"Don't forget, Harold isn't getting paid by anyone except Largo taxpayers, and his job is to keep their IT expenses as low as he can while providing ever-better IT services to the city employees who use them to do their jobs. In light of this, Harold's comparative cost figures are probably at least as trustworthy as anyone's -- and lots more trustworthy than some."
Its good to finally see a TCO that is about as unbiased as you can get. Other than this I've not yet to see a TCO (either proclaiming Linux or Windows) that isn't slanted in some way to paid for by a OS supplier.
Having said that, the 1.3% vs. 3% IT budget cost reduction is not all because of linux. All of that dirt cheap hardward adds up. I'm sure their bottom sure would still be significantly less than 3% even if they did use windows. Spending a couple dollars on a dumb terminal equals hugh hardware savings.
I'd say linux is just icing on the cake, (and probably leads to more silent beepers and a couple less admins). Still, remember that this is a total implementation comparision between municipalities, not purely Windows vs. Linux.
I wish I could remember the article you stole that from. Possibly its your and you are just reusing it, but I hate it when people kharma whore off of other peoples funny comments.
Essentially what I'm getting at is to say that I really didn't feel that it was fair to label the "working" classas somehow inferior to the "sysadmin" class and therefore somehow deserving of less recognition/pay
Shit, I don't think the "working class" aka blue collar workers deserve less recognition, respect or anything like that. If we lived in a perfect world and janitors got paid as much as sysadmin, I would gladly take up the mop instead of the long hours and pressure.
Do I really think that only 50% of the workforce is capable of being a sysadmin, no. I think that the percentage is much higher than that. And the analytical/problem solving/technologically comfortable aspect of things can be applied to almost any trade.
I've seen plenty of people wash out here because they couldn't cut it, regardless of how much they tried. Maybe the number is more like 75%, maybe its more like 25%, I don't know I just aimed for the middle. Some people are just not sysadmin just like some people just are not singers or football players. All require lots of training, and a certain level of talent. To assume that anybody can do a skilled job is nieve.
What I'm getting from this is that you think that YOU are more intelligent than the average Janitor and therefore deserving of something of a higher class and status.
I never said that I was more intelligent than the average janitor. I was saying that to be a sysadmin requires more intelligence than it does to be a janitor. Is that statement incorrect? Do you see the difference?
The attitude that I know more than you therefore I'm worth more than you.
I'm afraid you've got me all wrong man. Where did I state that I knew more than anybody else? Where did I compare objective worth? The amount someone gets paid is determined by market conditions and thus is in flux. Therefor pay is not objective and sysadmin are not objectively entitled to more money.
Even though some of the most intelligent people I've ever met knew that treating a person with dignity and respect was a helluva lot more important than trying to measure his/her intelligence quotia.
Did you even read anything I wrote? My main point was that sysadmins justifiably are paid more than unskilled labor. Or in general skilled labor is justifiably paid more than unskilled labor because of that skill set. Yes, you can take a large portion of the unskilled set and train them enough to be a skilled worker, but not everybody is able/willing to do that. Never did I disrespect or stereotype anybody, rather I made statements about the jobs themselves.
I've spend so long trying to defend myself, I forgot your point. How again can you justify that janitors making as much as sysadmins? Drop the whole worth/respect issure, I don't disrespect anybody becuase of their job.
Re:Woah there yankee...
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1) Yes pat ourselves on the back: "UNICEF estimated that about 500,000 children younger than 5 have died in Iraq since sanctions were imposed." [globalpolicy.org] Silly Europeans should let us go to war so we can stop killing children (and start killing adults)!
You say this like its the UNs fault for imposing sanctions. Its Saddams own freaking fault. If he was truly interesting in saving his own people, he would have never invaded anything, not started a pointless war against Iran, and would have championed peace in the middle east. Face it, if Saddam played his cards right, the US and other countries would be giving billion in aid to them.
2) For what its worth, the only nation with a proven track record of using weapons of mass destruction (chemical or nuclear) is the United States of America.
Yes, but the United States rebuilt Japan and Eruope up after WWII. They export billions and billions of dollars in foriegn aid. I'm not saying that the US has always acted in the Right Way (tm), but they do a hell of a lot of good too. If the only thing that we were doing was developing weapons of mass destruction, you could bet the UN be knocking on our door.
3) Indeed: because setting the precedent for justifying preemptive unilateral attack to stop terrorism, topple unfriendly regimes or whatever ambiguous issue-de-jour sounds like a recipe for prolonged peace!
If you wanted Iraq to argee to weapons inspections quickly, wouldn't you want them to believe that we are crazy enough to risk international mayhem to attack them? All the US has done so far is talk tough and move it military chess pieces. And yes, who wouldn't believe that dubbya isn't crazy enough to launch a war?
SUV are not safer than cars. Its true that SUV get less damage than cars in an SUV-car collision, but the cars is much more damaged than the SUV. Thus driving near SUVs is dangerous for me in my car. Secondly, SUV to SUV collisions results in more casualties than car to car collision. Think about it, increase the total mass of a collision system and more energy will be released when they collide. Thus an SUV is either more dangerous to other people in cars(SUV/car), or more dangerous to you than if everybody where driving cars(SUV/SUV). SUV may be safer to you considering more people drive car, but you are increasing the risk for everybody by driving one. In my opinion, SUVs are the scourge of the road. Buy a freaking mini-van, your never gonna take it off road anywhay.
