in the hands of citizens unbeholden to any outside forces or special interests what is the incentive to act on anything but the most critical issues? Remember: it is in the House that all spending and budget bills originate. Who better to assess the costs and predict the benefits of programs than those who struggle day to day to make ends meet and who often find themselves at the mercy of laws passed by a Legislature that felt it just had to Do Something? It frightens me to think of a Congress that feels it has to make new laws every day to placate its money-laden masters. Furthermore, since we take away the need to keep an eye always turned to the re-election campaign our Representatives should feel liberated to vote their conscience based on their understanding of the law and the Constitution. We would still have the Supreme Court to correct any egregious mistakes, but since we should see fewer laws being passed in the first place there shouldn't be too many mistakes to deal with.
A President who is very much aware that he is not king, a House peopled with Representatives from every sector of society, absolutely devoid of the corrupting influences of Special Interest money and election year grandstanding. Yes, I could enjoy living in that America.
Actually, this is being done in a small way with Internet2, http://www.techreview.com/articles/tynan0710013.as p, the extremely high bandwidth network being made available to Universities, Research and medical entities. While no such strategy as you describe has been publicly stated, it seems to me that its mere existence offers the opportunity to put just such a strategy in place.
I read the article and didn't see anything about abandoning POP3, just that they were adding a web-mail system to let users access thier mail from any computer. Did I mis-read it?
I generally get a gift card or two each year, usually to one of the major bookstore chains here in the US. One thing I notoce all the time is that if I have a $20 gift card and spend, say $17.45 I get the card back with $2.55 credit remaining. Care to speculate how many such cards are never fully redeemed? I buy alot of books, so I use them up, but I'd be willing to bet that a not-insignificant percentage of these cards are never fully spent. Back when I used to get Gift Certificates any small change was usually (though not always) returned as cash. Not any longer...
Noted earlier in this thread, but deserves a more pointed mention. It was written in 1975 and hits alot of points regarding technology 20 years forward. Couple of serious misses, as well. I used to think the cultural commentary of the book was off the mark. but can anyone say "Survivor" or "Fear Factor" and their ilk don't bear a resemblance to "Circus Bocconi?"
You neglected the BLU-82 Daisycutter. 15,000lbs of hurt-em delivered by a cargo aircraft because it's too damned big for any conventional bomber. I seem to remember we dropped a few of theese on troop positions in the Gulf War.
Yeah, I've seen that, but despite the "simplicity" of the design I guarantee you that the device is more sophisticated than a simple "pull the pin and run" mechanism. Regardless of that, the next question is shelf life. When did these weapons go missing? Are they being maintained? For that matter what kind of maintenace do they require? How long before there is enough decay in the fissile material to render it essentially inert? What about the high-explosives used to fire the bomb- what is thier shelf-life? What about the trigger for the HE itself? These things do not last forever.
Actually, a small tactical nuke would be, what, 5 kilotons? That would make a right fine mess of most cities. Still, the chances of a nuclear attack of that type is pretty small, even with the loose nukes supposedly floating around. Even the Soviets were not stupid enough to keep warheads and detonation codes in the same location. The KGB kept complete political control of the nuclear weapons codes. What good is a warhead if you can't convince it to detonate?
I'd be more concerned about some totally committed soul running in to MacDonald's at noon on a Tuesday with 50lbs of TNT strapped to his back.
More correctly, Atheism is an ideology. The previous poster's point that there really is no separation of church and state is essentially correct in that people with religious beliefs serve in government all the time. The government is simply forbidden to establish an official religion. Nit-picking over wether people should be allowed to use the word "God" in any official context (or even in the public expression of a personal opinion) is akin to the Taliban forbidding the teaching of Christianity in Afghanistan- one ideology (Atheism) attempting to forbid any other from open expression.
First Amendment? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?
This, of course, also applies to your right to complain about it. That's what makes the argument so damned entertaining.
To use your logic, the following could also be said. We (terrorists) are sending USA a message, we are going after the corporations that support gov, economy of USA, the evil USA goverment itself, etc... If one or two (or 1000) innocent civilians die in the process, that is sad but it is an acceptable loss all things considered. No?
