The problem I run into at my job is not so much spelling and grammar. I fortunately run into very few problems with that. What sets my teeth on edge is lack of basic netiquette skills.
For instance, I cringe when I see someone reply to a long email outlining multiple points in a discussion, only to see the person head the message with "My comments below IN CAPS". This person then proceeds to do just that, namely give all her comments in all uppercase. Ugh. There is no need for this. It is very clear what is quoted text and what is not quoted text.
Another one that is rampant at my company is top-posting. Everyone insists on quoting a message in a reply and proceeding to post their comments at the top. When I try to lead by example and properly bottom-post, people complain my emails are not clear. Argh.
At least I no longer have a boss like I did on my last job. She wrote her emails in all lowercase and used HTML blink tags.
It's about time we all face up to an important fact. When it comes to manned space travel, NASA can no longer be factored into the equation. NASA is not our future of manned spaceflight. They were great for getting humanity's foot in the door, but the private sector is going to have to take it from here. NASA cannot be relied upon to produce results when Congress will not give them funding.
So I am not as concerned about the fact that Congress will not give them the budget for this. What I am far more concerned about is what was mentioned at the end of the article:
The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 - which passed the House last week and is expected to pass the Senate when it reconvenes next week - actually tightens safety restrictions on any future private competitions like the X Prize.
I googled for this bill and came up with some info, but a lot of it is hard to piece together because there appear to be multiple versions of this bill. On first blush it would appear that Congress is already leaping into the fore of regulating this industry before it has even started.
So my greater concern is that the private sector may get as badly hamstrung as NASA, but just in a different way. Perhaps we should stop focusing on trying to get NASA funding and instead keep an eye on Congress and prevent them from overregulating the industry to death. Let NASA stick to what they appear to be best at, anyway, namely unmanned spaceflight.
In this case, I feel like the information should be made public, mostly because I think it would be great for the public to see that SCO's case is baseless and help clear the name of Linux before decision-makers decide to choose something other than Linux. I also don't see the point of making this case so private, there doesn't seem to be any sort of really good reason to make a case private (strong mafia/mob witness protection type issues, etc.). So, let's hope this filing succeeds.
I would wish it to succeed only if it can be done without revealing trade secrets or other information that the parties in question -- which are both privately owned companies -- can show are should remain confidential without jeoparding a fair disposition of the case by the judge and/or jury. Participants in a civil suit (and yes, this includes SCO, as much as we hate them) must have a reasonable expectation of privacy, otherwise people who have a valid claim will be afraid to bring their case to a court of law.
I do agree that there is an unusual aspect to the case. The fact that this is a dispute over a large open source project makes it somewhat unique. If SCO indeed had a case, and enough valid evidence were presented to convince a judge and jury of the merits of their claims, I would be completely in favor of forcing any sealed records concerning that evidence to be made public. To do otherwise would unfairly hamstring Linux (i.e. they would be violation of copyright but not given the tools to remediate it)
Just curious, but wouldn't this open up the possibility of anti-trust actions against Verizon if the company gouges for wi-fi access and uses this new law to block city-based wi-fi?
Technically speaking, I don't think this would be considered fodder for an anti-trust suit. Their grounds for doing this is to prevent government-created (read: government subsidized) services competing with their privately owned and operated services. I can agree with this thinking. If I own a company that profits from providing a particular service, then I damn well don't want the government walzing in and offering the same thing and undercutting me.
Now, if they did something like this to block other companies from doing this, then you're talking anti-trust issues. If they gouge customers with high prices and some other company can come into the market and offer it for less, then that's the market in action. If they turn around and try to force out that other company by any means other than honest competition, then that is possible anti-trust.
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield Which is more pathetic: the black and white face makeup in the episode or that I knew that.
I've heard lots of criticism over this particular plot device in this episode. How could a race evolve like that? How could evolution select for something like that? On and on.
My position on this is that people who can't see past this are missing the point of the episode. The point was not how a race could evolve like this, but how a race could chew itself up over something as trivial as which side of their face is white and which side is black. It was a nice statement against racism, which was pretty daring for that particular time in American history.
