The Lockheed article is interesting, though there's more than a little misinformation in there. As far as the F-22 goes...
In some respects it an impressive fighter but at $300 million a copy it ridiculously expensive.
Of course, much of this ridiculous per-unit cost is due the increasingly smaller total build orders the Pentagon has crafted. Less planes equals higher per-plane cost.
It was supposed to be operational a decade ago but the government just keeps pouring more and more money in to though the U.S. already completely dominates every other Air Force on the planet with the much cheaper planes it already has.
The F-22 has been operational since 2003. It took a while, but they finally started rolling them out of the production facility. The government's not pouring money into development; it's not like the plane isn't finished. Certainly they are still being purchased. Anyway, we've developed it, and we're producing it, so let's make us of it. We can dominate the rest of the world even more.
Lockheed can continue to develop it for another 20 years and may never field an operational squadron.
As I said, the F-22 is already operational.
They were punished for their failure with another $200 billion contract for the Joint Strike Fighter.
There was no failure.
They were just given a contract to build 5 or 6 Presidential helicopers for $1.5 billion dollars. Thats $300 million each for a helicopter.
The contract was for 23 helicopters, for $6.3 billion. About $260 million each. Hey, at least that's a lot less than the price by the rival contractor, Sikorsky.
You're confusing word-size and byte. For reference, see byte and word size.
Consider: a 32-bit processor has a word-size of 32 bits, and a 64-bit processor has a word size of 64 bits. Typically this refers to the size of the int datatype on the system. But in both the x86 and x86-64 archs, for example, a byte is still 8 bits. So unless you're talking about some old-ass architecture from back in the day, a byte is 8 bits.
I'll second (or third) the recommendation for the Interactive Way to Go. I looked at all the tutorial sites I could find back when I was first learning, and this one is the best. It's step-by-step, and doesn't go too fast, so it should definitely help you out.
Once you've done all the exercises there, phase 2 of your education should be the igowin demo, which uses a 9x9 board. You get to reinforce what you've learned by playing actual games on a small board. The game AI starts out at (what it considers) 20 or 30 kyu, I think, and then gets progressively more difficult. So you'll see how far down you can get... before too long, you should be able to beat the computer without too much trouble. Side note: it's a windows program, but it's a simple executable; I remember being able to run it fine in wine a couple years ago.
Good luck with the Go. And fyi, GoBase is a great site to check out once you know how to play.
North Korea is one of the reasons why we went into Iraq. Why? Because due to inaction on the part of the US and the rest of the world, NK is now untouchable: it can raize [sic] Seoul with conventional weapons, and now has enough nukes to be a severe pest.
I don't believe that North Korea's one of the reasons we went into Iraq, simply because I've never heard anyone in the administration justify the invasion of Iraq based on the situation in North Korea. But let me just ask, what do you mean when you say that North Korea is "now" untouchable? It's had a huge army stationed along the border for a long, long time, and at any time during the last few decades, an attack would have destroyed Seoul in short order. That's why we have so many troops tied down in bases there, near the DMZ: to serve as a tripwire, guaranteeing a US response to any North Korean attack.
We can't deal with NK militarily anymore precisely because we didn't deal with it militarily when we'd the chance.
No. I don't think there's ever been a chance to "deal with it militarily", after the war ended. All that's changed in recent years is their development of a nuclear capability. They're slowly increasing the range of targets they can strike, beyond South Korea. We have fucked up our response to that, but it's still not too late. Supposedly, at most they could have half a dozen low-yield warheads. The time to act is now.
Iraq was believed (by everyone, even France & Germany) to be headed in the same direction.
The same direction? It seems to me you're making a fatal error by not distinguishing between different types of WMD. Chemical, biological... sure, we thought Iraq had some of that. But there was no evidence that Iraq had been able to get its nuclear program up off the ground to any significant degree, much less even approach where it was in the 80s -- a couple of wild-assed claims by the Bush administration notwithstanding.
One approach favoured continuation of the containment policy which worked so well with NK; the other approach called for destroying Hussein while he was still easily destroyable.
