Re:How closely are the casino's being watched?
on
Net Vegas
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· Score: 5, Insightful
The casinos are watched fairly closely, though not perhaps by the gaming commissions. Here is how I figure it. The commisions establish relatively fair laws, the casinos make money and people come away happy. Not only that there is the fairly famous gambler's ruin mathematical theory that shows that the gambler never can break even, it is always in the houses favor.
Now, of course, the casinos might want to make even more money by cheating people. Here is why this wouldn't work on, most likely, a grand scale. Even if they managed to bribe a large contigent of inspectors ( a distinct possibility) what would happen, you suppose, if word of this got out? I mean, las vegas cheating people on a grand scale? You would have investigations upon investigations and it could ruin business in vegas. As I see casino operators are making money hand-over-fist right now, why attempt to ruin a good thing? Also, what happens if a rival casino operator finds out you are cheating? I'm sure a fair ammount of self-policing goes on to make sure one bad apple, so to speak, doesn't ruin it for the rest of Vegas. You think atlantic city and other places wouldn't jump on the chance to be the new 'fair city of gambling?'
This is not to say they don't cheat - I'm sure it happens, but not on any grand scale. Lets face it, if you are going to vegas odds are you aren't going to come away with more money than you brought.
Allright I work at a university research library so I can possibly answer this for you. For one, no we haven't had the FBI knocking on our door so that is good. But, as to how they would do this i have a few theories.
I doubt they would run anything on the computers themselves using a program or a keylogger, mainly because it is too much work and ALOT of people would have to know about. I mean, we have 176 public computers and around 200 staff computers throughout all our branches they would have to bug. And to do that they would have to involve at least 3 people PLUS the student techs who administer the machines and work in the labs. I would doubt they would bother with it, considering the work to log 500 some machines. Doesn't seem worth their time.
Instead, and much more likely, they would track the people's book browsing habits. Our library uses a third-party system called IRIS (innovative research something something) to handle our online card catalog, which happens to be our only card catalog. Now things become more interesting. Since all queries (seaching for books, journals, etc, etc) are tracked by IP and logged automatically by the IRIS machine in the first place - to see interests in books and what we can keep or send to storage, not part of some grand conspiracy - all the FBI would have to do is ask for the logs. Then, assuming they know which computer the suspect was at, match the IP's with the queries. Also if they wanted stuff like book checkout records, etc, etc, they could just grab it from the IRIS machine. Basically, this would be relatively easy for them and only 1-2 people who have to know. And, even better, the general public would be oblivious. You could also set up the database to only report certain queries for books, and the like. I mean the infrastructure is there, all they have to do is turn it on/customize it to what they need.
The only way you could find out about it is if you had access to the IRIS machine. And, sorry guys, that ain't going to happen unless you work there. So don't go to your local library looking for key loggers you aren't going to find any. Now, personally, I am a lowly student computer tech so I have absolutely no say in this but it is somewhat scary to think of.
Also, they could just deploy packet sniffers, etc, etc on the LAN.
Just a little note here, I am a computer tech at a college lab - don't put too much stock into how computers in your lab run. 9 times out of 10 the things are fscked, or set up in such a way to make them feel slow. It just happens. When you set up computers for a lab you don't particularly care about speed but about security and ease of maintenance. Just a thought.
Probably none, it would be suicide. Listen, big companies like Sony have these divisions - music, hardware, whatever. 10-1 odds that each division has no idea/say in what the other does. I would imagine that there would be an epic fight for the music/whatever division to include some sort of DRM on a burner like this. Why? Because it would (most likely) attract alot of negative attention and possibly cause the drive to not sell well. Therefore, the hardware division isn't going to allow for DRM without alot of pressure or the big guys upstairs telling themt too.
Also, it would be curious to see which division of Sony makes the most money - the media or the hardware. If I where a betting man I would say the hardware, ergo they have more say.
Is Microsoft really that worried about market share in impoverished Africa, and is it this inept at promoting itself?
You know that cracks me up. I mean Africa has a mean Per-Capita-GNP of about $2000, a AIDS infection rate reaching 30% in some countries, massive amounts of foreign debt, corrupt governments, and the list goes on-and-on. And yet microsoft is paranoid about market share. You think they would realize that it is *really* hard to get a business/non-profit organization/individual to pay 600-1200$ for the latest Microsoft Products when they can get near-equivalents for *free*. As in free. As in don't have to sacrifice the equivalent of 1 years worth of pay to buy some MS products which might be marginally better than the equivalent *Free* products. The only hope they have is giving them free software since, in all likelihood, if the organization really wants said copies of MS software they will just pirate the darn things anyways. And, hey, wouldn't you if you made 1500$ a year? Note: Don't advocate piracy or stealing, just trying to point out how inept MS strategy is.