Sorry to pick on your post to make this point. Nothing personal, this is just a pet peeve of mine (I guess that makes me even more a pathetic geek than you:) )
Here's a question for anyone out there with any knowledge in this area: how close does a name need to be to a trademark to constitute infingement? Here in Colorado, the primary electrical utility company for much of the state is Xcel Energy. "Xcel" is not spelled the same, but does the fact that it sounds exactly alike and is only one letter off mean anything from the perspective of the law? Does it mean anything that it's a totally different industry (and hence little chance it would be confused with a Microsoft product)?
For the approximately 600 million years that we can reconstruct climatological data, approximately 80 million of those, or 16%, has been at a mean global temerature comparable to today's levels. Another 80 million, or 16%, has been spent at temperatures averaging 5 C higher than current levels, and about 330 million years, or 67%, have been spent a full 10 C higher than current levels.
I love it when people trot out this little factoid and conveniently ignore the fact that past climatological changes generally occurred over the course of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, as opposed to recent trends that occurred in only 100 years.
Actually, I have had quite intelligent conversations about these two topics with people. The two topics that I have found I cannot accomplish this with are abortion and gun control. One of the reasons I have relative marital harmony at home is because my wife and I have the same stance on these issues.
Apparently, no one is paying up. It took in $11,000 last quarter.
Y'know, one wonders what goes through the heads of McBride and his Deatheaters at SCO. They don't make any money on the Linux license deal so they... raise prices?? Just where does the "Profit!" step come in?
A publicly traded company exists solely to make profits for shareholders. This is accomplished by crushing competition (ideally).
But it all depends on how you crush your competition. If you crush it by offering a better/cheaper product than your competitor, that's fine, and that is indeed a good business model. Using tactics that MS has done in the past, such as strongarming PC vendors into carrying only MS products to maintain their monopoly, is not (or at least not an ethical one).
Of course administrative computers used for record-keeping do run M$ mostly (somebody should point out to the HMO's how much money they'd save with Linux! They'd be onto it in a shot).
Not necessarily. HMOs are primarily concerned with direct medical costs associated with various procedures and tests that a doctor may decide to administer. What drives the price tag of these is the expertise of the actual human beings administering the tests, materials used, time consumed, and so on. IT costs factor in very little overhead compared to this, so replacing MS with Linux -- while a good idea for many other reasons -- would be well below the radar of the HMOs.
The figure I was quoted was that the average MD in the US makes $300,000/year...Hard to make the case that MDs are underpaid, though.
Please remember that at least 100K of this goes to malpractice insurance, and of the remainder, much of it is going towards paying off hefty student loans.
They removed a review that I wrote about a book on Java because I pointed out (in the context of a factual review) that the author had been arrested (and plead guilty on related charges) for crossing state lines to have sex with a 13 year old girl he met on the Internet!
Had I worked for Amazon and was in charge of filtering reviews, I would have removed your review as well. Your statement in the review had nothing to do with the merits of the book as pertaining to Java programming, and is thus tantamount to using a smear campaign against the author instead of debating the merits of the work itself.
I suggest you all go to Amazon and rate all the "one star" reviews helpful, and all the others "not helpful" for Katie.com
Vindictiveness generally does not get you very far.
IBM's pledge not to use its patent portfolio means nothing, even if they put it in writing. It is just a smokescreen to make them look like the good guys to the F/OSS community, meanwhile they continue to patent everything under the sun, taking full advantage of our horribly broken patent system.
If IBM really wanted to be a champion in this arena, they would step up to the plate and use their clout in Washington to have new legislation passed reforming the patent system. Until I see that, I have no faith in IBM leaving up to any "pledge" they may make.
Could I, as a janitor, put cameras in the woman's washroom because I wanted to prove that too much time was being spent there?
You're attempting to bolster a weak argument by making a analogy that is totally inappropriate to the discussion at hand, which tends to invalidate your entire line of reasoning.
This is not at all apropos to the situation because the janitor does not have it in his power or job description to look for people "wasting their time". He has a responsibility to clean the building and perform regular maintenance.
Now, if that janitor actually did have it in his contract that he was to actively insure people were not loitering about and were putting in their eight hours worth each day, and he chose to monitor bathroom useage, while I would find this a bit dubious a method to use, you know perfectly well that placing a camera INSIDE the bathroom would not be needed; you simply said this for shock value and to make those that disaggree with you seem like they approve of spying on the ladies' room.
If his boss was getting his job done and pleasing his employer, who cares how he did it?
