The US has to face the exact same blame, seeing as they had a mayority vote in the Spheres of Influence...as discussed by the US and USSR even before the WWII had ended.
Of course Kyoto would have had serious consquences for the US...that's kinda the whole point (not to mention that Kyoto falls far, tragically far, short of what actually needs to be doen). Scientists have recognised that significant change is needed to avert disaster. The exact details are under discussion, the broad gist isn't. Not only that, but environmentalists wouldn't have much ammo against nuclear power under kyoto.
As for assasination...this can be argued both ways: true, it can be a clean way of affecting a region, but on the other hand it can also have a destabalising effect, not least on the person who is a target...and that can lead to very dumb moves (a dead man swith tied to the president of North Korea would not be a good thing).
Not only that, but what is so fundamentally bad about nukes? The fact that they can be used. Now I'd say the US would have a point if they had none...only then they could say 'you can't have any' without the rest of the world saying 'screw you'. Not only that, but what if the US just lets NK go ahead? Do you really think NK will use 'em? MAD ensures they won't...as soon as NK does, that is the moment when NK becomes the only place aside from Chernobyl to glow in the dark...and NK knows that.
And as fopr missile defense..man, even the scientists working on it admit it is not effective and won't be for the next decades, if not hundred years. Laser based is the only way to go, and even that is so difficult that the money is better spent going after root causes.
Heh...your comments fit your nick, demogorgon (greek name for the devil, btw):)
And I have to say that I've thought kinda along those lines too: death is part of life.
!!However!! I feel that it's lifes duty to strugle against death. Space flight and colonisation could do the job nicely, alleviating overpopulation, resource scarceness and the problem of all our eggs in one basket nicely.
They usually have about the same volume for storage as a less gas guzzling station car. But station cars are more expensive due to dumb taxation in the US.
Which is funny, because studies have shown (and I've actually seen the graphs for this one...you can probably find 'em on a google) that SUV's are more dangerous than normal cars. Fatality is about the same as with sportscars. One cause might be the false feeling of safety one has, but I suspect a realer reason is that in a big car, one has more mass, and thus more momentum leading to grater forces on impact.
OTOH, it's also a gross simplification to say that clear cutting (something not found without human intervention) is as good as fire or other natural evolutionary catalysts.
One thing that a forest fire does is heat up seeds which need that to germinate. Clear cutting not only doesn't do that, but it also doesn't leave behind what a forest fire does.
Wow...the guy who modded you troll either has no intelligence or fucked up with his scrollwheel. Too bad I already posted in this thread...hope metamoderation gets you right.
Hey, that's neat! I never knew Jefferson thought that, but it's along the lines of what I've been thinking: everything in nature dies leaving it's ofspring to go on with the process of living. What always bothered me was that nations/political systems don't die: they are expected to live forever. I'd think, with all the hanges going on in society, that a proper political system should have it's own demise programmed in (like: a total overhaul of the justice/voting system every 50 years) so that the system can evolve.
Heh...goes to show that no-one has a truly original thought:)
Soldiers are so much a police force that even the geneva convention says that a 'liberating nation' must use them to guard against looting. By not doing so, the US has for the so-many-eth time contraved that convention.
What it boils down to is this: in a stable, safe democratic country, soldiers are no police force due to the harshness of military order and the inherent corruption possible by the military (that's why the military never gets to initiate a war all by itself; it always gets it's orders from the politicians). In Iraq however this was not the case: in the absence of a police force, the soldiers/MP's get the job. And there were more than enough troops in the area to do the tremporary policing.
Looting is such a commenplace, human activity that it is criminal oversight not to expect it. So criminal in fact that it's even incorporated in the geneva convention: an occupying force must guard against looting. By not planning against it, the US (yet again) contravened the geneva convention.
And lets be clear here: a couple of years ago, there was widescale looting in US cities. By a repressed population. If it happens in an attacking nations country, they had damn well be prepared for it when they 'liberate' an oppressed nation.
As for your parting comment: no, I shuddered when Bush got elected due to his past. I'll give you that I hadn't expected him to be so stupid as to pull out of Kyoto, re-institute assasination and pull out of the nuclear testban treaty saying that nukes ain't so bad (amongst other things). I just didn't expect someone could be/that/ stupid.
Chaos theory basically states that a seemingly chaotic system has underlying systems of order.
Case in point is weather: the heating up and cooling down you mention is the underlying order to the system, but the actual temperatures, windspeeds and fluctuations of bith are quite chaotic.