To: Microsoft
From: Africa
Subject: Quotes
After reviewing your offering of $15,000 to connect and equip 20 computers with software - from our grand total IT budget of about 50$ - we have decided to go with the competitions offer of *FREE*. That way instead of buying your over-priced software we can actually do some good like teaching rudimentry tech skills, feeding the poor kids we teach, and maybe attracting some tech jobs to improve the future of our grandchildren. We would like to assure you that your quote was appreciated and look forward to possibly doing business with you in the future.
I agree, I just meant the general statement to be the special morons who put there house sitting right on the dunes, about 5 meters from the high tide mark. That is building too close to the beahc.
No you would be the one stupid enough to *buy* property about to slide into the sea you deserve what you get. If you buy beachfront property and need a sea wall you shouldn't be buying it in the the first place or *shock* you should've built your house on a different location. There are other solutions to building a sea wall btw, that is just the cheapest. Also, people
Seriously, this is crap. The beach is the most dynamic enviroment the earth has to offer, and one of the most vital to organism reproducing. I could care less about your 400,000$ beachfront house that is going to be rubble the next time a hurricane/el nino/mudslide comes around anyways. Repeat after me - never build that close to a beach.
Bah, sorry for the rant it has been a long day. I took a oceanography class last semester from a really good professor who drilled into us how dumb beachfront building really is.
Exactly my reaction. It would be *wonderful* to read and see what they have. Nonetheless a couple of caveats:
Not everything is going to be available. I mean, it's simply not possible. We are talking about miles and miles of books here, many in a quite fragile state.
Most stuff isn't going to be in english. As a matter of fact, very little will be available in english or be translated to english
this will take years, if not decades. I work for a library and they are doing a kindof similar thing - it takes years. The only good thing is, like most libraries, they will probably publish the stuff via a nice XML format meaning that it will likely still be readable in 10-15-20 years.
No it's all public domain, of course. They do, currently, charge a fee for reproduction (i.e. if you want a copy of whatever they have sent to you) but it is fair, and similar to inter-library loan. The vatican doesn't claim copyright ownership other than this - you can reproduce whatever you want but god save your immortal soul (literally =)) if you change/edit the material and claim it is the original.
The vatican library isn't anything akin to scientology, the basic tennanents of the catholic church, enumerated in a book called the catechism, can be found at most major bookstores. Also, AFAIK the library is open to the public, and any information can be had similar to Interlibrary loan. The library by no means serves as a 'cash cow' for the catholic church and is designed to be used for scholarly research by the church and others. Remember, a large amount of very important historical texts where/are perserved at the library during the middle ages.
Vatican city's copyright law, such as it is, is based off of italian/roman common law and is quite similar to that. Now the vatican website had some additional information on photgraphic reproductions but I couldn't read it - in italian and was only able to guess (shrug, italian kindof similar to spanish) that anything published after 1801 might be copyrighted/unable to be photographicaly reproduced but... I don't know.
My god, I actually *learned* something in all those years of catholic school.
Good for yours, I found out my bank - a fairly large statewide bank - has iffy support across the board. While nearly everything can log in (as long as it supports 128 bit encryption which is a *Good Thing*) various functions don't work. I contacted the people about this and they said they would talk to the vendor soon about it. Well 6 months later I got tired of waiting and took a look at the code myself.
What was happening was they where using javascript for the pull down menu's that was only set to recognize MSIE 5/6 and Netscape 4/6. Note - this script would work in about everything I tested it in (opera, moz) but it was just set to only work if it detected those browser's strings. I sent them the fixed.js file that would work for everything but, of course, they declined to use it.
Sigh. Not much I can do about it anymore - besides set opera to identify itself as MSIE 5.0 but that doesn't help with mozilla.
A little late replying but Buran *was* a direct copy of the US space shuttle. They figured not to try and build there own when they could copy the US's and improve/customize some things.
At any rate Buran used the Energia as it's launching vehicle, the actual Buran spacecraft had, compared to space shuttle, very little thrust *on the spaceship itself*. On the other hand, Energia is, and was, the most powerful rocket ever constructed by man with the possible exception of the Saturn V. It was enormous powerhouse of a rocket. For more info read the link.
IANAL blah blah blah but there is barraty, which is a *Criminal* offense:
BARRATRY - The practice of instituting groundless judicial proceedings - a crime in a number of jurisdictions.
In old law French barat, baraterie, signifying robbery, deceit, fraud. In modern usage it may be defined as the habitual moving, exciting and maintaining suits and quarrels, either at law or otherwise.
