Multiple good points. Thanks for the correction and the sane response.
In answer to your question, I guess that I expect everyone who might have read one book by a "good" author to have tried most/all by that author. But I think I'm just strange that way:)
though Stepenson has had some dips (like the ever-ending _Diamond Age_)
I'm rather amazed that you called out "The Diamond Age" as never-ending, but failed to mention anything negative about "Cryptonomicon". I'm perfectly willing to agree that the end of "The Diamond Age" was weak (a Stephenson consistency), but I was never bored or felt that the pacing dragged.
"Cryptonomicon" became a personal challenge to finish, however. By the end, I simply couldn't have cared less what happened to whom. To each his own, I suppose...
Specifically in this case, the US supports the Saudi ruling family against the population of Saudi Arabia. The US also has also supported Israel and their side of that mess for decades, a position almost guaranteed to excite suicide level animosity among people on the other side of the feud.
I don't mean to get into a "who cast the first stone" argument re: Israel, but we've chosen sides in a regional blood feud, and we shouldn't be too suprised when some of the blood ends up on our shores. We've also supported despotic governments against their people and again, shouldn't be too suprised when some of those people decide to hit back at the power behind their oppressors.
And that's only two causal actions by the US that almost certainly contributed to 9/11. There's no real need to bring up all the rest of America's foreign policy nightmares through the 20th century... Pinochet? The Shah of Iran? Saddam Hussein? The list goes on and on...
This memo could be a photocopy of something circulating thirty years ago. Sounds like they're finally going to take advantage of the modular parts of the shuttle the way they talked about when the shuttle stack design was being originally being funded twenty-five to thirty years ago. One nice change is that the rumor mill believes the heavy lift stack bears a striking resemblance to Robert Zubrin's Ares stack (a.k.a. Shuttle-Z).
The "Shuttle-C" cargo stack (and variations) were originally publically discussed in the early '80s as reasons why the shuttle was worth all we were spending (you don't just get the shuttle, you also get a "normal" heavy-lift launcher). Those variants, however, have had problems that could only be resolved by massive cultural change at the NASA level. One of the biggest issues was payload capacity of the side-slung configuration. Since then variations including the Ares stack and the more recent Shuttle-B have appeared and pretty much gone nowhere.
I suspect that the United Space Alliance's (USA's) "risk averse" culture will actively hinder and ultimately frustrate all of these plans. If you've ever worked for a government contractor, you'll understand the culture I'm talking about. They (Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, the companies in the USA partnership) don't have to compete in markets, and are positively allergic to any hint that they may have to compete with other companies for revenue. If NASA's hoping for bargains, they won't find them when dealing with USA.
It's fine and dandy that everything's cut and dried for you, but for the rest of us it's just embarrassing. It's not even an answer. Funny that cosmologists take such questions seriously, while you, alone in your intellectual superiority, apparently doesn't need to.
Now, why is it that those who replied constructively to my post used an actual identities, while those who just flamed are all AC's?
If you don't think that I took his question seriously, you didn't understand his question, let alone the answer I gave. I could have gone on and on about the early state of the universe and how that led to current observations, sent him a copy of The First Three Minutes, discussed brane theory in some depth, and completely ignored the real thrust of his question.
Which was: What's behind the universe? Which is a question that the cosmologists I know (I know five, with two of those as close friends) say is the realm of religion, and which is very likely to stay the realm of religion.
So I gave him an answer appropriate to what we know about the nature and origin of the universe, from the perspective of an observer within the universe.
If you've got a better answer, by all means, let it loose, but if you just didn't like my answer, ultimately, that's your problem and nobody else's.
Next time, lose some of the anger, and use a realy identity to join the discussion.
Yet the mystery remains. "It is and has been" leaves one hollow, no?
Clearly there must be a answer.
Well, I can see that you would like there to be more of an answer, and I can understand some of the reasons to want more of an answer, but I don't think that there needs to be a better answer to your question. At least, not an answer that's discoverable from this existence.
I suspect that you, like many, would like for the world to be a little more magical or fantastic than it appears, and are hoping for a conclusive answer which fulfills that desire.
To me, "It is and has been." is an answer that releases me from what I see as a blind alley of escapism: looking for the Truth based on a perspective outside the universe. Godel's incompleteness theorem states that in any consistent system, there will exist statements that are unprovable if all you can use to prove them are facts from within the system. We're simply not going to be able to answer many questions, no matter how carefully we observe events within our own universe.
As for leaving me hollow, I find that there are many ways to deal with the answer: "That's not knowable." The plain, old, mundane universe is a fantastic place, and I get a great deal of satisfaction from learning as much as I possibly can about it. There's magic and wonder in the details of biology, botany, kitchen chemistry, geology, astronomy, etc.
But that's my take on it, and clearly, you don't need to be satisfied with the simple answer I gave. The world would be a rather boring place if everyone agreed with me, wouldn't it?
And here, folks, we see exactly the sort of mentality that holds humanity back. "Don't ask, it's impossible to know, and you are an idiot for asking."
Two points.
1) I believe that humanity is held back by dogmatism and fundamentalism. People who already claim to "have the facts" in every aspect of life. I make no such claim, and in fact, love a good discussion of what I (we) don't yet know.
2) The answer "It's impossible to know." can be the best possible answer to a question. If it is the best possible answer to a question, do you do the person who asked any favors by telling them something else?
Newsflash, oh "enlightened" one: There are NO stupid questions.
Again, two points.
1) I'm not enlightened, though I am seeking the same insights as many through history who clearly have been enlightened.
2) There are more useful and less useful questions, and one way to determine where a question lies on that continuum may be to determine if the question can be answered right now, or alternatively, what the value of the various possible answers would be to the asker. Based on that criteria, some questions clearly fall into the "not doing anyone any good either way" category.
If you determine there are [stupid questions], you stop questioning your own precepts, and become WRONG by default.
Your conclusion does not follow from your premise. Understanding is always subject to revision. If we do find a way to "step outside" our universe and make observations of "other" places, some of the questions that I was saying didn't make sense can make sense. But based on our current understanding of reality, asking about "the ultimate form of reality" is an invitation to escapism, and is the one realm that (I believe) religion will maintain as it's own.
It is and has been. (seriously, that's all the answer there is).
What existed before our universe?
