I'm getting a sense that this is going to be a digital event. It will either be an extraordinary masterpiece of cinema, considering the power a great director has today to fulfill a vision, or it will be the worst mind-numbing, steaming heap of CGI dung to ever grace celluloid. The best or worst of this is that it will almost certainly glory or stench in 3D.
The National Guard will gladly pay up to $50,000 of your student loans if you sign up immediately! That and I hear the clear mountain air of Afghanistan is bracing this time of year... Oooooooo, look at the poppies!
Yeah, the Fukushima disaster has resulted in increases in radioactive sulfur in California. Of course the levels are well below danger levels, but some folks are still all up in arms and terrified that they'll go to bed glowing light night lights.
Human beings have a remarkably poor ability to assess real threats vs. non-real threats. They did a study of folks living in the path of a Mt. Hood eruption and subsequent flood. Folks who lived 30 miles away were deeply concerned. Those 20 miles away worried all the time. People living in imminent danger near the base of the mountain didn't think about it all. Because the human mind discards a threat that it can't effectively deal with. Case in point, people living precisely ON the San Andreas fault in San Bernadino, CA (the city allowing people to build homes on, then live on that fault), driving while texting in one hand and calling in the other, people ignoring health warnings. Its almost an axiom that people are terrified of things that probably won't hurt them, while they continue to eat or drink to excess, smoke cigarettes, take dangerous drugs with serious side effects, drive imprudently or create hazard zones around their homes.
This comet is coming close by astronomical standards... only a couple light minutes away compared to a universe where we've seen objects over 13 billion light years away (even the nearest non-dwarf galaxy is 2 million light years away.) By human standards though, its impossible far away and will have no lasting impact on humanity (save the wonder, if it gives us a good show.) A car racing at a hundred miles per hour (that 160 KPH for the rest of you), will take a little over 25 years to travel that far, driving flat out, nonstop (I hope the driver has a good bladder.) Considering the size and distance, the tidal force (the most direct impact of the comet), will be less that 1 billionth of the moons. So figure if you have a large fixed body of water you may be able to see with a high powered microscope, water rising a few nanometers. Somehow, I'm just not left with a sense of foreboding.
"Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 has proved once again to be the best choice when it comes to catching attacks..."
Is that "Catching" like "Aha! I caught that wascawy wabbit" or is it "Catch" like "If I connect this PC to the internet for a couple minutes without loads of anti-virus protection and a beefy firewall, IE will catch something really nasty..." or even "Catch" like "A filter on a drain, a low place where nasty things tend to accumulate...". Because inquiring minds want to know!.
This isn't to say that IE9 isn't a lovely product, but if you're going to tout it, you might want to say it in a way that makes people clear about what you're saying at first glance. Just a suggestion:-)
Someone needs to start a new ISP, one that will hopefully have global appeal at some point. Its selling point would be that it:
Recognizes and active supports net neutrality.
That it treast customers with extraordinary respect starting with maintaining absolute privacy.
It never throttle traffic and gives you exactly what you pay for
That it is honest and open with its customers about everything, good and bad
That it closely works with its customers to create a shared environment hostile to hacking, cracking, malware, and breaches of personal security.
That it not only allows, but empowers its customers to be part of proving its services, aimed at informing and enlightening its customers.
That it puts its customers ahead of the government, ahead of other corporations, even ahead of its own momentary desires.
I have no illusions that such an ISP wouldn't be for everyone. Some folks don't have a problem with be used by governments or corporations like cattle. This is for folks who actually give a damn about their human rights, and demand to be treated with some modicum of dignity and respect. People for whom the word responsibility occur as less a curse, but more an opportunity.
Its fair to say that the network has become our most vulnerable aspect to modern life, because greedy and stupid people have traded our sanctity for their benefit. We need to take back what is rightfully ours and nobody elses.
This is not just putting a cable in orbit. Consider a long list of stability problems inherent to any project of this type. Everything from Harmonic vibration, to Coriolis effect, to shear from solar winds and complex interactions with the ionosphere. It might take a month to lift a cable car safely. Okay for raw materials, not so great for people or perishables.
Also imagine you have a 45,000 mile long antenna that extends out into the solar wind. Can you imagine the kind of voltages and currents that this thing will induce? The mind boggles.At its base you would need huge superconductors to draw charge off the cable to allow it to function at all. Of course there would be the up side in that it would generate enough power to operate itself and a fair part of the country the base was located in, It would just be an incredibly expensive and challenging endeavor.
None if this is to say we shouldn't pursue this end, it would transform what was possible for humanity. Just don't have illusions to how difficult, or complicated this undertaking would be. It would demand our best and brightest working for decades.