Absolutely. And when your enemy (the US) retaliates please refrain from whining about how unfair and uncivilized it is. The terrorists struck to elicit a response from the US. Here it is. TAKE COVER...
Funny old world, eh? Still, if you don't like it, don't worry - you can always bomb them!
Oddly enough, that's true. The old adage states that war is simply the continuation of diplomacy by other means. The US feels, with justification, that a trial in Afghanistan will result in an acquitall and reserves the right to try those responsible itself. If this were China or Russia or France harboring these folks we wouldn't be bombing because we have other leverage to apply in those cases. Here, we have a regime that cannot be trusted. We don't hand over our evidence to them because it would constitute a major compromise of what few intelligence sources we have there, and the Taliban would be predisposed to deny the veracity of anything they were presented with.
Don't lose sight of what is actually going on here: attacking the Taliban serves multiple purposes, including putting other regimes which harbour and support terrorists (Can you say Iraq? Sure you can!) on notice that the US is deadly serious about this. The fire and steel raining on the Taliban are as much a point of demonstration as they are a method of bringing a bandit regime to heel.
Before anyone starts screaming in idignation: yes, the US created the Taliban. That makes it even more our responsibility to clean up the mess we made.
Slashdot Mirror
And I explained to him that the same logical thought processes that go into higher math (and by that I mean maybe college-level calculus 101) are required to do solid, efficient coding of any kind. He was absolutely horrible at math, and his attempts at coding were predictably terrible.
Not terribly bright, are you?
To be fair, I only discovered Cyanogenmod about two months ago when my boss handed me a case of HP TouchPads and asked me if we could do anything with them. I'm a Windows Server monkey, but searching for "Android on TouchPad" led me straight to it.
I've been running 10.1 experimental on my HP TouchPad for a while and it's been fairly stable. Can't wait for the RC! My company has resurrected about two dozen TouchPads thanks to Cyanogenmod. Ghu love the folks who put their time and effort into this project!
Oh, I'll grant you that, certainly- an OS that requires a greater knowledge than that possessed by your average computer-savvy individual in order to properly configure is not *good* by any definition. Myself, having had to deploy it in a business setting (Bitlocker for laptops was the major reason), I was able to provide a satisfying experience to the users, but that's because I'd been playing with it for a year before it was made available to the general public. I may be a Vista fan, but I'm not a Vista fool ;).
They are also skillfully playing the psychology of all the Windows fanboys who know deep down in their heart that they don't really like Vista, and Windows 7 is really just a slightly updated Vista, but are desperate to not be embarrassed about Windows anymore, so you KNOW they are gonna say its the greatest thing ever even if it really isn't.
Not to get my hackles up (or yours for that matter), but any Windows 'Fanboy' knew how to straighten out a Vista installation a long, long time ago and has no incentive to praise 7 just to get over Vista embarassment. That said, if you are running Vista and are happy with it Windows 7 only offers a single advantage in expanded 64 bit support. Beyond that there is no real reason to make the switch. The real target are the XP holdouts (mentioned here ad nauseum so we won't bother going there now other than to say with 64 bit becoming more and more a reality in the desktop space XP has a very limited lifespan remaining.
You might want to ask this lady for her opinion :)
As an Asheron's Call player for 2 years running, I've seen that team come close, tantalizingly close. There were game plots where groups of players were pitted against each other, one set trying to prevent the onset of doom while others actively sought to unleash it. The mechanics of it were very, very interesting, particualrly on the PK-only server, Darktide.
It is possible to be other than a camp/kill/level player in AC (and in other games, I'd wager), but it requires dedication and patience. The temptation to go out and do some adventuring just to pick up quick points in order to move you towards your "real" goal is alwasy there.
In the end, I think the games are moving in the direction you would like, but it is going to be incremental for some time to come. What is really required is a technological breakthrough that povides an order of magnitude increase in base computing power across the board (at the server, PC and Console levels) as well as a wide, reliable, CHEAP data pipe to the consumer. Until those choke points are overcome the limitations placed on game design will stand squarely in the path of designing a truly dynamic, engaging total game experience.
