Ok. You're a technocrat, and I'm not. I suppose I can convince you of my point as much as you can convince me of yours. But here are a few things to think about:
If this is all about finding more space for humanity, why not colonize the oceans and the deserts first? Most of the earth is not inhabited by humans yet, so why not use that space first? It sure is a hell of a lot easier than to send supplies and people through a long space journey - with the problems we can both see - to another planet. Of course this is not as exciting as going to another planet, but that's not what this is all about...is it?
Besides, life on Mars is like living in the Emyn Muil - only there's no poisonous fume in the air because... there is no air. I don't know about you but I'd rather share my one room appartment with 10 chinese than to live in such a barren, airless wasteland.
But if you absolutely insist on going there - and that's your right, it's your money - please take Dubya with you. And Darl. And Bill. Thanks.
I read a very interesting editorial by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post the other day (here, registration required). Basically, she says that putting a robot on mars is a good idea because a robot is well suited for this kind of scientific work. Humans on the other hand are supposed to stay on earth - inhospitable climat, muscular deterioration during space flight and extreme radiation make a trip to mars less than pleasent.
Quoting: Mars, as a certain pop star once put it, isn't the kind of place where you'd want to raise your kids. Nor is it the kind of place anybody is ever going to visit, as some of the NASA scientists know perfectly well. Even leaving aside the cold, the lack of atmosphere and the absence of water, there's the deadly radiation. If the average person on Earth absorbs about 350 millirems of radiation every year, an astronaut traveling to Mars would absorb about 130,000 millirems of a particularly virulent form of radiation that would probably destroy every cell in his body. "Space is not 'Star Trek,' " said one NASA scientist, "but the public certainly doesn't understand that."
So....do we really need a man on mars? Not for scientific reasons, that's for sure. And what other reasons are there? Anyone who thinks we can just teraform mars into a habitable planet in the next 300 years when we can't even keep the ISS leak-free is seriously deluded...
I guess the question of "Why does Bush want it" doesn't even deserve an answer because it's so obvious...
Don't mistake these people for fortune tellers and remember this factoid about statistics:
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
So much for the prediction success rate. I guess that's also pretty much a question of interpretation. That aside, I consider the underlying assumption to be fundamentally flawed because it practically assumes that SCO has a point.
Of course we all know that the sensible thing to do is to cut down on our power usage so that we don't need so many bird-killing power plants in the first place...
It's a little bit late for this year, sure, but... if you put 50000 lights on your house for christmas, that does use up a lot of power!
Ive been reading slashdot for ages but only "recently" signed up to comment...Getting upset with this is just a phase and it will go away, but every once in a while I get enough and have to blurt it out...;)
Is trolling now officially endorsed by Slashdot?
Why the hell does everyone have to evangelize their system of choice as if it was necesary for the survival of mankind? If you think BSD is 1000x better than Linux, or Linux is 1000x better than Windows, or DOS is 1000x than OS/2, ok. It's your good right to have that opinion, and use what you will. But can't you leave other people alone? Do you people REALLY have to try and "educate" us about what's the only real OS to use in your book? Has it ever occured to you that we might not give a hoot about that? That we're happy with our OS? That we made a concious choice when we picked our OS of choice?
Besides, what's the point of this conflict between Linux and BSD users... most programs run on both plattforms anyway, also a lot of users don't have a real choice because of driver issues. And what's up with this whole holier than thou attitude? It's been fun for a while, but eventually it gets very very annoying. It's annoying enough to have to fight off religious windows users and ignore the tux fetishists in our own ranks, but THIS is the pinnacle of unnecessity!!
This whole article is just -1, TROLL
Sorry for the rant, but this is getting WAY too stupid for my taste.
Well, it all boils down to how much control you have about the application you're working on. In this case I had no control and had to use a lot of windows specific functions. If it was up to me, gcc all the way, with wxWindows and the likes thrown in. But, unfortunally, the customer has the say 99% of the time;]
That's actually a pretty good reasoning. It also reassures me that programming linux applications is the better choice for me. Strange that my friend could never say it with such clarity.