RTFA. He was NOT getting his job done, and had already had complaints about his behavior that fell on deaf ears. If he had been a model supervisor and did do his job, then I would agree. Where I work, we have a similar policy of no non-business use of the computer systems, but the unwritten rule essentially states "we know most of you work your butts off here; taking a short break to catch up on news, your stocks, your personal email, play a short game, etc is not something you'll be fired for, so long as you get your job done well; we trust you to use your judgement."
What his supervisor was doing in this case was not simple breaks for some downtime and relaxation, but a system of abuse of the trust placed in him. And if I were a resident of Alabama, I sure as hell would not want my tax dollars going to pay someone to play solataire all day.
According to the RIAA, if you rent or buy a movie, its for you only. Not your family, or your friends, but yours. If you let someone borrow it, or someone else watches it with you, its illegal.
This is what the MPAA wants people to think and it is incorrect. If I lend a DVD to someone, that is fair use of a product that I have purchased because at any given time, exactly one copy of the DVD exists. I cannot watch it at the same time as the other person. Now, according to the letter of the law as I understand it (disclaimer: IANAL), making a copy of the DVD, then giving away the copy, or giving away the original and keeping the copy is illegal. Also, watching a DVD with a friend is not illegal for the reasons stated in several threads prior to this one. The law specifically protects private viewing by multiple people. Seriously, even if the law read such that you could not have friends watch it with you, what police officer in their right mind is going to arrest someone for that? What judge is going to give someone a criminal record for that? What jury is going to hand out a harsh sentence for that?
What really pisses me off about the (MP|RI)AA is the fact that they purposely muddy the picture by claiming their "interpretation" of the law is the correct one, and, unfortunately, most non tech-savvy people are too dumb or lazy to dispute it, so they just go along with what "authority" tells them.
So that means that we can document that 7 security trained people or outside organizations have looked at any code that is declared "Evaluated"... To say that the code is Linux code is locked down and tested is to say that the barn door is locked too late in the process for the kinds of things the author of this posting is citing as potentials for happening.
So what's stopping the DoD from taking the source code base and doing their own testing and certification on it? Considering you claim to have had a background in this, I'm surprised you didn't think of this. This may save them some time in the long run, since they don't have to go through the effort of developing the software itself.
If I decide to use a library or module from another developer (OSS or otherwise) in something that I am doing, I always take the time to test it to make sure it at least does what I want and is adequate for the task at hand. Now, my own projects don't require a terrible amount of security, but if they did, I would be certain to do some testing in that area as well.
So I just don't get your point. You don't have to develop the code yourself in order to certify it if you have the full source available to you. And then once you have certified it, after making any corrections that you need on your copy of the source, then you lock THAT down. What came out of the original source base is irrelevant at this point. It only matters what you improved upon and certified.
I honestly feel that instead of spending billions fixing up Mars, instead that money should be used on Earth to fix problems that exist here, right now. Hunger, environmental problems, political strife, etc. It'll be a very long time before anything that occurs on Mars has any effect on the majority of human civilization, while investment in fixing Earth problems can have a more immediate global effect for us all.
Overall, I agree with this idea, but I want to make sure we don't get into a zero-sum game here. Certainly I don't want -- or expect -- terraforming to start on Mars tomorrow. Or next year, or possibly next century. I also agree that we have to devote time to our problems here. But this does not have to be done at the expense of totally shelving the idea of terraforming.
This is similar to a debate I get into with my wife on occassion. I show great enthusiasm for the space program that she does not, largely for the same reasons you cite. I try to explain to her that this is not a zero-sum proposition. Our total expenditures on space exploration account for a tiny fraction of what we spend on our current social programs (or defense for that matter).
So I think we should continue to spend some small amount of time and effort -- and money -- studying questions like terraforming. After all, terraforming takes a great deal of time, and it may very well be something we have to do in order for humanity to survive long-term. We can keep our planet totally pristine and pollution free, and we will still have to leave in 100 million to 500 million years' time when the sun's gradual warming makes Earth uninhabitable.