A man cannot be indicted as a common barrator in respect of any number of false and groundless actions brought in his own right, nor for a single act in right of another; for that would not make him a common barrator.
n. creating legal business by stirring up disputes and quarrels, generally for the benefit of the lawyer who sees fees in the matter. Barratry is illegal in all states and subject to criminal punishment and/or discipline by the state bar, but there must be a showing that the resulting lawsuit was totally groundless. There is a lot of border-line barratry in which attorneys, in the name of being tough or protecting the client, fail to seek avenues for settlement of disputes or will not tell the client he/she has no legitimate claim.
The problem, as usual is that barraty is nearly as hard to prove as libel/slander making it a very, very rare thing to see much like Libel/Slander cases.
Been a long time but.... set up wget to grab the link, oh, 4 million or so times? I would guess that google has some sort of system that prevents this though so you would probably have to go through some hoops.
Actually banks are not required by law to be FDIC insured - this is a common fallacy. Here in a nebraska about 20 or so years back there was this bank offering all these great low-interest loans... they where able to do this because they weren't paying FDIC insurance. So when the bank went belly-up and everybody came to the gov't looking for money.. well yeah. Anyways, banks aren't required to be FDIC insured and you should ALWAYS check before investing your money.
Commonly cited example and a good one. Churchill knew, through Ultra, that the germans where going to bomb Coventry. He couldn't do anything about it b/c, like you said, it would show they had partially cracked Enigma. He had to live with that decision which ended up costing around 25,000 lives... and probably saved 10x that because of the extremely valuable information ultra provided to the allies throughout the war.
The global warming will have a severe effect on the agriculture. This will increase the pressure to migrate to other parts of the world. This will not increase political stability nor peacefullness. It is to be remembered that big migrations around the year 400 finished off the roman empire without breaking sweat. These (too) were caused by climate changes.
Climate didn't cause the roman empire to collapse although it was a major contributing factor and a catalyst. You could argue that had those same climate changes occured at, oh, 200 A.D. the empire would've probably been fine. You bring up a good point though, only the strongest of empires/countries can survive climate change of this magnitude. The Han dynasty in China, the Kush kingdom in Africa, and the Parthian Empire all collapsed at roughly the same time as the Western roman empire did.
These changes just came at the wrong time for the Roman Empire and might come at the wrong time for us. It was years of waste and corruption, an increasingly non-roman army, weaker government,loss of food supply, inability to maintain it's borders - or indefensible borders if you prefer, and many, many other factors. A rapid debate will ensue among most historians if you mention the collapse of the Roman Empire. Climate change just seemed to be the catalyst for the final collapse - as it might be the catalyst for the collapse of western civilization (Don't call me paranoid, read the damm paper below)
For more I wrote a term paper on this very subject a year or two ago: Climate Change and the Collapse of Empires (Open Office Doc). Looks at the parthian empire, kush dynasty, and Han regime in china as well which collapsed around the same time. Not exactly the best paper I have written but it does give a good background.
Yes and no. The principles of stealth are extremely complex and hard ot understand for even the experts but I will try to explain it a little here, from what i understand.
Basically you can never make an aircraft 'disappear' off of radar for a number of reasons. Radar works by sending out frequency pulses and then reading the returns . The key is to reduce those returns to nearly nothing by reducing the planes RCS (radar cross section? something like that). You do THAT by doing a large number of simple things. First you make sure that no matter what no flat on angle is presented to the beam, instead you want everything to be angled as to deflect as much as the energy away from the aircraft as possible (think of the f-117A). You also shield the turbine intakes behind multiple radar absorbing screens, wierd angles in the ductwork, etc (believe it or not one of the biggest sources of radar returns are the turbine blades in the engines). You also plaster the thing with radar-absorbing material.
Also, look at the B-2 from head on. Not much there is it? Incredibly small and you won't find a flat, head-on angle anywhere on the aircraft except.. well here is where this gets tricky. Operating at perfection in ideal conditions the B-2 is about as small a radar cross section as a hummingbird or so. Yes, it can still be detected by modern radar and it can instantly become trackable by doing a number of things (the biggest being a nice angle from the top/bottom of the plane where it's RCS is huge). What B-2, and other stealth aircraft pilots, are trained to do is approach the target from the best possible angles maximizing the time you aren't detected. Now, they can also use standoff missles with long ranges (20+km) to avoid the radar and find 'holes' in the radar coverages to launch their weapons from. Not to mention that it is presumed that the target will also be saturated with Jamming and wild weasal missions. The air force ain't stupid and wouldn't send a flight of b-2's into a potentionall hostile target enviroment unless they where fairly sure they would come out on top w/o any losses (1 billion a plane makes you do that =).