What I ment was that he's telling people to apply specific service packs that he knows break things. I'm not against installing service packs in general, that's a misunderstanding. Only if you know it will break your app.
A friend on irc told me to "go to bbcworld" and babbled something about someone making $100k a year, so I went to bbcworld.com and looked around but didn't see anything. So I stated my confusion and he said "tv". So I went to bbcworld.tv, but that domain doesn't really exist. So I asked again and only then I learnt he ment the tv station bbc world. Of course, at that time the docu was already over.
Beware of the dreaded effects of caffein withdrawal!
I, on the other side, am a Linux programmer. We've worked together on a few projects, and there were differences in the way we looked at solving problems that were sometimes almost insurmountable.
The biggest difference between the two of us is that he has an almost religious believe that, if Microsoft says you are to do things a specific way, you have to do it that and no other way. I, on the other side, try to do things the way I think they work best.
One example is his belief that, if there is a service pack, you need to use it, even if it breaks things (as some visual studio SPs do in some cases). He gets really upset if you don't apply them. I'm all for keeping software up to date, but if it breaks things?
I have to say that his co-workers and fellow Windows programmers don't all agree with that philosophy though...
Why would anyone think of hypersonic planes
on
The Future of Flight
·
· Score: 1
Why would anyone even consider building a hypersonic plane after the Concorde just went to the dustbin of history for being way too expensive? Do they think new models will need less fuel? Do they think more people will want to use it if it flies even faster? Seems like a case of very bad timing. Sure, the time of such a device may yet come, but in times such as these? Strikes me as rather unlikely...
Yes you can do it. They have that kind of technology in actual use in China. Built by a german consortium. But there's a reason this consortium did not get to build one in Germany. You can make one work, but the costs are horrendous. Just like the Concorde's. So, at least for the foreseeable future, it's unlikely you will see this in a western country near you. Not because of physics, but simply for the fact that no sane investor likes the words "unlimited budget".
Saddam was an sadistic, evil, insane, dictator that enjoyed killing masses of people when he was in a bad mood..
He sure is a ruthless man, but I doubt he did it because he's satan's best friend. I suppose he used the most "effective" means available to him when he killed off those insurgencies... if that's what you're refering to.
He also helped subsidize the terrorists that attacked this country, and others..
I don't want to spoil your ranting, but...where's the actual proof?
And blatantly claimed he hated the US ( and other nations ) He needed to be gone, at most any cost.
I hate your gov too..does that mean you gonna come and kill me?
For those of you that are just too f-ing short sided and must twist everything around to make it an attack on our leader and our country, I only have one thing to say to you: Get the hell out if you dislike it here so much. We don't need you, nor do you deserve any of the benefits or freedoms that you get for living in MY country.
Wow..I thought the US was the land of the free, where everyone could have their own opinion... Makes me wonder, you know. If many people in your country think that way - that you have no right to your own opinion - it's actually a scary idea that you people wish to export your "democracy" to other countries. Yes, you can have your own opinion - if it happens to match mine!
You scare me.
Re:Random ramblings. (Ignore this post.)
on
Saddam Hussein Arrested
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
(3) Until I hear of nukes with "Hi, there!" painted on the sides being dragged out of Iraq, we have still invaded Iraq for no good reason. The only reason the UN went along with this little war is because US intelligence lied about WMD and thus believed that they posed a serious threat to neighboring nations. No WMD = unjustified war = unjustified deaths on both sides.
Pardon me, but have I been missing something? As far as I know the UN didn't "go along" with the war. It merily supports "reconstruction effords" now and has recognized the "coalation of the willing" as the current temporary governing force of iraq.
Did it ever occur to you that it doesn't matter one bit if he's actually the former ruler of iraq or some $rand actor? I mean, as long as nobody finds out...