Most ICBMs were NOT designed to destory cities (contrary to left wing propoganda) but to hit limited military targets, primarily the other side's ICBM silos
And I'm sure those same missiles were designed not to give off the least little tiny bit of radiation and fallout afterward? That they somehow will not allow prevailing winds to carry the fallout into cities, rivers, and farms? You make these things sound so wonderful and neat and clean. Bullshit. You're purposely ignoring all the secondary effects of a widespread series of groundburst or near-groundburst nuclear explosions. No matter how low yield or how "clean" these things are, in a full scale nuclear war like you're suggesting, you'll have enough going off to send an appreciable amount of fallout into the air. And considering that most of our silos are in the midwest right alongside farmland (what fucking moron conceived that one??), that does not make for a very rosy scenario after the war. Whether or not the secondary effects are intentional is a moot point; the effects are real and are not possible to suppress. You have a fission reaction, you are going to have radioactive materials left over.
The Tomahawk Cruise Missile was designed to deliver a nuclear warhead within 7 feet of its target... That would allow you to hit each silo with ONE missile, instead of TWO
Oh, that makes me feel SO much better.
The end of cold war weapons were finally reaching the goal of winning a nuclear exchange.
That's extremely scary thinking. I sincerely hope this thinking was limited to people like you who are not looking at all the facts and not our government. To think that someone could win -- or would want to win -- a nuclear war is sickening.
Taking out downtown Manhattan would take 8-12 nuclear missiles
This boggles the mind. Where the hell are you getting your facts? Though this does sync with your other false statement that these weapons were not designed to take out cities. Each side has different classes of weapons. While it is true that the bulk of each side's arsenals are counterforce weapons -- i.e. aimed at each others weapons -- each side also has many countervalue weapons -- i.e. aimed at cities. These are indeed specifically designed to level cities, taking industry and economic centers with them, and they are not so inefficiently designed to require "8-12" missiles. These missiles typically have yields in the megaton range, and it takes a far smaller number, either delivered via two or three single-warhead missiles, or one MIRV'ed warhead missile.
not "wiping out the world 10 times over" or whatever propoganda we grew up with.
The exact figure of "10 times over" is subject to debate and is not the point. The main point in this possible hyperbole is that while the pure, physical destructive force of all the world's warheads is not capable of wiping out the entire world in the actual fireballs, shock waves, etc, this does not take into account all the secondary effects, such as radiation, fallout, and possible climatalogical effects of burning materials throwing thousands of tons of soot and other debris into the atmosphere. And yes, I know there is still substantial debate about the "nuclear winter" scenario. But do me a favor and find some other planet to test the theory on, thank you.
Couldnt they have atleast dropped the bombs somewhere where everyone would know about them but few or none would be harmed?
Considering that the Japanese military was still debating whether or not to end the war even after the second bomb was dropped, I'd say no, it would not have worked. It took an action by emperor Hurohito himself to end the war, and even then the military tried to stop it, and it was only because Hurohito had enough forces still loyal to him that he survived and was able to put a stop to the madness. Had the military taken over the country, they may have continued the war, and the US would either have had to turn more of the country into smoking radioactive ruin or risk millions of casualties on both sides in a ground assault.
Consider this as well: while dropping these bombs on cities was barbaric (war is seldom anything less), it served a purpose. Instead of having only scientific studies, theory, and supposition as to the long-term effects of a nuclear war, we got to see it for real on a small scale, right in our face, no way to deny or cover up. It made the prospect of using these things again too horrifying a concept for any nation to consider.
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The problem I run into at my job is not so much spelling and grammar. I fortunately run into very few problems with that. What sets my teeth on edge is lack of basic netiquette skills.
For instance, I cringe when I see someone reply to a long email outlining multiple points in a discussion, only to see the person head the message with "My comments below IN CAPS". This person then proceeds to do just that, namely give all her comments in all uppercase. Ugh. There is no need for this. It is very clear what is quoted text and what is not quoted text.
Another one that is rampant at my company is top-posting. Everyone insists on quoting a message in a reply and proceeding to post their comments at the top. When I try to lead by example and properly bottom-post, people complain my emails are not clear. Argh.
At least I no longer have a boss like I did on my last job. She wrote her emails in all lowercase and used HTML blink tags.
It's about time we all face up to an important fact. When it comes to manned space travel, NASA can no longer be factored into the equation. NASA is not our future of manned spaceflight. They were great for getting humanity's foot in the door, but the private sector is going to have to take it from here. NASA cannot be relied upon to produce results when Congress will not give them funding.