Re:Picture in the article
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And the hit it'd take on it's lightning fast 40-some mph top speed...
Nowhere in the article does it say that its top speed is 40-some mph. It said that it averaged 40-some mph. If you can do 70mph for only ten minutes of your communte, and the rest is in traffic, your average speed is gonna be less than 40. RTFA man, and understand the numbers.
Re:75 km/h is fine( For the sidewalk)
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Na, I usually take the highway to the expressway to the turnpike. After that its only a short hop on the parkway and I'm there.
But seriously, how many people commute using highways in dense contries like the UK and china or Japan?
If the other 90 percent of the population were so trained, then you would see a subsequent shift in the labor force. Sysadmins would be getting Janitor's wages and Janitors would be very hard to come by. Wouldn't you think?
Yes, that's the way it would work.
I bet you think you can rebuild your own car engine and fly your own airplane. Let's not stop there. How about delivering your own mail or building your own house.
Both car mechanics and airplane pilots get paid much more than janitors. They would fall into the same catagory as sysadmins. I can't deliever my own mail because I don't have the large infrastructure that US mail has. And yes, I think I could build my own house, but I wouldn't undertake it without some professional help.
All of the jobs you list there require significant training, as opposed to janitors which require very little.
Perhaps its the statement that being a sysadmin is somehow linked to being intelligent.
How can you not agree that it takes more intelligence to be a sysadmin than to be a janitor. Its not just all training. A large portion of the population is smart enough to be trained. Probably at least 50%. Also the intelligence I'm talking about is the analytical/problem solving/technologically confortable kind. Not everybody has that, and people can be intelligent in many other ways. Airplane pilots require a similar set of physical/mental ability. Yes, I think I could be trained to be an airplane pilot, but I don't think everybody could do it.
Face it. Janitorial work is an untrained trade. I'm not saying I don't like and respect and am glad they are there. I'm just saying that in market conditions like ours, you can't expect a untrained jobs to pay the nearly the same as professional ones.
As for Harry Potter, I doubt I will bring the family to see that, as it kind of glosses over just which fate will befall those who practice witchcraft and necromancy. Perhaps the seventh film will tie it all together, Harry Potter and the Abyss of Eternal Torment and Damnation.
::sighs::Such ignorance. So sad. Point one, it's freaking fiction man, get over it. Two, do not damn those who you know nothing about. I happen to know quite a few Wiccans, and they lead very good lives. I've never seen one of them lay a hand on another person. I can't say the same for Catholics, whose fanatics have historically spilled more innocent blood than Islamic terrorists can hope to achieve any time soon.
Posting with religious irrationality will always get you modded down. Other Catholics have posted successfully and have been well received here, I suggest you try searching for their example. And yes, I like to respond to your hopelessly misguided religious postings, if you haven't noticed already. Any retort?
I don't think it's a coincidence that America's only Catholic president got us to the Moon.
I like Kennedy as much as the next guy, but I think there have been presidents that have accomplished feats orders of magnatudes more important than sending a man to the moon.
Yes, when you're involved in the True Church [vatican.va], you know that despite all your efforts, Death will get you, so it's better to be in orbit and die in a meteor shower, or die of a pressure suit leak on the Moon, than cravenly hiding in a planned retirement home.
History is littered with the bodies of those who fought over the "True Church". I have no problem with you being a Catholic, you should have no problem with me not believing in organized religon. More people have died fighting for their religon than for any other cause.
I suggest you examine your faith. Why do you believe? What justification do you having for believing? Think about these, nothing in the history of human civilization has been more dangerous than those violently acting on blind faith. It is naive to think that you have found the one true god, and that you follow the one true faith. What happens to all the Buddists/Muslims/Wiccans/(insert religon here) that just happened to live fantastically selfless lives?
Please don't preach about your one "True Church". You may extoll it values, but don't shove it down my freaking throat.
Respectable living wage? Yes. Should all jobs be equal pay just for the concept of equality. No. That would be ignoring the basic structure of supply and demand that our economy was built on.
Not everybody can be a sysadmin. It takes a certain amount of talent. Janitors however, require only physical labor. Hell, if being a janitor paid the same as a sysadmin, who the hell would want the stress and overtime of being a sysadmin?
Some people have the guts and fortitude to do jobs that they don't necessarily like because they have to put food on the table. Don't ever slight them again.....
I don't think the fact that sysadmins are justifiably paid more than janitors is slighting janitors. Yes, there are many honorable people working hard to support their family by doing less-than-glamourous jobs. I respect them, I really do. But I would guess that under one percent of the population are qualified to be a sysadmin, compared to upwards of 90% of the working population can be a janitor. You can take just about anybody off of the street to be a janitor. Its not nearly the same with sysadmins.
How long do you think a standard Unix sysadmin would last if his company's trash was never picked up? Statements like that sound arrogant and inconsiderate of others status in life.
Believe it or not, if nobody took the trash away from my desk, I would take the trash away from my desk. Janitors are easily and cheaply replaced. Sysadmins are costly and difficultly changed. This fact makes no judgement against those who are janitors. Christ, our janitor comes to happy hour with the rest of the office. Watch out, I wouldn't want you to get hurt when you fall off your high horse.
Its not about placing blame on teh past bombing, its about preventing ANY civilian casuaties.