Unknowable. "Before" the universe began is "before" the concept of time has any meaning. Alternatively, if we could observe things that were "outside of the universe", we would have to expand the scope of the universe to include those observations, meaning that they were no longer "outside of the universe".
What is the original nature of existence...of what we call "reality"?
This is a vague question. One possible interpretation is that you're asking about the "super-universe" in a different way from the "before the universe" question. It has the same problems as the "before the universe" question (if we could know, we'd have to redefine the universe).
The other interpretation is that you're asking if the nature of reality has changed through the lifecycle of the observable universe, presumably though alterations of fundamental laws from some initial "ideal" state. This question, while clearly less "grand", is more relevant, because it offers a source of falsifiable assertions and possible experiments.
Being able to classify questions as "irrelevant" and "not answerable" for various reasons is a part of "knowing what you don't know" and the rather tricky subset, "knowing what you can't know". Wisdom (and a lot of saved time) lies in a deeper understanding of how to determine the value of questions.
I must admit that about 12 years ago, I got comfortable with saying "I don't know" along with the realization that people are capable of asking bad questions as if they were the most important questions around. My favorite is "Why are we here?" It's worthless because it begs about four other questions that have no objective answer.
The interesting form of the question is, "Why am I here?" and it can only be conclusively answered by exactly one person: the same person who asked the question. What's really tragic is how many people are afraid of answering it themselves and accept someone else's answer out of fear of "getting it wrong". *sigh*
[...] with the five most liberal (Democrat) judges voting to take away your property.
Erm, no. (1) Three of the five judges in favor were appointed by Republican presidents. (2) SCOTUS judges tend to be difficult to call once they are on the bench and can vote their conscience. Besides, you seem to have got it into your head that Democrats and Republicans aren't all authoritarian bastards.
Which says more about the truth of liberalism and democrats than anything else. They lean towards socialism, while the conservatives lean towards individual rights.
Let's take a minute and get this straight. The current party with power; which is in the process of ramming through the PATRIOT act again (and objecting to any reduction in the powers granted by the renewed PATRIOT act), is made up of people who "lean towards individual rights"? The same group that argues that the government needs the ability to imprison people indefinitely without any due process? This is your assertion? IMHO the PATRIOT act is the largest attack on individual rights since Hoover and the Red Scares of the '50s and '60s. Not exactly protective of individual rights I consider important.
Maybe you use a different defintion of "lean towards", but I didn't consider a full frontal assault to be a very sympathetic position to take on the issue of individual rights.
Get it through your head that the "Party of the Little Guy" is not the Democrats.
Get it through your head that neither the Republocrats nor the Demublicans are "the 'Party of the Little Guy'". The little guy has been left swinging in the breeze by both parties for some time now (aside: I just love mixing metaphors).
It is an investment, and plenty of other companies have showed how huge the return can be on letting employees do open-ended work on company time: (Johnson&Johnson, HP (of the past), 3M, etc.)
Like other investments, there is a cost. In this case, the cost is the (potentially) reduced productivity to active projects when people spend in-office time elsewhere. The return on that investment is a potential goldmine of business ideas, some of which are likely to support or extend what google already does. Also, the potential loss of productivity is probably a lot closer to 0% than 20%. Taking a substantial mental break can do wonders for my creative processes, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
Once google decides to take a project and fund it, it's a completely different matter with a different kind of risk (similar to the risks that any startup faces). Most of these risks are manageable, especially if there's money to do market research and to answer other open-ended questions that most startups simply have to guess at. That money is a two-edged sword, however, as the lack of money forces startups to be lean and aggressive without the security of a large bankroll to fall back on...
In any case, your statements make you sound like a highly risk-averse person who would never think of leaving their salaried job and starting a company. Not even if you were certain that the product would be a hit. The world needs all kinds, but understand that the google culture doesn't resemble anything that you're probably comfortable with.
Good cool mead taste masks the incredible quantity of sugar that you are actualy drinking.
Not sure what you mean by "cool mead", but your statements are only true for what I've typically heard called a "sack" or sweet mead, which is much easier to make, but not as delicious as the dry recipies (IMHO). A dry mead is more my style, and has an amazing spectrum of flavors that really do justice to the layman's description, "honey wine".
The citric acid is important to conceal the alcohol flavor in a dry mead, however... I think I'm going to be making some more real soon. This thread has me salivating at the thought...
You are a geek, not a user you cannot possibly comprehend what they want, so stop trying.
If you believe this, then you should stop working in software now. Further, even if you were to rephrase your statement to say what you meant, you're still wrong.
Developers can and should become domain experts in the problem space served by their company's product. They do this by interacting directly with users and other domain experts (exceptional sales people, ex-users, marketers (sometimes), more senior developers). In any effective product organization, any mid-level or higher developer should be able to hold his own in any conversation with a user, a marketer, a salesperson, or the CEO.
Finally, when you ask, your users will tell you what they really want and many times, you will have to ask still more questions and if you are very good, you will give them what they really need. Which may bear only a passing resemblance to what they originally said they wanted.
IMHO, this task is best done by your development staff. In my personal experience, marketing is too far from the actual metal to effectively understand the possibilities of the actual solution.
There certainly are problem sets for which the relational model is inappropriate. However, there is no large data management problem for which a flat file is more appropriate than a relational database (assertions by the Prevayler group nonwithstanding).
As for your assertion that tree-like data is a poor fit for relational programming, it's an issue of having a deeper understanding of relational programming (a "kind" of programming parallel to procedural or object-oriented programming). Trees fit perfectly well into relational models, you just need to understand how a relational system should manage them. If you're ever interested in learning more, a great book to read would be: SQL For Smarties.
Even more germane to the specifics of trees in databases, the same author has a newer book (that I haven't read) Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties. Only one person has reviewed it and they weren't overwhelmed, so who knows.
Tags are only a problem if it wasn't designed into the schema from the start (i.e. CVS style tags strapped into RCS files). If a tag is actually an association of deltas as in Subversion (much more amenable to a relational model), asking for "the state of the system at 'Release 1.1' (changeset 1134)", becomes fairly simple to implement and much simpler to optimize.
(that's developer-speech for a boring but feasible project that would make you shove your buzzword db-admin-speech up your arse)
Point #1:
A quick google search yielded afew links for "sqlfs".