The first is regarding the rights of corporations vs everyone else. If the court system has degenerated into a rubber stamp to give corporations whatever they want effectively criminalizing anyone who isn't a corporation, then we have some serious problems here and they need to be address with velocity and extreme prejudice.
The other is a technical issue involving a broken service being used by the corporation. Intent is one of those things that is hard to determine, and without solid evidence like "A witness overheard a conversation..." or "The union employed ex-employees to find the vulnerability..." one must look at a reasonable expectation. If the corporation created a means for traffic, such that reasonable use of that means caused it to fail, then the corporation has no expectation of winning this case, because the union did nothing exceptional or in this specific case unreasonable, ie. no apparent act of malice.
If my front yard ends up filled with hazards and imminent disasters, either intentionally or through neglect, and the mailman trips and breaks a decrepit lamp post or falls into my flower patch, the mailman is not liable. There was no malice in his actions, in fact he had reasonable expectations to the contrary and the vulnerability was a product of my irresponsible or inappropriate behavior. The only exception to this is if I can prove unequivocally that the mailman willfully and with full knowledge damaged my yard, and with evidence that I created a hazardous environment already acknowledged, that's going to be a really tough stretch.
What Apple did was innovate style and function. While that is remarkable, truly artistic and elegant. It is not something that should be patentable. The elements have been around for a long time... you point that out yourself. What other device manufacturers lacked was a vision, a sense of what it is that the user wanted and needed, what would be the best use for this device, then making the device conform fit and function to that use.
By patenting the iPad, they have to actually say what it is they are patenting. Are they patenting size, dimension, shape, appearance or some other physical attribute? Are they patenting user experience? Are they patenting the hardware? Are they patenting the style, the craft or the design aspects? You see none of these things are patentable. They don't meet the criteria of something you can patent. Some of thees things you can trademark, some you could possible copyright (though I would presume that would be a limited protection at best.)
Their existing patent is ridiculously vague and under the glare of a patent trial might well be thrown out or pared down to a bloody stump of what it currently is. What will happen ultimately is that Samsung is a big kid, it'll ask Apple how much to go away and stop bothering them. Apple will wave its arms and make all kinds of unhappy gestures, make false threats against Samsung, meet them behind closed doors, and hammer out an agreement (because in the end they know their patent is less than water tight) because its better to walk away with cash in hand, than to spend money on trials you will probably lose.
This is the shape of business today, extortion, confidence games, ponzi schemes and pretty much everyone hiking a leg to mark territory.
Clearly you don't get what's happening. People here on Slashdot, for the most part don't care one way or the other about Apple. They have awesome product design, and you pay a huge premium for their artistic flare (typically 200%.) That's absolutely why artists love Apple.
The problem here is that Apple is fighting dirty, the IP they claim for the most part is thin at best and utterly bogus in the rest. Yes, they took the tablet that Microsoft and an army of PC makers simply couldn't figure out, and produced a perfect combination of software and hardware with a great form factor for a specific set of purposes, knowing instinctively what to accomplish (with today's technology) and what to avoid.
That makes them bright, clever, first on the scene with the right formula for success in this market. Kudos... It doesn't mean they could, should, or deserve to own the entire touch-pad market space. Just on principal its offensive to see someone wage a campaign of scape the bottom ethics. For another, look at the iPad 2, notice how much cooler it is that the iPad 1. That because even in their brilliance,Apple saw their competitors come up with cool ideas they missed. Having competition keeps you sharp, makes you honest, because silly BS won't fly in the face of real competition. The saddest part it that this is just morally and socially lazy. Trying to win like this is an admission that you haven't got the chops to compete on your intelligence or talent. That or it means you're such a bloated beast that you win by going around crushing your competition by manipulating legal and social options.
Apple should applaud the Galaxy, because it make the iPad better. Suck it up Apple and play like you have a pair.
At 13,000 mph the delivery time is about half an hour. Figure the furthest spot on the planet is 12,000 miles from launch site and that means less than an hour ro anywhere on the planet. Can you say DAMN FAST!!!
As for delivering ordinance, you would coordinate a fast delivery vehicle with local eyes in the air and possibly eyes on the ground. Drop a couple multi-warhead smart bombs and you pretty much have obsoleted any other kind of bomber. Add fly by wire plus autonomous smart electronics, and predator drones, and you pretty much don't have to change out of your jammies to blast the snot out of somebody half a world away.
On the more productive side, this technology would lend itself to eventually creating aircraft capable of LEO space flight, and ultra high speed global travel. The idea of getting anyplace on earth in less time than it takes to get through the security line is kind of shocking. Anyone for high tea in Johannesburg?
