On the subject of nukes: nuclear weapons in this day and age are not treated with the same aloofness they once were. As more and more countries begin to acquire nuclear capabilities, the global awareness augments. I very much doubt Pakistan and India will ever nuke each other: quite simply, the international community would never allow it. And if you think it's too early to say because they acquired nuclear capability last year, think again: India and Pakistan had them for a long time. Pakistan made it public last year. That means the other countries were forced to acknowledge them as a nuclear power, even though they knew all along. (Unconvinced? You can detect a nuclear explosion taking place underground in Russia with a good sismograph in the United States.)
Consider this: who's the sole country that used nuclear weapons on another? US. Which two countries came the closest to all-out nuclear armageddon? US and the USSR. Yet these two were the superpowers of the time, and the most "civilised".
We're quick to judge other countries as more dangerous than the Western World because of, say, religious fundamentalism. I think there's nothing saying that they can't be as (ir)responsible as us.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Some have commented that this "war" is not revelant due to the extent of damage done. I think they're missing the point: I agree that the extent of the damage is minimal, and that most script kiddies, by this definition of cyberwar, become great warriors for the Cause (oh, great, like we need to inflate their ego.)
However, it's the first step: ten years ago, you couldn't touch an enemy power's electronic resources unless you sent a spy on site. The last decade has indeed brought the world a little closer by connecting it all together, and that means it's easier to go whack your neighbour.
I think this trend will just keep on developping. I'm not saying nukes will ever be online; or at least I hope no one is enough of a moron to do it. But I think that as security augments, so will the range of vital services brought online. Email, anyone? I'm sure if you take down a country's entire email capability, you're reducing their reaction time. That's not just vandalism, it's undermining the enemy's power to wage war efficiently.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
[...]sticking it to the bad guys and keep the good guys out of trouble
I like the way a similar sentence is used every time some sort of surveillance system is introduced. I bet they said this for Echelon too.
In my mind, that's Govspeech for, 'Spying on everyone so if you've got nothing to fear, you won't mind. Right?!?'
This system is used to spot crimes happening, not to solve them. As such, it's actually a backward investigation idea backed by modern technology. In the late 1800's, the length of a police investigation was to catch the criminal in the act again. Modern investigation techniques have led to an in-depth investigation with the help of, for instance, DNA analysis.
Compare DNA analysis with satellite surveillance: one is used to identify a potential suspect, the other is used to catch a criminal red-handed. One is performed on you when you are a possible suspect already, the other is used whether you commited a crime or not. There is a hell of a difference, and while the first one speaks of the marvels of modern forensics, the last one makes me cry out 'Big Brother!'
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Ok, so this time Corel is being collaborative. It's normal: there's a lot of pressure from the Linux community that a company sticks to the GPL terms. There would be no one to buy Corel's products if they suddenly screwed up their target audience.
What I wonder is, as unlikely as it is given the reaction mechanism I just described, what would happen if a company took a GPLed product and suddenly turned it closed-source? Yes, they're violating a license, but who sues in this case?
I'm asking because I have a sinking feeling it's gonna happen one day or another. And I'd hate to suddenly see the GPL license undefendable based on some Law trick.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Kill two birds with one stone: switch to IPv6, then switch the whole telephone system on it. That way, when you want to call someone, the phone line has an IP address and perhaps a DNS entry. So there you go! You can phone phone.alicebranford.nyc.ny.us
Erm. I guess that's as likely, feasible and practical as running your toasters on in a Beowulf cluster through your kitchen Intranet.:)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
RAW has indeed everything to do with this game; the whole SJG is based on his book. The paranoids and Erisians will tell you the Illuminati existed way before RAW wrote them. They're just a bunch of silly men because RAW Shea invented them all from scratch. The Illuminati never existed. Repeat after me. fnord
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I don't know, this guy doesn't sound so wacko. I mean, great geniuses had much weirder ideas than taking plasma from Grizzlies in order to promote extended space flight. (Hmm. Put that way, I have doubts suddenly.) Take for instance Tesla: he wanted to build giant towers to harness the Earth's magnetic fields. Madman? Yes. Genius? Yes, also.
This Bear Suit sounds like it's an awkward approach to the problem it was designed to solve (sustain a Grizzly's attack), but it sounds like it has fantastic applications. Put a cop in that suit, and off he goes into a terrorist-laden building. Make this suit airtight, and you've got a Battletech-like elemental suit.