Of course, as it turned out, our containment policy in Iraq had been working well. But the North Korean inspection regime was just a couple of IAEA guys in their nuclear processing plant, nothing compared to the countrywide system we had forced on Iraq.
You can invade Iraq and dismantle their government with relatively few casualties.
But if you even START to THINK about invading North Korea, Seoul gets hit by 50,000 missiles before our troops can even step across the border. Sure, North Korea would fall in a matter of days, but not until after they'd done tons of damage.
Yes. I believe I read recently that the South Korean government is planning to move at least some of their important institutions from Seoul to a more southern city. That at least would prevent them from being totally decapitated in the event of a North Korean invasion.
The ONLY way to deal with North Korea is diplomacy. Any other dealing will reduce Seoul to rubble in a matter of minutes.
I've got another option, if it comes down to it: the nuclear option. If it came down to the wire, and we were sure Kim Jong Il were going to launch an invasion, possibly w/ nukes, it might be worth utterly destroying their attack capability with targeted nuclear strikes. The question is whether we could take out their nuclear capability and their military without causing massive civilian collateral damage worse than what they themselves could have done. A very tough call... but if diplomacy has failed, the alternative is a hideous land battle against their 1 million-man army, in which millions of civilians could die.
If I can't run my copy of *work program from 1998* (read: game) on the latest version of windows, I'd end up not using the latest windows, costing microsoft another sale.
Don't you think that this is a little bit unrealistic? How many people do you know, who still play 1998 games on current hardware and OS? Then, how many of these actually run them on Windows? Have you looked at one of those 1998 games recently and thought: "Gee, this game is amazing!"?
I would say that the number of people who play 1998 games is negligible compared to the number of people who make up for recent hardware and OS sales.
You're far, far off base. It's not at all unrealistic -- a whole shitload of people play 1998 games on their current machine. How many of these run on windows? 99%. And yeah, I have had fun playing 6 year-old games. I'm sorry that's an experience you don't care for.
Another poster named StarCraft and Diablo. Do I even have to mention Half-Life and Counter-Strike? Isn't that still the most popular online fragfest? Let's not forget Quake III; that's from '99. EverQuest is from '99. Ultima Online is from '96.
Well. I just named many millions of players. Everquest and UO alone are more than 600,000. So I would say that the number of people who play ~1998 games is significant compared to the number of people buying new machines.
Do you really play DOOM (the first one) on current hardware and a current OS?
DOOM is from '93. That's almost as far from '98 as '98 is from now.
My point is, people don't get new machines to play old games, they get them to play new games. But they don't stop playing their old games.
As other replies to your post have pointed out, you are laboring under some misconceptions. Allow me to clear them up for you.
I never thought that my generation (I'm 26) would see commerical space flight in our life time.
You still haven't I'm afraid. Rutan has built a vehicle that can attain a 60 mile altitude...AND COMES IMMIDIATELY DOWN again.
You are incorrect. As Wikipedia's article on space notes, "The altitude of 100 kilometers or 62 miles established by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale is the most widely used definition as the boundary between atmosphere and space." Because SpaceShipOne can attain this 100 km altitude, Burt Rutan has, indeed, achieved commercial space flight.
To actually ORBIT a craft must reach about 18,000 mph give or take....rutan's craft can only go about 1,500 mph....not even 10% of what's needed to achieve orbit.
This is all well and good, but SpaceShipOne wasn't intended to reach orbit. Orbit isn't required to achieve space flight. Orbit isn't required to win the X Prize.
[Rutan]'s built a BIG cannon that can launch someone 60 miles high nd come back down again...but he's NO WHERE NEAR achieving a true suborbital flight which needs HORIZONTAL velocities AT LEAST 5 to 10 times what he could possibly hope to achieve now with his current design.
Again, you're incorrect. Wikipedia's article on suborbital space flight gives a definition: "A sub-orbital spaceflight (or sub-orbital flight) is a spaceflight that does not involve putting a vehicle into orbit." Thus, because SpaceShipOne enters space, and does not achieve orbit, it is a suborbital spaceflight.