Let's see, we start it all off with a really witless attempt at a racial slur. Honestly, this is a living example of why we so need Head-Start. Then he goes for the ham-fisted attempt at sarcasm, and finally brings the whole trailer trash Trifecta home with an awkward insinuation regarding a political system that only exists any more on a backward Caribbean Island. My hats off sir, in two sentences you've regurgitated enough stupidity to lower the average IQ of the western hemisphere by 0.3%. What a monument to ignorance. What a shining beacon for morons everywhere! You must be very proud! Congratulations.;-)
No, light does not attract black holes, how ever the barionic objects that produce the light do.
Light exerts force on all objects with mass, in fact one of the more interesting interplanetary/interstellar ship designs involves shooting a laser at a large light sail.
We are still trying the prove there are gravity waves, we have yet to actually measure them so we have no idea yet how fast they propagate, though some think the graviton is likely to be a tachyon (a particle that is faster than light.) Measuring gravitons is operationally impossible:
Unambiguous detection of individual gravitons, though not prohibited by any fundamental law, is impossible with any physically reasonable detector.[11] The reason is the extremely low cross section for the interaction of gravitons with matter. For example, a detector with the mass of Jupiter and 100% efficiency, placed in close orbit around a neutron star, would only be expected to observe one graviton every 10 years, even under the most favorable conditions. It would be impossible to discriminate these events from the background of neutrinos, since the dimensions of the required neutrino shield would ensure collapse into a black hole.
Sorry but your information, math and appraisal of the situation is in grotesque error.
When George Bush took office the national debt was stood $5.727 trillion. When he left it was just over 10 trillion. Simple mathematics suggest that he pounded about 4.3 trillion dollars into oblivion. That's nearly 2 trillion more than Obama. For more information you can go http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-4486228-500803.html">here.
Then we look at where Obama spent that money... Oh yeah, he spent it on Bush's war (which he expanded), Bush's economic collapse (which he prevented) and Bush's continued give away to corporations and the nations wealthiest 2 percent. In short, he had to choose between economic China Syndrome, or bailing out the banks and businesses to prevent global catastrophe (created by George Bush.) He had to choose to walk out of the middle east or clean up the mess that George made. He had to attempt to help the millions that lost their jobs in the economic crash that was created by George Bush. He did all these things with the general consent and support of the Republican rank and file. The one thing he did in the face of the Republicans was to attempt to provide low cost healthcare for all Americans. Well clearly someone needs to lynch him for that.
In short, if Obama has any failing, its being too much like George Bush, and letting the conservative wing nuts in the legislature run the country into a ditch. Forgive me, but the time for religious blathering and mindless snot is passed. The facists and fruitloops have gutted the American economy and simply Wallmarted us all to death. The only glimmer of hope in the last 30 years occurred during the office of a tax and spend MODERATE, who spent money investing in the middle class, environment and the nations infrastructure. To quote "Its the economy stupid!".When you invest in the right things America thrives. When you invest in the wrong things American dies. Investing in pointless war, the wealthy and powerful, corporate welfare and Wallstreet would be the "Wrong Thing"!
Thanks for the perspective from outside the circus tent:-)
Personally I'm a registered Dem, but that's of little importance, both sides have failed miserably. At one time, the Dems were the representatives of the common man, and their focus was primarily quality of life for the middle income, protection against destitution for the poor, strong human rights and addressing what they saw as problems or injustices with the necessary government resources to make a difference. The Dems were champions for social advancement and change. The Reps on the other side were defenders of beloved cultural traditions, committed to promoting business, national defense and protecting the status quo. Strangely enough, during the time of Richard Nixon, the Reps were as interested in the environment as the Dems, by the same logic that hunters and fishermen today are among the best environmentalists, because they see what they love under threat of mindless and rampant development for development sake (that and the self evident logic that its unwise to defecate where masticate.)
It was a dedicated bunch of men and women who used several effective strategies in the 80s to hijack the government. A combination of bringing wallstreet advertising into politics to sell candidates, creating highly charged emotional arguments to distract the public (abortion, equal rights, gay rights, etc.), 30 second sound bites (for the attention deficit crowd), spin doctoring (couching controversial and negative arguments in fluffy, friendly terms... to hide their significance) and in general pulling so hard to the right consistently that over time, the middle is now further right than the far right used to be. They also took a line from history. Tell big lies often enough and people will believe them.
By the way those men and women represented the wealthy and powerful, and were concerned about things like population growth, and the distribution of wealth, honestly believing that if they controlled all the wealth, they were somehow inherently wiser and more fit to steer the ship of the future. There plan was the end result of years of time and energy (and billions of dollars) spent on conservative think tanks.) That and they saw the lack of direction and purpose in their own party in the early 70s after the crisis of conscience in the resignation of Richard Nixon.
