Not at all! It is a perfectly controllable problem. You just have to break the problem into manageable parts. First of all, the volume of gasses released by a coal fired plant is far to large to simply "pump underground". You must first separate out the C from the CO2. This should yield relatively pure carbon that can be compressed into blocks. These blocks can then be disposed of simply by placing them in the underground voids where coal has been removed by mining. Easy as "One, two three"!
Unfortunately, it will require the entire electricity output of the power plant and then some to strip the carbon out of the exhaust gasses, so what we will need is some honkin' big solar power satellites in orbit and use the electricity from them to power the carbon stripping process. That way the full output of the coal fired plant can go to the grid.
The really cool thing about this plan is that if you ever run out of coal, you can just dig up your waste carbon and burn that in the very same coal fired power plants! Brilliant!
The JWSP will be equipped with an APAS docking adaptor. Unfortunately, the Ares I will not have the cojones to get a CEV all the way out to where the thing will live at the Earth/Sun L2 point, much less do so with any useful cargo. The only options with current planned boosters would be a difficult dual Ares I launch with orbital rendezvous with departure stage and cargo (doubt Ares I can even loft a departure stage with a useful amount of cargo), an Ares I and EELV launch with orbital rendezvous, or a manned Ares V launch (sometime after 2020, assuming such a beast is ever even built).
If NASA gives up on the Ares I/V pair and begins to pursue something reasonable, like the Direct architecture, they will have boosters capable of sending a CEV along with cargo and a departure stage to L2 without having to wait decades (or forever) for Ares V to be built.
While there is no realistic way for NASA to service the JWST with current and planned rockets, it does seem like the designers of the JWST are preparing it with the hopes that NASA changes its attitude with regards to boosters and builds something that can affordably reach L2. With Ares, it will be as expensive as a full blown moon mission.
What about the salaries of the engineers, scientists, machinists, technicians, etc. who brought the Hubble to life? Don't those people count as having their lives improved? I have nothing against diverting a portion of the country's tax revenues to helping make life better for the nation's less fortunate people, but I also like the idea of tax dollars going to highly educated and trained professionals doing work that the private sector wouldn't otherwise be interested in getting involved with. The skills to build something like the Hubble is a very good thing for the country to have.
Furthermore, why does everyone always assume that every project undertaken by the nation must have a short term return on investment? Does everything that you personally spend money on yield a cash return? How much money has that big plasma or DLP TV monitor made for you? Did the last CD/DVD/book/whatnot that you bought generate a net profit for you? Why should the nation's expenditures be any different?
I'm living in Japan now, and I have to say that the roads are most certainly NOT better than what I was accustomed to back in the States. Sure, the toll roads are not too bad, but that is only due to the fact that no one uses them because they are outraeously expensive. $1/mile for the lightest class car is just insane.
The regular prefectural and town roads, on the other hand, are a horror show. Paving crews seem to just pave everything in sight and paint some lanes on later. Intersections seem to be the result of negotiations between rival paving crews that happen to run across each other. Let's not even talk about roads out in the mountains! You get a few feet off the beaten path and you'll be lucky to ever make it back. Imagine endless blind switchbacks on a strip of pavement less than ten feet wide! If you run across someone coming from the other direction, one of you will have to back up a half mile or so.
Furthermore, driver education in Japan is worse than useless. You are trained to operate a supplied vehicle on a closed course (sorta like a go-cart park). You have to shift into the proper gear at precisely marked points in the course, signal your intention to turn at another marked point in the course, etc. In short, you are trained to operate a particular vehicle to exacting standards ON A PARTICULAR CLOSED COURSE!
I was forewarned about the silly test and was therefore able to pass it my first time without taking classes. Fact is, however, that I was the only one to get my license that day.
The low fatality rates on Japanese roads is more reasonably attributed to the fact that no one ever actually drives faster than about 25MPH. Even in the little kei cars you have half a chance of surviving an accident at those speeds.
Japanese drivers suck. Oh, they are sorta 'polite' and all. They don't talk on their cell phone while driving. In fact, if they get a call, they'll stop before answering. ..right in the middle of the traveled way! No effort made to get their car off the road or to a safe place. ..Nope, the phone rings, they set the parking brake wherever they happen to be, be that a blind curve, an intersection or on the highway.
If people here ever actually had to travel a significant distance and did so at the sort of speeds typical in the US, you can bet they'd leave the US far behind where highway carnage was concerned.
Wrong. . . monkeys don't need Ann Coultergeist and Bill O to help them maintain their ideological hygiene. The 'rationalizing' that Heinlein referred to was Man's tendency to use his or her intellect to justify conclusions that they arrived at without first employing that intellect. Mankind has developed some mechanisms to help try to compensate for this tendency, such as scepticism and the scientific method, but these mechanisms take discipline and humility and are not fool-proof.
In other words, humans have the same capacity to make bad decisions as monkeys do, and continue to make those bad decisions over time. The difference is that humans have a (relatively) advanced capacity to rationalize and justify why their wrong decision was actually the right one all along.
A consequence of this, I am willing to bet, is that monkeys can easily be deprogrammed with regard to their preference for red M&Ms vs blue M&Ms. On the other hand, have you ever tried to get a Coke drinker to switch to Pepsi? An A&F boy to wear GAP? A Ford driver to buy a Chevy? A Muslim to become Christian? A Neocon to vote Democrat? Or vice-versa? IANAP, but it seems that, for a portion of the population in any case, Man's intellect serves to strongly reinforce decisions made without prior consultation with that intellect.
What is "useful"? That is a term that you just pulled out of your ass. Who is it that gets to define "useful"? I know that it seemed obvious to you at the time, but try to codify that into a license and see where it gets you.
For reality's sake, let's just delete that and see what we have. ..
"any modifications or extensions also be licensed under the BSD License."
OK, no one will complain about that. ..or will they? With that one addition, the BSD license essentially becomes the GPL license. If you wanted your code and its derivatives to be available to the public under all circumstances, then why did you use the BSD to begin with? The GPL would have guaranteed that from the beginning.
What this really comes down to is that the BSD fanatics are shamed by being "used" by another open source organization rather than the normal corporate users that they accustomed to being fucked by. If taking Microsoft's big 'ole shaft, or Sony's somewhat smaller one, is OK, why bitch about the FSF and GPL use of the same code? In fact, this exposes a fundamental defect in the philosophy of the BSD license. Being offended by other Open Source organization's use of their code but not by corporate users who close off their work reveals the BSD camp's true character. They are happy to share (unconditionally) with those who would use their work for personal profit, but for others to lock that work into the domain of the public? Horror!
Fact is, by simply viewing the structures of the two licenses, it is easy to see that eventually the properties of any value protected by the BSD license will all either end up in proprietary products or under a GPL style 'viral' license. Which would you prefer?
If that property (as in 'real estate') is grabbed for use by a businessman. ..no problem. Grabbed by a FSF radical that intends to make sure that the public always has access to that code? Evil vermin! Die, die, die!
This is a (not so) complicated issue. If you stand for freedom, then back the GPL. If hedging your bets is more important than freedom, then you belong in the BSD camp.
NASA is not diverting funding to go to the moon and Mars, it is diverting funding to develop a horribly expensive and increasingly unrealistic launch vehicle whose only advantage is that the development process will send vast sums of cash to a company called ATK-Thiokol. Read about it here:
With an intelligent plan of action, NASA could retire the Shuttle, build an even better replacement using the best parts of the Shuttle stack, go to the moon, and STILL have money left over for lots of good basic science. Unfortunately, because of cronyism and corruption, ATK-Thiokol will be getting the lions share of NASA's budget for the next several years.
To be certain, my good, H1-B, Danish friend, America is treating you quite well. You would be well advised, however, to not consider the current generosity of US capitalism as having any sort of enduring character where you personally are concerned. As a FOB H1-B near the bottom of an apparently bounteous pay scale, you are to your employer's bean-counters an asset. However, as the years ease gracefully by and you creep towards the top of that pay scale, your degree loses its freshness, your health begins to slide ever so slightly, and the exuberance of a new employee mellows to the seasoned industry of the veteran, you will ever so gradually steal into the bean-counters' liability column.
Still, things will seem OK to you. You have a decent work relationship with your boss and coworkers. Your hypertension and cholesterol problems are well under control with the expensive medications that your employer's insurance covers. Your stock options look certain to guarantee a comfortable retirement in a couple decades time.
It will be about at this point that your boss will show up in your cubicle looking really, REALLY nervous and uncomfortable. He will start by saying that he really felt that you were an important part of the team and everybody values the contributions you made to the company over the years. He will then start talking about how the company is doing some restructuring and unfortunately, some positions are being eliminated. He will then apologize profusely and then point out that while one of those positions is yours, the company is offering a generous severance package.