SPARK mandates adding numerous instrumentation constructs to the code for the sake of analysis.
This seems rather a waste of time. You either first describe exactly what the code does, then write the code, or you write a simplification of what the code does, then the code.
I'm not an expert on any of this stuff, but allow me to point out the misunderstanding I think you're operating under. Programming by contract isn't concerned with what the code does inside a function, per se. It simply tries to ensure that a function adheres to its contract conditions on expected input/output. Pre/post conditions... you know. So a function, on beginning execution, can expect the program state it is given to obey the precondition properties. In turn, on ending execution, the function must leave the program state as specified by the postcondition.
In the first case, you write the exact same thing twice, in different languages. That sounds like an immense waste of time to me.
No, you don't specify everything the code does.
In the second case, your specification does not cover every aspect, which introduces loopholes, defeating the purpose of the contract.
As I said, the contract isn't a "simplification" of the code. But anyway, you're kind of saying here that this technique doesn't totally prevent all mistakes, so it's worthless. Harsh.
In either case, you get in trouble if there are errors in the contract.
Clearly. I think it's useful to explicitly detail the contract, however. It forces you to think about something you might not have considered otherwise.
Guess I'm a little late responding, but anyway....
There is definitely a setting that changes this. iirc, it's in one of konq's config screens... a choice between single-clicks or double-clicks activating files. Sorry I'm on a windows machine atm, so I can't check exactly where it is.
I asked about Mandrake because there was a long-running bug through multiple versions where some of Mandrake's added code was overriding the user's preference selection and forcing single-click hyperlink-like behavior. One of the influential packager guys had to take it upon himself and make a rather large effort to have Mandrake fix it, which didn't happen until just now, w/ Mandrake 10.
But the one choice I want - the ability to stop files and folders on my local harddrive from acting like hyperlinks - isn't available. I suppose that, given a few months of practice, I could get used to treating my hard drive like a website, but it isn't working out for me at the moment.
When the Chinese decided to build the Great Wall, the first thing they did was spend fifty years building schools, researching techniques, and training a generation of engineers to design the Great Wall.
Then they spent several generations building the wall.
Big things take time.
I think I may be wandering OT here, but where exactly are you getting this from? The first Qin Emperor had the Wall built during his reign, 221 - 207 BCE. It was done in a decade.
Perhaps one of the additions constructed by later dynasties took longer, but still....
You mean "Red Mars"? That was another book I put down after it became weird freaks/terrorists/Martian Gia lovers having sex on Mars.
Dude, you're weirding me out here. It never "became" about sex on Mars. That's not part of the story at all. The people on Mars did have sex, of course. It wasn't a big issue. Earlier you mentioned that you were looking for "interplanetary missions, frontier spirit, new technologies changing the shape of our Solar System (like locomotives, cars, and factories did for the old west)". Well, the Mars Trilogy deals with all of that. That's what it's about.
Sex is a very normal part of human existence. However, it is not the be all to end all of that existence. Most of this #### is akin to stories of western frontier's men heading west just so they could get women to have sex with them! It's pathetic!
Again, people having sex is not a major element KSR's story. The only story you've mentioned specifically is Heinlein's Friday, and there's an element of truth to that -- but that's one of Heinlein's well-known "issues".
I'm sure many people don't agree with me, but that's my feelings on the issue.
*shrugs* It sounds like you want a story without the word "sex" in it. Good luck.
Fine, I'll look you in the eye and tell you that I can't stand reading David Brin. His characters are flat and lifeless, altered however necessary to get across whatever "insightful" political or philosophical point he wants to emphasize this paragraph. Sundiver was okay, but Startide Rising and the Uplift War were absolutely hideously dry. Not only can he not do characters, he can't do plots or interesting situations either. I had to struggle to finish both of the above.
*stares* You think they were dry? Of all words, dry? Startide Rising and The Uplift War were full of... emotion, description, action... they were fucking organic. Sundiver was far plainer and drier than those 2. I thought the characters and plots were thoroughly engrossing.