As you say, the political system is not the root of the issue. We were hijacked by the wealthy, affluent and powerful. They created a climate where they could distract the masses and take the entire game, playing board, pieces, even the dice. Most folks here are still paying attention to the distraction. That's the sad part, we've become so Pavlovian in our automatic responses to the insane state of affairs that most of us can't see that we've been bought and sold. People here take their belief systems very seriously. Rather than pursuing truly rational activities, we share opinions and band together in bunches celebrating them like they had some intrinsic value.
I think Americans are ripe for a major shift. If we can stop defending positions and actually roll up our sleeve and come to some basic consensus about where we want our society to go, we might yet pull this bacon out of the fire. Americans in spite of their ignorance, prejudice and superstition have an amazing ability to stop, look at what needs to get done and simply do it. I'm hoping that we rise to this occasion, and if necessary do it right over the top of those who would stop us (in D.C. or anywhere else.)
The first is that we can't seem to provide real medical service for people in this country without getting insurance and for profit insanity mixed up in it. There should be two levels of medical care. One is socialized, and primarily nonprofit based providing the public with basic day to day and simple emergency service. Then there would be the for profit care, that provides the kind of service that people who can afford additional care can expect (this is what you buy insurance for.) The two for the most part don't compete and if the socialized service is primarily geared at preventative medicine and education, you have a healthy nation.
As for the economic mess we're in, we as a society outsourced everything. On the delusion that we could consume forever and the rest of the world would provide. The jobs and dollars flooded out of our country in the interest of corporations who siphoned off the flow and got insanely wealthy while America was being bled dry. From 1970 to today we went from the largest lender in the world to the biggest debtor.
The economic conversation is FUD. Its obfuscation from the FED, to hide the simple fact that there is no sane basis for the American economy, and that we've been told flat out lies by our government in the name of multinational corporations. In the 70s we protected balance of trade. We had protections against banks, investment firms, and the dangerous mixing of the two. In the 70s we saw the writing on the wall and began a systematic plan for protecting our environment, promoting alternative energy technologies, and aggressively developing space.
In the 80s friends of business and conservative power put plan into action that were the results of nearly a decade of research and billions in private spending. We dispensed with the plans of the 70s, gave up on sane and prudent practices and took up an economic behavior that had demonstrated consistently in the preceding century lead to boom/bust and economic bubbles. By the way, before drinking the koolaid, George HW Bush referred to supply side as "Voodoo Economics". In 30 short years we've bled the middle class dry, turned both our market system and national government into a one ring circuses (we can't afford the other two rings), and created a disparity of wealth between the masses and the vanishing few the likes of which has never before been seen on this planet. We have allowed our infrastructure to disintegrate. We have ensured that our children will have no access to the education or jobs needed to sustain a great country and any meaningful quality of life. In the 70s the U.C. system was virtually free.
Our taxes are now lower than they've ever been. Our state governments, all of them are going bankrupt and are beginning to fail, answering that failure by the wholesale elimination of jobs, police, paramedics, firemen, all going away. Prisoners are being paroled by the thousands to cut prison costs. Now we are about to abandon the poor, elderly and children. So the wealthy among us can suck up the loose change in our collective pockets because the folding money is already gone. The CEO of GE, a company the had one of the highest earning of any company in the United States was asked on television why he had shipped the vast majority of jobs outside the United States. He said because the U.S. had the highest taxes in the world, and was then asked, but you paid no tax in the U.S. and in fact received 4 billion dollars in tax payer money in corporate welfare and still shipped those jobs out of country. To which he simply smiled and shook his head. This man is at the head of Obama's committee to promote American business. What's wrong with all of this.
I think any rationale person would agree that this 30 year experiment has failed, unfortunately a significant number of people who continue tenaciously adhere to these ideas also believe in the rapture, intelligent design and the dashboard jebus. None are so blind... Folks, let go, we need to dismiss them all, that
What makes ol' Uncle Bob a loon, is that to stay off the sidewalks he's chosen to drive through people's front yards, to stay under the speed limit he's parked his car in the middle of the freeway, and he has this weird habit of picking and choosing the strangest rules which he obeys with blind obedience while ignoring the rest, like for instance which side of the road to drive down. In short, he's a imminent wreck. The wise money is on taking the keys away from Bob with all due haste... oh and yes one or two of Bob's ideas are pretty good, I'd just have to add that even the blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm getting a sense that this is going to be a digital event. It will either be an extraordinary masterpiece of cinema, considering the power a great director has today to fulfill a vision, or it will be the worst mind-numbing, steaming heap of CGI dung to ever grace celluloid. The best or worst of this is that it will almost certainly glory or stench in 3D.