I bet this suit will be useful down the line. His creator will be barely remembered, only perhaps as a footnote, as the guy who tried so very hard, but didn't quite succeed in the end. They'll look back on the wacko shaving with a Bowie, and smile, thinking the only application he saw was to tackle bears.
I wish him luck. He may be insane, but the most remarkable men are.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
He's using D&D 3rd Edition rules: AC 10 in 3rd Edition means -10 in AD&D 2nd.
So this baby has a natural AC of -10. With a good Dex (say, 16), enough Strength to move this baby around, and say, a body shield, you're walking around with a -14 AC without magic adjustment. Fear the Barbarian wearing that thing!
(Disclaimer: YES, I know he wasn't talking about D&D AC.)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
PR indeed. I don't see how this would prove anything; the time before a crack isn't significant, because you're always likely to run into a security hole early. So what if NT is cracked one week before Linux? It doesn't prove that Linux has better security (like we need proof), only that NT got unlucky and someone found an NT crack first.
Somehow, though, I suspect people will put a lot more energy into cracking NT than cracking Linux. So Microsoft won't be using this "benchmark" as FUD. Good, cause that would have been annoying.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I believe the development of solid and friendly desktop environments such as Gnome and KDE is a big step in raising public awareness on Linux and other Open Source initiatives. What are the future projects in this direction? What can we expect to see in the future that will push Linux in the public's mind not only as a reliable operating system, but also the support for clean, professional and integrated applications?
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
You're confusing the H-bomb with the atomic bomb. Yes, there are very good arguments that support the development of the atomic bomb under the Manhattan Project. Yes, I'm quite certain your father is right.
The H-bomb, however, is an altogether different issue. It was developped after WW2 was won. It uses an atomic bomb as a trigger. The H-bomb never needed to exist other than a show of paranoia and power during the Cold War.
There's a large margin between Openheimer and Teller. Openheimer opposed the H-bomb's development, and Teller denounced him as a Communist. This goes to show what kind of man Teller is.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
What has Teller contributed to the world? He is lying (or at least delluding himself) when he says the hydrogen bomb won the US the Cold War. His arrogance towards nature is typical of the 1950's, where we didn't consider the earth yet as a careful balance; there are consequences to upsetting the balance which he does not even consider (sulfur dioxide to block sunlight??? what a vision of hell!)
So, no, Teller hasn't brought the world anything worthwhile except fear, paranoia and a god complex. It would indeed have been a better place without him.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Hey, I know where you're coming from, I'm from Québec too. Actually, the language barrier *is* present in Québec; most governmental institutions are slow to catch up, for instance, with the Internet, because it has less appeal to a French-speaking population. That is not to say we are Neanderthals when it comes to IT: I work for the largest e-commerce services provider in Canada, and we're doing quite nicely, thank you.
The examples you cited (SoftImage and UbiSoft) are good ones. There are many others. But there is less Internet and technology awareness in the general population and in governmental institutions. Of course, it could be argued that the language barrier doesn't matter as much as far as Québec is concerned, because IT business is concentrated in Montréal, where most people are fluent in both English and French.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Visio has a history of professional and helpful products. It's mostly used by directors and other administration types. I don't think being acquired by MS will mean the product will be any less good at what it does: design flowcharts and supplement presentation.
Visio took great pains to integrate their software into MS Office, and so MS probably recognised it and decided to go all the way with it.
This is one product I don't mind MS touching. As far as designing flowcharts and presentations goes, MS does OK. I just wish they'd stick to that instead of trying to design operating systems.:)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
My brother reports that his 40 MHz computer (don't know what model or year, he doesn't know himself) reported a hard drive failure on 9/9/99. Says it's the CMOS. He set the date to somewhere in the 70's and is happy ever since.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Pay attention, darnit... The point is to shield yourself from neutrons, so only neutrinos come through. Of course I don't think this is a neutron observatory.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
You misread my post. The point is to shield the detector from neutrons, so that only neutrinos reach the detector. Since they're both of neutral charge, they affect the detector in the same way. So if you don't take out the neutrons, it's akin to trying to find a ball the size of a pinhead in a room filled with bowling balls.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Alright. Or maybe they read Slashdot so obsessively that in the mass of posts they make, one strikes a moderator as insightful or funny and karma goes up.:)
Actually, why not make karma be an average of post moderations? Every time it hits a integer, that score is added to your posts by default.