All of the above are why sci-fi sucks. They're excellent examples of the "Plot? Characterization? Who needs those! We've got SCIENCE!" school of thought. They're so wrapped up in how scientifically accurate they are that they totally forget that scientific accuracy is not and has never been an element of an engaging story. Especially since their "accurate" predictions usually get disproven or debunked by scientists within six months of publication anyway.
At this point I have to question whether you actually intended the above to include Brin, since it doesn't describe his novels at all. So you've read Startide Rising and The Uplift War, right? Where were there any scientific predictions of any sort? The novels are far more character- and story-driven. The only thing that's even vaguely scientific is the entire process of uplifting dolphins and chimps; none of the technology used, for example, is gone into at all. It's just there: superluminal drives, probability drives, weapons, etc. All of those are "far-future magic" sort of technologies. Maybe Sundiver has some of what you're describing, but I'm familiar with Bear and Benford, and Brin's Uplift Trilogy, at least, is quite distant from their work.
And just as an aside, Benford's Timescape was superb.
Re:Piers Anthony advocates DRM
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He does not still use a typewriter. According to the author's notes at the end of each Xanth book, he converted to using a PC 6-7 years ago.
I believe the grandparent was referring to Harlan Ellison, not Anthony.
Not quite. I was referring to interplanetary missions, frontier spirit, new technologies changing the shape of our Solar System (like locomotives, cars, and factories did for the old west), and eventually looking at real opportunities to head to Alpha Centari. Once you have a Solar System Infrastructure in space, building a craft that can make it to a serious fraction of c doesn't look so hard.
You seem to be looking for some sort of comprehensive examination of the exploration and settling of the solar system and beyond. I'm not sure I can give you exactly that, but Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy gives you a lot of what you're asking for. It focuses on Mars and its relationship with Earth, of course, but especially in the last book, Blue Mars, there's discussion of the settlements, cultures, etc., on Mercury, the Jovian moons, and even one of Uranus' moons. And there are interstellar spacecraft launched as well, though that's not such a big part of the story.
The series is superb, and pretty highly thought of on/., too, if past discussions are any indication. Highly recommended.
Re:Sorta agree with both points of view
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Funny you should mention David Weber because I'm reading Field of Dishonor now. Unfortunatly, although I rather liked the second book in the Honor series (I read it first off of the Baen free library), I think i'm going to stop after this one. I swear my hands start to feel sticky whenever Weber goes off on one of his "Honor is the bestest person in the world ever!!!" tangents. His admiration for his own main character borders on pornographic at times [...]
Yeah, a lot of people have this issue. I personally don't have a problem with the Honor-worship, but if you do, you might as well bail out now, because it only gets more and more worshipful.
[...] and the villans are so one dimentional with absolutely no redeeming qualities or plausible motivations whatsoever.
This is a problem. Later on, he goes into the Havenites in more depth, and I think (some of the characters, at least) are quite deep.
...and this book is taking far too long to get to the space battle.
Uh oh... ah, let's see, how to put this? I'm afraid you've got some disappointment ahead in that area....
If he doesn't hurry up, I might actually make good on my promise not to buy the next book. The space battle in the last book was the only thing that made be buy this one.
There are many more kick-ass battles ahead... but you'll have to buy some more books.
Sorry about the vagueness, just trying not to spoil shit.
Sigh. This is the short-sighted, disconnected view of drug abuse that seems to typify the "legalize drugs now" crowd. Nothing happens in a vacuum. The parent comment isn't insightful or even interesting - it's tragic, if the poster actually believes it. When somebody busts out the window of a car to steal a stereo to sell so that they can buy drugs with which to overdose, then go to the hospital, have the bill paid for by the county, to whom we pay taxes, then off to detox, again supported by our taxes...then start the whole process over again.
Huh. Sounds like you've just given several good reasons for legalizing and regulating drugs.
If drugs were legalized, people would be paying low, reasonable prices, not obscene black market prices. Hence a dramatically lessened need for people to steal shit to support their habit.