Now, if I could just plug the game interface in to a socket in the back of my skull...
New.net was the bane of my existence for a while there. At my company several folks decided to install Kazzaa, which carries the new.net virus/component. Never mind the fact that they were not supposed to be doing this, the point is that when IT investigated the high bandwidth consumption and removed Kazzaa, new.net remained. Removing new.net was a screaming nightmare and their tech support people were at best arrogant in response to our questions as to why when the uninstall was complete, did we have to completely reinstall tcp/ip? We were repeatedly told that we had incorrectly removed the plug-in. We uninstalled it from two machines, then said "screw it" and erased and reinstalled the other five.
I cruise the Tek-Tips forum quite a bit and new.net has come up repeatedly as a source of major problems. When the author mentioned this pernicious, unstable pile of drek I just nodded in sympathy because I knew he'd been through hell...
-----------
I suspect he knew exactly what he said:)
-------
In the very early Eighties my older sister went to Smith College in Northampton, MA. Back then as now Smith was a hot bed of leftist True Think with a frightening mixture of rabid feminism and incipient Political Correctness. For four years she slaved away after her degree in Mathematics, finally returning home with her diploma.
As you might imagine, she also came home with a slightly more left-of-center worldview than she had departed with. My father, a curmudgeonly fiscal Conservative, alternated between amusement and despair whenever politics were discussed at dinner. He finally fell back in to the old standby of "when you can't show 'em, shock 'em." One exchange I remember quite clearly came when my sister and her live-in boyfriend of the time stopped by for dinner. My parents are not prudes so this was not an unusual thing, and they actually liked Geoffrey a lot, despite his socialist take on the human condition.
That evening we were digging in to Chicken Parmigiana while Geoffrey waxed philosophical on the failure of government to effectively deal with poverty. Dad, never one to pass up a good straight line, began taking him to task over the multiple billions of dollars already spent to aid the poor. What did Geoffrey want to do, throw more good money after bad? Then Geoffrey made the mistake: he asked my father what he thought the government should do.
My father looked him straight in the eyes and said, "Just make me Emperor for two years. Give me complete control of society and in two years there won't be any more poor people."
Looking for the entire world like a deer in the headlights of an on-rushing Mack truck Geoffrey asked him how that would happen.
"Simple: After two years the malingerers will have jobs and all the others will have starved."
My dad is a nice guy. He paid to have Geoffrey's shirt cleaned after he spit a mouthful of chicken and marinara sauce all over himself. Eventually
my sister was forced back to reality by the Great Equalizer: she got a job, saw all that cash being sucked out of what should have been an impressive
paycheck for all that hard work and began to wonder just what she was getting for her money. Welcome back, sis.
The reason that particular episode sticks out in my head is that it was the first time I was clued in to a Basic Truth: where governments are concerned tinkering around the edges rarely fixes problems. Even Thomas Jefferson noted that a healthy government probably needs a good revolution every now and then just to keep it fresh and vital. With everything that is and has
been going on in Washington I think this idea deserves a new examination, so here I am to toss out a proposal.
First, Presidential Elections piss me off to no end. Screw this Campaign Finance Reform stuff; let's just do away with the election all together. Let the Senate elect the President and then he can appoint a Vice President with the approval of the House of Representatives. Let them serve six or seven years and then they are replaced. We should also ease the rules for
removing anyone who turns out to be a bum. This change accomplishes a couple of things: it removes the Presidential Election as a source of corruption, and it restores the proper perspective to the relationship between Congress
and the Executive. The Imperial Presidency that most of us have grown up with is a hold over from the end of World War II where the President
retained an inordinate amount of power due to the semi-state of war that existed between NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This was never the intent of the
Founding Fathers who wanted most of the political power to be in the hands of Congress.
As for the Senate, I think it actually works pretty well as is in that it was designed to be the stabilizing force in the Legislative branch. The House of Representatives is where the real change needs to come. People seem to think that because Representatives only serve two-year terms they have no real power, but nothing could be further from the truth. Collectively the House outweighs the Senate and the Presidency and as such it needs to be more accountable to the people. I would make it so by simply returning it to the people. Do away with elected Representatives and institute a draft.