Now, are you really talking about a filesystem implemented in a relational database? You're pretty confused if you think you contradicted what I wrote. That's exactly what I'm advocating, except that I'm advocating that this database-backed filesystem also be CM-aware.
For this particular file-centric application, I *love* filesystems implemented as front-ends to databases.
Point #2:
You're really confused if you think I'm a db-admin or that I'm in favor of a CM tool that requires a DB-admin to install or use. I'm in favor of an ACID database as a core part of an effective CM system. Whether end users know it's on their machine is completely irrelevant (in fact, I think the user shouldn't have to know it's there).
Point #3:
Why would that project be boring? Sounds like it would be pretty neat if you ask me. I'm actually a little disappointed that none of the links yielded a project with recent activity.
(wouldn't it be cool to store data from your SQL tables in easy-to-parse flat files for instance? That would make recovery and manipulation a lot simpler)
*snicker*
*laugh*
*great rolling peals of laughter*
*sigh*
*wipes tear from eye*
You haven't done much work that actually required databases (or that would massively benefit from a relational programming model). The whole point of moving from flat files to a database is so that the data is stored already parsed, recovery is done by a tool provided by the db vendor, and manipulation is done within rules (constraints) that prevent "programming accidents" (bugs) or "pilot error" (users) from breaking relationships between parts of your data. That eliminates most of the need for recovery right there.
CM systems get much more powerful and IMHO, simpler, when you start using a decent database as the backend. As for distributed work, there are plenty of good databases that inexpensively and easily fit onto any modern workstation (PostgreSQL is my personal favorite) that can act as a local backing store, giving you fully detached functionality and the benefits of a relationally organized system.
Without quite the same use of emotionally loaded language, I choose to rephrase your statement this way:
ALL war is ALWAYS horrible and awful. Make no mistake about that.
It's just that, sometimes, it's the right thing to do.
I'll expand upon this statement with the observation that those attempting to justify the attack on Iraq have yet to convince me that it was the right thing to do. The US entry into WWII was the right thing to do (would have been right even earlier).
But the neoconservatives assert that regular demonstrations of U.S. military superiority are necessary to maintain U.S. political control in today's world. And so, any reason at all will be pulled forward to "justify" the aggression of the U.S. military. As a Usian, I don't think my government does a very good job of demonstrating that it should have any control whatsoever, but that's just my opinion.
Regards, Ross
Re:Except how to make an atom bomb
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Fab
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The link provides a lot of garbage data.
First off, the author mentions that you've got a thermonuclear bomb after a piss-poor description of a fission bomb.
Secondly, in his description of a fission bomb, the author mixes up two different designs. In the one design ("Thin Man" and "Little Boy" approach), you impact two subcritical masses of Pu-238 together. The total mass/density of the combined material is supercritical, fission happens quickly, bang. In the second design ("Fat Man" approach), you have a single spherical subcritical mass of Pu-238 at the center of a set of explosive charges.
The exact size, shape, and location of the explosive charges surrounding the core of the "Fat Man" design are essential as they must create an enormous inward pressure evenly around the entire spherical core. The writers of "The Manhattan Project" guessed at a soccer-ball arrangement of truncated "prismatic cones", but there's almost certainly more to it than that. After all, they were allowed to make the movie... Those of us without security clearances and a need to know don't get to know how to set up these explosives. Because of the complexity of the explosives in the "Fat Man" approach, it's usually set aside as impractical by everyone except for those trying to build a thermonuclear device (for which getting the explosives right is critical).
The bomb design that could most easily be built by a terrorist group is the "push two subcritical masses together" type of "thin man" and "little boy" fame. Now, they'd still need to actually get their hands on a lot of fissionable material (not 50lbs, more like 6-10lbs of high purity Pu-238) and we can hope that too many Soviet and/or Pakistani warheads don't get lost here and there.
The author jokes about the hazards of plutonium dust, which is fairly funny as we're all in on the joke. Just don't get any plutonium inside your body (this means breathing in the same airspace where plutonium has been machined) wash yourself thoroughly after being near fissionable materials, wear your safety gear in the places where the signs look scary (especially the lead-lined jock strap), and chances are you and your children will be just fine.
That's what I learned from Hollywood, a few books from the public library, and a summer internship working at Fermilab (the radiation safety class was a blast:)
And her philosophy is personally useful to me and I think I 'get it' better than the randbots.
I personally agree with both parts of your statement. The only thing I change about basic or "fundamental" Objectivism is to expand upon what I see as a simplistic "qua man" definition.
The logical progression after that point is spot on.
Management isn't stupid enough to cut development time in half, but shaving a day or two off of a three month schedule isn't that big of a deal.
We had been working for 15 months of a 24 month project when the newly hired marketing team finally presented a complete product spec (the previous marketing team had been fired because they couldn't produce a sane product spec and we spent our time running around in circles). We did several estimates on the spec the provided and came up with a range of estimates for a nominal schedule of 22-24 months, +/- 25%. We also figured that we could reuse a good sized hunk of what we'd already written and guessed that that would save us about 6 months, leaving us with 16-18 months of work to complete.
But the original schedule had us finishing in 9 months (remember, we were already 15 months into this "two year" project).
They chose not to alter the schedule. Or substantially alter the spec. i.e., management was stupid enough to "cut the schedule in half". Hilarity ensues.
We ship two months late, and what we ship sucks. Most of the internal data-management frameworks were left half-baked so that developers could spend more time working on screens and reports, which means that even minor changes are painful; performance is pathetic; the UI abuses the user in several ways; and it has errors in data management that can corrupt customer financial data.
But you can't teach management a damned thing about how to write software. They're the ones in charge, so they're the ones who have to tell us how to do our jobs best. Right?
The flaw with that reasoning is that capitalism does not involve passing interventionist laws.
You're confusing the economic system with the governmental context in which it exists. My supposition is that "pure capitalism" as an economic system in a larger social context can't last, and almost inevitably shifts to a form of mercantilism. Pure capitalism relies on the owners of capital being willing to leave the system unsullied by the influence available to them.
Which is just as unreasonable as Communism's assertion that the planners of the "transitional" distribution system will not use their position of power to better themselves at the expense of others.
To say that it leads to corruption makes it undifferent from any other system.
Exactly my point. But "tarnished capitalism" in an open society with a transparent legislature results in a better system for distributing those scarce resources than most other forms. IMHO, at least.