So, for instance, if your posts are in average moderated to 2, you get +1 on your posts; if your posts tend to be moderated to -1, you get -1. In the rare event when your posting average is +4, you get to post posts rated 5 by default! (Like that would ever happen.)
Don't know; it doesn't sound perfect at all. But the idea of alloting karma with regard to post quality average instead of blunt total sounds good.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I would love to see moderation capability tied more closely to karma. In general, high karma individuals have a history of posting intelligent comments, and that would go along with being able to recognise intelligent comments. So increase the proportion of moderation power and probability for high karma! I have high karma, have been here for a while, and unless you consider reloading the Slashdot page 10 times on a workday to be obsessive behaviour, then I don't see why I haven't been given the opportunity to moderate yet.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
The reason why water is used in radiation shielding is that it contains two Hydrogen atoms per water molecule. Since an atom of Hydrogen has more or less the same mass than a neutron, it acts like a billiard ball: the neutron tends to stop, and the proton is transferred all the kinetic energy. And since the proton is a charged particle, it stops quickly.
Anyway; that means it's good shielding against neutrons. You still have neutrons coming from the environment ("thermal neutrons"), and if the telescope is exposed directly to water, this solves the problem. But you don't need to put it so far down underwater.
Finally, gamma radiation: that's photons. how do you stop these? With difficulty, most of the times. Lead does it, but then lead also emits thermal neutrons! So you have to choose a way to stop both, which you can't.
Except that at this depth, most of the gamma radiation coming from the Sun is absorbed already.
It's a bit of an anti-Hubble: Hubble needs to be in space to be exposed to as much "noise" as possible, whereas this telescope needs to be shielded from almost everything.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
For those who wondered how they could build a sonar for the Lego Mindstorm kit... Some of you don't know it, but there's already one included in the basic kit!
It's simple. The Brick communicates via the infrared port. Which means it sends communications via infrared.
Now take a look at the light sensor. Wouldn't it be fantastic if it could read in IR? Well; it does! And very well at that. The thing is flooded when you emit directly into the light sensor.
So you can use a light sensor and the PBrick to act as a sonar, by constantly emitting IR light (via messages to other bricks) and see how it registers on the light sensor.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
All it takes is two Lego Mindstorm kits, the Not Quite C compiler, maybe the optional Lego Midnstorms Extreme Sports expansion pack. Alright, so you don't have a sonar, but it's hundreds of hours of pleasure anyway.
The article didn't mention whether they used the Mindstorms kit...
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Slashdot Mirror
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Consider this: who's the sole country that used nuclear weapons on another? US. Which two countries came the closest to all-out nuclear armageddon? US and the USSR. Yet these two were the superpowers of the time, and the most "civilised".
We're quick to judge other countries as more dangerous than the Western World because of, say, religious fundamentalism. I think there's nothing saying that they can't be as (ir)responsible as us.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
However, it's the first step: ten years ago, you couldn't touch an enemy power's electronic resources unless you sent a spy on site. The last decade has indeed brought the world a little closer by connecting it all together, and that means it's easier to go whack your neighbour.
I think this trend will just keep on developping. I'm not saying nukes will ever be online; or at least I hope no one is enough of a moron to do it. But I think that as security augments, so will the range of vital services brought online. Email, anyone? I'm sure if you take down a country's entire email capability, you're reducing their reaction time. That's not just vandalism, it's undermining the enemy's power to wage war efficiently.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
I like the way a similar sentence is used every time some sort of surveillance system is introduced. I bet they said this for Echelon too.
In my mind, that's Govspeech for, 'Spying on everyone so if you've got nothing to fear, you won't mind. Right?!?'
This system is used to spot crimes happening, not to solve them. As such, it's actually a backward investigation idea backed by modern technology. In the late 1800's, the length of a police investigation was to catch the criminal in the act again. Modern investigation techniques have led to an in-depth investigation with the help of, for instance, DNA analysis.
Compare DNA analysis with satellite surveillance: one is used to identify a potential suspect, the other is used to catch a criminal red-handed. One is performed on you when you are a possible suspect already, the other is used whether you commited a crime or not. There is a hell of a difference, and while the first one speaks of the marvels of modern forensics, the last one makes me cry out 'Big Brother!'
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
What I wonder is, as unlikely as it is given the reaction mechanism I just described, what would happen if a company took a GPLed product and suddenly turned it closed-source? Yes, they're violating a license, but who sues in this case?