One fine day, there is a knock on your door. There stand two Federal Marshals. One of them hands you a letter. "Congratulations!" the letter
would read, "You have been chosen by the Selective Service Administration to serve your Congressional District as its Representative to the House for a period not to exceed three years." They give you five minutes to pack a
small overnight bag, kiss the spouse and kids goodbye, and then they bundle you off to do your duty.
We could run a draft every year, replacing a third of the House each time so that there would always be a group of Representatives present who were familiar with the way things worked. As far as restrictions go, I would limit eligibility to any citizen over age 21 who has not been convicted of a crime in the past five years and I would also suggest that no one be allowed to serve consecutive terms. You might be drafted again (unlikely, given the numbers) but never twice in a row. A final restriction that is almost always suggested by anyone with whom I have ever discussed this: no lawyers in the House.
Beyond the very simple restrictions I would add dispensations for extreme medical situations and the like, but I would still make it very difficult to weasel out of serving. We also would need to take a close look at compensation, job retention and the fulfillment of contracts and other obligations that might have been entered in to before the prospective Representative was drafted. While this might seem a daunting task we must remember that we would only need to deal with about 150 people a year. Somehow I have to think that the government has the resources to deal with this.
Why do I like this idea? As I understand it (and I freely admit that I am not a Constitutional scholar) the House of Representatives was supposed to be the voice of the Citizen in our government. It was intended that Representatives be ordinary citizens who served a term or two then returned to their normal lives. As anyone can plainly see this is no longer the case and has not been for some time. A drafted House rectifies this situation in a simple, brute-force fashion. Spare me the smarmy, glad-handing politician seeking my vote- I want my Representative dragged kicking and screaming in
to office. They would be housed in comfortable condos in Washington and when in session the Representatives would wear identical lime-green jump suits with their name stenciled on the front and their Congressional District number on the back.
Assuming we could force this idea through the existing political process, what would the over-all effect be? First, the President would at least have the support of the Senate, and he would be very much aware that he served at
the Senate's pleasure. The President would be merely Commander-In-Chief and leader of the Executive, as the Constitution intended. The House would be about as non-partisan as one could imagine since the selection process would be free of any consideration of party affiliation. The People (that's you and me) would be spared most of the Election Year displays of Lying and
Corruption as the only officials actually elected would be the Senators. The country could save a lot of money and angst.
Another very positive effect would be that a lot less would get done in Washington DC. With the House in the hands of citizens unbeholden to any
outside forces or special interests what is the incentive to act on anything but the most critical issues? Remember: it is in the House that all spending and budget bills originate. Who better to assess the costs and predict the benefits of programs than those who struggle day to day to make ends meet and who often find themselves at the mercy of laws passed by a
Legislature that felt it just had to Do Something? It frightens me to think of a Congress that feels it has to make new laws every day to placate its money-laden masters. Furthermore, since we take away the need to keep
an eye always turned to the re-election campaign our Representatives should feel liberated to vote their conscience based on their understanding of the law and the Constitution. We would still have the Supreme Court to correct any egregious mistakes, but since we should see fewer laws being passed in the first place there shouldn't be too many mistakes to deal with.
A President who is very much aware that he is not king, a House peopled with Representatives from every sector of society, absolutely devoid of the
corrupting influences of Special Interest money and election year grandstanding. Yes, I could enjoy living in that America.
Now, about that pesky 16th amendment...
---------------
Songs Of Distant Earth- Arthur C. Clarke
Much the same idea, in this case driven by the impending destruction of Earth.
--------
Actually, this is being done in a small way with Internet2, http://www.techreview.com/articles/tynan0710013.as p, the extremely high bandwidth network being made available to Universities, Research and medical entities. While no such strategy as you describe has been publicly stated, it seems to me that its mere existence offers the opportunity to put just such a strategy in place.
---------
I read the article and didn't see anything about abandoning POP3, just that they were adding a web-mail system to let users access thier mail from any computer. Did I mis-read it?
Land two or three relays at the "equatorial" region- they could probably be cheap (in a relative sense, of course).
----------
No need- the idea seems to be to actually plant the observatory on the moon itself, so orbital mechanics are not an issue.