I can't agree. The very fact that this guy is asking/. if he should invoke the DMCA (man, doesn't that sound as if he's doing magic or something?;) ) kind of demonstrates the fact that there is a moral question here.
I'm trying to formulate a good analogy here, but it boils down to the question "should I use an unmoral/unjust law to do good work?"
The pragmatist in me says 'go for it'...the moralist in me says 'that'll just make you as bad as the evil you use', faintly akin to the shopkeeper who uses a shotgun on a kid stealing bread from his shop. He might be in his rights, but it's still wrong.
The main problems with e-voting are twofold, equally serious. Problem one is a question of motivation and knowledge. Now, the people who vote more often than not have a general knowledge of the political spectrum: they know what they're voting for. They have an idea of the repercussions and don't buy into the hype of electiontime lies. Once e-voting comes into effect, we'll have the millions of dumb people voting. The populist will win every time, not the one who has unpopular, but correct ideas and ideals. Having high voter turnout is not neccessarily a good thing.
But the second problem is a slightly nastyer one. As it stands you have to physically vote (ie you actually do care about what happens), which means you also have guaranteed privacy...you stand, by yourself in a voting booth where no-one sees what you vote. E-voting means that you can be coerced into voting for someone you might not want to. Dad (or mum) can decide his/her kids/wife/hubby have to vote for his choice. Or roving bands of thugs could come by (yeah, unlikely, but it is possible, and therefore must be avoided) and tell you to vote for mr x.
And that's discounting the fact that e-voting systems (especially closed ones) can be hacked or have backdoors put in.
You have a good point, but in my post above I said why the question as stated wouldn't work. I also supplied an 'answer space' where the solution is to be found. But that solution wouldn't work for the question as stated because of points you've mentioned; for one, a line is a line is not a line segment. Anyone who's had his/her highschoool math (and didn't take the easy way by dropping it) knows that. Not only that, but working in euclidean space is much more of a basic assumption than saying "hey, I'll confuse a line with a line segment!"
The thing is that when someone asks me to make something, I will always back up my alternative with the neccessary info to point out why the asked for isn't possible. I know a couple of people who'll say "yeah sure, we'll do x which does this, this and this" and then make y instead which does as many things as x as possible. And that to me is dishonest. It might be good business, but I wouldn't want to work like that.
Man, you'll be happy when you upgrade...reading in true black and white (not green monochrome) is so much easier on the eyes! I was so glad when I got my IIIc:)
Just slightly smaller than a paperback would be better. I've often found that th average paperback will perfectly exactly just not fit into most coat pockets.
Have a look at my answer to the poster above you...the line thing won't work.
Personally, I suspect it can't be done: a line is defined by two points. Seeing as lines cannot occupy the same space, you're left with an intersection or no intersection. The latter isn't an option as you have to few pennies for that, so there must be an intersection...but that means you have at least three pennies already tied up, defining your two lines (the intersection counts as a line point definition for both lines), leaving you one penny.
And that one penny has to be placed on one of those lines (and the intersection point is already taken!) for the "three pennies on a line" criterium, leaving one line with only two pennies.
Now those three pennies (defining two lines) also define a plane, so taking it to three dimensions gets you nowhere.
Therefore, I'm saying it can't be done, QED...at least for euclidean space.
I'd say that only works if you can subsitute 'line' for 'vector'...then you just place all 4 pennies in a line and claim that those are two vectors in oposite directions (vector abc and dcb).
Problem is you can't do it with lines, as a line cannot occupy the same space as another line (except at intersection...and all that in euclidian space, at that:) ).
Then again, they may be taking potshots at DD because overall the movie sucked?
I mean, ok, there where some cool vfx and sfx, but the story was crap, character development was artificial, not to mention the dialogue. The pacing was way off too, and many of the vfx shots were awfull.
And I didn't mind Afleck...but please don't call him a good actor. Afleck has one role he plays tollerably well, and that's himself. So he's not even versatile, let alone a 'good actor'.
I'm gonna have a real cash flow problem: HalfLife 2, GTA3: Vice City, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Homeworld 2, Paradise Cracked, Soldner and a few more...that's 300 at least for the software alone, not to mention the 500 I'll be spending on hardware upgrades:(
Slashdot Mirror
...an animated gif of a game of Pong?
The US has to face the exact same blame, seeing as they had a mayority vote in the Spheres of Influence...as discussed by the US and USSR even before the WWII had ended.
Not really...public sentiment in Japan and Germany is against the US military based there. Read some foreign news sometime.