As you follow the security guard to the front door carrying the box of your personal items from your desk, you tell yourself "A year severence pay. ..not bad. I can get another job in a year, no sweat."
A year finds you in your new job and filling out the paperwork to get your medication covered by the new insurance policy. Your first effort to do so was rejected by the insurance company with some excuse about "Pre-existing condition". To be certain, there must be some sort of mistake, so you are applying again. You never noticed it before, but those meds cost thousands of dollars a year. On top of that, this new job isn't quite as generous where the pay is concerned and your kid wants to start college this year. Too bad she didn't get a scholarship. At this point in the future, it will be important for you to try to remember your present rosy view of working in America. Will you stick it out? No, you will confirm the previous poster's point and run, not walk, back to Denmark.
There is no way that you Microsoft apologists are going to get away with this kind of historical revisionism.
Back when windows 95 shipped it was head and shoulders technically better than the other operating systems targeting average everyday folks.
Let's look at some examples, shall we? Apple's offering in `95 was System 7.5.2. Not Mac OS's finest moment ever, as System 7.5.2 was terribly unstable, but it was still pretty solid compared to Win95.
NeXT Computer's NeXTSTEP was available. ..Win95 was nowhere close to NeXTSTEP.
AmigaOS 3.1 was contemporary with Win95 but still far better than Microsoft's best efforts.
Acorn Computer's RISC OS (version 3.60 was available when Win95 was released) is arguably Win95's equal.
Atari release MultiTOS in 1993 and then the company died (for all intents and purposes). ..bad management can do that to any company. But was Windows 95 superior to MultiTOS? That is debatable.
Linux kernel 1.2 was available in 1995. You could argue that this wasn't an "operating systems targeting average everyday folks" because it was a beast to install and configure, but, honestly, how many "average everyday folks" could successfully install Win95 back in those days? Most people who used Win95 bought computers with it preinstalled. This was particularly the case with "average everyday folks".
And then there was IBM's OS/2. It was superior to Windows 95 in every way. In some ways, OS/2 is still technically superior to Microsoft's latest efforts, despite OS/2's development having been slowed to a crawl for most of the last decade.
Face it, Windows 95 was garbage. Microsoft has, twelve years on, yet to deliver on many of the marketing promises made about 'Chicago'. "Don't commit to OS/2 because 'Chicago' will be sooo much better!" Later, when the snake oil salesmen had finished fleecing the credulous, the suckers became vocal supporters of Microsoft in the hopes of burying their shame at being swindled and made fools of in a chorus of praise. "Oooh! Such high performance!" and "It is sooo stable! I don't HAVE to reboot it three times a day, I just like that sound it makes when it starts!" and "It is sooo easy to use!".
In any case, the faithful have been strung along for so long now that they will desperately defend any nonsense that Microsoft generates. As a famous idiot once said "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. ..can't get fooled again!" But when one is fooled many times in series (how many times is it now? Win95, Win98, WinME. Win2000, WinXP, etc), brand loyalty takes on religious characteristics. "When Jesus comes back. ..I mean, when Microsoft finally gets it right, you're gonna be so sorry for making fun of me!" Pointing out the obvious disconnects between reality and Microsoft's sermons to the flock only strengthens their resolve to maintain the faith. With this in mind, it is easy to see why some people would make ludicrous claims about Windows 95. Since Microsoft's vendor lock in has this psychological aspect in addition to the technical and economic ones, debunking Microsoft's claims only serves to allow those of us who have not yet been assimilated to feel smug about having successfully resisted the BS for so long. This debunking can not influence individuals with significant portions of their credibility tied to the myth of Windows superiority. ..individuals like Ziff-Davis columnists and execs who pushed through transitioning corporate assets to Microsoft infrastructure.
Try rereading the parent post. This is the the point. From the perspective of private enterprise, any investment in facilities outside Earth's atmosphere, other than a couple tiny satellites, is inconceivable. Private investment CAN NOT take us to the moon, or Mars, or build factories in orbit. The scale of the investment, in terms of capital and time, is mammoth. The basic laws of capitalism (turn a profit or perish) forbid private industry from being more than contractors (leeches) to public (government) enterprises where serious space development is concerned.
Re:Exit Polls are Inaccurate
on
Who won?
·
· Score: 1
Your characterization of the "typical" republican as upper-middle-class white suburbanite does not coincide with my experience. Most that I've met in this demographic are democrat. The republicans that I have met have typically been poorly educated trailer park residents (trailer parks are sort of suburban, right?) suffering from one of the common, ignorance-derived mental disorders like religious fanaticism, congenital racism, violent homophobia or xenophobia, or terminal provincialism. These republicans, where they possess the ability to read and actually exercised this ability more than twice a year, prefer such reputable sources as "The National Enquirer". More often they just watch its TV equivalent, Fox News.
As an aside, I happen to know people whose parents were accountants who are struggling to pay rent and feed themselves. I also know accountants who are lost on their desktop if their accounting software doesn't load automatically when they log in. In addition, I know inner city kids <sarcasm>(Black kids, even! Imagine that?)</sarcasm> who could likely code circles around you (assuming that you can program at all).
It is true that economically disadvantaged demographics may have less access and exposure to current technology. It is not true that those demographics are more stupid than any other demographic. It is also not true that exposure to a particular computer interface will automatically make a user better able to apprehend a new one. As someone who was responsible for transitioning a group of users to a new application (accountants, oddly enough), my observations were that experience with one interface actually interferes with the comprehension of a new one. In the last few elections, the interface to the new electronic voting machines was new to virtually all voters, rich and poor alike. Saying that poor, inner city residents (you are principally talking about African-Americans here) often screwed up in the voting booth, but that the white trash in the trailer park outside of town (we are now talking republicans) never did in numbers great enough to be statistically significant. ..that is something that I find deeply offensive.
Inner city residents lack even basic computer skills? Skills like operating a computer through a touch sensitive display? Displays like the ones used at restaurants and stores? How much exposure does an accountant get to these types of input devices, I wonder? The claim that inner city residents are at a disadvantage using a touch screen voting machine is one that is not well thought out. The claim that the discrepancy between the final tallies and the exit polls in poorer urban districts is due to the ignorance and the ineptitude of the voters is equally ill-conceived.
Actually, it didn't help the customers at all. Your post is claiming that AT&T somehow stifled innovation when it was a heavily regulated monopoly by suggesting that you would still need pulse-dialed phones (rotary) to this day. Where do you think DTMF dialing was developed? When do you think it was developed? Where was cellular telephone technology developed? Who invented the transistor, the laser, fiber-optics?
Bell Labs was a powerhouse of innovation back in the days when the phone company was such a heavily regulated monopoly that it was virtually a state run enterprise. Since the breakup and deregulation of AT&T (effectively the same as privatization, in this case), what sorts of epoch-making telecommunications innovations have there been? Please only cite examples that were not already in Bell Labs' development pipeline and near marketable maturity.
How about price? While long distance service has stabilized somewhere near the pre-deregulation prices or perhaps even slightly less, fees and 'local long distance' costs are FAR higher now.
You point out being able to to buy cheap cordless phones at Walmart like it is some sort of improvement. A years rent on one of the terminals that AT&T supplied was no more than the cost of one of those cheap pieces of crap that you get from Walmart, yet it was a reasonably high quality instrument. Furthermore, AT&T did allow customers to use their own terminals on the network and cordless phones were widely available prior to the breakup of AT&T. Bell Labs even developed much of the technology for making cordless phones.
What innovations have come to market that AT&T had been stifling?"all of the other things that AT&T had locked down opened up". What things? Some examples would be nice, as I can't think of any.
MS's mechanism to organize multiple windows of each application is most certainly not the same as an application providing a tabbed interface. As I mentioned previously, openning a new window consumes MUCH more system resources than providing a new tab within the existing application. In a worst case scenario, where the application is unaware of this 'feature' of MSWindows and is not optimised with a seperate and lightweight window rendering process, spawning a new window could entail loading a whole new copy of the application into memory. Even assuming that the application is designed so that the bulk of its processing is done by a backend that serves multiple lightweight windows, it will still require more system resources, and thus be less responsive, than a similar application that uses only a single window to display all of that data.
Perhaps you should be aware that Firefox (and the browser from which it was forked, Mozilla) have had a tabbed interface for substantially longer than MSWindows' Task Bar has supported grouping the buttons of open instances of applications. It is the ease of use of the tabbed interface that Mozilla supported that forced Microsoft to address the awkwardness of working with more than one page at a time in IE by grouping the Task Bar buttons. That this was itself an awkward and far from optimal solution is evidenced by the fact that the latest version of IE now supports a tabbed interface.