The truth is that there are no 'systems' in their own right, just people with philosophies. And to have capitalism, you first must have capitalists (similar to marxism).
Incorrect. A != B There are real differences between the economic systems, even if no economic system can ever be implemented in its ideal form.
You also are flawed in your assessment of resources, property rights, etc. Property rights are causal. Property does not exist unless property rights also exist.
I believe you are responding to someone else's remarks here.
Also, your assessment of Rand is incorrect - in fact, your 'four drives' are all selfish - and Rand was not all about acquisition. If she was, her characters would have been despots in the USSR.
Ayn was unwilling to consider a richer tapesty of what the nature of man was. The closest she got to actually admitting that simple definitions of selfishness were insufficient was in "The Romantic Manifesto", but she completely failed to expand upon the richness of human nature in any of her other work, including most importantly, "The Virtue of Selfishness".
All you need to validate my assertion is to look at the people who have come closest to actually living by Ayn's widely propagated ideals. They are uniformly unhappy: prone to suspicion, destructive in their relationships with others, etc. Starting with Ayn herself, who alienated everyone near her except for a few acolytes, and who died alone, bitter, and miserable in her New York apartment.
As for who her characters were, I submit that people who bear a resemblance to those cardboard-thin caricatures are exactly the type of people likely to become despots when granted the power to enact their own ideals.
Discussions are made up of various viewpoints, and dissenting viewpoints are critical to having a rich, full, and honest debate. Besides, he only thinks he disagrees with me. Once he reads my reply to him in the thread, he'll probably come around.
Also, you're likely to get tagged by the meta-moderators for simply moderating the guy down wherever he posts.
I would imagine you would say that 'true Communism' failed because it was never tried
No, I believe that Communism has failed (and will continue to fail whenever it is tried on a non-community scale) because it does not propose a workable means for allocating scarce resources. Communism in the large relies on the altruism of man to best determine how to allocate resources, and without the social context of a close-knit community (see extended families, Kibbutzim, Quaker communities, etc. for examples of working communal groups), altruism isn't worth a plugged nickel.
Capitalism proposes that efficiency be rewarded through the markets, which is a very nice starting point as it relies on greed and selfishness to drive economic decision making. Greed and selfishness being two human attributes that we can count on, even in the absense of social checks and balances. The problem with ideal Capitalism happens after the first round of profit is collected. The profitable companies use their money to buy influence with the market-makers, who then pass laws that alter the markets in favor of the existing companies.
In a country with open dialogs and transparent government, this mercantilist influence waxes and wanes as the public periodically checks in and corrects the situation. The less transparent the decision making, the fewer freedoms of expression available to the public, the longer these deals last and the more they accumulate. A trend we are now observing today right here in the US.
and would encourage further attempts despite the death toll of hundreds of millions if it's own when it was tried (Mao, Stalin, etc.)
You appear to have misread my admiration for some of Marx's writings for aliegance and/or agreement with those who have called themselves "Marxist". On the contrary, I think that people attempting to use the big gun of government to eliminate capitalism or to convert private ownership of assets to public management are woefully misguided. I don't think Marx would have liked or agreed with the people who call themselves "Marxist". Today or historically. I think they've got him all wrong.
I wish Ayn Rand were here so she could slap you hard.
Actually, I rather like Ayn Rand's work, though I find her "man qua man" to be hopelessly simplistic. Man's drives, and the resulting true nature of man, are deeper and richer than simply selfish acquisitiveness. I find at least four fundamental drives in myself: the drive to acquire, the drive to bond, the drive to learn, and the drive to defend. Man qua man is quite different from what Ayn thought it was, and though much of her derivation remains interesting, it falls to pieces in the details.
Well, Marx actually railed against Mercantilism or Syndicalism (where the merchants are/own the government and use that power to maintain their position/income/power). He thought that "true capitalism" was a pipe dream and pure propaganda to keep people from complaining about the influence of business in government (he remains completely correct to this day). As an aside, Marx would have been appalled by all of the varieties of Communism and Socialism that have appeared and claimed foundations in his writing.
China has a largely capitalist economy with significant private ownership of capital but has an authoritarian system of government. The censorship, repression, imprisonment, and torture of citizens for expressing sentiments contrary to the official position has very little to do with the private or public ownership of capital and everything to do with the authoritarian aspects of their government.
I'll refrain from pointing out trends in the US government towards a more authoritarian model. The reality of that transistion is that the US merchants who exert so much control over our government would only allow such a thing to happen if 1) they believed it would improve their profits and 2) they could retain control of the new system.
Actually, you can completely replace the nitrogen with helium in dive mixes. It's commonly called heliox. Doesn't save you a lot in decompression time, but it does eliminate nitrogen narcosis at depth. Not commonly used because helium is so damned expensive, trimix is a lot cheaper, and trimix does result in shorter decompression times (each gas offgasses separately).
As for trimix, you're balancing He, N2, and O2 to fit your dive. Almost always, you're trying to displace N2 with He. Sometimes, you're trying to displace O2 with He, but not as often. Most of the time, you're adding oxygen back into the blend to make trimix.
Usually, I set it up to have 1.4atm ppO2 at a nominal MOD (maximum operating depth). I also aim for an apparent 100fsw nitrogen depth (3.2atm ppN2) at the same depth. The balance of the mixture is He. In order to achieve this mix for a 240fsw MOD dive (my normal mix), I first add O2 to filtered air so that the O2 meter in the stage 1 mixing chamber reads 30.4% (ppO2 4.5psi @stp) and then add He so that the O2 meter in the stage 2 mixing reads 19% (ppO2 2.8psi @stp).
In this final mixture, there is 19% O2, 45% N2, and 36% He. As compared to the 20% O2 and 79% N2 found in air, I have basically replaced slightly less than half of the nitrogen with helium.
Slashdot Mirror
Multiple good points. Thanks for the correction and the sane response.
:)
In answer to your question, I guess that I expect everyone who might have read one book by a "good" author to have tried most/all by that author. But I think I'm just strange that way
Regards,
Ross
though Stepenson has had some dips (like the ever-ending _Diamond Age_)
I'm rather amazed that you called out "The Diamond Age" as never-ending, but failed to mention anything negative about "Cryptonomicon". I'm perfectly willing to agree that the end of "The Diamond Age" was weak (a Stephenson consistency), but I was never bored or felt that the pacing dragged.