So I am not as concerned about the fact that Congress will not give them the budget for this. What I am far more concerned about is what was mentioned at the end of the article:
The Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 - which passed the House last week and is expected to pass the Senate when it reconvenes next week - actually tightens safety restrictions on any future private competitions like the X Prize.
I googled for this bill and came up with some info, but a lot of it is hard to piece together because there appear to be multiple versions of this bill. On first blush it would appear that Congress is already leaping into the fore of regulating this industry before it has even started.
So my greater concern is that the private sector may get as badly hamstrung as NASA, but just in a different way. Perhaps we should stop focusing on trying to get NASA funding and instead keep an eye on Congress and prevent them from overregulating the industry to death. Let NASA stick to what they appear to be best at, anyway, namely unmanned spaceflight.
I would wish it to succeed only if it can be done without revealing trade secrets or other information that the parties in question -- which are both privately owned companies -- can show are should remain confidential without jeoparding a fair disposition of the case by the judge and/or jury. Participants in a civil suit (and yes, this includes SCO, as much as we hate them) must have a reasonable expectation of privacy, otherwise people who have a valid claim will be afraid to bring their case to a court of law.
I do agree that there is an unusual aspect to the case. The fact that this is a dispute over a large open source project makes it somewhat unique. If SCO indeed had a case, and enough valid evidence were presented to convince a judge and jury of the merits of their claims, I would be completely in favor of forcing any sealed records concerning that evidence to be made public. To do otherwise would unfairly hamstring Linux (i.e. they would be violation of copyright but not given the tools to remediate it)
Technically speaking, I don't think this would be considered fodder for an anti-trust suit. Their grounds for doing this is to prevent government-created (read: government subsidized) services competing with their privately owned and operated services. I can agree with this thinking. If I own a company that profits from providing a particular service, then I damn well don't want the government walzing in and offering the same thing and undercutting me.
Now, if they did something like this to block other companies from doing this, then you're talking anti-trust issues. If they gouge customers with high prices and some other company can come into the market and offer it for less, then that's the market in action. If they turn around and try to force out that other company by any means other than honest competition, then that is possible anti-trust.
I've heard lots of criticism over this particular plot device in this episode. How could a race evolve like that? How could evolution select for something like that? On and on.
My position on this is that people who can't see past this are missing the point of the episode. The point was not how a race could evolve like this, but how a race could chew itself up over something as trivial as which side of their face is white and which side is black. It was a nice statement against racism, which was pretty daring for that particular time in American history.
Sorry to pick on your post to make this point. Nothing personal, this is just a pet peeve of mine (I guess that makes me even more a pathetic geek than you :) )
Here's a question for anyone out there with any knowledge in this area: how close does a name need to be to a trademark to constitute infingement? Here in Colorado, the primary electrical utility company for much of the state is Xcel Energy. "Xcel" is not spelled the same, but does the fact that it sounds exactly alike and is only one letter off mean anything from the perspective of the law? Does it mean anything that it's a totally different industry (and hence little chance it would be confused with a Microsoft product)?
I love it when people trot out this little factoid and conveniently ignore the fact that past climatological changes generally occurred over the course of hundreds of thousands to millions of years, as opposed to recent trends that occurred in only 100 years.
No, they are not "unauthorized". Shakespeare is in the public domain.
Actually, I have had quite intelligent conversations about these two topics with people. The two topics that I have found I cannot accomplish this with are abortion and gun control. One of the reasons I have relative marital harmony at home is because my wife and I have the same stance on these issues.
Only the most important one of all: Synthahol
Their logic can be defined thusly (to borrow some quotes from Spock in a particularly memorable episode of Star Trek):
"Logic is a little bird tweeting in a meadow."
"Logic is a wreath of pretty flowers ... that smell BAD."
That about sums up SCO's logic.
Y'know, one wonders what goes through the heads of McBride and his Deatheaters at SCO. They don't make any money on the Linux license deal so they ... raise prices?? Just where does the "Profit!" step come in?
But it all depends on how you crush your competition. If you crush it by offering a better/cheaper product than your competitor, that's fine, and that is indeed a good business model. Using tactics that MS has done in the past, such as strongarming PC vendors into carrying only MS products to maintain their monopoly, is not (or at least not an ethical one).