While it is nice to have a variety of tools to organize your running applications, I've seen no studies that indicate that the tools offered by Microsoft to do this are in any way ergonomically superior to those of any other contemporary OS. Your opinion may very well be that MSWindows is better. My experience, however, is that there are a number of alternatives that get the job done with fewer keystrokes, fewer keyboard-to-mouse-to-keyboard transitions, and fewer mouse actions.
Your assumption that the reason for a tabbed interface in Firefox being because the underlying OS does not support easy switching between open instances of the same program is false. I can't speak for every window manager that runs on every unix-like system, but the ones that I have used, as well as the display systems on non-unix OSes, support easy switching between open instances of the same program.
You state that it is your opinion that applications should not have tabbed interfaces and we should instead just rely upon the OS to organize multiple instances of each application. Your opinion is not universally shared. While the OS most certainly should do this, it should just be considered a fallback position for poorly designed applications that can't manage their own interface adequately (like IE before it supported tabs). This is partly due to the system resources issue that I mentioned above, but also because there are numerous ways of displaying paged information in a compact form. The authors of various applications may (probably do, actually) know better than MS how to manage the display of the information that their particular application handles. Using tabs is only one way, though it is an efficient and effective way. Because of this, you are seeing a growing number of applications that have a tabbed interface. You will, in fact, continue to see more. I will even bet that you will see tabs for selecting open documents in Word before too long.
As a final note, look at the subject that you provided for this thread:Where do I go to get back to "lean and mean".... As I have repeatedly pointed out, a tabbed interface to an application is indeed "leaner and meaner" than launching many seperate instances of the same application.
I agree with you in principle, as I also would like a basic browser that just renders standard HTML and supports CSS and does so in less than a.5meg memory footprint (not including page caching). What I don't understand is your repeated objection to tabbed browsing. I (and many others) see tabbed browsing as the single biggest advance in browser technology since. ..well, since Tim Berners-Lee invented the web browser. I can think of no other feature that is as "must-have" that has been introduced in the last thirteen or fourteen years.
First of all, supporting tabs does not increase the actual memory utilization of the application, or reduce performance. The memory required to spawn a new window and the system (OS) resources needed to support that window are MUCH greater than the resources needed for the application to spawn a new tab within the existing application window. The only significant memory consumption with respect to tabbed browsing is in the form of caching the unexposed tabs. Sure, some of the fancy things that Opera does with tabs probably requires some resources (previews, drag-n-drop, etc), but until some other browser approaches Opera's performance, I can't see anyone complaining about it.
Really, I can only understand your problem with tabbed browsing by assuming you to be a Windows (only) user who has been too lazy to invest the ten or fifteen minutes needed to develop the skills required to operate a tabbed browser. If you bother to learn a couple keyboard shortcuts, you will suddenly understand the awesome power of tabbed browsing. <ctrl><w>has already been suggested to you (for closing the current tab or the window if there is only one tab). I would like to suggest <ctrl><pgup> and <ctrl><pgdown> to cycle to the previous or next tab respectively. Furthermore, if you deselect the option to "Select new tabs opened from links" in Firefox Preferences, you can load reference links from a document that you are reading without interrupting your reading by middle-clicking them (I believe that is how it works in Windoze). This will load the links in the background while you continue browsing the current document.
Perusing/. and you want to read an undisplayed message? Click the link then click the back button when you finish reading it to reload to the original thread? NO! Middle click to load the message in a new tab, <ctrl><pgdown> to read the message then <ctrl><w> to close the new tab when you are done. Viola! Back at the original thread without reloading it! Dozens of ms saved! If you think Windoze can spawn and load a new window faster than Firefox can spawn and load a new tab. ..you are delusional.
Shopping online? Load competing products into adjacent tabs then <ctrl><pgup> and <ctrl><pgdown> between them, comparing features. Shopping at Amazon or some such place and a recommended product catches your eye but you don't want to waste time investigating until after you make your purchase? Middle-click to load it into another tab and check it out later without missing a beat.
Even if all you really use the Web for is finding porn, tabbed browsing is for you. Next time you are on that thumbnail page of Japanese school girls or goats or MOPAR engines or whatever turns you on, middle-click each thumbnail then <ctrl><pgup> and <ctrl><pgdown> through all of your loaded images! You will never again complain about tabbed browsing! (You can, you'll find, do that one handed!)
Anyway, tabbed browsing is a lightweight means of exploring multiple tangential references without interrupting your current task. There are posters here who claim fifty or more simultaneous open tabs. I typically have that many or more open at a time as well. Can you imagine navigating 50+ simultaneously open IE windows? Is that even possible?
Honestly, if you try to use tabbed browsing, you will see the adva
I'll let someone else mod you OT, or ridiculous or something like that. ..I'm hitting the sack. By the way, good luck with your $3/hr job. ..wish you the best.
Sorry about that. ..the 'dumbass' comments come from your persistant fear of the power of Saddam. ..People that were afraid of Saddam five years ago were dumbasses. People whose fear in Saddam persists to this day are. ..well. ..what can you call them?
What makes you think that Saddam could have resisted a cagey band of welfare claims reps backed by a hard stare from Condie Rice? I'll bet you are one of those 'believers' that still thinks Saddam has Transformer tractor trailers hiding in invisible underground bunkers that can link together and make an invincible, WMD producing robot of destruction. Come on, dude, this stuff is not and was never true! Saddam was just a chubby idiot trying to make the best of a bad situation. He couldn't teleport through walls, shoot laser beams from his eyes or fart atomic fire. We didn't have to bomb the neighborhood into rubble before going in. ..that was gratuitous violence in the extreme.
Think about it for a bit. A bunch of welfare agents set up shop in Baghdad and start handing out cash. Sure, Saddam will see the threat, but he can't, and never really did, act on his own. If he can't sell the idea of some threat to his supporters, then he can't act on that threat. In this respect, he is no different from Bush. Every ruler, be they elected or not, must act from a power base. That power base MUST be a portion of the population. ..it can not be simply the particular leaders say so. If we went in nice and didn't hurt anyone, then all of his ranting about it would sound like. ..ranting. It would get no traction. Saddam would lose credibility. ..how much more does this need to be spelled out for you? Do I need to actually name the welfare agents that I think would have been best to send over or something?
No. ..Saddam could not have just slaughtered American citizens en masse. No, Saddam could not have politically survived significant interference in funds disbursement. You are attributing super human characteristics to a man who was just playing politics a little harder than some other leaders. The most probable outcome of the invasion of the welfare agents is that Saddam would have struck a deal with the US agreeing to pretty much anything so long as he could remain the titular head of the country.
Damn! You are so right! I didn't realise that you wanted to work for $3.00 an hour for 70 hours a week. I always figured that somewhere on the planet there existed someone that wanted $3/hr for 70 hours and no more but I had never met that person `til now! I suppose that we could make an amendment to the minimum wage law for people like you stating that, as long as you were offered full labor protection rights and offered full guarantees that no discrimination will be directed your way were you to accept those protections, then you can voluntarily return a portion of your earnings to your employer.
Krill, you are still being a dumbass. Why hand out checks? Hand out wads of cash. ..We are doing this to win the hearts of the people, not teach them to curse the artificial barriers to their benefits as honorary American welfare recipients the we impose upon our own citizens!
If Saddam could fight this "violation of Iraqi sovereignty", he could have fought the real one. ..grow up.
"How we choose to exploit the poor slobs we employ is off limits"
Free trade is not exploitation.
Everything is fair in business, right? OK, let's despense with all these burdensome regulations. I want your daughter in my brothel. ..just business, mind you. ..what are you going to do about it? Put me out of business? Got something with a better draw than your own green eyed horse shoe?
" there are good reasons for limitations on Disney, there are good reasons for limitations on FoxNewscorp or CNN."
What sort of limitations? The First Amendment sort of frowns on interfering with the freedom of the press.
Now you have me laughing. ..there are a small handfull of corporations that control everything that all Americans see in the media and you are going to champion them in the name of freedom of the press? Why don't you defend Pravda or Xinhau while you are at it! Restrictions formerly existed to prevent this condition but they are gone now (Thanks, Mr. Powell).
But if you don't like it and can't get it changed, you have to suffer for it if it is something the government controls
Hey, if everybody else wants something but you don't. ..suck it up or get out. ..The down side of democracy is that you don't always get your way. Do you think that you will get your way more often in a capitalist society without democracy?