By all means, and while you're waiting for the distribution to proceed, please enjoy this complementary bulls-eye t-shirt, its the height of fashion!
Woot; is the Baba Wawa superuser!
So all you poor bastitdges who live a stones throw from Mt. Rushmore, should just bend over and kiss your buttocks good bye, while you still gott'em.
The National Guard will gladly pay up to $50,000 of your student loans if you sign up immediately! That and I hear the clear mountain air of Afghanistan is bracing this time of year... Oooooooo, look at the poppies!
Yeah, the Fukushima disaster has resulted in increases in radioactive sulfur in California. Of course the levels are well below danger levels, but some folks are still all up in arms and terrified that they'll go to bed glowing light night lights.
Human beings have a remarkably poor ability to assess real threats vs. non-real threats. They did a study of folks living in the path of a Mt. Hood eruption and subsequent flood. Folks who lived 30 miles away were deeply concerned. Those 20 miles away worried all the time. People living in imminent danger near the base of the mountain didn't think about it all. Because the human mind discards a threat that it can't effectively deal with. Case in point, people living precisely ON the San Andreas fault in San Bernadino, CA (the city allowing people to build homes on, then live on that fault), driving while texting in one hand and calling in the other, people ignoring health warnings. Its almost an axiom that people are terrified of things that probably won't hurt them, while they continue to eat or drink to excess, smoke cigarettes, take dangerous drugs with serious side effects, drive imprudently or create hazard zones around their homes.
This comet is coming close by astronomical standards... only a couple light minutes away compared to a universe where we've seen objects over 13 billion light years away (even the nearest non-dwarf galaxy is 2 million light years away.) By human standards though, its impossible far away and will have no lasting impact on humanity (save the wonder, if it gives us a good show.) A car racing at a hundred miles per hour (that 160 KPH for the rest of you), will take a little over 25 years to travel that far, driving flat out, nonstop (I hope the driver has a good bladder.) Considering the size and distance, the tidal force (the most direct impact of the comet), will be less that 1 billionth of the moons. So figure if you have a large fixed body of water you may be able to see with a high powered microscope, water rising a few nanometers. Somehow, I'm just not left with a sense of foreboding.
Why that depends on which of the library's dimensions you happen to be using... leaving me wondering how long it would take and African Swallow...
"Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 has proved once again to be the best choice when it comes to catching attacks..."
Is that "Catching" like "Aha! I caught that wascawy wabbit" or is it "Catch" like "If I connect this PC to the internet for a couple minutes without loads of anti-virus protection and a beefy firewall, IE will catch something really nasty..." or even "Catch" like "A filter on a drain, a low place where nasty things tend to accumulate...". Because inquiring minds want to know!.
This isn't to say that IE9 isn't a lovely product, but if you're going to tout it, you might want to say it in a way that makes people clear about what you're saying at first glance. Just a suggestion :-)
Someone needs to start a new ISP, one that will hopefully have global appeal at some point. Its selling point would be that it:
I have no illusions that such an ISP wouldn't be for everyone. Some folks don't have a problem with be used by governments or corporations like cattle. This is for folks who actually give a damn about their human rights, and demand to be treated with some modicum of dignity and respect. People for whom the word responsibility occur as less a curse, but more an opportunity.
Its fair to say that the network has become our most vulnerable aspect to modern life, because greedy and stupid people have traded our sanctity for their benefit. We need to take back what is rightfully ours and nobody elses.
This is not just putting a cable in orbit. Consider a long list of stability problems inherent to any project of this type. Everything from Harmonic vibration, to Coriolis effect, to shear from solar winds and complex interactions with the ionosphere. It might take a month to lift a cable car safely. Okay for raw materials, not so great for people or perishables.
Also imagine you have a 45,000 mile long antenna that extends out into the solar wind. Can you imagine the kind of voltages and currents that this thing will induce? The mind boggles.At its base you would need huge superconductors to draw charge off the cable to allow it to function at all. Of course there would be the up side in that it would generate enough power to operate itself and a fair part of the country the base was located in, It would just be an incredibly expensive and challenging endeavor.
None if this is to say we shouldn't pursue this end, it would transform what was possible for humanity. Just don't have illusions to how difficult, or complicated this undertaking would be. It would demand our best and brightest working for decades.
There are two distinctly separate issues here.
The first is regarding the rights of corporations vs everyone else. If the court system has degenerated into a rubber stamp to give corporations whatever they want effectively criminalizing anyone who isn't a corporation, then we have some serious problems here and they need to be address with velocity and extreme prejudice.