"Cryptonomicon" became a personal challenge to finish, however. By the end, I simply couldn't have cared less what happened to whom. To each his own, I suppose...
Regards,
Ross
What did we do to provoke it? Fill us in....
Specifically in this case, the US supports the Saudi ruling family against the population of Saudi Arabia. The US also has also supported Israel and their side of that mess for decades, a position almost guaranteed to excite suicide level animosity among people on the other side of the feud.
I don't mean to get into a "who cast the first stone" argument re: Israel, but we've chosen sides in a regional blood feud, and we shouldn't be too suprised when some of the blood ends up on our shores. We've also supported despotic governments against their people and again, shouldn't be too suprised when some of those people decide to hit back at the power behind their oppressors.
And that's only two causal actions by the US that almost certainly contributed to 9/11. There's no real need to bring up all the rest of America's foreign policy nightmares through the 20th century... Pinochet? The Shah of Iran? Saddam Hussein? The list goes on and on...
Regards,
Ross
This memo could be a photocopy of something circulating thirty years ago. Sounds like they're finally going to take advantage of the modular parts of the shuttle the way they talked about when the shuttle stack design was being originally being funded twenty-five to thirty years ago. One nice change is that the rumor mill believes the heavy lift stack bears a striking resemblance to Robert Zubrin's Ares stack (a.k.a. Shuttle-Z).
The "Shuttle-C" cargo stack (and variations) were originally publically discussed in the early '80s as reasons why the shuttle was worth all we were spending (you don't just get the shuttle, you also get a "normal" heavy-lift launcher). Those variants, however, have had problems that could only be resolved by massive cultural change at the NASA level. One of the biggest issues was payload capacity of the side-slung configuration. Since then variations including the Ares stack and the more recent Shuttle-B have appeared and pretty much gone nowhere.
I suspect that the United Space Alliance's (USA's) "risk averse" culture will actively hinder and ultimately frustrate all of these plans. If you've ever worked for a government contractor, you'll understand the culture I'm talking about. They (Boeing and Lockheed-Martin, the companies in the USA partnership) don't have to compete in markets, and are positively allergic to any hint that they may have to compete with other companies for revenue. If NASA's hoping for bargains, they won't find them when dealing with USA.
Regards,
Ross
It's fine and dandy that everything's cut and dried for you, but for the rest of us it's just embarrassing. It's not even an answer. Funny that cosmologists take such questions seriously, while you, alone in your intellectual superiority, apparently doesn't need to.
Now, why is it that those who replied constructively to my post used an actual identities, while those who just flamed are all AC's?
If you don't think that I took his question seriously, you didn't understand his question, let alone the answer I gave. I could have gone on and on about the early state of the universe and how that led to current observations, sent him a copy of The First Three Minutes, discussed brane theory in some depth, and completely ignored the real thrust of his question.
Which was: What's behind the universe? Which is a question that the cosmologists I know (I know five, with two of those as close friends) say is the realm of religion, and which is very likely to stay the realm of religion.
So I gave him an answer appropriate to what we know about the nature and origin of the universe, from the perspective of an observer within the universe.
If you've got a better answer, by all means, let it loose, but if you just didn't like my answer, ultimately, that's your problem and nobody else's.
Next time, lose some of the anger, and use a realy identity to join the discussion.
Regards,
Ross
Yet the mystery remains. "It is and has been" leaves one hollow, no?
Clearly there must be a answer.
Well, I can see that you would like there to be more of an answer, and I can understand some of the reasons to want more of an answer, but I don't think that there needs to be a better answer to your question. At least, not an answer that's discoverable from this existence.
I suspect that you, like many, would like for the world to be a little more magical or fantastic than it appears, and are hoping for a conclusive answer which fulfills that desire.
To me, "It is and has been." is an answer that releases me from what I see as a blind alley of escapism: looking for the Truth based on a perspective outside the universe. Godel's incompleteness theorem states that in any consistent system, there will exist statements that are unprovable if all you can use to prove them are facts from within the system. We're simply not going to be able to answer many questions, no matter how carefully we observe events within our own universe.
As for leaving me hollow, I find that there are many ways to deal with the answer: "That's not knowable." The plain, old, mundane universe is a fantastic place, and I get a great deal of satisfaction from learning as much as I possibly can about it. There's magic and wonder in the details of biology, botany, kitchen chemistry, geology, astronomy, etc.
But that's my take on it, and clearly, you don't need to be satisfied with the simple answer I gave. The world would be a rather boring place if everyone agreed with me, wouldn't it?
Regards,
Ross
And here, folks, we see exactly the sort of mentality that holds humanity back. "Don't ask, it's impossible to know, and you are an idiot for asking."
Two points.
1) I believe that humanity is held back by dogmatism and fundamentalism. People who already claim to "have the facts" in every aspect of life. I make no such claim, and in fact, love a good discussion of what I (we) don't yet know.
2) The answer "It's impossible to know." can be the best possible answer to a question. If it is the best possible answer to a question, do you do the person who asked any favors by telling them something else?
Newsflash, oh "enlightened" one: There are NO stupid questions.
Again, two points.
1) I'm not enlightened, though I am seeking the same insights as many through history who clearly have been enlightened.
2) There are more useful and less useful questions, and one way to determine where a question lies on that continuum may be to determine if the question can be answered right now, or alternatively, what the value of the various possible answers would be to the asker. Based on that criteria, some questions clearly fall into the "not doing anyone any good either way" category.
If you determine there are [stupid questions], you stop questioning your own precepts, and become WRONG by default.
Your conclusion does not follow from your premise. Understanding is always subject to revision. If we do find a way to "step outside" our universe and make observations of "other" places, some of the questions that I was saying didn't make sense can make sense. But based on our current understanding of reality, asking about "the ultimate form of reality" is an invitation to escapism, and is the one realm that (I believe) religion will maintain as it's own.
Regards,
Ross
What is the nature and origin of the Universe?
It is and has been. (seriously, that's all the answer there is).
What existed before our universe?
Unknowable. "Before" the universe began is "before" the concept of time has any meaning. Alternatively, if we could observe things that were "outside of the universe", we would have to expand the scope of the universe to include those observations, meaning that they were no longer "outside of the universe".