If drugs were regulated, we wouldn't be seeing low-quality, dangerous goods of varying potentness. Hence a dramatically lessened occurrence of overdosing.
Now, the grandparent was wrong. The use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs carries a significant negative externality: the costs society incurrs in dealing with drug problems...
I've seen it in Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston and New York. I've even seen it in places that you've never heard of, like Nampa, Idaho and Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
... So let's fucking DO something about it, instead of blindly continuing this insane War on Drugs.
Are they puting back the Kernel source? It wasn't on the ISOs I downloaded for 9.2
Really? I'm pretty sure it was... it's just that mdk has left kernel-source out of the default install for a while, maybe since 9.0. So you'd have to use rpmdrake or urpmi to install it yourself. Right now, I see a listing for it in my 9.2 distrib mirror (that I use in lieu of having to put in the actual cds).
I'm not sure why they leave it out -- I imagine I'm not the only person who always ends up installing it anyway.
Did Jefferson qualify his prose with "A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State" because he was feeling particularly verbose?
Firstly, Jefferson didn't write the Bill of Rights. James Madison did. And the phrase isn't a qualification, it's an explanation.
The founders were not idiots, and Jefferson was not an incompetent writer. Every syllable is there for a purpose.
Indeed. But we would disagree on what that purpose is.
Here's a page I found the other day, that had an interesting analogy in it: examine the sentence
A well-schooled electorate, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and read Books, shall not be infringed.
If you believe, as you appear to, that the first bit in the 2nd Amendment implies certain restrictions on how to interpret the second part, then you should also believe that in the sentence above, people will only be allowed to read books if they are members of the well-schooled electorate.
If the founders simply meant that we should have unfettered access to weapons, everything before the comma is extraneous and misleading.
No, it's not misleading. It's just misleading you, into believing that Jefferson (no, Madison) intended that private firearm ownership be restricted to some sort of state-controlled militia. I notice that you in no way had any rebuttal to grandparent's point that
It is utterly incomprehensible that intelligent people could believe that a group of founders who had just successfully led an armed rebellion drawing heavily on the grassroots arms and knowledge of arms against an officially sanctioned armed State could have intended that only arms sanctioned by a new State and controlled by them be allowed.
Please respond -- preferably to the substantive issue, instead of with incorrect grammatical pedantry.
-Law abiding citizens will not be able to defend themselves in their own homes against criminals with guns.
I didn't forget it. I just consider the life of a burglar to be more important than your property. If you shoot a burglar, you're an outlaw to me.
Well, well, well, Scarblac. The AC didn't say "burglar", he said "criminal". I'm glad to see you also think that the life of a criminal is more important than the life of a homeowner -- because murderers break into houses too. And I suppose if I shoot a murderous thug that's broken into my house, I'll be an outlaw to you too, eh?
Well, why don't you go ahead and not defend yourself against anyone who happens to break into your house. Whether you're killed, or just roughed up, don't worry... I won't consider you an outlaw.
In other European countries guns are outlawed, too, and the crime rate is a lot lower than in England. So what do you want to prove?
Britain's gun ban was instituted in the late 90s after a bunch of kids got killed at an elementary school by a loony armed to the teeth with guns. This recalls the spate of school shootings in the US during the same period. But Britain's astronomic explosion in violent crime and gun crime began after the gun ban, while the US, which didn't institute a wide-ranging gun ban, has seen crime rates stand still or fall.
So in Britain's case the obvious cause of the increase in crime is the gun ban.
But why drop the second bomb on Nagasaki before the Japanese leadership knew about the devastating effects off the first one?
Because they refused unconditional surrender. This was one of our terms, and an important one.
Rotten, the Japanese never accepted unconditional surrender. Their sticking point in the negotiations in the months prior to Hiroshima was the preservation of the institution of Emperor. Guess what was preserved after Hirohito signed the documents of surrender? The institution of Emperor. They were already ready to surrender -- nothing was changed by the atomic bombs, except the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians.