Now, if the government happened to butt out and leave the matters for the people to decide, then you gain power.
Please explain to me why the government's decision is not the people's decision. ..we are talking about democracy here. In the current situation, of course, the government does things that the people do not want. When an executive is put into power that is committed to doing things that the public does not want, can you complain that the concept of government is flawed? No. ..simply put, a bunch of people made a bad decision based upon lies and misinformation (likely that this group includes you) and allowed a government to come into power that is doing things that people (including you) don't want it to do. That you made a bad decision does not mean that the concept of government is flawed. ..it simply means that you have to put more effort into your homework.
Let us put it another way. ..If you vote democracy away, it does not absolve you of the crimes committed by whatever replaces democacy. Throwing all decisions to the Market (remember, I am capitalising out of respect because you treat it as a god) and relegating all atrocities that the Market commits to 'just business' does not mean that you are not just as responsible for those atrocities as Stalin was for the deaths of the peasants in the Ukraine. In the Immortal words of Geddy Lee, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". There is no option available to you in which you don't have to shoulder at least a portion of the responsibility for the events that unfold in the world. The Market does not function in a vacuum. It cannot commit atriocities without the consent of its supporters. When the Market commits atrocities, it does so only because of the will of its supporters. This means you. This means that when someone dies of starvation in Africa because they couldn't afford food, you, as a supporter of the Market, killed them just as directly as Stalin killed any Kulak in the Ukraine.
Certainly, this is harsh and hard for any supporter of the Market to come to terms with. The truth that the Market supporter is responsible for more deaths than all of the 'communist' rulers combined is heady stuff indeed. For example, famine in Ireland, death squads in Central and South America, serial famines in Africa, industrial acccidents worldwide due to poor or nonexistant workplace safty regulations, fatalities caused by product failure due to cost saving corner cutting, etc.
Please, krill, stop being a dumbass. The described mechanism is (only partially) figurative. There are uncountable ways for the US to conspicuously dump huge volumes of cash into another country's economy. I'll provide a simple scenario to feed your malnourished imagination.
The US drops from a Blackhawk helicopter a detachment of welfare claims representatives into downtown Baghdad. Under the cover of Apache gunships, the claims reps rent an office and begin disbursing welfare claims. In another part of the city, covert operatives set up a RentOwn shop with unbeatable deals. Meanwhile, a Dunkin`Donuts opens across town with FREE donuts! On the banks of the Tibris, a team of Army Engineers begins building a water park. ..you getting the idea yet?
Which is refusing to deal with a company because you don't like it, right? That's what I was referring to. Very powerful, used all the time in our decisions, even when it is not called an "organized boycott". You simply don't have this option with the government (the cops will kill you if you try).
Sorry, not very powerful. ..voting the bastards out is MUCH more direct and MUCH more powerful. Your example only works when the organization committing 'evil' acts is also not a monopoly and not producing products that the public needs at a price that is less that any potential competition. The Market (I'll capitalize it since you seem to revere it like a god) cares not about the circumstances under which goods are produced but only price, and, sometimes, quality. The problem is that HOW goods are produced can be of significant public concern yet the market provides no reliable mechanism to adjust productive capacity based upon HOW goods are produced, leaving the deliberate, conscious, coordinated boycott as the only tool available to the public (short of legal. ..I mean legislative. ..action). Very, very weak. ..denying the public the right to legally forbid particular business practices is. ..well. ..you try and give it a nice name, OK?
As for the government, if you are are having problems, then you voted for the wrong guy. ..You voted for Bush, right? Figures. . .
I think I disagree with that on general principles (why have the legislature force its decision on all), but would like some specific examples? I agree with regulation, but only as a last resort. Leave as many decisions to the people as possible.
Please. ..justify this comment by telling me that you ate a lot of lead paint chips as a child. ..No? Lead paint was banned by the time you were a child? How did that happen? Magic? Your intellect wasn't stunted by spending your formative years in a coal mine, was it? Really? Then what's your excuse?
we need to be concerned every time the government gets involved in personal economic decisions
Ahh. ..it is OK for the government to get involved in other personal decisions? How we choose to exploit the poor slobs we employ is off limits, though, right? I think I am seeing a pattern emerge. . ..
I believe strongly in democracy as a way to control government. I do not believe in democracy as a way to control people's private lives. Opposition to sbusive power by government is not opposition to democracy.
Hehehehe! You can see democracy controlling only itself, but no other aspects of human interaction? What's that. ..we have a game called 'Democracy' that we play every once and a while but it has nothing to do with our real lives? We can't let it influence the real world (the economy)? You really need to think harder about this stuff. . .
By the way. ..if you don't like a government policy. ..use democratic methods to change it. ..don't try to destroy the organs of democracy altogather! That's. ..well . ..antidemocratic!
It is less an "invisible hand" than it is allowing the people themselves to make informed decisions about their lives. Rather than have the fascist jackboot of government kick the "one size fits few" decree into them. There are some matters that should be left to the people, and not the government. Giving government too much has resulted in huamnity's lowest achievements. The only "mysticism" here is placing blind trust in rulers.
Hmmm. ..wingnut talking points devoid of content. ..what are you trying to say? Who is placing blind trust in rulers? (aside from conservative Bush supporters). Why can't people express their "informed decision
Sorry, but you missed the point. ..The cash would be good old US legal tender. ..The point to the operation would be, well, bluntly, mass bribery. You'd be surprised (or perhaps not) how effective that can be.
The free market (by which the public directly influences the corporations) actually does the best job of constraining the corporations that are not in the public interest.
Hmmm. ..like Microsoft, right?
I think you have it wrong. ..directly controlling corporations through the market is like balancing a stack of marbles on a bowling ball. The only tool available to the public is the boycott. ..sounds great unless the target is the only effective supplier of the good or service that the public needs. ..Far better to just legislate that the supplier can supply, but just not by doing X, Y and Z.
Sorry, but your perspective of the market is viewed through rose colored lenses and hopelessly utopian. ..you capitalist idealists really need to wake up and smell the incinerated liberties. Giving corporations free reign is NOT the answer. ..it is just the final solution.
Your diatribe against the government is quite telling. You don't believe in democracy. From your perspective, only knee-jerk and phantasmagorical (devine, perhaps?) mechanisms like the 'invisible hand' of the market can meet the needs of the people. The people can not possibly deliberate their needs in open and democratic debate? I am sorry, but we simply disagree. . . for me, a democratic government trumps all metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. That a government is not perfectly democratic is, for me, a call for improvement, not a call to discard humanity's highest achievements and throw our specie's lot in with mysticism.
Hate to point this out but. ..gotta point this out:
please, we could mow down there army without much trouble.
With what army? Oh yeah. ..the one that is in Iraq. ..Gonna do some real long range mowing down, I take it?
Think "Shock and Awe" will impress them much? They've seen the US's best effort at that already.
Gonna nuke them? You'd blanket Japan with fallout. Sure, there are cleaner bombs available now, but to take out bunkers with a nuke, you need to do a ground burst. ..even one of those will make a mess out of the entire region.
No. ..you will have to send in ground troops. Unfortunately, the US doesn't have any to spare right now, do they? You can try to send in the South Koreans as your proxies, but I have been there and met them. The South Koreans are certainly concerned about their kin to the north, but have no desire to kill them. They talk about peaceful reunification using "when", not "if".
I agree with your point that there is no financial motive for attacking the DPRK and as such, events in that country have a real low priority for the Bush regime. Nevertheless, to say that the Bush regime is not conservative is the sort of thing only a. ..well. ..particularly dumb but devout conservative would say. To isolate 'corporatist' (that's what you meant to type, I know it) from 'conservative' is nonsensical. When in this or the last century have the conservatives NOT backed corporate authority over that of the public? What do you think "small government" really boils down to? Sure, when the government has been quarantined from control by the public, as has been the case recently in the US, the government can become a tool of corporations. Please don't assume that this is something that has happened by accident, however! This is the ultimate achievement sought by conservative for many decades. If you are a conservative, be proud of it. Typically, though, a democratic government is a tool used by the public to constrain the actions of corporations and other powerful entities whose interests do not match those of the public. That's why conservatives are for a smaller and weaker one. They don't want the power of corporations constrained by anything, even the conscious will of the public. As a conservative, you should know that. If you are a conservative and don't know that. ..what can I say? You've been had.
Anyway, if the US goes and nukes North Korea, they will lose their last best friend; Japan. Sure, the Japanese want to take a tough line on the North Koreans, but they certainly don't want the radioactive remains of the North Korean contry side settling over their rice fields in Niigata. Something of a diplomatic wedgie, I think.