What is the original nature of existence...of what we call "reality"?
This is a vague question. One possible interpretation is that you're asking about the "super-universe" in a different way from the "before the universe" question. It has the same problems as the "before the universe" question (if we could know, we'd have to redefine the universe).
The other interpretation is that you're asking if the nature of reality has changed through the lifecycle of the observable universe, presumably though alterations of fundamental laws from some initial "ideal" state. This question, while clearly less "grand", is more relevant, because it offers a source of falsifiable assertions and possible experiments.
Being able to classify questions as "irrelevant" and "not answerable" for various reasons is a part of "knowing what you don't know" and the rather tricky subset, "knowing what you can't know". Wisdom (and a lot of saved time) lies in a deeper understanding of how to determine the value of questions.
I must admit that about 12 years ago, I got comfortable with saying "I don't know" along with the realization that people are capable of asking bad questions as if they were the most important questions around. My favorite is "Why are we here?" It's worthless because it begs about four other questions that have no objective answer.
The interesting form of the question is, "Why am I here?" and it can only be conclusively answered by exactly one person: the same person who asked the question. What's really tragic is how many people are afraid of answering it themselves and accept someone else's answer out of fear of "getting it wrong". *sigh*
Regards,
Ross
You're p0wn3d, dude. His post was completely on the money, despite your best attempt at putting your hands over your ears and shouting "nananana".
As an aside, you shouldn't be so scared of new knowledge. Who knows, you might learn something...
Regards,
Ross
[...] with the five most liberal (Democrat) judges voting to take away your property.
Erm, no. (1) Three of the five judges in favor were appointed by Republican presidents. (2) SCOTUS judges tend to be difficult to call once they are on the bench and can vote their conscience. Besides, you seem to have got it into your head that Democrats and Republicans aren't all authoritarian bastards.
Which says more about the truth of liberalism and democrats than anything else. They lean towards socialism, while the conservatives lean towards individual rights.
Let's take a minute and get this straight. The current party with power; which is in the process of ramming through the PATRIOT act again (and objecting to any reduction in the powers granted by the renewed PATRIOT act), is made up of people who "lean towards individual rights"? The same group that argues that the government needs the ability to imprison people indefinitely without any due process? This is your assertion? IMHO the PATRIOT act is the largest attack on individual rights since Hoover and the Red Scares of the '50s and '60s. Not exactly protective of individual rights I consider important.
Maybe you use a different defintion of "lean towards", but I didn't consider a full frontal assault to be a very sympathetic position to take on the issue of individual rights.
Get it through your head that the "Party of the Little Guy" is not the Democrats.
Get it through your head that neither the Republocrats nor the Demublicans are "the 'Party of the Little Guy'". The little guy has been left swinging in the breeze by both parties for some time now (aside: I just love mixing metaphors).
Regards,
Ross
It is an investment, and plenty of other companies have showed how huge the return can be on letting employees do open-ended work on company time: (Johnson&Johnson, HP (of the past), 3M, etc.)
Like other investments, there is a cost. In this case, the cost is the (potentially) reduced productivity to active projects when people spend in-office time elsewhere. The return on that investment is a potential goldmine of business ideas, some of which are likely to support or extend what google already does. Also, the potential loss of productivity is probably a lot closer to 0% than 20%. Taking a substantial mental break can do wonders for my creative processes, and I'm sure I'm not alone.
Once google decides to take a project and fund it, it's a completely different matter with a different kind of risk (similar to the risks that any startup faces). Most of these risks are manageable, especially if there's money to do market research and to answer other open-ended questions that most startups simply have to guess at. That money is a two-edged sword, however, as the lack of money forces startups to be lean and aggressive without the security of a large bankroll to fall back on...
In any case, your statements make you sound like a highly risk-averse person who would never think of leaving their salaried job and starting a company. Not even if you were certain that the product would be a hit. The world needs all kinds, but understand that the google culture doesn't resemble anything that you're probably comfortable with.
Regards,
Ross
Good cool mead taste masks the incredible quantity of sugar that you are actualy drinking.
Not sure what you mean by "cool mead", but your statements are only true for what I've typically heard called a "sack" or sweet mead, which is much easier to make, but not as delicious as the dry recipies (IMHO). A dry mead is more my style, and has an amazing spectrum of flavors that really do justice to the layman's description, "honey wine".
The citric acid is important to conceal the alcohol flavor in a dry mead, however... I think I'm going to be making some more real soon. This thread has me salivating at the thought...
REgards,
Ross
You are a geek, not a user you cannot possibly comprehend what they want, so stop trying.
If you believe this, then you should stop working in software now. Further, even if you were to rephrase your statement to say what you meant, you're still wrong.
Developers can and should become domain experts in the problem space served by their company's product. They do this by interacting directly with users and other domain experts (exceptional sales people, ex-users, marketers (sometimes), more senior developers). In any effective product organization, any mid-level or higher developer should be able to hold his own in any conversation with a user, a marketer, a salesperson, or the CEO.
Finally, when you ask, your users will tell you what they really want and many times, you will have to ask still more questions and if you are very good, you will give them what they really need. Which may bear only a passing resemblance to what they originally said they wanted.
IMHO, this task is best done by your development staff. In my personal experience, marketing is too far from the actual metal to effectively understand the possibilities of the actual solution.
Regards,
Ross
There certainly are problem sets for which the relational model is inappropriate. However, there is no large data management problem for which a flat file is more appropriate than a relational database (assertions by the Prevayler group nonwithstanding).
As for your assertion that tree-like data is a poor fit for relational programming, it's an issue of having a deeper understanding of relational programming (a "kind" of programming parallel to procedural or object-oriented programming). Trees fit perfectly well into relational models, you just need to understand how a relational system should manage them. If you're ever interested in learning more, a great book to read would be: SQL For Smarties.
Even more germane to the specifics of trees in databases, the same author has a newer book (that I haven't read) Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties. Only one person has reviewed it and they weren't overwhelmed, so who knows.
Tags are only a problem if it wasn't designed into the schema from the start (i.e. CVS style tags strapped into RCS files). If a tag is actually an association of deltas as in Subversion (much more amenable to a relational model), asking for "the state of the system at 'Release 1.1' (changeset 1134)", becomes fairly simple to implement and much simpler to optimize.