Of course Kyoto would have had serious consquences for the US...that's kinda the whole point (not to mention that Kyoto falls far, tragically far, short of what actually needs to be doen). Scientists have recognised that significant change is needed to avert disaster. The exact details are under discussion, the broad gist isn't. Not only that, but environmentalists wouldn't have much ammo against nuclear power under kyoto.
As for assasination...this can be argued both ways: true, it can be a clean way of affecting a region, but on the other hand it can also have a destabalising effect, not least on the person who is a target...and that can lead to very dumb moves (a dead man swith tied to the president of North Korea would not be a good thing).
Not only that, but what is so fundamentally bad about nukes? The fact that they can be used. Now I'd say the US would have a point if they had none...only then they could say 'you can't have any' without the rest of the world saying 'screw you'. Not only that, but what if the US just lets NK go ahead? Do you really think NK will use 'em? MAD ensures they won't...as soon as NK does, that is the moment when NK becomes the only place aside from Chernobyl to glow in the dark...and NK knows that.
And as fopr missile defense..man, even the scientists working on it admit it is not effective and won't be for the next decades, if not hundred years. Laser based is the only way to go, and even that is so difficult that the money is better spent going after root causes.
Heh...your comments fit your nick, demogorgon (greek name for the devil, btw) :)
And I have to say that I've thought kinda along those lines too: death is part of life.
!!However!! I feel that it's lifes duty to strugle against death. Space flight and colonisation could do the job nicely, alleviating overpopulation, resource scarceness and the problem of all our eggs in one basket nicely.
They usually have about the same volume for storage as a less gas guzzling station car. But station cars are more expensive due to dumb taxation in the US.
Which is funny, because studies have shown (and I've actually seen the graphs for this one...you can probably find 'em on a google) that SUV's are more dangerous than normal cars.
Fatality is about the same as with sportscars. One cause might be the false feeling of safety one has, but I suspect a realer reason is that in a big car, one has more mass, and thus more momentum leading to grater forces on impact.
Actually, according to the statistics, it doesn't: if you have a gun, you are more likely to be shot/injured/killed.
check it out at http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/guns.htm
Intersting reading (and I hope the link is still current).
OTOH, it's also a gross simplification to say that clear cutting (something not found without human intervention) is as good as fire or other natural evolutionary catalysts.
One thing that a forest fire does is heat up seeds which need that to germinate. Clear cutting not only doesn't do that, but it also doesn't leave behind what a forest fire does.
Wow...the guy who modded you troll either has no intelligence or fucked up with his scrollwheel. Too bad I already posted in this thread...hope metamoderation gets you right.
Man, you wnet through all that and ended with antibiotics? Why not just use the ever-current oil-deplenishment situation?
Hey, that's neat! I never knew Jefferson thought that, but it's along the lines of what I've been thinking: everything in nature dies leaving it's ofspring to go on with the process of living. What always bothered me was that nations/political systems don't die: they are expected to live forever. I'd think, with all the hanges going on in society, that a proper political system should have it's own demise programmed in (like: a total overhaul of the justice/voting system every 50 years) so that the system can evolve.
:)
Heh...goes to show that no-one has a truly original thought
I call bullshit on you,sir.
Soldiers are so much a police force that even the geneva convention says that a 'liberating nation' must use them to guard against looting. By not doing so, the US has for the so-many-eth time contraved that convention.
What it boils down to is this: in a stable, safe democratic country, soldiers are no police force due to the harshness of military order and the inherent corruption possible by the military (that's why the military never gets to initiate a war all by itself; it always gets it's orders from the politicians). In Iraq however this was not the case: in the absence of a police force, the soldiers/MP's get the job. And there were more than enough troops in the area to do the tremporary policing.
No, not entirely. Or actually, entirely not.
/that/ stupid.
Looting is such a commenplace, human activity that it is criminal oversight not to expect it. So criminal in fact that it's even incorporated in the geneva convention: an occupying force must guard against looting. By not planning against it, the US (yet again) contravened the geneva convention.
And lets be clear here: a couple of years ago, there was widescale looting in US cities. By a repressed population. If it happens in an attacking nations country, they had damn well be prepared for it when they 'liberate' an oppressed nation.
As for your parting comment: no, I shuddered when Bush got elected due to his past. I'll give you that I hadn't expected him to be so stupid as to pull out of Kyoto, re-institute assasination and pull out of the nuclear testban treaty saying that nukes ain't so bad (amongst other things). I just didn't expect someone could be
Chaos theory basically states that a seemingly chaotic system has underlying systems of order.