Not necessarily. HMOs are primarily concerned with direct medical costs associated with various procedures and tests that a doctor may decide to administer. What drives the price tag of these is the expertise of the actual human beings administering the tests, materials used, time consumed, and so on. IT costs factor in very little overhead compared to this, so replacing MS with Linux -- while a good idea for many other reasons -- would be well below the radar of the HMOs.
Please remember that at least 100K of this goes to malpractice insurance, and of the remainder, much of it is going towards paying off hefty student loans.
Had I worked for Amazon and was in charge of filtering reviews, I would have removed your review as well. Your statement in the review had nothing to do with the merits of the book as pertaining to Java programming, and is thus tantamount to using a smear campaign against the author instead of debating the merits of the work itself.
I suggest you all go to Amazon and rate all the "one star" reviews helpful, and all the others "not helpful" for Katie.comVindictiveness generally does not get you very far.
IBM's pledge not to use its patent portfolio means nothing, even if they put it in writing. It is just a smokescreen to make them look like the good guys to the F/OSS community, meanwhile they continue to patent everything under the sun, taking full advantage of our horribly broken patent system.
If IBM really wanted to be a champion in this arena, they would step up to the plate and use their clout in Washington to have new legislation passed reforming the patent system. Until I see that, I have no faith in IBM leaving up to any "pledge" they may make.
You're attempting to bolster a weak argument by making a analogy that is totally inappropriate to the discussion at hand, which tends to invalidate your entire line of reasoning.
This is not at all apropos to the situation because the janitor does not have it in his power or job description to look for people "wasting their time". He has a responsibility to clean the building and perform regular maintenance.
Now, if that janitor actually did have it in his contract that he was to actively insure people were not loitering about and were putting in their eight hours worth each day, and he chose to monitor bathroom useage, while I would find this a bit dubious a method to use, you know perfectly well that placing a camera INSIDE the bathroom would not be needed; you simply said this for shock value and to make those that disaggree with you seem like they approve of spying on the ladies' room.
RTFA. He was NOT getting his job done, and had already had complaints about his behavior that fell on deaf ears. If he had been a model supervisor and did do his job, then I would agree. Where I work, we have a similar policy of no non-business use of the computer systems, but the unwritten rule essentially states "we know most of you work your butts off here; taking a short break to catch up on news, your stocks, your personal email, play a short game, etc is not something you'll be fired for, so long as you get your job done well; we trust you to use your judgement."
What his supervisor was doing in this case was not simple breaks for some downtime and relaxation, but a system of abuse of the trust placed in him. And if I were a resident of Alabama, I sure as hell would not want my tax dollars going to pay someone to play solataire all day.
This is what the MPAA wants people to think and it is incorrect. If I lend a DVD to someone, that is fair use of a product that I have purchased because at any given time, exactly one copy of the DVD exists. I cannot watch it at the same time as the other person. Now, according to the letter of the law as I understand it (disclaimer: IANAL), making a copy of the DVD, then giving away the copy, or giving away the original and keeping the copy is illegal. Also, watching a DVD with a friend is not illegal for the reasons stated in several threads prior to this one. The law specifically protects private viewing by multiple people. Seriously, even if the law read such that you could not have friends watch it with you, what police officer in their right mind is going to arrest someone for that? What judge is going to give someone a criminal record for that? What jury is going to hand out a harsh sentence for that?
What really pisses me off about the (MP|RI)AA is the fact that they purposely muddy the picture by claiming their "interpretation" of the law is the correct one, and, unfortunately, most non tech-savvy people are too dumb or lazy to dispute it, so they just go along with what "authority" tells them.
To say that the code is Linux code is locked down and tested is to say that the barn door is locked too late in the process for the kinds of things the author of this posting is citing as potentials for happening.
So what's stopping the DoD from taking the source code base and doing their own testing and certification on it? Considering you claim to have had a background in this, I'm surprised you didn't think of this. This may save them some time in the long run, since they don't have to go through the effort of developing the software itself.
If I decide to use a library or module from another developer (OSS or otherwise) in something that I am doing, I always take the time to test it to make sure it at least does what I want and is adequate for the task at hand. Now, my own projects don't require a terrible amount of security, but if they did, I would be certain to do some testing in that area as well.
So I just don't get your point. You don't have to develop the code yourself in order to certify it if you have the full source available to you. And then once you have certified it, after making any corrections that you need on your copy of the source, then you lock THAT down. What came out of the original source base is irrelevant at this point. It only matters what you improved upon and certified.