The other is a technical issue involving a broken service being used by the corporation. Intent is one of those things that is hard to determine, and without solid evidence like "A witness overheard a conversation..." or "The union employed ex-employees to find the vulnerability..." one must look at a reasonable expectation. If the corporation created a means for traffic, such that reasonable use of that means caused it to fail, then the corporation has no expectation of winning this case, because the union did nothing exceptional or in this specific case unreasonable, ie. no apparent act of malice.
If my front yard ends up filled with hazards and imminent disasters, either intentionally or through neglect, and the mailman trips and breaks a decrepit lamp post or falls into my flower patch, the mailman is not liable. There was no malice in his actions, in fact he had reasonable expectations to the contrary and the vulnerability was a product of my irresponsible or inappropriate behavior. The only exception to this is if I can prove unequivocally that the mailman willfully and with full knowledge damaged my yard, and with evidence that I created a hazardous environment already acknowledged, that's going to be a really tough stretch.
Sorry you kept on trying and we ran out of cake...
What Apple did was innovate style and function. While that is remarkable, truly artistic and elegant. It is not something that should be patentable. The elements have been around for a long time... you point that out yourself. What other device manufacturers lacked was a vision, a sense of what it is that the user wanted and needed, what would be the best use for this device, then making the device conform fit and function to that use.
By patenting the iPad, they have to actually say what it is they are patenting. Are they patenting size, dimension, shape, appearance or some other physical attribute? Are they patenting user experience? Are they patenting the hardware? Are they patenting the style, the craft or the design aspects? You see none of these things are patentable. They don't meet the criteria of something you can patent. Some of thees things you can trademark, some you could possible copyright (though I would presume that would be a limited protection at best.)
Their existing patent is ridiculously vague and under the glare of a patent trial might well be thrown out or pared down to a bloody stump of what it currently is. What will happen ultimately is that Samsung is a big kid, it'll ask Apple how much to go away and stop bothering them. Apple will wave its arms and make all kinds of unhappy gestures, make false threats against Samsung, meet them behind closed doors, and hammer out an agreement (because in the end they know their patent is less than water tight) because its better to walk away with cash in hand, than to spend money on trials you will probably lose.
This is the shape of business today, extortion, confidence games, ponzi schemes and pretty much everyone hiking a leg to mark territory.
Clearly you don't get what's happening. People here on Slashdot, for the most part don't care one way or the other about Apple. They have awesome product design, and you pay a huge premium for their artistic flare (typically 200%.) That's absolutely why artists love Apple.
The problem here is that Apple is fighting dirty, the IP they claim for the most part is thin at best and utterly bogus in the rest. Yes, they took the tablet that Microsoft and an army of PC makers simply couldn't figure out, and produced a perfect combination of software and hardware with a great form factor for a specific set of purposes, knowing instinctively what to accomplish (with today's technology) and what to avoid.
That makes them bright, clever, first on the scene with the right formula for success in this market. Kudos... It doesn't mean they could, should, or deserve to own the entire touch-pad market space. Just on principal its offensive to see someone wage a campaign of scape the bottom ethics. For another, look at the iPad 2, notice how much cooler it is that the iPad 1. That because even in their brilliance,Apple saw their competitors come up with cool ideas they missed. Having competition keeps you sharp, makes you honest, because silly BS won't fly in the face of real competition. The saddest part it that this is just morally and socially lazy. Trying to win like this is an admission that you haven't got the chops to compete on your intelligence or talent. That or it means you're such a bloated beast that you win by going around crushing your competition by manipulating legal and social options.
Apple should applaud the Galaxy, because it make the iPad better. Suck it up Apple and play like you have a pair.
At 13,000 mph the delivery time is about half an hour. Figure the furthest spot on the planet is 12,000 miles from launch site and that means less than an hour ro anywhere on the planet. Can you say DAMN FAST!!!
As for delivering ordinance, you would coordinate a fast delivery vehicle with local eyes in the air and possibly eyes on the ground. Drop a couple multi-warhead smart bombs and you pretty much have obsoleted any other kind of bomber. Add fly by wire plus autonomous smart electronics, and predator drones, and you pretty much don't have to change out of your jammies to blast the snot out of somebody half a world away.
On the more productive side, this technology would lend itself to eventually creating aircraft capable of LEO space flight, and ultra high speed global travel. The idea of getting anyplace on earth in less time than it takes to get through the security line is kind of shocking. Anyone for high tea in Johannesburg?