Regards,
Ross
"sqlfs"
(that's developer-speech for a boring but feasible project that would make you shove your buzzword db-admin-speech up your arse)
Point #1:
A quick google search yielded a few links for "sqlfs".
Now, are you really talking about a filesystem implemented in a relational database? You're pretty confused if you think you contradicted what I wrote. That's exactly what I'm advocating, except that I'm advocating that this database-backed filesystem also be CM-aware.
For this particular file-centric application, I *love* filesystems implemented as front-ends to databases.
Point #2:
You're really confused if you think I'm a db-admin or that I'm in favor of a CM tool that requires a DB-admin to install or use. I'm in favor of an ACID database as a core part of an effective CM system. Whether end users know it's on their machine is completely irrelevant (in fact, I think the user shouldn't have to know it's there).
Point #3:
Why would that project be boring? Sounds like it would be pretty neat if you ask me. I'm actually a little disappointed that none of the links yielded a project with recent activity.
Regards,
Ross
(wouldn't it be cool to store data from your SQL tables in easy-to-parse flat files for instance? That would make recovery and manipulation a lot simpler)
*snicker*
*laugh*
*great rolling peals of laughter*
*sigh*
*wipes tear from eye*
You haven't done much work that actually required databases (or that would massively benefit from a relational programming model). The whole point of moving from flat files to a database is so that the data is stored already parsed, recovery is done by a tool provided by the db vendor, and manipulation is done within rules (constraints) that prevent "programming accidents" (bugs) or "pilot error" (users) from breaking relationships between parts of your data. That eliminates most of the need for recovery right there.
CM systems get much more powerful and IMHO, simpler, when you start using a decent database as the backend. As for distributed work, there are plenty of good databases that inexpensively and easily fit onto any modern workstation (PostgreSQL is my personal favorite) that can act as a local backing store, giving you fully detached functionality and the benefits of a relationally organized system.
Regards,
Ross
Without quite the same use of emotionally loaded language, I choose to rephrase your statement this way:
ALL war is ALWAYS horrible and awful. Make no mistake about that.
It's just that, sometimes, it's the right thing to do.
I'll expand upon this statement with the observation that those attempting to justify the attack on Iraq have yet to convince me that it was the right thing to do. The US entry into WWII was the right thing to do (would have been right even earlier).
But the neoconservatives assert that regular demonstrations of U.S. military superiority are necessary to maintain U.S. political control in today's world. And so, any reason at all will be pulled forward to "justify" the aggression of the U.S. military. As a Usian, I don't think my government does a very good job of demonstrating that it should have any control whatsoever, but that's just my opinion.
Regards,
Ross
The link provides a lot of garbage data.
:)
First off, the author mentions that you've got a thermonuclear bomb after a piss-poor description of a fission bomb.
Secondly, in his description of a fission bomb, the author mixes up two different designs. In the one design ("Thin Man" and "Little Boy" approach), you impact two subcritical masses of Pu-238 together. The total mass/density of the combined material is supercritical, fission happens quickly, bang. In the second design ("Fat Man" approach), you have a single spherical subcritical mass of Pu-238 at the center of a set of explosive charges.
The exact size, shape, and location of the explosive charges surrounding the core of the "Fat Man" design are essential as they must create an enormous inward pressure evenly around the entire spherical core. The writers of "The Manhattan Project" guessed at a soccer-ball arrangement of truncated "prismatic cones", but there's almost certainly more to it than that. After all, they were allowed to make the movie... Those of us without security clearances and a need to know don't get to know how to set up these explosives. Because of the complexity of the explosives in the "Fat Man" approach, it's usually set aside as impractical by everyone except for those trying to build a thermonuclear device (for which getting the explosives right is critical).
The bomb design that could most easily be built by a terrorist group is the "push two subcritical masses together" type of "thin man" and "little boy" fame. Now, they'd still need to actually get their hands on a lot of fissionable material (not 50lbs, more like 6-10lbs of high purity Pu-238) and we can hope that too many Soviet and/or Pakistani warheads don't get lost here and there.
The author jokes about the hazards of plutonium dust, which is fairly funny as we're all in on the joke. Just don't get any plutonium inside your body (this means breathing in the same airspace where plutonium has been machined) wash yourself thoroughly after being near fissionable materials, wear your safety gear in the places where the signs look scary (especially the lead-lined jock strap), and chances are you and your children will be just fine.
That's what I learned from Hollywood, a few books from the public library, and a summer internship working at Fermilab (the radiation safety class was a blast
Regards,
Ross
And her philosophy is personally useful to me and I think I 'get it' better than the randbots.
I personally agree with both parts of your statement. The only thing I change about basic or "fundamental" Objectivism is to expand upon what I see as a simplistic "qua man" definition.
The logical progression after that point is spot on.
Regards,
Ross
Management isn't stupid enough to cut development time in half, but shaving a day or two off of a three month schedule isn't that big of a deal.
We had been working for 15 months of a 24 month project when the newly hired marketing team finally presented a complete product spec (the previous marketing team had been fired because they couldn't produce a sane product spec and we spent our time running around in circles). We did several estimates on the spec the provided and came up with a range of estimates for a nominal schedule of 22-24 months, +/- 25%. We also figured that we could reuse a good sized hunk of what we'd already written and guessed that that would save us about 6 months, leaving us with 16-18 months of work to complete.
But the original schedule had us finishing in 9 months (remember, we were already 15 months into this "two year" project).
They chose not to alter the schedule. Or substantially alter the spec. i.e., management was stupid enough to "cut the schedule in half". Hilarity ensues.
We ship two months late, and what we ship sucks. Most of the internal data-management frameworks were left half-baked so that developers could spend more time working on screens and reports, which means that even minor changes are painful; performance is pathetic; the UI abuses the user in several ways; and it has errors in data management that can corrupt customer financial data.
But you can't teach management a damned thing about how to write software. They're the ones in charge, so they're the ones who have to tell us how to do our jobs best. Right?
Regards,
Ross
The flaw with that reasoning is that capitalism does not involve passing interventionist laws.
You're confusing the economic system with the governmental context in which it exists. My supposition is that "pure capitalism" as an economic system in a larger social context can't last, and almost inevitably shifts to a form of mercantilism. Pure capitalism relies on the owners of capital being willing to leave the system unsullied by the influence available to them.