Aside from the question if you fully believe the news, the question if others believe it is always more important. Whatever your opinion is, you can be sure that for every one person who has doubts there will be a million who don't. They are led to believe something, and that should be the main concern here. Because a million people have a lot more impact than one. And if you've been reading major newspapers lately, you might have noticed that, for instance, the majority of the people in the US believe Hussein to be responsible for 9/11 - despite the fact there is no evidence.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the actual facts are always most interesting, but they have no impact if people rather believe what they want to believe, if they oversimplify, make uninformed decisions and don't bother to revise their model of the world. Simply put, actual facts don't matter to the majority.
You could say that, in a case like this, facts are made through news.
No matter if you believe the pictures seen on tv right now that show a male person looking similar to Saddam Hussein in captivity to be real, the question wether this event will have any impact on the insurgency taking place in iraq or not is an entirely different one.
First of all, it should be noted that several western intelligence services consider the acts of terrorism to be conducted not by loyalists but by activist with ties to/inspired by Al Qaeda. However, there is no reliable information on who's behind all this.
What if it were loyalists? Well, in that case I doubt it will make much of a difference. It has been noted that now the plain vanilla arabian person will consider Hussein a coward and will no longer fight for him. This, in my humble opinion, displays a lack of understanding of the sort of people Hussein surrounded himself with as well as having pretty rigid stereotypes.
You have to realize that his 'followers' are not motivated by ideology, honor or religion. They are/were motivated by their hunger for power. And riches. If they thought they had a chance to get that back, they might pretty well still think so. Hussein isn't dead yet, and even if he was, someone could replace him. They mostly want their power and wealth back, not necessarily Hussein.
And if it isn't (mostly) 'Saddamists' behind the terror? Then it will make even less of a difference. And if you think more troops or more/better police will improve the situation, think again. Every house search, every accidently killed civilian, every repressive action by the occupation forces or the so-called iraqi police will drive more people into the underground.
Is this a victory for the US? Certainly. Any acts of terrorism occuring after the arrest of Hussein can be discounted as the desperate last acts of a bunch of lunatics that lost their leader.
Is this a victory for the Iraqi people? Perhaps a very small one. They can have their vengence, but it's unlikely their quality of life will improve now.
Slashdot Mirror
Hundreds of people have their lives destroyed by a cyclone, and Slashdot reports it as a wireless Internet outage. Tsk.
I think they think that's pretty much the same...
Gentlemen, start your "my precioussssss" jokes .. now!
Ok. You're a technocrat, and I'm not. I suppose I can convince you of my point as much as you can convince me of yours. But here are a few things to think about:
If this is all about finding more space for humanity, why not colonize the oceans and the deserts first? Most of the earth is not inhabited by humans yet, so why not use that space first? It sure is a hell of a lot easier than to send supplies and people through a long space journey - with the problems we can both see - to another planet. Of course this is not as exciting as going to another planet, but that's not what this is all about...is it?
Besides, life on Mars is like living in the Emyn Muil - only there's no poisonous fume in the air because ... there is no air. I don't know about you but I'd rather share my one room appartment with 10 chinese than to live in such a barren, airless wasteland.
But if you absolutely insist on going there - and that's your right, it's your money - please take Dubya with you. And Darl. And Bill. Thanks.
I read a very interesting editorial by Anne Applebaum in the Washington Post the other day (here, registration required). Basically, she says that putting a robot on mars is a good idea because a robot is well suited for this kind of scientific work. Humans on the other hand are supposed to stay on earth - inhospitable climat, muscular deterioration during space flight and extreme radiation make a trip to mars less than pleasent.
Quoting: Mars, as a certain pop star once put it, isn't the kind of place where you'd want to raise your kids. Nor is it the kind of place anybody is ever going to visit, as some of the NASA scientists know perfectly well. Even leaving aside the cold, the lack of atmosphere and the absence of water, there's the deadly radiation. If the average person on Earth absorbs about 350 millirems of radiation every year, an astronaut traveling to Mars would absorb about 130,000 millirems of a particularly virulent form of radiation that would probably destroy every cell in his body. "Space is not 'Star Trek,' " said one NASA scientist, "but the public certainly doesn't understand that."