WOW! This is a mixed salad of mental illness
Let's see, we start it all off with a really witless attempt at a racial slur. Honestly, this is a living example of why we so need Head-Start. Then he goes for the ham-fisted attempt at sarcasm, and finally brings the whole trailer trash Trifecta home with an awkward insinuation regarding a political system that only exists any more on a backward Caribbean Island. My hats off sir, in two sentences you've regurgitated enough stupidity to lower the average IQ of the western hemisphere by 0.3%. What a monument to ignorance. What a shining beacon for morons everywhere! You must be very proud! Congratulations. ;-)
I'm guessing though, from the shallow end of the gene pool. Chlorine anybody???
Actually in your case I'd take a wild shot and go with Homo Erectus... ;-)
Would that be better than a Betty shot of Beaver? "Ward... don't you think you were a little hard on the Beav last night?"
No, light does not attract black holes, how ever the barionic objects that produce the light do.
Light exerts force on all objects with mass, in fact one of the more interesting interplanetary/interstellar ship designs involves shooting a laser at a large light sail.
We are still trying the prove there are gravity waves, we have yet to actually measure them so we have no idea yet how fast they propagate, though some think the graviton is likely to be a tachyon (a particle that is faster than light.) Measuring gravitons is operationally impossible:
Unambiguous detection of individual gravitons, though not prohibited by any fundamental law, is impossible with any physically reasonable detector.[11] The reason is the extremely low cross section for the interaction of gravitons with matter. For example, a detector with the mass of Jupiter and 100% efficiency, placed in close orbit around a neutron star, would only be expected to observe one graviton every 10 years, even under the most favorable conditions. It would be impossible to discriminate these events from the background of neutrinos, since the dimensions of the required neutrino shield would ensure collapse into a black hole.
Sorry but your information, math and appraisal of the situation is in grotesque error.
When George Bush took office the national debt was stood $5.727 trillion. When he left it was just over 10 trillion. Simple mathematics suggest that he pounded about 4.3 trillion dollars into oblivion. That's nearly 2 trillion more than Obama. For more information you can go http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-500803_162-4486228-500803.html">here.
Then we look at where Obama spent that money... Oh yeah, he spent it on Bush's war (which he expanded), Bush's economic collapse (which he prevented) and Bush's continued give away to corporations and the nations wealthiest 2 percent. In short, he had to choose between economic China Syndrome, or bailing out the banks and businesses to prevent global catastrophe (created by George Bush.) He had to choose to walk out of the middle east or clean up the mess that George made. He had to attempt to help the millions that lost their jobs in the economic crash that was created by George Bush. He did all these things with the general consent and support of the Republican rank and file. The one thing he did in the face of the Republicans was to attempt to provide low cost healthcare for all Americans. Well clearly someone needs to lynch him for that.
In short, if Obama has any failing, its being too much like George Bush, and letting the conservative wing nuts in the legislature run the country into a ditch. Forgive me, but the time for religious blathering and mindless snot is passed. The facists and fruitloops have gutted the American economy and simply Wallmarted us all to death. The only glimmer of hope in the last 30 years occurred during the office of a tax and spend MODERATE, who spent money investing in the middle class, environment and the nations infrastructure. To quote "Its the economy stupid!".When you invest in the right things America thrives. When you invest in the wrong things American dies. Investing in pointless war, the wealthy and powerful, corporate welfare and Wallstreet would be the "Wrong Thing"!
Get a clue... hell get two, they're small.
Thanks for the perspective from outside the circus tent :-)
Personally I'm a registered Dem, but that's of little importance, both sides have failed miserably. At one time, the Dems were the representatives of the common man, and their focus was primarily quality of life for the middle income, protection against destitution for the poor, strong human rights and addressing what they saw as problems or injustices with the necessary government resources to make a difference. The Dems were champions for social advancement and change. The Reps on the other side were defenders of beloved cultural traditions, committed to promoting business, national defense and protecting the status quo. Strangely enough, during the time of Richard Nixon, the Reps were as interested in the environment as the Dems, by the same logic that hunters and fishermen today are among the best environmentalists, because they see what they love under threat of mindless and rampant development for development sake (that and the self evident logic that its unwise to defecate where masticate.)
It was a dedicated bunch of men and women who used several effective strategies in the 80s to hijack the government. A combination of bringing wallstreet advertising into politics to sell candidates, creating highly charged emotional arguments to distract the public (abortion, equal rights, gay rights, etc.), 30 second sound bites (for the attention deficit crowd), spin doctoring (couching controversial and negative arguments in fluffy, friendly terms... to hide their significance) and in general pulling so hard to the right consistently that over time, the middle is now further right than the far right used to be. They also took a line from history. Tell big lies often enough and people will believe them.
By the way those men and women represented the wealthy and powerful, and were concerned about things like population growth, and the distribution of wealth, honestly believing that if they controlled all the wealth, they were somehow inherently wiser and more fit to steer the ship of the future. There plan was the end result of years of time and energy (and billions of dollars) spent on conservative think tanks.) That and they saw the lack of direction and purpose in their own party in the early 70s after the crisis of conscience in the resignation of Richard Nixon.