Which is just as unreasonable as Communism's assertion that the planners of the "transitional" distribution system will not use their position of power to better themselves at the expense of others.
To say that it leads to corruption makes it undifferent from any other system.
Exactly my point. But "tarnished capitalism" in an open society with a transparent legislature results in a better system for distributing those scarce resources than most other forms. IMHO, at least.
The truth is that there are no 'systems' in their own right, just people with philosophies. And to have capitalism, you first must have capitalists (similar to marxism).
Incorrect. A != B There are real differences between the economic systems, even if no economic system can ever be implemented in its ideal form.
You also are flawed in your assessment of resources, property rights, etc. Property rights are causal. Property does not exist unless property rights also exist.
I believe you are responding to someone else's remarks here.
Also, your assessment of Rand is incorrect - in fact, your 'four drives' are all selfish - and Rand was not all about acquisition. If she was, her characters would have been despots in the USSR.
Ayn was unwilling to consider a richer tapesty of what the nature of man was. The closest she got to actually admitting that simple definitions of selfishness were insufficient was in "The Romantic Manifesto", but she completely failed to expand upon the richness of human nature in any of her other work, including most importantly, "The Virtue of Selfishness".
All you need to validate my assertion is to look at the people who have come closest to actually living by Ayn's widely propagated ideals. They are uniformly unhappy: prone to suspicion, destructive in their relationships with others, etc. Starting with Ayn herself, who alienated everyone near her except for a few acolytes, and who died alone, bitter, and miserable in her New York apartment.
As for who her characters were, I submit that people who bear a resemblance to those cardboard-thin caricatures are exactly the type of people likely to become despots when granted the power to enact their own ideals.
Regards,
Ross
Don't do that. Please.
Discussions are made up of various viewpoints, and dissenting viewpoints are critical to having a rich, full, and honest debate. Besides, he only thinks he disagrees with me. Once he reads my reply to him in the thread, he'll probably come around.
Also, you're likely to get tagged by the meta-moderators for simply moderating the guy down wherever he posts.
Regards,
Ross
I would imagine you would say that 'true Communism' failed because it was never tried
No, I believe that Communism has failed (and will continue to fail whenever it is tried on a non-community scale) because it does not propose a workable means for allocating scarce resources. Communism in the large relies on the altruism of man to best determine how to allocate resources, and without the social context of a close-knit community (see extended families, Kibbutzim, Quaker communities, etc. for examples of working communal groups), altruism isn't worth a plugged nickel.
Capitalism proposes that efficiency be rewarded through the markets, which is a very nice starting point as it relies on greed and selfishness to drive economic decision making. Greed and selfishness being two human attributes that we can count on, even in the absense of social checks and balances. The problem with ideal Capitalism happens after the first round of profit is collected. The profitable companies use their money to buy influence with the market-makers, who then pass laws that alter the markets in favor of the existing companies.
In a country with open dialogs and transparent government, this mercantilist influence waxes and wanes as the public periodically checks in and corrects the situation. The less transparent the decision making, the fewer freedoms of expression available to the public, the longer these deals last and the more they accumulate. A trend we are now observing today right here in the US.
and would encourage further attempts despite the death toll of hundreds of millions if it's own when it was tried (Mao, Stalin, etc.)
You appear to have misread my admiration for some of Marx's writings for aliegance and/or agreement with those who have called themselves "Marxist". On the contrary, I think that people attempting to use the big gun of government to eliminate capitalism or to convert private ownership of assets to public management are woefully misguided. I don't think Marx would have liked or agreed with the people who call themselves "Marxist". Today or historically. I think they've got him all wrong.
I wish Ayn Rand were here so she could slap you hard.
Actually, I rather like Ayn Rand's work, though I find her "man qua man" to be hopelessly simplistic. Man's drives, and the resulting true nature of man, are deeper and richer than simply selfish acquisitiveness. I find at least four fundamental drives in myself: the drive to acquire, the drive to bond, the drive to learn, and the drive to defend. Man qua man is quite different from what Ayn thought it was, and though much of her derivation remains interesting, it falls to pieces in the details.
Regards,
Ross
Well, Marx actually railed against Mercantilism or Syndicalism (where the merchants are/own the government and use that power to maintain their position/income/power). He thought that "true capitalism" was a pipe dream and pure propaganda to keep people from complaining about the influence of business in government (he remains completely correct to this day). As an aside, Marx would have been appalled by all of the varieties of Communism and Socialism that have appeared and claimed foundations in his writing.
China has a largely capitalist economy with significant private ownership of capital but has an authoritarian system of government. The censorship, repression, imprisonment, and torture of citizens for expressing sentiments contrary to the official position has very little to do with the private or public ownership of capital and everything to do with the authoritarian aspects of their government.
I'll refrain from pointing out trends in the US government towards a more authoritarian model. The reality of that transistion is that the US merchants who exert so much control over our government would only allow such a thing to happen if 1) they believed it would improve their profits and 2) they could retain control of the new system.
Regards,
Ross
Actually, you can completely replace the nitrogen with helium in dive mixes. It's commonly called heliox. Doesn't save you a lot in decompression time, but it does eliminate nitrogen narcosis at depth. Not commonly used because helium is so damned expensive, trimix is a lot cheaper, and trimix does result in shorter decompression times (each gas offgasses separately).
As for trimix, you're balancing He, N2, and O2 to fit your dive. Almost always, you're trying to displace N2 with He. Sometimes, you're trying to displace O2 with He, but not as often. Most of the time, you're adding oxygen back into the blend to make trimix.
Usually, I set it up to have 1.4atm ppO2 at a nominal MOD (maximum operating depth). I also aim for an apparent 100fsw nitrogen depth (3.2atm ppN2) at the same depth. The balance of the mixture is He. In order to achieve this mix for a 240fsw MOD dive (my normal mix), I first add O2 to filtered air so that the O2 meter in the stage 1 mixing chamber reads 30.4% (ppO2 4.5psi @stp) and then add He so that the O2 meter in the stage 2 mixing reads 19% (ppO2 2.8psi @stp).
In this final mixture, there is 19% O2, 45% N2, and 36% He. As compared to the 20% O2 and 79% N2 found in air, I have basically replaced slightly less than half of the nitrogen with helium.
Regards,
Ross