So....do we really need a man on mars? Not for scientific reasons, that's for sure. And what other reasons are there? Anyone who thinks we can just teraform mars into a habitable planet in the next 300 years when we can't even keep the ISS leak-free is seriously deluded...
I guess the question of "Why does Bush want it" doesn't even deserve an answer because it's so obvious...
Don't mistake these people for fortune tellers and remember this factoid about statistics:
According to the latest official figures, 43% of all statistics are totally worthless.
So much for the prediction success rate. I guess that's also pretty much a question of interpretation. That aside, I consider the underlying assumption to be fundamentally flawed because it practically assumes that SCO has a point.
here
The article does not link to Harrington's website.
And I was just gonna look at that article...
Of course we all know that the sensible thing to do is to cut down on our power usage so that we don't need so many bird-killing power plants in the first place...
It's a little bit late for this year, sure, but... if you put 50000 lights on your house for christmas, that does use up a lot of power!
Ive been reading slashdot for ages but only "recently" signed up to comment...Getting upset with this is just a phase and it will go away, but every once in a while I get enough and have to blurt it out... ;)
Is trolling now officially endorsed by Slashdot? Why the hell does everyone have to evangelize their system of choice as if it was necesary for the survival of mankind? If you think BSD is 1000x better than Linux, or Linux is 1000x better than Windows, or DOS is 1000x than OS/2, ok. It's your good right to have that opinion, and use what you will. But can't you leave other people alone? Do you people REALLY have to try and "educate" us about what's the only real OS to use in your book? Has it ever occured to you that we might not give a hoot about that? That we're happy with our OS? That we made a concious choice when we picked our OS of choice?
Besides, what's the point of this conflict between Linux and BSD users... most programs run on both plattforms anyway, also a lot of users don't have a real choice because of driver issues. And what's up with this whole holier than thou attitude? It's been fun for a while, but eventually it gets very very annoying. It's annoying enough to have to fight off religious windows users and ignore the tux fetishists in our own ranks, but THIS is the pinnacle of unnecessity!!
This whole article is just -1, TROLL
Sorry for the rant, but this is getting WAY too stupid for my taste.
So that's why they need to build that fusion reactor.
"Grinning from ear to ear"? What was he smoking?
Well, it all boils down to how much control you have about the application you're working on. In this case I had no control and had to use a lot of windows specific functions. If it was up to me, gcc all the way, with wxWindows and the likes thrown in. But, unfortunally, the customer has the say 99% of the time ;]
That's actually a pretty good reasoning. It also reassures me that programming linux applications is the better choice for me. Strange that my friend could never say it with such clarity.
What I ment was that he's telling people to apply specific service packs that he knows break things. I'm not against installing service packs in general, that's a misunderstanding. Only if you know it will break your app.
A friend on irc told me to "go to bbcworld" and babbled something about someone making $100k a year, so I went to bbcworld.com and looked around but didn't see anything. So I stated my confusion and he said "tv". So I went to bbcworld.tv, but that domain doesn't really exist. So I asked again and only then I learnt he ment the tv station bbc world. Of course, at that time the docu was already over.
Beware of the dreaded effects of caffein withdrawal!
I have a friend who's a Windows programmer.
I, on the other side, am a Linux programmer. We've worked together on a few projects, and there were differences in the way we looked at solving problems that were sometimes almost insurmountable.
The biggest difference between the two of us is that he has an almost religious believe that, if Microsoft says you are to do things a specific way, you have to do it that and no other way. I, on the other side, try to do things the way I think they work best.
One example is his belief that, if there is a service pack, you need to use it, even if it breaks things (as some visual studio SPs do in some cases). He gets really upset if you don't apply them. I'm all for keeping software up to date, but if it breaks things?
I have to say that his co-workers and fellow Windows programmers don't all agree with that philosophy though...
Why would anyone even consider building a hypersonic plane after the Concorde just went to the dustbin of history for being way too expensive? Do they think new models will need less fuel? Do they think more people will want to use it if it flies even faster? Seems like a case of very bad timing. Sure, the time of such a device may yet come, but in times such as these? Strikes me as rather unlikely...