Impossible in WWII. Possible today, with our military might, but not a reasonable goal in WWII. If you have civilians working and living around war factories there was no way not to target them. The Japanese could have corralled all of their civilians away from all potential target, but their war machine would have fallen way ward.
These people put themselves in danger for the honor of defending their country. Yes they did lament the dead, but they were also proud that they died for such a good cause.
The one thing i know that those who knew the dead also agree with is that we can't let somehting like that happen again.
We can't let a war like WWII happen again. Many more civilians died from conventional means. An order of magnatude more. Look at Russian and German casualties. This was the cost of invasion. The bomb was a necessary evil. The point is not to prevent the use of nuclear weapons but avoid the situation of war that makes you want to think about it.
The real power in the bomb is the fear of it killing more civilians. So although it did destroy military targets it did far less than any other type of bombing could have to purely military targets.
I suggest you look up the accuracy of high altitude bombing of the day. If you wanted to target strategic targets in a city you there was no way you weren't going to be hitting civilians. Look at Dresden, and the firebombing of Tokyo. The reason the Japanese surrendered was not only out of concern for their citizens, but they also realized that the americans could take out any point on their island with one bomb instead of thousands and thousands of bombs coming from dozens of bombers flying dozens of missions. That's why nobody paid much attention to the Enola Gay and her escorts. A single bomber probably wouldn't have even set off the air raid sirens.
You are right about that but it is not honorable to get yourself killed and have your family starve.
How many prisoners did the Allies take from their island hopping campagn? Don't you remember stories of people flinging themselves off of cliffs rather than surrender? Not only soldiers did that, as there were a number of Japanese civilians on a the islands they took who also committed suicide. Granted this also stemed from the fear of being captured, but it shows their determination. How many Japanese died in futile Bonzai rushes only to be mowed down by machine gun fire? This is what the americans experienced in the pacific, why would they have any less reason to believe that taking Japan would be any easier? Wouldn't you think it would be more costly?
And wouldn't you fight if your holy emperor told you to? He was a divine after all.
Do you think they would have really fought so hard when real American troops came to their town.
Yes. Suicidally hard, at least for a while. You fail to give no evidence that the Japanese population would have done otherwise.
The war machine convinced them of things that would most likely have proekn down on the event of a real invasion
Give one example, besides Frace in WWII, in history that a decidedly determined foe surrendered at the face of invasion. America in the 1770's? Boy, those brits were sure strong. Vietnam? Korea? Russia in every war? Even in Germany elderly people were armed as the Allies crossed the Rhine.
Yeah I can't tell you how many times I've seen in Operating Systems or Network textbooks the following:
"Such and such(TCP/IP stack, UDP datagrams,IPCs,Filesystems,process management) is ususally implemented in the operating system and since you can't modify your operating system, here's some crap simulation code!"
I agree and find it inexcusable to pass up educational opportunities just to maintain the status quo.
If you want to brag, you sell the smallest RECOGNIZABLE object at the greatest distance. Not a pixel that could be anything.
I disagree with you there. Scientistis like absolutes. At what distance you can recognize sometime is increadable grey. But enough logic for you, here's some math. Light interferes with itself. This has an interesting effect. After a certain distance observing under a certain wavelength it become impossible to distinguish two separate points.
This is neatly summed up in Rayleigh's criterion for resolvability:
theta(in radians) = 1.22 lamba/(diameter of lens).
The combined light gathering strength for the Very Large Telescope comes out to be equivalent to a 16m mirror. It can also discern wavelengths well into ultraviolet range, so lets give em 100nm. SO 1.22*(100*10^-9)/16 = 7.625*10^-9 radians. Now imagine an isocoles (sp?) triangle with that angle at the top. The base would be the length of the smallest discernable object. Say it was 16000m from the top of the triangle to the bottom, how can we figure the base? Divide angle by two and make a right triangle making a known edge of length 16000m. tan(theta)= opp/adj => tan(3.8125*10^-9)*16000m = 6.1*10^-5, but wait we have to multiply by two to get our original base back =.000122m which is slightly larger than the width of the average human hair.
Thus according to physics a telescope with apparent 16m lens and ability to measure ultraviolet wavelength at 100nm can not distinguish between two points less then.0001m apart from 16km away. Therefore if it can not discern two separate points, the best it can see is one point and thus one human hair would roughly be equivalent to one pixel. Look it up.
A [sic] assume your saying you have. I dont believe you did
I've studied WWII alot in both theaters and one of the best books I've ever read was John Hersey's Hiroshima. Yes, the human toll was heart breaking. I can understand that it was, but what other alternatives were there? After the fierce Japanese resistance in the island hopping campaign , how can you not assume hundreds of thousands of casualities required to take the island?
They could have dropped it over the ocean, but this would have been little more than a light show. How can you convince somebody of its destruction ability yet not destroy anything? Besides look at the alternatives: months of fire bombing every major city the "soften" up the invation, months of city fighting against a determined foe, the cost of such an operation. There was no right choice, it just happened that the bomb was the easiest, cheapest (after the intial R&D of course), and most garunteed way to ensure surrender. What would you have done?
Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were stragtegic targets. To deny so is nieve. To quote Harry TumanThis weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.
He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful...
Also, was I wrong about the Japanese being honor driven? Please explain. IIRC, the Japanese weren't open for peace negotiations until the second bomb went off.