Also note that the only things that can detect B-2's/F-117A/Other stealth aircraft are only the most modern of radars. You instantly elimante 90% of the world's anti-aircraft defenses.. and the 10% that HAVE those defenses tend to be our allies. The 'tiny investment' you speak of isn't so tiny.... even the best, most advanced radar systems of western nations (which have the best, most modern radar systems) have an extremely hard time picking up stealth aircraft - and they can't be everywhere at once. Deploying a full-time AA grid is extroadanirly expensive... so much so that a number of nations (US) don't even bother. And these things can be dealt with other ways - protect your capital with anti-stealth radars eh? Fine. We will send 14 wild weasal sites and take em out.
Finally consider the new F-22 raptor fighter. Extremely stealthy (nearly as much as a B-2) with AMRAAM fire-and-forget missles, supersonic cruise ability... quite simply nothing can touch it - and I mean nothing. They can usually detect, find, and kill a target before that target can even see them (for those of yuo paying attention they can use targeting data downloaded from a AWACS plane to lock/fire the AMRAAM so as to be undetectable).
Oh, for things like infra-red a number of techniques are used including burying the engines inside to fuselage, spreading the exhaust over a larger area, and a number of other features to make them more 'stealthy'.
The Air Force's obsession with stealth is a good thing... and I hope this answers your questions.
While I agree with your post the same could be said of linux, linux very rarely 'innovates' (i'm talking about general Unix software now) other than you know that the software will likely be secure and stable. I mean, really, what was the last 'innovation' that occured in the *nix/world? Wow, we finally got journalling databases, and we are finally starting to get user-friendly UI enviroments. Whopee. Not the most technical of people so maybe the linux kernel does do some wonderfully modern stuff but to me it doesn't look like much.
Of all the modern OS's I feel the *nix world copies the most and does the least innovation. Think of all that could be done with kde/gnome - but instead they became win98 clones until just recently. Not that *nix software is bad it just being a wee bit hypocritical.
BTW, you missed.Net which is basically a suped-up version of Java to replace MS's previous failed java-usurper ActiveX. =).
Not saying I particularly like how she reviews things (I mean, come on, installing it on ONE machine?) but I can always count on the fact that she will give her total unbiased opinion - even if it is dead wrong - and to me that is worth its weight in gold.
Eugenia does have a tendency to trash most *anything* she reviews. Sometimes it can be annoying yes but often times she brings up great points and nobody can accuse her of being biased (she did like Red Hat tho). Often times she explains it as she tries to look at the whatever as though a typical end user would - not a geek who understands and knows about many of the issues facing linux. I find a number of points she brings up quite useful/relevant:
General UI crappiness - inconsitent layout/design, confusing menus (to a NORMAL END USER, not us geeks), multiple settings locations (really i despise this about all modern linux distros). She praises the few that get it right though, such as red hat with bluecurve (according to her at least).
Stability Oh yes, 'linux' crashes. Sure we will say no it is just X that crashes but does the end user care/know? No they don't, and no they don't want to go into console to kill x and start it over again, instead they will just reboot. To be honest X crashes more on me than Win2k/Xp. Doesn't mean I don't like X any less just an observation.
The Many and Varied issues with X - The most common of these, and the one that makes me shudder with hatred, is the only way to change your refresh rate is by going through and editing a set of.conf files (yes, yes I know this was just added to the CVS tree a few weeks ago but it isn't here now now is it?). This is a feature windows has had for nearly 7 years now! . Also, some of us use fixed-frequency monitors which means our computer is unusable until we can get through and edit these files. Personally my SGI monitor will work for about 10-15 minutes at 60hz (needs to run at 85hz) before shutting off. I hate having to go in and edit these files where as with windows it is a few clicks away. And many, many more problems. Not that X doesn't do some things great (terminal server anybody?) but it isn't perfect by any means.
Too Many Programs - us geeks love having 13 web browsers. Other people would rather not care. She makes an excellent point with respect to the 7 terminal clients included with Mandrake. 7???? 1 or 2 at most, leave the rest to be installed by those who want them.
I think people who hate Eugenia's reviews the most are those who are unwilling to admit the huge flaws present in most linux distros today. BTW, I use debian at home for my desktop (apt-get rocks my world), it's not like I love windows but it does do quite a few things better than linux. And some things alot worse for that matter.
Oh boy. How do we define terrorism? How do we determine if there are actually terrorists in these countries? Unilaterally decalare that they are holding terrorist's and demand they turn them over while offering no proof(ala afghanistan)? This is one of the dumbest, stupidest ideas I have ever heard. Also note boyo that since 9/11 there hasn't been a single terrorist attack against the US (note: anthrax might be domestic, unknown).