So, big guy, give me some details on how we could mow down there army without much trouble. Saying the US could do it is one thing. ..sure, in a perfect world. ..delivering the meat and potatoes is another thing, though. You don't have to deliver. ..just give me the menu.
This is the best suggestion I've read so far. I've said it before and this is a good place to say it again. About Iraq I said (before the second war) that it would be cheaper and more effective to gain control of the country by dropping bales of cash all over the countryside from cargo planes than by actually going to war. Looking at the current cost and effectiveness of the war, I guess I was right.
The same is true of the DPRK. Crazy Kim, as goofy and silly as he seems to everyone else in the world, has a solid cult of personality gig going in his own country. A surprising number of North Koreans would be willing to die for the clown. Furthermore, hungry people don't revolt unless they have a definite sense that things will get better as a result of it. Revolution is something people do out of irrepressible optimism, not hopeless desperation. Sanctions will do nothing but amplify any suffering that the common people of the DPRK are experiencing without harming the current regime in the slightest.
Flood the DPRK with cheap (or free) consumer goods, build them some power stations gratis and set up a US funded welfare system for the entire population. That wouldn't even approach the cost of a couple months of the occupation in Iraq. We could double the annual income of everyone in the DPRK with direct payments (dare I say bribes?) for less than 10% of the cost of the Iraq war. After a year or so of that, do you think the North Korean people would let their government do anything unpleasant to their new best friends? How long do you think Kim's cult of personality could hold out against that?
Let's make things even better. ..how about opening commerce directly with the regime? You guessed it, we agree to buy from the government of the DPRK every brand spanking shiny new atom bomb that they can make for ten times the market price. Think of how many Hong Kong pirated DVDs Kim could get off eBay with that much money! We then specify, for quality control purposes and ISO9001 compliance, that we be able to observe the bomb making process from time to time.
If we stop treating Kim II like the class dweeb and try not to laugh at his stupid haircut in front of him then maybe he wouldn't be so touchy. Maybe Bush II could even invite Kim II to some of those 'special' parties in Washington. ..you know, like the ones Bush HW went to that featured underage male prostitutes? I'm sure all Kim really wants is some love.
This idea that the only way to beat your enemies is to make them bleed is retarded and likely the result of being on the receiving end of too much abuse in the school yard as a child. It is immature and dysfunctional. Which part of immature and dysfunctional applies to both Bush II and Kim II? I leave that as an exercise for the reader.
Slashdot Mirror
Unfortunately, it will require the entire electricity output of the power plant and then some to strip the carbon out of the exhaust gasses, so what we will need is some honkin' big solar power satellites in orbit and use the electricity from them to power the carbon stripping process. That way the full output of the coal fired plant can go to the grid.
The really cool thing about this plan is that if you ever run out of coal, you can just dig up your waste carbon and burn that in the very same coal fired power plants! Brilliant!
See, completely controllable.
If NASA gives up on the Ares I/V pair and begins to pursue something reasonable, like the Direct architecture, they will have boosters capable of sending a CEV along with cargo and a departure stage to L2 without having to wait decades (or forever) for Ares V to be built.
While there is no realistic way for NASA to service the JWST with current and planned rockets, it does seem like the designers of the JWST are preparing it with the hopes that NASA changes its attitude with regards to boosters and builds something that can affordably reach L2. With Ares, it will be as expensive as a full blown moon mission.
Furthermore, why does everyone always assume that every project undertaken by the nation must have a short term return on investment? Does everything that you personally spend money on yield a cash return? How much money has that big plasma or DLP TV monitor made for you? Did the last CD/DVD/book/whatnot that you bought generate a net profit for you? Why should the nation's expenditures be any different?
The regular prefectural and town roads, on the other hand, are a horror show. Paving crews seem to just pave everything in sight and paint some lanes on later. Intersections seem to be the result of negotiations between rival paving crews that happen to run across each other. Let's not even talk about roads out in the mountains! You get a few feet off the beaten path and you'll be lucky to ever make it back. Imagine endless blind switchbacks on a strip of pavement less than ten feet wide! If you run across someone coming from the other direction, one of you will have to back up a half mile or so.
Furthermore, driver education in Japan is worse than useless. You are trained to operate a supplied vehicle on a closed course (sorta like a go-cart park). You have to shift into the proper gear at precisely marked points in the course, signal your intention to turn at another marked point in the course, etc. In short, you are trained to operate a particular vehicle to exacting standards ON A PARTICULAR CLOSED COURSE!
I was forewarned about the silly test and was therefore able to pass it my first time without taking classes. Fact is, however, that I was the only one to get my license that day.
The low fatality rates on Japanese roads is more reasonably attributed to the fact that no one ever actually drives faster than about 25MPH. Even in the little kei cars you have half a chance of surviving an accident at those speeds.
Japanese drivers suck. Oh, they are sorta 'polite' and all. They don't talk on their cell phone while driving. In fact, if they get a call, they'll stop before answering. . .right in the middle of the traveled way! No effort made to get their car off the road or to a safe place. . .Nope, the phone rings, they set the parking brake wherever they happen to be, be that a blind curve, an intersection or on the highway.
If people here ever actually had to travel a significant distance and did so at the sort of speeds typical in the US, you can bet they'd leave the US far behind where highway carnage was concerned.
In other words, humans have the same capacity to make bad decisions as monkeys do, and continue to make those bad decisions over time. The difference is that humans have a (relatively) advanced capacity to rationalize and justify why their wrong decision was actually the right one all along.
A consequence of this, I am willing to bet, is that monkeys can easily be deprogrammed with regard to their preference for red M&Ms vs blue M&Ms. On the other hand, have you ever tried to get a Coke drinker to switch to Pepsi? An A&F boy to wear GAP? A Ford driver to buy a Chevy? A Muslim to become Christian? A Neocon to vote Democrat? Or vice-versa? IANAP, but it seems that, for a portion of the population in any case, Man's intellect serves to strongly reinforce decisions made without prior consultation with that intellect.
What is "useful"? That is a term that you just pulled out of your ass. Who is it that gets to define "useful"? I know that it seemed obvious to you at the time, but try to codify that into a license and see where it gets you.
For reality's sake, let's just delete that and see what we have. . .
"any modifications or extensions also be licensed under the BSD License."
OK, no one will complain about that. . .or will they? With that one addition, the BSD license essentially becomes the GPL license. If you wanted your code and its derivatives to be available to the public under all circumstances, then why did you use the BSD to begin with? The GPL would have guaranteed that from the beginning.
What this really comes down to is that the BSD fanatics are shamed by being "used" by another open source organization rather than the normal corporate users that they accustomed to being fucked by. If taking Microsoft's big 'ole shaft, or Sony's somewhat smaller one, is OK, why bitch about the FSF and GPL use of the same code? In fact, this exposes a fundamental defect in the philosophy of the BSD license. Being offended by other Open Source organization's use of their code but not by corporate users who close off their work reveals the BSD camp's true character. They are happy to share (unconditionally) with those who would use their work for personal profit, but for others to lock that work into the domain of the public? Horror!
Fact is, by simply viewing the structures of the two licenses, it is easy to see that eventually the properties of any value protected by the BSD license will all either end up in proprietary products or under a GPL style 'viral' license. Which would you prefer?
If that property (as in 'real estate') is grabbed for use by a businessman. . .no problem. Grabbed by a FSF radical that intends to make sure that the public always has access to that code? Evil vermin! Die, die, die!
This is a (not so) complicated issue. If you stand for freedom, then back the GPL. If hedging your bets is more important than freedom, then you belong in the BSD camp.
Actually, not so tough, eh?
Whatever. . .
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-vie w.asp?tid=8902&posts=59&start=1
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/forums/thread-vie w.asp?tid=7868&posts=1197&start=1
With an intelligent plan of action, NASA could retire the Shuttle, build an even better replacement using the best parts of the Shuttle stack, go to the moon, and STILL have money left over for lots of good basic science. Unfortunately, because of cronyism and corruption, ATK-Thiokol will be getting the lions share of NASA's budget for the next several years.
Still, things will seem OK to you. You have a decent work relationship with your boss and coworkers. Your hypertension and cholesterol problems are well under control with the expensive medications that your employer's insurance covers. Your stock options look certain to guarantee a comfortable retirement in a couple decades time.
It will be about at this point that your boss will show up in your cubicle looking really, REALLY nervous and uncomfortable. He will start by saying that he really felt that you were an important part of the team and everybody values the contributions you made to the company over the years. He will then start talking about how the company is doing some restructuring and unfortunately, some positions are being eliminated. He will then apologize profusely and then point out that while one of those positions is yours, the company is offering a generous severance package.