Come on you cant really believe that. The war had not been going their way for over a year and althought they may have been surprised that they actually lost they were not in "utter shock".
You underestimate the value of their propaganda machine. Germany was the same way. Most Germans and Japanese had no idea how bad their situation really was until the Allies came rolling through. How would they have known? There was no free press. Yes, the Americans had been bombing relentlessly, but when all you hear is propaganda, what do you believe?
I think you need to grow up and think a little bit before you post. And a little history study would help too.
So, since you are so fucking absolutely infinitely wise even though you've obviously never opened a history book in your (presumably about 16 years long) life - what would you have done ?
What did somebody say something? I can't hear you. I have this problem about hearing AC's. Grow some balls and speak up coward. Besides you offer no good argument. packeteer makes some good points, most of which I do not agree with. Does insulting people anonymously make you feel good? Get out of here.
When spy satelites first claimed (with 1m resolution) that they could see individual cars, the cars appeared as a single pixel. The only reason you could tell they were car was you could discern the lines of streets around them. When they got better, they stopped talking about cars because you then saw little spots that turned out to be people.
They didn't say they could identify a hair at 16km, they said they could see it. If you were catagorizing your telescope, wouldn't you want to say what the smallest thing you could see was? Doesn't something smaller sound more impressive? If a human hair took up a hundred pixels at 16km, wouldn't rather say you could still see it at 17km or 18km? Come on now.
Usually when one makes a statement like that it means that if the object were any smaller, you couldn't see it at all. Now it might be a little bigger than one pixel because scientists like to compare thing to the human hair. I doubt it would show up to be more than a handfull of pixels, prosibly ten to twenty square at best (maybe a little longer on one side for the shadow. It would be enough to ID for you and me, but for the conspiracry people, its just a few tens of pixels.
the civilians who were killed were not enemies of ours
Of course they were. I suggest you look into the Japanese mindset of the time. For anybody there not to defend their homeland would have been considered dishonorable. Not only to themselves, but to their family and ancestors. Quite a large motiving factor.
When the US dropped the bombs, Japan was arming it citizenry and preparing for invasion. Old men, children, women. Who could you consider a non-combatant? The US did try to warn the civilian populace with flyers saying to leave city, but how could proud Japanese flee from supporting their war machine?
The Japanese people were in complete and utter shock when their surrender was sounded, even after knowing their losses after two bombs, a lot of people still wanted to keep fighting.
Yes, dropping the bomb was a horrible thing. It was a crime against humanity to indescriminately kill so many people. (which was, by the way, not the main goal, the bombs hit major production cities) Their is however, overwelming evidence that more people would have died in an invasion.
It is quite a moral quandry.
The difference between the US here, and Radical Fundamentalists of the modern era is that the US struck out in the goal of peace. We just wanted there to be no more fighting. The only thing about them we wanted to change was their ability to attack US. The US spent billions of dollars rebuilding Japan, and it today stands a world leader.
Terrorists however, want to change us. What would we have to do to avoid their continued attacks? Not only would the US have to pull out of Arabia, Israel relocate to Ohio, and everybody everywhere convert to Islam. But there would still be terrorists. Even if women are muslim, how dare they show their face in public! Wipe out unclean industry (music,tv,alcolhol,broadway,schools where women can attend) also, thereby destroying the world economy and pluging into depression. Even if we did all of that, somebody somewhere would still find it in them to hate us.
There can be no peace from those that will not accept poeple different than them. The only way to beat terrorism is education and economic support. Only once Arabs teach their children not to hate those different from them (which a good portion already does) will we have peace in the middle east.
Consider the following: the telescope can see a human hair from 16km away. A human hair is about.1mm. The moon is 384400km away from earth.
(384400km/16km)*.0001m = 2.4025m, which is to say that the telescope can see objects as small as 2.4 meters on the surface of the moon. That means the lander wouldn't be bigger than 2 pixels square.
"What's that little black dot?" "That's the lander, duh." "Still don't believe you"
You can never absolutely positively convince a person of the existance of a historical event. For all I know, the United States didn't even exist in 1950. Hell, I don't even believe in France, since I've never been there. I mean come on, you want me to believe that that silly French accent comes from a real language?!! Proposterous!
Straight-up ascii? That's what XML is (and RTF for the most part, except when you want to embed stuff).
And don't even get me started on RTF. Have you ever looked at that crap? I worked on an open source xsl:fo to RTF converter and I'd have to say that RTF is extrememly anoying to work with.
Microsoft has a RTF specification doc. but this is notoriously full of holes and ambiguities. There is a reason that RTF still works best with Office: they don't tell you how exactly to implement it.
It's tremedously hard to debug, ugly, verbose(more so than xml), hard to read. I hate RTF. I've had dreams when i kick it in the forehead and strangle it underwater. But that's just me.
Compare an XML document with a RTF document and you'll see what I mean.
Still it seems that signs are pointing to validity instead of the other way around. Slashdotter may have anti-microsoft tendencies, but usually someone will dig up the Truth TM
I'd still like to see more evidence, but right now, I'm leaning toward credible.
Slashdot Mirror
Da, in Soviet Russia, thin client runs YOU!
Da, in Soviet Russia, server serves YOU!
This is an open source comment, the following is the source code:
"Don't forget, Harold isn't getting paid by anyone except Largo taxpayers, and his job is to keep their IT expenses as low as he can while providing ever-better IT services to the city employees who use them to do their jobs. In light of this, Harold's comparative cost figures are probably at least as trustworthy as anyone's -- and lots more trustworthy than some."