Let us not forget about how much hate we will generate by taking/overthrowing multiple countries or the cost in lives, money, time effort. Yeah. Real smart. Think afghanistan was easy to invade? sure. Try invading georgia or checnya and see how much the CIS likes it. Or N. Korea and watch china/Japan go nuts. Try invading more than one country at a time and watch as slowly the US military gets bogged down in multiple overseas conflicts, or gets stuck in another vietnam/panama (ala 1900's). Smart. Real smart. let's just go barging in on other countries and demanding they hand over there citizens to us with no proof.
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The casinos are watched fairly closely, though not perhaps by the gaming commissions. Here is how I figure it. The commisions establish relatively fair laws, the casinos make money and people come away happy. Not only that there is the fairly famous gambler's ruin mathematical theory that shows that the gambler never can break even, it is always in the houses favor.
Now, of course, the casinos might want to make even more money by cheating people. Here is why this wouldn't work on, most likely, a grand scale. Even if they managed to bribe a large contigent of inspectors ( a distinct possibility) what would happen, you suppose, if word of this got out? I mean, las vegas cheating people on a grand scale? You would have investigations upon investigations and it could ruin business in vegas. As I see casino operators are making money hand-over-fist right now, why attempt to ruin a good thing? Also, what happens if a rival casino operator finds out you are cheating? I'm sure a fair ammount of self-policing goes on to make sure one bad apple, so to speak, doesn't ruin it for the rest of Vegas. You think atlantic city and other places wouldn't jump on the chance to be the new 'fair city of gambling?'
This is not to say they don't cheat - I'm sure it happens, but not on any grand scale. Lets face it, if you are going to vegas odds are you aren't going to come away with more money than you brought.
Allright I work at a university research library so I can possibly answer this for you. For one, no we haven't had the FBI knocking on our door so that is good. But, as to how they would do this i have a few theories.
I doubt they would run anything on the computers themselves using a program or a keylogger, mainly because it is too much work and ALOT of people would have to know about. I mean, we have 176 public computers and around 200 staff computers throughout all our branches they would have to bug. And to do that they would have to involve at least 3 people PLUS the student techs who administer the machines and work in the labs. I would doubt they would bother with it, considering the work to log 500 some machines. Doesn't seem worth their time.
Instead, and much more likely, they would track the people's book browsing habits. Our library uses a third-party system called IRIS (innovative research something something) to handle our online card catalog, which happens to be our only card catalog. Now things become more interesting. Since all queries (seaching for books, journals, etc, etc) are tracked by IP and logged automatically by the IRIS machine in the first place - to see interests in books and what we can keep or send to storage, not part of some grand conspiracy - all the FBI would have to do is ask for the logs. Then, assuming they know which computer the suspect was at, match the IP's with the queries. Also if they wanted stuff like book checkout records, etc, etc, they could just grab it from the IRIS machine. Basically, this would be relatively easy for them and only 1-2 people who have to know. And, even better, the general public would be oblivious. You could also set up the database to only report certain queries for books, and the like. I mean the infrastructure is there, all they have to do is turn it on/customize it to what they need.
The only way you could find out about it is if you had access to the IRIS machine. And, sorry guys, that ain't going to happen unless you work there. So don't go to your local library looking for key loggers you aren't going to find any. Now, personally, I am a lowly student computer tech so I have absolutely no say in this but it is somewhat scary to think of.
Also, they could just deploy packet sniffers, etc, etc on the LAN.
Just a little note here, I am a computer tech at a college lab - don't put too much stock into how computers in your lab run. 9 times out of 10 the things are fscked, or set up in such a way to make them feel slow. It just happens. When you set up computers for a lab you don't particularly care about speed but about security and ease of maintenance. Just a thought.
Probably none, it would be suicide. Listen, big companies like Sony have these divisions - music, hardware, whatever. 10-1 odds that each division has no idea/say in what the other does. I would imagine that there would be an epic fight for the music/whatever division to include some sort of DRM on a burner like this. Why? Because it would (most likely) attract alot of negative attention and possibly cause the drive to not sell well. Therefore, the hardware division isn't going to allow for DRM without alot of pressure or the big guys upstairs telling themt too.
.02 cents.
Also, it would be curious to see which division of Sony makes the most money - the media or the hardware. If I where a betting man I would say the hardware, ergo they have more say.
Shrug, just my
Is Microsoft really that worried about market share in impoverished Africa, and is it this inept at promoting itself?
You know that cracks me up. I mean Africa has a mean Per-Capita-GNP of about $2000, a AIDS infection rate reaching 30% in some countries, massive amounts of foreign debt, corrupt governments, and the list goes on-and-on. And yet microsoft is paranoid about market share. You think they would realize that it is *really* hard to get a business/non-profit organization/individual to pay 600-1200$ for the latest Microsoft Products when they can get near-equivalents for *free*. As in free. As in don't have to sacrifice the equivalent of 1 years worth of pay to buy some MS products which might be marginally better than the equivalent *Free* products. The only hope they have is giving them free software since, in all likelihood, if the organization really wants said copies of MS software they will just pirate the darn things anyways. And, hey, wouldn't you if you made 1500$ a year? Note: Don't advocate piracy or stealing, just trying to point out how inept MS strategy is.