Isn't that what physicists do every day?
Stephen Hawking, cosmic code hacker.
Overall, I agree with this idea, but I want to make sure we don't get into a zero-sum game here. Certainly I don't want -- or expect -- terraforming to start on Mars tomorrow. Or next year, or possibly next century. I also agree that we have to devote time to our problems here. But this does not have to be done at the expense of totally shelving the idea of terraforming.
This is similar to a debate I get into with my wife on occassion. I show great enthusiasm for the space program that she does not, largely for the same reasons you cite. I try to explain to her that this is not a zero-sum proposition. Our total expenditures on space exploration account for a tiny fraction of what we spend on our current social programs (or defense for that matter).
So I think we should continue to spend some small amount of time and effort -- and money -- studying questions like terraforming. After all, terraforming takes a great deal of time, and it may very well be something we have to do in order for humanity to survive long-term. We can keep our planet totally pristine and pollution free, and we will still have to leave in 100 million to 500 million years' time when the sun's gradual warming makes Earth uninhabitable.
And I'm sure those same missiles were designed not to give off the least little tiny bit of radiation and fallout afterward? That they somehow will not allow prevailing winds to carry the fallout into cities, rivers, and farms? You make these things sound so wonderful and neat and clean. Bullshit. You're purposely ignoring all the secondary effects of a widespread series of groundburst or near-groundburst nuclear explosions. No matter how low yield or how "clean" these things are, in a full scale nuclear war like you're suggesting, you'll have enough going off to send an appreciable amount of fallout into the air. And considering that most of our silos are in the midwest right alongside farmland (what fucking moron conceived that one??), that does not make for a very rosy scenario after the war. Whether or not the secondary effects are intentional is a moot point; the effects are real and are not possible to suppress. You have a fission reaction, you are going to have radioactive materials left over.
The Tomahawk Cruise Missile was designed to deliver a nuclear warhead within 7 feet of its target... That would allow you to hit each silo with ONE missile, instead of TWOOh, that makes me feel SO much better.
The end of cold war weapons were finally reaching the goal of winning a nuclear exchange.That's extremely scary thinking. I sincerely hope this thinking was limited to people like you who are not looking at all the facts and not our government. To think that someone could win -- or would want to win -- a nuclear war is sickening.
Taking out downtown Manhattan would take 8-12 nuclear missilesThis boggles the mind. Where the hell are you getting your facts? Though this does sync with your other false statement that these weapons were not designed to take out cities. Each side has different classes of weapons. While it is true that the bulk of each side's arsenals are counterforce weapons -- i.e. aimed at each others weapons -- each side also has many countervalue weapons -- i.e. aimed at cities. These are indeed specifically designed to level cities, taking industry and economic centers with them, and they are not so inefficiently designed to require "8-12" missiles. These missiles typically have yields in the megaton range, and it takes a far smaller number, either delivered via two or three single-warhead missiles, or one MIRV'ed warhead missile.
not "wiping out the world 10 times over" or whatever propoganda we grew up with.The exact figure of "10 times over" is subject to debate and is not the point. The main point in this possible hyperbole is that while the pure, physical destructive force of all the world's warheads is not capable of wiping out the entire world in the actual fireballs, shock waves, etc, this does not take into account all the secondary effects, such as radiation, fallout, and possible climatalogical effects of burning materials throwing thousands of tons of soot and other debris into the atmosphere. And yes, I know there is still substantial debate about the "nuclear winter" scenario. But do me a favor and find some other planet to test the theory on, thank you.
Considering that the Japanese military was still debating whether or not to end the war even after the second bomb was dropped, I'd say no, it would not have worked. It took an action by emperor Hurohito himself to end the war, and even then the military tried to stop it, and it was only because Hurohito had enough forces still loyal to him that he survived and was able to put a stop to the madness. Had the military taken over the country, they may have continued the war, and the US would either have had to turn more of the country into smoking radioactive ruin or risk millions of casualties on both sides in a ground assault.
Consider this as well: while dropping these bombs on cities was barbaric (war is seldom anything less), it served a purpose. Instead of having only scientific studies, theory, and supposition as to the long-term effects of a nuclear war, we got to see it for real on a small scale, right in our face, no way to deny or cover up. It made the prospect of using these things again too horrifying a concept for any nation to consider.