Its good to finally see a TCO that is about as unbiased as you can get. Other than this I've not yet to see a TCO (either proclaiming Linux or Windows) that isn't slanted in some way to paid for by a OS supplier.
Having said that, the 1.3% vs. 3% IT budget cost reduction is not all because of linux. All of that dirt cheap hardward adds up. I'm sure their bottom sure would still be significantly less than 3% even if they did use windows. Spending a couple dollars on a dumb terminal equals hugh hardware savings.
I'd say linux is just icing on the cake, (and probably leads to more silent beepers and a couple less admins). Still, remember that this is a total implementation comparision between municipalities, not purely Windows vs. Linux.
No, no, no, comrade. In Soviet Russia, government fears YOU!
of a Slashdotter comment that twisted an old expression...
"Those who sacrafice sound quality for hard disk space deserve neither."
Cool idea to throw around though.
I wish I could remember the article you stole that from. Possibly its your and you are just reusing it, but I hate it when people kharma whore off of other peoples funny comments.
Essentially what I'm getting at is to say that I really didn't feel that it was fair to label the "working" classas somehow inferior to the "sysadmin" class and therefore somehow deserving of less recognition/pay
Shit, I don't think the "working class" aka blue collar workers deserve less recognition, respect or anything like that. If we lived in a perfect world and janitors got paid as much as sysadmin, I would gladly take up the mop instead of the long hours and pressure.
Do I really think that only 50% of the workforce is capable of being a sysadmin, no. I think that the percentage is much higher than that. And the analytical/problem solving/technologically comfortable aspect of things can be applied to almost any trade.
I've seen plenty of people wash out here because they couldn't cut it, regardless of how much they tried. Maybe the number is more like 75%, maybe its more like 25%, I don't know I just aimed for the middle. Some people are just not sysadmin just like some people just are not singers or football players. All require lots of training, and a certain level of talent. To assume that anybody can do a skilled job is nieve.
What I'm getting from this is that you think that YOU are more intelligent than the average Janitor and therefore deserving of something of a higher class and status.
I never said that I was more intelligent than the average janitor. I was saying that to be a sysadmin requires more intelligence than it does to be a janitor. Is that statement incorrect? Do you see the difference?
The attitude that I know more than you therefore I'm worth more than you.
I'm afraid you've got me all wrong man. Where did I state that I knew more than anybody else? Where did I compare objective worth? The amount someone gets paid is determined by market conditions and thus is in flux. Therefor pay is not objective and sysadmin are not objectively entitled to more money.
Even though some of the most intelligent people I've ever met knew that treating a person with dignity and respect was a helluva lot more important than trying to measure his/her intelligence quotia.
Did you even read anything I wrote? My main point was that sysadmins justifiably are paid more than unskilled labor. Or in general skilled labor is justifiably paid more than unskilled labor because of that skill set. Yes, you can take a large portion of the unskilled set and train them enough to be a skilled worker, but not everybody is able/willing to do that. Never did I disrespect or stereotype anybody, rather I made statements about the jobs themselves.
I've spend so long trying to defend myself, I forgot your point. How again can you justify that janitors making as much as sysadmins? Drop the whole worth/respect issure, I don't disrespect anybody becuase of their job.
1) Yes pat ourselves on the back: "UNICEF estimated that about 500,000 children younger than 5 have died in Iraq since sanctions were imposed." [globalpolicy.org] Silly Europeans should let us go to war so we can stop killing children (and start killing adults)!
You say this like its the UNs fault for imposing sanctions. Its Saddams own freaking fault. If he was truly interesting in saving his own people, he would have never invaded anything, not started a pointless war against Iran, and would have championed peace in the middle east. Face it, if Saddam played his cards right, the US and other countries would be giving billion in aid to them.
2) For what its worth, the only nation with a proven track record of using weapons of mass destruction (chemical or nuclear) is the United States of America.
Yes, but the United States rebuilt Japan and Eruope up after WWII. They export billions and billions of dollars in foriegn aid. I'm not saying that the US has always acted in the Right Way (tm), but they do a hell of a lot of good too. If the only thing that we were doing was developing weapons of mass destruction, you could bet the UN be knocking on our door.
3) Indeed: because setting the precedent for justifying preemptive unilateral attack to stop terrorism, topple unfriendly regimes or whatever ambiguous issue-de-jour sounds like a recipe for prolonged peace!
If you wanted Iraq to argee to weapons inspections quickly, wouldn't you want them to believe that we are crazy enough to risk international mayhem to attack them? All the US has done so far is talk tough and move it military chess pieces. And yes, who wouldn't believe that dubbya isn't crazy enough to launch a war?
SUV are not safer than cars. Its true that SUV get less damage than cars in an SUV-car collision, but the cars is much more damaged than the SUV. Thus driving near SUVs is dangerous for me in my car. Secondly, SUV to SUV collisions results in more casualties than car to car collision. Think about it, increase the total mass of a collision system and more energy will be released when they collide. Thus an SUV is either more dangerous to other people in cars(SUV/car), or more dangerous to you than if everybody where driving cars(SUV/SUV). SUV may be safer to you considering more people drive car, but you are increasing the risk for everybody by driving one. In my opinion, SUVs are the scourge of the road. Buy a freaking mini-van, your never gonna take it off road anywhay.