As you follow the security guard to the front door carrying the box of your personal items from your desk, you tell yourself "A year severence pay. . .not bad. I can get another job in a year, no sweat."
A year finds you in your new job and filling out the paperwork to get your medication covered by the new insurance policy. Your first effort to do so was rejected by the insurance company with some excuse about "Pre-existing condition". To be certain, there must be some sort of mistake, so you are applying again. You never noticed it before, but those meds cost thousands of dollars a year. On top of that, this new job isn't quite as generous where the pay is concerned and your kid wants to start college this year. Too bad she didn't get a scholarship. At this point in the future, it will be important for you to try to remember your present rosy view of working in America. Will you stick it out? No, you will confirm the previous poster's point and run, not walk, back to Denmark.
Welcome to America.
Back when windows 95 shipped it was head and shoulders technically better than the other operating systems targeting average everyday folks.
Let's look at some examples, shall we? Apple's offering in `95 was System 7.5.2. Not Mac OS's finest moment ever, as System 7.5.2 was terribly unstable, but it was still pretty solid compared to Win95.
NeXT Computer's NeXTSTEP was available. . .Win95 was nowhere close to NeXTSTEP.
AmigaOS 3.1 was contemporary with Win95 but still far better than Microsoft's best efforts.
Acorn Computer's RISC OS (version 3.60 was available when Win95 was released) is arguably Win95's equal.
Atari release MultiTOS in 1993 and then the company died (for all intents and purposes). . .bad management can do that to any company. But was Windows 95 superior to MultiTOS? That is debatable.
Linux kernel 1.2 was available in 1995. You could argue that this wasn't an "operating systems targeting average everyday folks" because it was a beast to install and configure, but, honestly, how many "average everyday folks" could successfully install Win95 back in those days? Most people who used Win95 bought computers with it preinstalled. This was particularly the case with "average everyday folks".
And then there was IBM's OS/2. It was superior to Windows 95 in every way. In some ways, OS/2 is still technically superior to Microsoft's latest efforts, despite OS/2's development having been slowed to a crawl for most of the last decade.
Face it, Windows 95 was garbage. Microsoft has, twelve years on, yet to deliver on many of the marketing promises made about 'Chicago'. "Don't commit to OS/2 because 'Chicago' will be sooo much better!" Later, when the snake oil salesmen had finished fleecing the credulous, the suckers became vocal supporters of Microsoft in the hopes of burying their shame at being swindled and made fools of in a chorus of praise. "Oooh! Such high performance!" and "It is sooo stable! I don't HAVE to reboot it three times a day, I just like that sound it makes when it starts!" and "It is sooo easy to use!".
In any case, the faithful have been strung along for so long now that they will desperately defend any nonsense that Microsoft generates. As a famous idiot once said "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice. . .can't get fooled again!" But when one is fooled many times in series (how many times is it now? Win95, Win98, WinME. Win2000, WinXP, etc), brand loyalty takes on religious characteristics. "When Jesus comes back. . .I mean, when Microsoft finally gets it right, you're gonna be so sorry for making fun of me!" Pointing out the obvious disconnects between reality and Microsoft's sermons to the flock only strengthens their resolve to maintain the faith. With this in mind, it is easy to see why some people would make ludicrous claims about Windows 95. Since Microsoft's vendor lock in has this psychological aspect in addition to the technical and economic ones, debunking Microsoft's claims only serves to allow those of us who have not yet been assimilated to feel smug about having successfully resisted the BS for so long. This debunking can not influence individuals with significant portions of their credibility tied to the myth of Windows superiority. . .individuals like Ziff-Davis columnists and execs who pushed through transitioning corporate assets to Microsoft infrastructure.
Try rereading the parent post. This is the the point. From the perspective of private enterprise, any investment in facilities outside Earth's atmosphere, other than a couple tiny satellites, is inconceivable. Private investment CAN NOT take us to the moon, or Mars, or build factories in orbit. The scale of the investment, in terms of capital and time, is mammoth. The basic laws of capitalism (turn a profit or perish) forbid private industry from being more than contractors (leeches) to public (government) enterprises where serious space development is concerned.
Your characterization of the "typical" republican as upper-middle-class white suburbanite does not coincide with my experience. Most that I've met in this demographic are democrat. The republicans that I have met have typically been poorly educated trailer park residents (trailer parks are sort of suburban, right?) suffering from one of the common, ignorance-derived mental disorders like religious fanaticism, congenital racism, violent homophobia or xenophobia, or terminal provincialism. These republicans, where they possess the ability to read and actually exercised this ability more than twice a year, prefer such reputable sources as "The National Enquirer". More often they just watch its TV equivalent, Fox News.
.that is something that I find deeply offensive.
As an aside, I happen to know people whose parents were accountants who are struggling to pay rent and feed themselves. I also know accountants who are lost on their desktop if their accounting software doesn't load automatically when they log in. In addition, I know inner city kids <sarcasm>(Black kids, even! Imagine that?)</sarcasm> who could likely code circles around you (assuming that you can program at all).
It is true that economically disadvantaged demographics may have less access and exposure to current technology. It is not true that those demographics are more stupid than any other demographic. It is also not true that exposure to a particular computer interface will automatically make a user better able to apprehend a new one. As someone who was responsible for transitioning a group of users to a new application (accountants, oddly enough), my observations were that experience with one interface actually interferes with the comprehension of a new one. In the last few elections, the interface to the new electronic voting machines was new to virtually all voters, rich and poor alike. Saying that poor, inner city residents (you are principally talking about African-Americans here) often screwed up in the voting booth, but that the white trash in the trailer park outside of town (we are now talking republicans) never did in numbers great enough to be statistically significant. .
Inner city residents lack even basic computer skills? Skills like operating a computer through a touch sensitive display? Displays like the ones used at restaurants and stores? How much exposure does an accountant get to these types of input devices, I wonder? The claim that inner city residents are at a disadvantage using a touch screen voting machine is one that is not well thought out. The claim that the discrepancy between the final tallies and the exit polls in poorer urban districts is due to the ignorance and the ineptitude of the voters is equally ill-conceived.
Bell Labs was a powerhouse of innovation back in the days when the phone company was such a heavily regulated monopoly that it was virtually a state run enterprise. Since the breakup and deregulation of AT&T (effectively the same as privatization, in this case), what sorts of epoch-making telecommunications innovations have there been? Please only cite examples that were not already in Bell Labs' development pipeline and near marketable maturity.
How about price? While long distance service has stabilized somewhere near the pre-deregulation prices or perhaps even slightly less, fees and 'local long distance' costs are FAR higher now.
You point out being able to to buy cheap cordless phones at Walmart like it is some sort of improvement. A years rent on one of the terminals that AT&T supplied was no more than the cost of one of those cheap pieces of crap that you get from Walmart, yet it was a reasonably high quality instrument. Furthermore, AT&T did allow customers to use their own terminals on the network and cordless phones were widely available prior to the breakup of AT&T. Bell Labs even developed much of the technology for making cordless phones.
What innovations have come to market that AT&T had been stifling?"all of the other things that AT&T had locked down opened up". What things? Some examples would be nice, as I can't think of any.
Perhaps you should be aware that Firefox (and the browser from which it was forked, Mozilla) have had a tabbed interface for substantially longer than MSWindows' Task Bar has supported grouping the buttons of open instances of applications. It is the ease of use of the tabbed interface that Mozilla supported that forced Microsoft to address the awkwardness of working with more than one page at a time in IE by grouping the Task Bar buttons. That this was itself an awkward and far from optimal solution is evidenced by the fact that the latest version of IE now supports a tabbed interface.
While it is nice to have a variety of tools to organize your running applications, I've seen no studies that indicate that the tools offered by Microsoft to do this are in any way ergonomically superior to those of any other contemporary OS. Your opinion may very well be that MSWindows is better. My experience, however, is that there are a number of alternatives that get the job done with fewer keystrokes, fewer keyboard-to-mouse-to-keyboard transitions, and fewer mouse actions.
Your assumption that the reason for a tabbed interface in Firefox being because the underlying OS does not support easy switching between open instances of the same program is false. I can't speak for every window manager that runs on every unix-like system, but the ones that I have used, as well as the display systems on non-unix OSes, support easy switching between open instances of the same program.