To: Microsoft
From: Africa
Subject: Quotes
After reviewing your offering of $15,000 to connect and equip 20 computers with software - from our grand total IT budget of about 50$ - we have decided to go with the competitions offer of *FREE*. That way instead of buying your over-priced software we can actually do some good like teaching rudimentry tech skills, feeding the poor kids we teach, and maybe attracting some tech jobs to improve the future of our grandchildren. We would like to assure you that your quote was appreciated and look forward to possibly doing business with you in the future.
Kthnxbye.
I agree, I just meant the general statement to be the special morons who put there house sitting right on the dunes, about 5 meters from the high tide mark. That is building too close to the beahc.
Aye
Wow. Figures how much I know, just a hick country boy from nebraska =).
No you would be the one stupid enough to *buy* property about to slide into the sea you deserve what you get. If you buy beachfront property and need a sea wall you shouldn't be buying it in the the first place or *shock* you should've built your house on a different location. There are other solutions to building a sea wall btw, that is just the cheapest. Also, people
Seriously, this is crap. The beach is the most dynamic enviroment the earth has to offer, and one of the most vital to organism reproducing. I could care less about your 400,000$ beachfront house that is going to be rubble the next time a hurricane/el nino/mudslide comes around anyways. Repeat after me - never build that close to a beach.
Bah, sorry for the rant it has been a long day. I took a oceanography class last semester from a really good professor who drilled into us how dumb beachfront building really is.
No it's all public domain, of course. They do, currently, charge a fee for reproduction (i.e. if you want a copy of whatever they have sent to you) but it is fair, and similar to inter-library loan. The vatican doesn't claim copyright ownership other than this - you can reproduce whatever you want but god save your immortal soul (literally =)) if you change/edit the material and claim it is the original. The vatican library isn't anything akin to scientology, the basic tennanents of the catholic church, enumerated in a book called the catechism, can be found at most major bookstores. Also, AFAIK the library is open to the public, and any information can be had similar to Interlibrary loan. The library by no means serves as a 'cash cow' for the catholic church and is designed to be used for scholarly research by the church and others. Remember, a large amount of very important historical texts where/are perserved at the library during the middle ages. Vatican city's copyright law, such as it is, is based off of italian/roman common law and is quite similar to that. Now the vatican website had some additional information on photgraphic reproductions but I couldn't read it - in italian and was only able to guess (shrug, italian kindof similar to spanish) that anything published after 1801 might be copyrighted/unable to be photographicaly reproduced but... I don't know. My god, I actually *learned* something in all those years of catholic school.
Good for yours, I found out my bank - a fairly large statewide bank - has iffy support across the board. While nearly everything can log in (as long as it supports 128 bit encryption which is a *Good Thing*) various functions don't work. I contacted the people about this and they said they would talk to the vendor soon about it. Well 6 months later I got tired of waiting and took a look at the code myself.
.js file that would work for everything but, of course, they declined to use it.
What was happening was they where using javascript for the pull down menu's that was only set to recognize MSIE 5/6 and Netscape 4/6. Note - this script would work in about everything I tested it in (opera, moz) but it was just set to only work if it detected those browser's strings. I sent them the fixed
Sigh. Not much I can do about it anymore - besides set opera to identify itself as MSIE 5.0 but that doesn't help with mozilla.
A little late replying but Buran *was* a direct copy of the US space shuttle. They figured not to try and build there own when they could copy the US's and improve/customize some things.
At any rate Buran used the Energia as it's launching vehicle, the actual Buran spacecraft had, compared to space shuttle, very little thrust *on the spaceship itself*. On the other hand, Energia is, and was, the most powerful rocket ever constructed by man with the possible exception of the Saturn V. It was enormous powerhouse of a rocket. For more info read the link.
IANAL blah blah blah but there is barraty, which is a *Criminal* offense:
BARRATRY - The practice of instituting groundless judicial proceedings - a crime in a number of jurisdictions.
In old law French barat, baraterie, signifying robbery, deceit, fraud. In modern usage it may be defined as the habitual moving, exciting and maintaining suits and quarrels, either at law or otherwise.