And the hit it'd take on it's lightning fast 40-some mph top speed...
Nowhere in the article does it say that its top speed is 40-some mph. It said that it averaged 40-some mph. If you can do 70mph for only ten minutes of your communte, and the rest is in traffic, your average speed is gonna be less than 40. RTFA man, and understand the numbers.
Na, I usually take the highway to the expressway to the turnpike. After that its only a short hop on the parkway and I'm there.
But seriously, how many people commute using highways in dense contries like the UK and china or Japan?
If the other 90 percent of the population were so trained, then you would see a subsequent shift in the labor force. Sysadmins would be getting Janitor's wages and Janitors would be very hard to come by. Wouldn't you think?
Yes, that's the way it would work.
I bet you think you can rebuild your own car engine and fly your own airplane. Let's not stop there. How about delivering your own mail or building your own house.
Both car mechanics and airplane pilots get paid much more than janitors. They would fall into the same catagory as sysadmins. I can't deliever my own mail because I don't have the large infrastructure that US mail has. And yes, I think I could build my own house, but I wouldn't undertake it without some professional help.
All of the jobs you list there require significant training, as opposed to janitors which require very little.
Perhaps its the statement that being a sysadmin is somehow linked to being intelligent.
How can you not agree that it takes more intelligence to be a sysadmin than to be a janitor. Its not just all training. A large portion of the population is smart enough to be trained. Probably at least 50%. Also the intelligence I'm talking about is the analytical/problem solving/technologically confortable kind. Not everybody has that, and people can be intelligent in many other ways. Airplane pilots require a similar set of physical/mental ability. Yes, I think I could be trained to be an airplane pilot, but I don't think everybody could do it.
Face it. Janitorial work is an untrained trade. I'm not saying I don't like and respect and am glad they are there. I'm just saying that in market conditions like ours, you can't expect a untrained jobs to pay the nearly the same as professional ones.
As for Harry Potter, I doubt I will bring the family to see that, as it kind of glosses over just which fate will befall those who practice witchcraft and necromancy. Perhaps the seventh film will tie it all together, Harry Potter and the Abyss of Eternal Torment and Damnation.
::sighs::Such ignorance. So sad. Point one, it's freaking fiction man, get over it. Two, do not damn those who you know nothing about. I happen to know quite a few Wiccans, and they lead very good lives. I've never seen one of them lay a hand on another person. I can't say the same for Catholics, whose fanatics have historically spilled more innocent blood than Islamic terrorists can hope to achieve any time soon.
Posting with religious irrationality will always get you modded down. Other Catholics have posted successfully and have been well received here, I suggest you try searching for their example. And yes, I like to respond to your hopelessly misguided religious postings, if you haven't noticed already. Any retort?
I don't think it's a coincidence that America's only Catholic president got us to the Moon.
I like Kennedy as much as the next guy, but I think there have been presidents that have accomplished feats orders of magnatudes more important than sending a man to the moon.
Yes, when you're involved in the True Church [vatican.va], you know that despite all your efforts, Death will get you, so it's better to be in orbit and die in a meteor shower, or die of a pressure suit leak on the Moon, than cravenly hiding in a planned retirement home.
History is littered with the bodies of those who fought over the "True Church". I have no problem with you being a Catholic, you should have no problem with me not believing in organized religon. More people have died fighting for their religon than for any other cause.
I suggest you examine your faith. Why do you believe? What justification do you having for believing? Think about these, nothing in the history of human civilization has been more dangerous than those violently acting on blind faith. It is naive to think that you have found the one true god, and that you follow the one true faith. What happens to all the Buddists/Muslims/Wiccans/(insert religon here) that just happened to live fantastically selfless lives?
Please don't preach about your one "True Church". You may extoll it values, but don't shove it down my freaking throat.
Respectable living wage? Yes. Should all jobs be equal pay just for the concept of equality. No. That would be ignoring the basic structure of supply and demand that our economy was built on.
Not everybody can be a sysadmin. It takes a certain amount of talent. Janitors however, require only physical labor. Hell, if being a janitor paid the same as a sysadmin, who the hell would want the stress and overtime of being a sysadmin?
Some people have the guts and fortitude to do jobs that they don't necessarily like because they have to put food on the table. Don't ever slight them again.....
I don't think the fact that sysadmins are justifiably paid more than janitors is slighting janitors. Yes, there are many honorable people working hard to support their family by doing less-than-glamourous jobs. I respect them, I really do. But I would guess that under one percent of the population are qualified to be a sysadmin, compared to upwards of 90% of the working population can be a janitor. You can take just about anybody off of the street to be a janitor. Its not nearly the same with sysadmins.
How long do you think a standard Unix sysadmin would last if his company's trash was never picked up? Statements like that sound arrogant and inconsiderate of others status in life.
Believe it or not, if nobody took the trash away from my desk, I would take the trash away from my desk. Janitors are easily and cheaply replaced. Sysadmins are costly and difficultly changed. This fact makes no judgement against those who are janitors. Christ, our janitor comes to happy hour with the rest of the office. Watch out, I wouldn't want you to get hurt when you fall off your high horse.
Its not about placing blame on teh past bombing, its about preventing ANY civilian casuaties.
Impossible in WWII. Possible today, with our military might, but not a reasonable goal in WWII. If you have civilians working and living around war factories there was no way not to target them. The Japanese could have corralled all of their civilians away from all potential target, but their war machine would have fallen way ward.