I generally get a gift card or two each year, usually to one of the major bookstore chains here in the US. One thing I notoce all the time is that if I have a $20 gift card and spend, say $17.45 I get the card back with $2.55 credit remaining. Care to speculate how many such cards are never fully redeemed? I buy alot of books, so I use them up, but I'd be willing to bet that a not-insignificant percentage of these cards are never fully spent. Back when I used to get Gift Certificates any small change was usually (though not always) returned as cash. Not any longer...
Noted earlier in this thread, but deserves a more pointed mention. It was written in 1975 and hits alot of points regarding technology 20 years forward. Couple of serious misses, as well. I used to think the cultural commentary of the book was off the mark. but can anyone say "Survivor" or "Fear Factor" and their ilk don't bear a resemblance to "Circus Bocconi?"
-----
You neglected the BLU-82 Daisycutter. 15,000lbs of hurt-em delivered by a cargo aircraft because it's too damned big for any conventional bomber. I seem to remember we dropped a few of theese on troop positions in the Gulf War.
Yeah, I've seen that, but despite the "simplicity" of the design I guarantee you that the device is more sophisticated than a simple "pull the pin and run" mechanism. Regardless of that, the next question is shelf life. When did these weapons go missing? Are they being maintained? For that matter what kind of maintenace do they require? How long before there is enough decay in the fissile material to render it essentially inert? What about the high-explosives used to fire the bomb- what is thier shelf-life? What about the trigger for the HE itself? These things do not last forever.
Actually, a small tactical nuke would be, what, 5 kilotons? That would make a right fine mess of most cities. Still, the chances of a nuclear attack of that type is pretty small, even with the loose nukes supposedly floating around. Even the Soviets were not stupid enough to keep warheads and detonation codes in the same location. The KGB kept complete political control of the nuclear weapons codes. What good is a warhead if you can't convince it to detonate?
I'd be more concerned about some totally committed soul running in to MacDonald's at noon on a Tuesday with 50lbs of TNT strapped to his back.
More correctly, Atheism is an ideology. The previous poster's point that there really is no separation of church and state is essentially correct in that people with religious beliefs serve in government all the time. The government is simply forbidden to establish an official religion. Nit-picking over wether people should be allowed to use the word "God" in any official context (or even in the public expression of a personal opinion) is akin to the Taliban forbidding the teaching of Christianity in Afghanistan- one ideology (Atheism) attempting to forbid any other from open expression.
First Amendment? Anyone? Anyone? Beuller?
This, of course, also applies to your right to complain about it. That's what makes the argument so damned entertaining.
To use your logic, the following could also be said. We (terrorists) are sending USA a message, we are going after the corporations that support gov, economy of USA, the evil USA goverment itself, etc... If one or two (or 1000) innocent civilians die in the process, that is sad but it is an acceptable loss all things considered. No?
Absolutely. And when your enemy (the US) retaliates please refrain from whining about how unfair and uncivilized it is. The terrorists struck to elicit a response from the US. Here it is. TAKE COVER...
Funny old world, eh? Still, if you don't like it, don't worry - you can always bomb them!
Oddly enough, that's true. The old adage states that war is simply the continuation of diplomacy by other means. The US feels, with justification, that a trial in Afghanistan will result in an acquitall and reserves the right to try those responsible itself. If this were China or Russia or France harboring these folks we wouldn't be bombing because we have other leverage to apply in those cases. Here, we have a regime that cannot be trusted. We don't hand over our evidence to them because it would constitute a major compromise of what few intelligence sources we have there, and the Taliban would be predisposed to deny the veracity of anything they were presented with.
Don't lose sight of what is actually going on here: attacking the Taliban serves multiple purposes, including putting other regimes which harbour and support terrorists (Can you say Iraq? Sure you can!) on notice that the US is deadly serious about this. The fire and steel raining on the Taliban are as much a point of demonstration as they are a method of bringing a bandit regime to heel.
Before anyone starts screaming in idignation: yes, the US created the Taliban. That makes it even more our responsibility to clean up the mess we made.
And are you suggesting that by doing nothing further violence would be avoided?