Case in point is weather: the heating up and cooling down you mention is the underlying order to the system, but the actual temperatures, windspeeds and fluctuations of bith are quite chaotic.
I can't agree. The very fact that this guy is asking /. if he should invoke the DMCA (man, doesn't that sound as if he's doing magic or something? ;) ) kind of demonstrates the fact that there is a moral question here.
I'm trying to formulate a good analogy here, but it boils down to the question "should I use an unmoral/unjust law to do good work?"
The pragmatist in me says 'go for it'...the moralist in me says 'that'll just make you as bad as the evil you use', faintly akin to the shopkeeper who uses a shotgun on a kid stealing bread from his shop. He might be in his rights, but it's still wrong.
And I'm not talking about geeks here :)
The main problems with e-voting are twofold, equally serious.
Problem one is a question of motivation and knowledge. Now, the people who vote more often than not have a general knowledge of the political spectrum: they know what they're voting for. They have an idea of the repercussions and don't buy into the hype of electiontime lies.
Once e-voting comes into effect, we'll have the millions of dumb people voting. The populist will win every time, not the one who has unpopular, but correct ideas and ideals. Having high voter turnout is not neccessarily a good thing.
But the second problem is a slightly nastyer one. As it stands you have to physically vote (ie you actually do care about what happens), which means you also have guaranteed privacy...you stand, by yourself in a voting booth where no-one sees what you vote. E-voting means that you can be coerced into voting for someone you might not want to. Dad (or mum) can decide his/her kids/wife/hubby have to vote for his choice. Or roving bands of thugs could come by (yeah, unlikely, but it is possible, and therefore must be avoided) and tell you to vote for mr x.
And that's discounting the fact that e-voting systems (especially closed ones) can be hacked or have backdoors put in.
You have a good point, but in my post above I said why the question as stated wouldn't work. I also supplied an 'answer space' where the solution is to be found.
But that solution wouldn't work for the question as stated because of points you've mentioned; for one, a line is a line is not a line segment. Anyone who's had his/her highschoool math (and didn't take the easy way by dropping it) knows that. Not only that, but working in euclidean space is much more of a basic assumption than saying "hey, I'll confuse a line with a line segment!"
The thing is that when someone asks me to make something, I will always back up my alternative with the neccessary info to point out why the asked for isn't possible.
I know a couple of people who'll say "yeah sure, we'll do x which does this, this and this" and then make y instead which does as many things as x as possible. And that to me is dishonest.
It might be good business, but I wouldn't want to work like that.
Man, you'll be happy when you upgrade...reading in true black and white (not green monochrome) is so much easier on the eyes! :)
I was so glad when I got my IIIc
Just slightly smaller than a paperback would be better. I've often found that th average paperback will perfectly exactly just not fit into most coat pockets.
Have a look at my answer to the poster above you...the line thing won't work.
Personally, I suspect it can't be done: a line is defined by two points. Seeing as lines cannot occupy the same space, you're left with an intersection or no intersection. The latter isn't an option as you have to few pennies for that, so there must be an intersection...but that means you have at least three pennies already tied up, defining your two lines (the intersection counts as a line point definition for both lines), leaving you one penny.
And that one penny has to be placed on one of those lines (and the intersection point is already taken!) for the "three pennies on a line" criterium, leaving one line with only two pennies.
Now those three pennies (defining two lines) also define a plane, so taking it to three dimensions gets you nowhere.
Therefore, I'm saying it can't be done, QED...at least for euclidean space.
I'd say that only works if you can subsitute 'line' for 'vector'...then you just place all 4 pennies in a line and claim that those are two vectors in oposite directions (vector abc and dcb).
:) ).
Problem is you can't do it with lines, as a line cannot occupy the same space as another line (except at intersection...and all that in euclidian space, at that
Isn't this a trailer for Sandler and de Niro's 'Anger Management"?
Then again, they may be taking potshots at DD because overall the movie sucked?
I mean, ok, there where some cool vfx and sfx, but the story was crap, character development was artificial, not to mention the dialogue. The pacing was way off too, and many of the vfx shots were awfull.
And I didn't mind Afleck...but please don't call him a good actor. Afleck has one role he plays tollerably well, and that's himself. So he's not even versatile, let alone a 'good actor'.
I'm gonna have a real cash flow problem: HalfLife 2, GTA3: Vice City, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Homeworld 2, Paradise Cracked, Soldner and a few more...that's 300 at least for the software alone, not to mention the 500 I'll be spending on hardware upgrades :(