Yes you can do it. They have that kind of technology in actual use in China. Built by a german consortium. But there's a reason this consortium did not get to build one in Germany. You can make one work, but the costs are horrendous. Just like the Concorde's. So, at least for the foreseeable future, it's unlikely you will see this in a western country near you. Not because of physics, but simply for the fact that no sane investor likes the words "unlimited budget".
...it doesn't matter as long as everyone except you and me believe he's the real thing.
Saddam was an sadistic, evil, insane, dictator that enjoyed killing masses of people when he was in a bad mood..
He sure is a ruthless man, but I doubt he did it because he's satan's best friend. I suppose he used the most "effective" means available to him when he killed off those insurgencies... if that's what you're refering to.
He also helped subsidize the terrorists that attacked this country, and others..
I don't want to spoil your ranting, but...where's the actual proof?
And blatantly claimed he hated the US ( and other nations ) He needed to be gone, at most any cost.
I hate your gov too..does that mean you gonna come and kill me?
For those of you that are just too f-ing short sided and must twist everything around to make it an attack on our leader and our country, I only have one thing to say to you: Get the hell out if you dislike it here so much. We don't need you, nor do you deserve any of the benefits or freedoms that you get for living in MY country.
Wow..I thought the US was the land of the free, where everyone could have their own opinion... Makes me wonder, you know. If many people in your country think that way - that you have no right to your own opinion - it's actually a scary idea that you people wish to export your "democracy" to other countries. Yes, you can have your own opinion - if it happens to match mine!
You scare me.
(3) Until I hear of nukes with "Hi, there!" painted on the sides being dragged out of Iraq, we have still invaded Iraq for no good reason. The only reason the UN went along with this little war is because US intelligence lied about WMD and thus believed that they posed a serious threat to neighboring nations. No WMD = unjustified war = unjustified deaths on both sides.
Pardon me, but have I been missing something? As far as I know the UN didn't "go along" with the war. It merily supports "reconstruction effords" now and has recognized the "coalation of the willing" as the current temporary governing force of iraq.
Did it ever occur to you that it doesn't matter one bit if he's actually the former ruler of iraq or some $rand actor? I mean, as long as nobody finds out...
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the actual facts are always most interesting, but they have no impact if people rather believe what they want to believe, if they oversimplify, make uninformed decisions and don't bother to revise their model of the world. Simply put, actual facts don't matter to the majority.
You could say that, in a case like this, facts are made through news.
No matter if you believe the pictures seen on tv right now that show a male person looking similar to Saddam Hussein in captivity to be real, the question wether this event will have any impact on the insurgency taking place in iraq or not is an entirely different one.
First of all, it should be noted that several western intelligence services consider the acts of terrorism to be conducted not by loyalists but by activist with ties to/inspired by Al Qaeda. However, there is no reliable information on who's behind all this.
What if it were loyalists? Well, in that case I doubt it will make much of a difference. It has been noted that now the plain vanilla arabian person will consider Hussein a coward and will no longer fight for him. This, in my humble opinion, displays a lack of understanding of the sort of people Hussein surrounded himself with as well as having pretty rigid stereotypes.
You have to realize that his 'followers' are not motivated by ideology, honor or religion. They are/were motivated by their hunger for power. And riches. If they thought they had a chance to get that back, they might pretty well still think so. Hussein isn't dead yet, and even if he was, someone could replace him. They mostly want their power and wealth back, not necessarily Hussein.
And if it isn't (mostly) 'Saddamists' behind the terror? Then it will make even less of a difference. And if you think more troops or more/better police will improve the situation, think again. Every house search, every accidently killed civilian, every repressive action by the occupation forces or the so-called iraqi police will drive more people into the underground.
Is this a victory for the US? Certainly. Any acts of terrorism occuring after the arrest of Hussein can be discounted as the desperate last acts of a bunch of lunatics that lost their leader.
Is this a victory for the Iraqi people? Perhaps a very small one. They can have their vengence, but it's unlikely their quality of life will improve now.