A man cannot be indicted as a common barrator in respect of any number of false and groundless actions brought in his own right, nor for a single act in right of another; for that would not make him a common barrator.
n. creating legal business by stirring up disputes and quarrels, generally for the benefit of the lawyer who sees fees in the matter. Barratry is illegal in all states and subject to criminal punishment and/or discipline by the state bar, but there must be a showing that the resulting lawsuit was totally groundless. There is a lot of border-line barratry in which attorneys, in the name of being tough or protecting the client, fail to seek avenues for settlement of disputes or will not tell the client he/she has no legitimate claim.
The problem, as usual is that barraty is nearly as hard to prove as libel/slander making it a very, very rare thing to see much like Libel/Slander cases.
Been a long time but.... set up wget to grab the link, oh, 4 million or so times? I would guess that google has some sort of system that prevents this though so you would probably have to go through some hoops.
Actually banks are not required by law to be FDIC insured - this is a common fallacy. Here in a nebraska about 20 or so years back there was this bank offering all these great low-interest loans... they where able to do this because they weren't paying FDIC insurance. So when the bank went belly-up and everybody came to the gov't looking for money.. well yeah. Anyways, banks aren't required to be FDIC insured and you should ALWAYS check before investing your money.
Commonly cited example and a good one. Churchill knew, through Ultra, that the germans where going to bomb Coventry. He couldn't do anything about it b/c, like you said, it would show they had partially cracked Enigma. He had to live with that decision which ended up costing around 25,000 lives... and probably saved 10x that because of the extremely valuable information ultra provided to the allies throughout the war.
The global warming will have a severe effect on the agriculture. This will increase the pressure to migrate to other parts of the world. This will not increase political stability nor peacefullness. It is to be remembered that big migrations around the year 400 finished off the roman empire without breaking sweat. These (too) were caused by climate changes.
Climate didn't cause the roman empire to collapse although it was a major contributing factor and a catalyst. You could argue that had those same climate changes occured at, oh, 200 A.D. the empire would've probably been fine. You bring up a good point though, only the strongest of empires/countries can survive climate change of this magnitude. The Han dynasty in China, the Kush kingdom in Africa, and the Parthian Empire all collapsed at roughly the same time as the Western roman empire did.
These changes just came at the wrong time for the Roman Empire and might come at the wrong time for us. It was years of waste and corruption, an increasingly non-roman army, weaker government,loss of food supply, inability to maintain it's borders - or indefensible borders if you prefer, and many, many other factors. A rapid debate will ensue among most historians if you mention the collapse of the Roman Empire. Climate change just seemed to be the catalyst for the final collapse - as it might be the catalyst for the collapse of western civilization (Don't call me paranoid, read the damm paper below)
For more I wrote a term paper on this very subject a year or two ago: Climate Change and the Collapse of Empires (Open Office Doc). Looks at the parthian empire, kush dynasty, and Han regime in china as well which collapsed around the same time. Not exactly the best paper I have written but it does give a good background.
Yes and no. The principles of stealth are extremely complex and hard ot understand for even the experts but I will try to explain it a little here, from what i understand.
... so much so that a number of nations (US) don't even bother. And these things can be dealt with other ways - protect your capital with anti-stealth radars eh? Fine. We will send 14 wild weasal sites and take em out.
Basically you can never make an aircraft 'disappear' off of radar for a number of reasons. Radar works by sending out frequency pulses and then reading the returns . The key is to reduce those returns to nearly nothing by reducing the planes RCS (radar cross section? something like that). You do THAT by doing a large number of simple things. First you make sure that no matter what no flat on angle is presented to the beam, instead you want everything to be angled as to deflect as much as the energy away from the aircraft as possible (think of the f-117A). You also shield the turbine intakes behind multiple radar absorbing screens, wierd angles in the ductwork, etc (believe it or not one of the biggest sources of radar returns are the turbine blades in the engines). You also plaster the thing with radar-absorbing material.
Also, look at the B-2 from head on. Not much there is it? Incredibly small and you won't find a flat, head-on angle anywhere on the aircraft except.. well here is where this gets tricky. Operating at perfection in ideal conditions the B-2 is about as small a radar cross section as a hummingbird or so. Yes, it can still be detected by modern radar and it can instantly become trackable by doing a number of things (the biggest being a nice angle from the top/bottom of the plane where it's RCS is huge). What B-2, and other stealth aircraft pilots, are trained to do is approach the target from the best possible angles maximizing the time you aren't detected. Now, they can also use standoff missles with long ranges (20+km) to avoid the radar and find 'holes' in the radar coverages to launch their weapons from. Not to mention that it is presumed that the target will also be saturated with Jamming and wild weasal missions. The air force ain't stupid and wouldn't send a flight of b-2's into a potentionall hostile target enviroment unless they where fairly sure they would come out on top w/o any losses (1 billion a plane makes you do that =).