These people put themselves in danger for the honor of defending their country. Yes they did lament the dead, but they were also proud that they died for such a good cause.
The one thing i know that those who knew the dead also agree with is that we can't let somehting like that happen again.
We can't let a war like WWII happen again. Many more civilians died from conventional means. An order of magnatude more. Look at Russian and German casualties. This was the cost of invasion. The bomb was a necessary evil. The point is not to prevent the use of nuclear weapons but avoid the situation of war that makes you want to think about it.
The real power in the bomb is the fear of it killing more civilians. So although it did destroy military targets it did far less than any other type of bombing could have to purely military targets.
I suggest you look up the accuracy of high altitude bombing of the day. If you wanted to target strategic targets in a city you there was no way you weren't going to be hitting civilians. Look at Dresden, and the firebombing of Tokyo. The reason the Japanese surrendered was not only out of concern for their citizens, but they also realized that the americans could take out any point on their island with one bomb instead of thousands and thousands of bombs coming from dozens of bombers flying dozens of missions. That's why nobody paid much attention to the Enola Gay and her escorts. A single bomber probably wouldn't have even set off the air raid sirens.
You are right about that but it is not honorable to get yourself killed and have your family starve.
How many prisoners did the Allies take from their island hopping campagn? Don't you remember stories of people flinging themselves off of cliffs rather than surrender? Not only soldiers did that, as there were a number of Japanese civilians on a the islands they took who also committed suicide. Granted this also stemed from the fear of being captured, but it shows their determination. How many Japanese died in futile Bonzai rushes only to be mowed down by machine gun fire? This is what the americans experienced in the pacific, why would they have any less reason to believe that taking Japan would be any easier? Wouldn't you think it would be more costly? And wouldn't you fight if your holy emperor told you to? He was a divine after all.
Do you think they would have really fought so hard when real American troops came to their town.
Yes. Suicidally hard, at least for a while. You fail to give no evidence that the Japanese population would have done otherwise.
The war machine convinced them of things that would most likely have proekn down on the event of a real invasion
Give one example, besides Frace in WWII, in history that a decidedly determined foe surrendered at the face of invasion. America in the 1770's? Boy, those brits were sure strong. Vietnam? Korea? Russia in every war? Even in Germany elderly people were armed as the Allies crossed the Rhine.
Yeah I can't tell you how many times I've seen in Operating Systems or Network textbooks the following :
"Such and such(TCP/IP stack, UDP datagrams,IPCs,Filesystems,process management) is ususally implemented in the operating system and since you can't modify your operating system, here's some crap simulation code!"
I agree and find it inexcusable to pass up educational opportunities just to maintain the status quo.
If you want to brag, you sell the smallest RECOGNIZABLE object at the greatest distance. Not a pixel that could be anything.
.000122m which is slightly larger than the width of the average human hair.
.0001m apart from 16km away. Therefore if it can not discern two separate points, the best it can see is one point and thus one human hair would roughly be equivalent to one pixel. Look it up.
I disagree with you there. Scientistis like absolutes. At what distance you can recognize sometime is increadable grey. But enough logic for you, here's some math. Light interferes with itself. This has an interesting effect. After a certain distance observing under a certain wavelength it become impossible to distinguish two separate points.
This is neatly summed up in Rayleigh's criterion for resolvability:
theta(in radians) = 1.22 lamba/(diameter of lens).
The combined light gathering strength for the Very Large Telescope comes out to be equivalent to a 16m mirror. It can also discern wavelengths well into ultraviolet range, so lets give em 100nm. SO 1.22*(100*10^-9)/16 = 7.625*10^-9 radians. Now imagine an isocoles (sp?) triangle with that angle at the top. The base would be the length of the smallest discernable object. Say it was 16000m from the top of the triangle to the bottom, how can we figure the base? Divide angle by two and make a right triangle making a known edge of length 16000m. tan(theta)= opp/adj => tan(3.8125*10^-9)*16000m = 6.1*10^-5, but wait we have to multiply by two to get our original base back =
Thus according to physics a telescope with apparent 16m lens and ability to measure ultraviolet wavelength at 100nm can not distinguish between two points less then
A [sic] assume your saying you have. I dont believe you did
I've studied WWII alot in both theaters and one of the best books I've ever read was John Hersey's Hiroshima. Yes, the human toll was heart breaking. I can understand that it was, but what other alternatives were there? After the fierce Japanese resistance in the island hopping campaign , how can you not assume hundreds of thousands of casualities required to take the island?
They could have dropped it over the ocean, but this would have been little more than a light show. How can you convince somebody of its destruction ability yet not destroy anything? Besides look at the alternatives: months of fire bombing every major city the "soften" up the invation, months of city fighting against a determined foe, the cost of such an operation. There was no right choice, it just happened that the bomb was the easiest, cheapest (after the intial R&D of course), and most garunteed way to ensure surrender. What would you have done?
Also, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were stragtegic targets. To deny so is nieve. To quote Harry Tuman This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children. Even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the world for the common welfare cannot drop that terrible bomb on the old capital or the new.
He and I are in accord. The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives. I'm sure they will not do that, but we will have given them the chance. It is certainly a good thing for the world that Hitler's crowd or Stalin's did not discover this atomic bomb. It seems to be the most terrible thing ever discovered, but it can be made the most useful...