You state that it is your opinion that applications should not have tabbed interfaces and we should instead just rely upon the OS to organize multiple instances of each application. Your opinion is not universally shared. While the OS most certainly should do this, it should just be considered a fallback position for poorly designed applications that can't manage their own interface adequately (like IE before it supported tabs). This is partly due to the system resources issue that I mentioned above, but also because there are numerous ways of displaying paged information in a compact form. The authors of various applications may (probably do, actually) know better than MS how to manage the display of the information that their particular application handles. Using tabs is only one way, though it is an efficient and effective way. Because of this, you are seeing a growing number of applications that have a tabbed interface. You will, in fact, continue to see more. I will even bet that you will see tabs for selecting open documents in Word before too long.
As a final note, look at the subject that you provided for this thread:Where do I go to get back to "lean and mean".... As I have repeatedly pointed out, a tabbed interface to an application is indeed "leaner and meaner" than launching many seperate instances of the same application.
Sincerely, Geezle/2
I agree with you in principle, as I also would like a basic browser that just renders standard HTML and supports CSS and does so in less than a .5meg memory footprint (not including page caching). What I don't understand is your repeated objection to tabbed browsing. I (and many others) see tabbed browsing as the single biggest advance in browser technology since. . .well, since Tim Berners-Lee invented the web browser. I can think of no other feature that is as "must-have" that has been introduced in the last thirteen or fourteen years.
/. and you want to read an undisplayed message? Click the link then click the back button when you finish reading it to reload to the original thread? NO! Middle click to load the message in a new tab, <ctrl><pgdown> to read the message then <ctrl><w> to close the new tab when you are done. Viola! Back at the original thread without reloading it! Dozens of ms saved! If you think Windoze can spawn and load a new window faster than Firefox can spawn and load a new tab. . .you are delusional.
First of all, supporting tabs does not increase the actual memory utilization of the application, or reduce performance. The memory required to spawn a new window and the system (OS) resources needed to support that window are MUCH greater than the resources needed for the application to spawn a new tab within the existing application window. The only significant memory consumption with respect to tabbed browsing is in the form of caching the unexposed tabs. Sure, some of the fancy things that Opera does with tabs probably requires some resources (previews, drag-n-drop, etc), but until some other browser approaches Opera's performance, I can't see anyone complaining about it.
Really, I can only understand your problem with tabbed browsing by assuming you to be a Windows (only) user who has been too lazy to invest the ten or fifteen minutes needed to develop the skills required to operate a tabbed browser. If you bother to learn a couple keyboard shortcuts, you will suddenly understand the awesome power of tabbed browsing. <ctrl><w>has already been suggested to you (for closing the current tab or the window if there is only one tab). I would like to suggest <ctrl><pgup> and <ctrl><pgdown> to cycle to the previous or next tab respectively. Furthermore, if you deselect the option to "Select new tabs opened from links" in Firefox Preferences, you can load reference links from a document that you are reading without interrupting your reading by middle-clicking them (I believe that is how it works in Windoze). This will load the links in the background while you continue browsing the current document.
Perusing
Shopping online? Load competing products into adjacent tabs then <ctrl><pgup> and <ctrl><pgdown> between them, comparing features. Shopping at Amazon or some such place and a recommended product catches your eye but you don't want to waste time investigating until after you make your purchase? Middle-click to load it into another tab and check it out later without missing a beat.
Even if all you really use the Web for is finding porn, tabbed browsing is for you. Next time you are on that thumbnail page of Japanese school girls or goats or MOPAR engines or whatever turns you on, middle-click each thumbnail then <ctrl><pgup> and <ctrl><pgdown> through all of your loaded images! You will never again complain about tabbed browsing! (You can, you'll find, do that one handed!)
Anyway, tabbed browsing is a lightweight means of exploring multiple tangential references without interrupting your current task. There are posters here who claim fifty or more simultaneous open tabs. I typically have that many or more open at a time as well. Can you imagine navigating 50+ simultaneously open IE windows? Is that even possible?
Honestly, if you try to use tabbed browsing, you will see the adva
I'll let someone else mod you OT, or ridiculous or something like that. . .I'm hitting the sack. By the way, good luck with your $3/hr job. . .wish you the best.
What makes you think that Saddam could have resisted a cagey band of welfare claims reps backed by a hard stare from Condie Rice? I'll bet you are one of those 'believers' that still thinks Saddam has Transformer tractor trailers hiding in invisible underground bunkers that can link together and make an invincible, WMD producing robot of destruction. Come on, dude, this stuff is not and was never true! Saddam was just a chubby idiot trying to make the best of a bad situation. He couldn't teleport through walls, shoot laser beams from his eyes or fart atomic fire. We didn't have to bomb the neighborhood into rubble before going in. . .that was gratuitous violence in the extreme.
Think about it for a bit. A bunch of welfare agents set up shop in Baghdad and start handing out cash. Sure, Saddam will see the threat, but he can't, and never really did, act on his own. If he can't sell the idea of some threat to his supporters, then he can't act on that threat. In this respect, he is no different from Bush. Every ruler, be they elected or not, must act from a power base. That power base MUST be a portion of the population. . .it can not be simply the particular leaders say so. If we went in nice and didn't hurt anyone, then all of his ranting about it would sound like. . .ranting. It would get no traction. Saddam would lose credibility. . .how much more does this need to be spelled out for you? Do I need to actually name the welfare agents that I think would have been best to send over or something?
No. . .Saddam could not have just slaughtered American citizens en masse. No, Saddam could not have politically survived significant interference in funds disbursement. You are attributing super human characteristics to a man who was just playing politics a little harder than some other leaders. The most probable outcome of the invasion of the welfare agents is that Saddam would have struck a deal with the US agreeing to pretty much anything so long as he could remain the titular head of the country.
Damn! You are so right! I didn't realise that you wanted to work for $3.00 an hour for 70 hours a week. I always figured that somewhere on the planet there existed someone that wanted $3/hr for 70 hours and no more but I had never met that person `til now! I suppose that we could make an amendment to the minimum wage law for people like you stating that, as long as you were offered full labor protection rights and offered full guarantees that no discrimination will be directed your way were you to accept those protections, then you can voluntarily return a portion of your earnings to your employer.
If Saddam could fight this "violation of Iraqi sovereignty", he could have fought the real one. . .grow up.
Everything is fair in business, right? OK, let's despense with all these burdensome regulations. I want your daughter in my brothel. . .just business, mind you. . .what are you going to do about it? Put me out of business? Got something with a better draw than your own green eyed horse shoe?
" there are good reasons for limitations on Disney, there are good reasons for limitations on FoxNewscorp or CNN." What sort of limitations? The First Amendment sort of frowns on interfering with the freedom of the press.
Now you have me laughing. . .there are a small handfull of corporations that control everything that all Americans see in the media and you are going to champion them in the name of freedom of the press? Why don't you defend Pravda or Xinhau while you are at it! Restrictions formerly existed to prevent this condition but they are gone now (Thanks, Mr. Powell).
But if you don't like it and can't get it changed, you have to suffer for it if it is something the government controls
Hey, if everybody else wants something but you don't. . .suck it up or get out. . .The down side of democracy is that you don't always get your way. Do you think that you will get your way more often in a capitalist society without democracy?
Now, if the government happened to butt out and leave the matters for the people to decide, then you gain power.
Please explain to me why the government's decision is not the people's decision. . .we are talking about democracy here. In the current situation, of course, the government does things that the people do not want. When an executive is put into power that is committed to doing things that the public does not want, can you complain that the concept of government is flawed? No. . .simply put, a bunch of people made a bad decision based upon lies and misinformation (likely that this group includes you) and allowed a government to come into power that is doing things that people (including you) don't want it to do. That you made a bad decision does not mean that the concept of government is flawed. . .it simply means that you have to put more effort into your homework.
Let us put it another way. . .If you vote democracy away, it does not absolve you of the crimes committed by whatever replaces democacy. Throwing all decisions to the Market (remember, I am capitalising out of respect because you treat it as a god) and relegating all atrocities that the Market commits to 'just business' does not mean that you are not just as responsible for those atrocities as Stalin was for the deaths of the peasants in the Ukraine. In the Immortal words of Geddy Lee, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice". There is no option available to you in which you don't have to shoulder at least a portion of the responsibility for the events that unfold in the world. The Market does not function in a vacuum. It cannot commit atriocities without the consent of its supporters. When the Market commits atrocities, it does so only because of the will of its supporters. This means you. This means that when someone dies of starvation in Africa because they couldn't afford food, you, as a supporter of the Market, killed them just as directly as Stalin killed any Kulak in the Ukraine.