Also note that the only things that can detect B-2's/F-117A/Other stealth aircraft are only the most modern of radars. You instantly elimante 90% of the world's anti-aircraft defenses.. and the 10% that HAVE those defenses tend to be our allies. The 'tiny investment' you speak of isn't so tiny.... even the best, most advanced radar systems of western nations (which have the best, most modern radar systems) have an extremely hard time picking up stealth aircraft - and they can't be everywhere at once. Deploying a full-time AA grid is extroadanirly expensive
Finally consider the new F-22 raptor fighter. Extremely stealthy (nearly as much as a B-2) with AMRAAM fire-and-forget missles, supersonic cruise ability... quite simply nothing can touch it - and I mean nothing. They can usually detect, find, and kill a target before that target can even see them (for those of yuo paying attention they can use targeting data downloaded from a AWACS plane to lock/fire the AMRAAM so as to be undetectable).
Oh, for things like infra-red a number of techniques are used including burying the engines inside to fuselage, spreading the exhaust over a larger area, and a number of other features to make them more 'stealthy'.
The Air Force's obsession with stealth is a good thing... and I hope this answers your questions.
I believe her point was that those 7 where installed with the base system.
Maybe that's the problem, nothing really jumps out but it's all the little things. Excellent point.
While I agree with your post the same could be said of linux, linux very rarely 'innovates' (i'm talking about general Unix software now) other than you know that the software will likely be secure and stable. I mean, really, what was the last 'innovation' that occured in the *nix /world? Wow, we finally got journalling databases, and we are finally starting to get user-friendly UI enviroments. Whopee. Not the most technical of people so maybe the linux kernel does do some wonderfully modern stuff but to me it doesn't look like much.
.Net which is basically a suped-up version of Java to replace MS's previous failed java-usurper ActiveX. =).
Of all the modern OS's I feel the *nix world copies the most and does the least innovation. Think of all that could be done with kde/gnome - but instead they became win98 clones until just recently. Not that *nix software is bad it just being a wee bit hypocritical.
BTW, you missed
Not saying I particularly like how she reviews things (I mean, come on, installing it on ONE machine?) but I can always count on the fact that she will give her total unbiased opinion - even if it is dead wrong - and to me that is worth its weight in gold.
- General UI crappiness - inconsitent layout/design, confusing menus (to a NORMAL END USER, not us geeks), multiple settings locations (really i despise this about all modern linux distros). She praises the few that get it right though, such as red hat with bluecurve (according to her at least).
- Stability Oh yes, 'linux' crashes. Sure we will say no it is just X that crashes but does the end user care/know? No they don't, and no they don't want to go into console to kill x and start it over again, instead they will just reboot. To be honest X crashes more on me than Win2k/Xp. Doesn't mean I don't like X any less just an observation.
- The Many and Varied issues with X - The most common of these, and the one that makes me shudder with hatred, is the only way to change your refresh rate is by going through and editing a set of
.conf files (yes, yes I know this was just added to the CVS tree a few weeks ago but it isn't here now now is it?). This is a feature windows has had for nearly 7 years now! . Also, some of us use fixed-frequency monitors which means our computer is unusable until we can get through and edit these files. Personally my SGI monitor will work for about 10-15 minutes at 60hz (needs to run at 85hz) before shutting off. I hate having to go in and edit these files where as with windows it is a few clicks away. And many, many more problems. Not that X doesn't do some things great (terminal server anybody?) but it isn't perfect by any means.
- Too Many Programs - us geeks love having 13 web browsers. Other people would rather not care. She makes an excellent point with respect to the 7 terminal clients included with Mandrake. 7???? 1 or 2 at most, leave the rest to be installed by those who want them.
I think people who hate Eugenia's reviews the most are those who are unwilling to admit the huge flaws present in most linux distros today. BTW, I use debian at home for my desktop (apt-get rocks my world), it's not like I love windows but it does do quite a few things better than linux. And some things alot worse for that matter.Oh boy. How do we define terrorism? How do we determine if there are actually terrorists in these countries? Unilaterally decalare that they are holding terrorist's and demand they turn them over while offering no proof(ala afghanistan)? This is one of the dumbest, stupidest ideas I have ever heard. Also note boyo that since 9/11 there hasn't been a single terrorist attack against the US (note: anthrax might be domestic, unknown).
Let us not forget about how much hate we will generate by taking/overthrowing multiple countries or the cost in lives, money, time effort. Yeah. Real smart. Think afghanistan was easy to invade? sure. Try invading georgia or checnya and see how much the CIS likes it. Or N. Korea and watch china/Japan go nuts. Try invading more than one country at a time and watch as slowly the US military gets bogged down in multiple overseas conflicts, or gets stuck in another vietnam/panama (ala 1900's). Smart. Real smart. let's just go barging in on other countries and demanding they hand over there citizens to us with no proof.