As you say, the political system is not the root of the issue. We were hijacked by the wealthy, affluent and powerful. They created a climate where they could distract the masses and take the entire game, playing board, pieces, even the dice. Most folks here are still paying attention to the distraction. That's the sad part, we've become so Pavlovian in our automatic responses to the insane state of affairs that most of us can't see that we've been bought and sold. People here take their belief systems very seriously. Rather than pursuing truly rational activities, we share opinions and band together in bunches celebrating them like they had some intrinsic value.
I think Americans are ripe for a major shift. If we can stop defending positions and actually roll up our sleeve and come to some basic consensus about where we want our society to go, we might yet pull this bacon out of the fire. Americans in spite of their ignorance, prejudice and superstition have an amazing ability to stop, look at what needs to get done and simply do it. I'm hoping that we rise to this occasion, and if necessary do it right over the top of those who would stop us (in D.C. or anywhere else.)
There are several problems here
The first is that we can't seem to provide real medical service for people in this country without getting insurance and for profit insanity mixed up in it. There should be two levels of medical care. One is socialized, and primarily nonprofit based providing the public with basic day to day and simple emergency service. Then there would be the for profit care, that provides the kind of service that people who can afford additional care can expect (this is what you buy insurance for.) The two for the most part don't compete and if the socialized service is primarily geared at preventative medicine and education, you have a healthy nation.
As for the economic mess we're in, we as a society outsourced everything. On the delusion that we could consume forever and the rest of the world would provide. The jobs and dollars flooded out of our country in the interest of corporations who siphoned off the flow and got insanely wealthy while America was being bled dry. From 1970 to today we went from the largest lender in the world to the biggest debtor.
The economic conversation is FUD. Its obfuscation from the FED, to hide the simple fact that there is no sane basis for the American economy, and that we've been told flat out lies by our government in the name of multinational corporations. In the 70s we protected balance of trade. We had protections against banks, investment firms, and the dangerous mixing of the two. In the 70s we saw the writing on the wall and began a systematic plan for protecting our environment, promoting alternative energy technologies, and aggressively developing space.
In the 80s friends of business and conservative power put plan into action that were the results of nearly a decade of research and billions in private spending. We dispensed with the plans of the 70s, gave up on sane and prudent practices and took up an economic behavior that had demonstrated consistently in the preceding century lead to boom/bust and economic bubbles. By the way, before drinking the koolaid, George HW Bush referred to supply side as "Voodoo Economics". In 30 short years we've bled the middle class dry, turned both our market system and national government into a one ring circuses (we can't afford the other two rings), and created a disparity of wealth between the masses and the vanishing few the likes of which has never before been seen on this planet. We have allowed our infrastructure to disintegrate. We have ensured that our children will have no access to the education or jobs needed to sustain a great country and any meaningful quality of life. In the 70s the U.C. system was virtually free.
Our taxes are now lower than they've ever been. Our state governments, all of them are going bankrupt and are beginning to fail, answering that failure by the wholesale elimination of jobs, police, paramedics, firemen, all going away. Prisoners are being paroled by the thousands to cut prison costs. Now we are about to abandon the poor, elderly and children. So the wealthy among us can suck up the loose change in our collective pockets because the folding money is already gone. The CEO of GE, a company the had one of the highest earning of any company in the United States was asked on television why he had shipped the vast majority of jobs outside the United States. He said because the U.S. had the highest taxes in the world, and was then asked, but you paid no tax in the U.S. and in fact received 4 billion dollars in tax payer money in corporate welfare and still shipped those jobs out of country. To which he simply smiled and shook his head. This man is at the head of Obama's committee to promote American business. What's wrong with all of this.
I think any rationale person would agree that this 30 year experiment has failed, unfortunately a significant number of people who continue tenaciously adhere to these ideas also believe in the rapture, intelligent design and the dashboard jebus. None are so blind... Folks, let go, we need to dismiss them all, that
What makes ol' Uncle Bob a loon, is that to stay off the sidewalks he's chosen to drive through people's front yards, to stay under the speed limit he's parked his car in the middle of the freeway, and he has this weird habit of picking and choosing the strangest rules which he obeys with blind obedience while ignoring the rest, like for instance which side of the road to drive down. In short, he's a imminent wreck. The wise money is on taking the keys away from Bob with all due haste... oh and yes one or two of Bob's ideas are pretty good, I'd just have to add that even the blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.
... And if we aren't 1000%, absolutely, positively reliable may God Strike Us... BLAM!!!!!!