Certainly, this is harsh and hard for any supporter of the Market to come to terms with. The truth that the Market supporter is responsible for more deaths than all of the 'communist' rulers combined is heady stuff indeed. For example, famine in Ireland, death squads in Central and South America, serial famines in Africa, industrial acccidents worldwide due to poor or nonexistant workplace safty regulations, fatalities caused by product failure due to cost saving corner cutting, etc.
The US drops from a Blackhawk helicopter a detachment of welfare claims representatives into downtown Baghdad. Under the cover of Apache gunships, the claims reps rent an office and begin disbursing welfare claims. In another part of the city, covert operatives set up a RentOwn shop with unbeatable deals. Meanwhile, a Dunkin`Donuts opens across town with FREE donuts! On the banks of the Tibris, a team of Army Engineers begins building a water park. . .you getting the idea yet?
Sorry, not very powerful. . .voting the bastards out is MUCH more direct and MUCH more powerful. Your example only works when the organization committing 'evil' acts is also not a monopoly and not producing products that the public needs at a price that is less that any potential competition. The Market (I'll capitalize it since you seem to revere it like a god) cares not about the circumstances under which goods are produced but only price, and, sometimes, quality. The problem is that HOW goods are produced can be of significant public concern yet the market provides no reliable mechanism to adjust productive capacity based upon HOW goods are produced, leaving the deliberate, conscious, coordinated boycott as the only tool available to the public (short of legal. . .I mean legislative. . .action). Very, very weak. . .denying the public the right to legally forbid particular business practices is. . .well. . .you try and give it a nice name, OK?
As for the government, if you are are having problems, then you voted for the wrong guy. . .You voted for Bush, right? Figures. . .
I think I disagree with that on general principles (why have the legislature force its decision on all), but would like some specific examples? I agree with regulation, but only as a last resort. Leave as many decisions to the people as possible.
Please. . .justify this comment by telling me that you ate a lot of lead paint chips as a child. . .No? Lead paint was banned by the time you were a child? How did that happen? Magic? Your intellect wasn't stunted by spending your formative years in a coal mine, was it? Really? Then what's your excuse?
we need to be concerned every time the government gets involved in personal economic decisions
Ahh. . .it is OK for the government to get involved in other personal decisions? How we choose to exploit the poor slobs we employ is off limits, though, right? I think I am seeing a pattern emerge. . . .
I believe strongly in democracy as a way to control government. I do not believe in democracy as a way to control people's private lives. Opposition to sbusive power by government is not opposition to democracy.
Hehehehe! You can see democracy controlling only itself, but no other aspects of human interaction? What's that. . .we have a game called 'Democracy' that we play every once and a while but it has nothing to do with our real lives? We can't let it influence the real world (the economy)? You really need to think harder about this stuff. . .
By the way. . .if you don't like a government policy. . .use democratic methods to change it. . .don't try to destroy the organs of democracy altogather! That's. . .well . . .antidemocratic!
It is less an "invisible hand" than it is allowing the people themselves to make informed decisions about their lives. Rather than have the fascist jackboot of government kick the "one size fits few" decree into them. There are some matters that should be left to the people, and not the government. Giving government too much has resulted in huamnity's lowest achievements. The only "mysticism" here is placing blind trust in rulers.
Hmmm. . .wingnut talking points devoid of content. . .what are you trying to say? Who is placing blind trust in rulers? (aside from conservative Bush supporters). Why can't people express their "informed decision
Sorry, but you missed the point. . .The cash would be good old US legal tender. . .The point to the operation would be, well, bluntly, mass bribery. You'd be surprised (or perhaps not) how effective that can be.
Hmmm. . .like Microsoft, right?
I think you have it wrong. . .directly controlling corporations through the market is like balancing a stack of marbles on a bowling ball. The only tool available to the public is the boycott. . .sounds great unless the target is the only effective supplier of the good or service that the public needs. . .Far better to just legislate that the supplier can supply, but just not by doing X, Y and Z.
Sorry, but your perspective of the market is viewed through rose colored lenses and hopelessly utopian. . .you capitalist idealists really need to wake up and smell the incinerated liberties. Giving corporations free reign is NOT the answer. . .it is just the final solution.
Your diatribe against the government is quite telling. You don't believe in democracy. From your perspective, only knee-jerk and phantasmagorical (devine, perhaps?) mechanisms like the 'invisible hand' of the market can meet the needs of the people. The people can not possibly deliberate their needs in open and democratic debate? I am sorry, but we simply disagree. . . for me, a democratic government trumps all metaphysical mumbo-jumbo. That a government is not perfectly democratic is, for me, a call for improvement, not a call to discard humanity's highest achievements and throw our specie's lot in with mysticism.
please, we could mow down there army without much trouble.
With what army? Oh yeah. . .the one that is in Iraq. . .Gonna do some real long range mowing down, I take it?
Think "Shock and Awe" will impress them much? They've seen the US's best effort at that already.
Gonna nuke them? You'd blanket Japan with fallout. Sure, there are cleaner bombs available now, but to take out bunkers with a nuke, you need to do a ground burst. . .even one of those will make a mess out of the entire region.
No. . .you will have to send in ground troops. Unfortunately, the US doesn't have any to spare right now, do they? You can try to send in the South Koreans as your proxies, but I have been there and met them. The South Koreans are certainly concerned about their kin to the north, but have no desire to kill them. They talk about peaceful reunification using "when", not "if".
I agree with your point that there is no financial motive for attacking the DPRK and as such, events in that country have a real low priority for the Bush regime. Nevertheless, to say that the Bush regime is not conservative is the sort of thing only a. . .well. . .particularly dumb but devout conservative would say. To isolate 'corporatist' (that's what you meant to type, I know it) from 'conservative' is nonsensical. When in this or the last century have the conservatives NOT backed corporate authority over that of the public? What do you think "small government" really boils down to? Sure, when the government has been quarantined from control by the public, as has been the case recently in the US, the government can become a tool of corporations. Please don't assume that this is something that has happened by accident, however! This is the ultimate achievement sought by conservative for many decades. If you are a conservative, be proud of it. Typically, though, a democratic government is a tool used by the public to constrain the actions of corporations and other powerful entities whose interests do not match those of the public. That's why conservatives are for a smaller and weaker one. They don't want the power of corporations constrained by anything, even the conscious will of the public. As a conservative, you should know that. If you are a conservative and don't know that. . .what can I say? You've been had.
Anyway, if the US goes and nukes North Korea, they will lose their last best friend; Japan. Sure, the Japanese want to take a tough line on the North Koreans, but they certainly don't want the radioactive remains of the North Korean contry side settling over their rice fields in Niigata. Something of a diplomatic wedgie, I think.
So, big guy, give me some details on how we could mow down there army without much trouble. Saying the US could do it is one thing. . .sure, in a perfect world. . .delivering the meat and potatoes is another thing, though. You don't have to deliver. . .just give me the menu.
The same is true of the DPRK. Crazy Kim, as goofy and silly as he seems to everyone else in the world, has a solid cult of personality gig going in his own country. A surprising number of North Koreans would be willing to die for the clown. Furthermore, hungry people don't revolt unless they have a definite sense that things will get better as a result of it. Revolution is something people do out of irrepressible optimism, not hopeless desperation. Sanctions will do nothing but amplify any suffering that the common people of the DPRK are experiencing without harming the current regime in the slightest.
Flood the DPRK with cheap (or free) consumer goods, build them some power stations gratis and set up a US funded welfare system for the entire population. That wouldn't even approach the cost of a couple months of the occupation in Iraq. We could double the annual income of everyone in the DPRK with direct payments (dare I say bribes?) for less than 10% of the cost of the Iraq war. After a year or so of that, do you think the North Korean people would let their government do anything unpleasant to their new best friends? How long do you think Kim's cult of personality could hold out against that?
Let's make things even better. . .how about opening commerce directly with the regime? You guessed it, we agree to buy from the government of the DPRK every brand spanking shiny new atom bomb that they can make for ten times the market price. Think of how many Hong Kong pirated DVDs Kim could get off eBay with that much money! We then specify, for quality control purposes and ISO9001 compliance, that we be able to observe the bomb making process from time to time.
If we stop treating Kim II like the class dweeb and try not to laugh at his stupid haircut in front of him then maybe he wouldn't be so touchy. Maybe Bush II could even invite Kim II to some of those 'special' parties in Washington. . .you know, like the ones Bush HW went to that featured underage male prostitutes? I'm sure all Kim really wants is some love.
This idea that the only way to beat your enemies is to make them bleed is retarded and likely the result of being on the receiving end of too much abuse in the school yard as a child. It is immature and dysfunctional. Which part of immature and dysfunctional applies to both Bush II and Kim II? I leave that as an exercise for the reader.