Also, was I wrong about the Japanese being honor driven? Please explain. IIRC, the Japanese weren't open for peace negotiations until the second bomb went off.
Come on you cant really believe that. The war had not been going their way for over a year and althought they may have been surprised that they actually lost they were not in "utter shock".
You underestimate the value of their propaganda machine. Germany was the same way. Most Germans and Japanese had no idea how bad their situation really was until the Allies came rolling through. How would they have known? There was no free press. Yes, the Americans had been bombing relentlessly, but when all you hear is propaganda, what do you believe?
I think you need to grow up and think a little bit before you post. And a little history study would help too.
So, since you are so fucking absolutely infinitely wise even though you've obviously never opened a history book in your (presumably about 16 years long) life - what would you have done ?
What did somebody say something? I can't hear you. I have this problem about hearing AC's. Grow some balls and speak up coward. Besides you offer no good argument. packeteer makes some good points, most of which I do not agree with. Does insulting people anonymously make you feel good? Get out of here.
When spy satelites first claimed (with 1m resolution) that they could see individual cars, the cars appeared as a single pixel. The only reason you could tell they were car was you could discern the lines of streets around them. When they got better, they stopped talking about cars because you then saw little spots that turned out to be people.
They didn't say they could identify a hair at 16km, they said they could see it. If you were catagorizing your telescope, wouldn't you want to say what the smallest thing you could see was? Doesn't something smaller sound more impressive? If a human hair took up a hundred pixels at 16km, wouldn't rather say you could still see it at 17km or 18km? Come on now.
Usually when one makes a statement like that it means that if the object were any smaller, you couldn't see it at all. Now it might be a little bigger than one pixel because scientists like to compare thing to the human hair. I doubt it would show up to be more than a handfull of pixels, prosibly ten to twenty square at best (maybe a little longer on one side for the shadow. It would be enough to ID for you and me, but for the conspiracry people, its just a few tens of pixels.
the civilians who were killed were not enemies of ours
Of course they were. I suggest you look into the Japanese mindset of the time. For anybody there not to defend their homeland would have been considered dishonorable. Not only to themselves, but to their family and ancestors. Quite a large motiving factor.
When the US dropped the bombs, Japan was arming it citizenry and preparing for invasion. Old men, children, women. Who could you consider a non-combatant? The US did try to warn the civilian populace with flyers saying to leave city, but how could proud Japanese flee from supporting their war machine?
The Japanese people were in complete and utter shock when their surrender was sounded, even after knowing their losses after two bombs, a lot of people still wanted to keep fighting.
Yes, dropping the bomb was a horrible thing. It was a crime against humanity to indescriminately kill so many people. (which was, by the way, not the main goal, the bombs hit major production cities) Their is however, overwelming evidence that more people would have died in an invasion. It is quite a moral quandry.
The difference between the US here, and Radical Fundamentalists of the modern era is that the US struck out in the goal of peace. We just wanted there to be no more fighting. The only thing about them we wanted to change was their ability to attack US. The US spent billions of dollars rebuilding Japan, and it today stands a world leader.
Terrorists however, want to change us. What would we have to do to avoid their continued attacks? Not only would the US have to pull out of Arabia, Israel relocate to Ohio, and everybody everywhere convert to Islam. But there would still be terrorists. Even if women are muslim, how dare they show their face in public! Wipe out unclean industry (music,tv,alcolhol,broadway,schools where women can attend) also, thereby destroying the world economy and pluging into depression. Even if we did all of that, somebody somewhere would still find it in them to hate us.
There can be no peace from those that will not accept poeple different than them. The only way to beat terrorism is education and economic support. Only once Arabs teach their children not to hate those different from them (which a good portion already does) will we have peace in the middle east.
Consider the following: the telescope can see a human hair from 16km away. A human hair is about .1mm. The moon is 384400km away from earth.
(384400km/16km)*.0001m = 2.4025m, which is to say that the telescope can see objects as small as 2.4 meters on the surface of the moon. That means the lander wouldn't be bigger than 2 pixels square.
"What's that little black dot?"
"That's the lander, duh."
"Still don't believe you"
You can never absolutely positively convince a person of the existance of a historical event. For all I know, the United States didn't even exist in 1950. Hell, I don't even believe in France, since I've never been there. I mean come on, you want me to believe that that silly French accent comes from a real language?!! Proposterous!
Straight-up ascii? That's what XML is (and RTF for the most part, except when you want to embed stuff).
And don't even get me started on RTF. Have you ever looked at that crap? I worked on an open source xsl:fo to RTF converter and I'd have to say that RTF is extrememly anoying to work with.
Microsoft has a RTF specification doc. but this is notoriously full of holes and ambiguities. There is a reason that RTF still works best with Office: they don't tell you how exactly to implement it.
It's tremedously hard to debug, ugly, verbose(more so than xml), hard to read. I hate RTF. I've had dreams when i kick it in the forehead and strangle it underwater. But that's just me.
Compare an XML document with a RTF document and you'll see what I mean.
I thought the same thing at first also. Until I read this report about a microsoft foulup and this post (granted take both with a grain a salt)
Still it seems that signs are pointing to validity instead of the other way around. Slashdotter may have anti-microsoft tendencies, but usually someone will dig up the Truth TM
I'd still like to see more evidence, but right now, I'm leaning toward credible.