You could ask the same question of the Japanese, why did they attack Pearl Harbor?
To preempt a US assault on Japanese military forces during and after the Japanese conquest of Asia. Note that Pearl Harbor was a US naval base -- a legitimate military target, whatever one thinks of the surprise nature of the attack.
Slashdot Mirror
For reference, the wikipedia article is pretty good.
Also, does anyone know what "better way then to go" means?
Consider: a 32-bit processor has a word-size of 32 bits, and a 64-bit processor has a word size of 64 bits. Typically this refers to the size of the int datatype on the system. But in both the x86 and x86-64 archs, for example, a byte is still 8 bits. So unless you're talking about some old-ass architecture from back in the day, a byte is 8 bits.
Once you've done all the exercises there, phase 2 of your education should be the igowin demo, which uses a 9x9 board. You get to reinforce what you've learned by playing actual games on a small board. The game AI starts out at (what it considers) 20 or 30 kyu, I think, and then gets progressively more difficult. So you'll see how far down you can get... before too long, you should be able to beat the computer without too much trouble. Side note: it's a windows program, but it's a simple executable; I remember being able to run it fine in wine a couple years ago.
Good luck with the Go. And fyi, GoBase is a great site to check out once you know how to play.
Also, the Libertarian one makes no sense:
What, exactly, does this have to do with supporting personal freedoms, free markets, and small government? Nothing.Another poster named StarCraft and Diablo. Do I even have to mention Half-Life and Counter-Strike? Isn't that still the most popular online fragfest? Let's not forget Quake III; that's from '99. EverQuest is from '99. Ultima Online is from '96.
Well. I just named many millions of players. Everquest and UO alone are more than 600,000. So I would say that the number of people who play ~1998 games is significant compared to the number of people buying new machines.
DOOM is from '93. That's almost as far from '98 as '98 is from now.My point is, people don't get new machines to play old games, they get them to play new games. But they don't stop playing their old games.
Thanks, man... excellent work.
There is definitely a setting that changes this. iirc, it's in one of konq's config screens... a choice between single-clicks or double-clicks activating files. Sorry I'm on a windows machine atm, so I can't check exactly where it is.
I asked about Mandrake because there was a long-running bug through multiple versions where some of Mandrake's added code was overriding the user's preference selection and forcing single-click hyperlink-like behavior. One of the influential packager guys had to take it upon himself and make a rather large effort to have Mandrake fix it, which didn't happen until just now, w/ Mandrake 10.
Perhaps one of the additions constructed by later dynasties took longer, but still....
And just as an aside, Benford's Timescape was superb.
The series is superb, and pretty highly thought of on /., too, if past discussions are any indication. Highly recommended.
Sorry about the vagueness, just trying not to spoil shit.
- If drugs were legalized, people would be paying low, reasonable prices, not obscene black market prices. Hence a dramatically lessened need for people to steal shit to support their habit.
- If drugs were regulated, we wouldn't be seeing low-quality, dangerous goods of varying potentness. Hence a dramatically lessened occurrence of overdosing.
Now, the grandparent was wrong. The use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs carries a significant negative externality: the costs society incurrs in dealing with drug problems...I'm not sure why they leave it out -- I imagine I'm not the only person who always ends up installing it anyway.
Here's a page I found the other day, that had an interesting analogy in it: examine the sentence
If you believe, as you appear to, that the first bit in the 2nd Amendment implies certain restrictions on how to interpret the second part, then you should also believe that in the sentence above, people will only be allowed to read books if they are members of the well-schooled electorate. No, it's not misleading. It's just misleading you, into believing that Jefferson (no, Madison) intended that private firearm ownership be restricted to some sort of state-controlled militia. I notice that you in no way had any rebuttal to grandparent's point that Please respond -- preferably to the substantive issue, instead of with incorrect grammatical pedantry.Well, why don't you go ahead and not defend yourself against anyone who happens to break into your house. Whether you're killed, or just roughed up, don't worry... I won't consider you an outlaw.
So in Britain's case the obvious cause of the increase in crime is the gun ban.