I'm asking because I have a sinking feeling it's gonna happen one day or another. And I'd hate to suddenly see the GPL license undefendable based on some Law trick.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Erm. I guess that's as likely, feasible and practical as running your toasters on in a Beowulf cluster through your kitchen Intranet. :)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
This Bear Suit sounds like it's an awkward approach to the problem it was designed to solve (sustain a Grizzly's attack), but it sounds like it has fantastic applications. Put a cop in that suit, and off he goes into a terrorist-laden building. Make this suit airtight, and you've got a Battletech-like elemental suit.
I bet this suit will be useful down the line. His creator will be barely remembered, only perhaps as a footnote, as the guy who tried so very hard, but didn't quite succeed in the end. They'll look back on the wacko shaving with a Bowie, and smile, thinking the only application he saw was to tackle bears.
I wish him luck. He may be insane, but the most remarkable men are.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
So this baby has a natural AC of -10. With a good Dex (say, 16), enough Strength to move this baby around, and say, a body shield, you're walking around with a -14 AC without magic adjustment. Fear the Barbarian wearing that thing!
(Disclaimer: YES, I know he wasn't talking about D&D AC.)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Somehow, though, I suspect people will put a lot more energy into cracking NT than cracking Linux. So Microsoft won't be using this "benchmark" as FUD. Good, cause that would have been annoying.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
The H-bomb, however, is an altogether different issue. It was developped after WW2 was won. It uses an atomic bomb as a trigger. The H-bomb never needed to exist other than a show of paranoia and power during the Cold War.
There's a large margin between Openheimer and Teller. Openheimer opposed the H-bomb's development, and Teller denounced him as a Communist. This goes to show what kind of man Teller is.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
So, no, Teller hasn't brought the world anything worthwhile except fear, paranoia and a god complex. It would indeed have been a better place without him.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
The examples you cited (SoftImage and UbiSoft) are good ones. There are many others. But there is less Internet and technology awareness in the general population and in governmental institutions. Of course, it could be argued that the language barrier doesn't matter as much as far as Québec is concerned, because IT business is concentrated in Montréal, where most people are fluent in both English and French.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Visio took great pains to integrate their software into MS Office, and so MS probably recognised it and decided to go all the way with it.
This is one product I don't mind MS touching. As far as designing flowcharts and presentations goes, MS does OK. I just wish they'd stick to that instead of trying to design operating systems. :)
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
So the odds of some asshole scoring 5 on 5 successive posts are pretty slim.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Actually, why not make karma be an average of post moderations? Every time it hits a integer, that score is added to your posts by default.
So, for instance, if your posts are in average moderated to 2, you get +1 on your posts; if your posts tend to be moderated to -1, you get -1. In the rare event when your posting average is +4, you get to post posts rated 5 by default! (Like that would ever happen.)
Don't know; it doesn't sound perfect at all. But the idea of alloting karma with regard to post quality average instead of blunt total sounds good.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
The reason why water is used in radiation shielding is that it contains two Hydrogen atoms per water molecule. Since an atom of Hydrogen has more or less the same mass than a neutron, it acts like a billiard ball: the neutron tends to stop, and the proton is transferred all the kinetic energy. And since the proton is a charged particle, it stops quickly.
Anyway; that means it's good shielding against neutrons. You still have neutrons coming from the environment ("thermal neutrons"), and if the telescope is exposed directly to water, this solves the problem. But you don't need to put it so far down underwater.
Finally, gamma radiation: that's photons. how do you stop these? With difficulty, most of the times. Lead does it, but then lead also emits thermal neutrons! So you have to choose a way to stop both, which you can't.
Except that at this depth, most of the gamma radiation coming from the Sun is absorbed already.
It's a bit of an anti-Hubble: Hubble needs to be in space to be exposed to as much "noise" as possible, whereas this telescope needs to be shielded from almost everything.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
For those who wondered how they could build a sonar for the Lego Mindstorm kit... Some of you don't know it, but there's already one included in the basic kit!
It's simple. The Brick communicates via the infrared port. Which means it sends communications via infrared.
Now take a look at the light sensor. Wouldn't it be fantastic if it could read in IR? Well; it does! And very well at that. The thing is flooded when you emit directly into the light sensor.
So you can use a light sensor and the PBrick to act as a sonar, by constantly emitting IR light (via messages to other bricks) and see how it registers on the light sensor.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
The article didn't mention whether they used the Mindstorms kit...
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."