I'm pretty sure USAF Lockheed C-5 Galaxy and the Russian Antonov An-124 have higher gross weights. They're the only two aircraft that are larger/heavier than the 747. The Antonov can carry 377,473 lbs and I seem to remember the Galaxy lugging 2 M-1 tanks which weigh 60 tons each.
You are correct: the An-124 has a higher gross weight, and at least one (modified) C-5 does too. There is also the An-225, only one built, that has a gross weight of around 1,300,000 pounds. It is the largest aircraft in the world by a significant margin.
Did you notice that in that linked article, they mentioned that they irradiated the letters with chemicals? What the hell? Isn't radiation... you know... something you would beam at a target, whether X-rays, or gamma rays, or even high-energy nuclei?
Did that make any sense to you? Or do you know what they mean, and how they did it?
Are you serious? Since when are they telling people what it is? It's just a filename - it doesn't necessarily have to be anything in particular. There's no guarantee, and hence no fraud. Besides, they used their bandwidth of their own volition, trying to download something without knowing what it is. You can't hold the jammers responsible for something that's your own goddamned fault.
I wouldn't say that it leads to 100% bug-free code: that's a pretty strong statement. It seems to me that that's not guaranteed unless all possible code paths are taken during development, which seems unlikely for code of any serious complexity. I think the only way to really be certain that there are no bugs at all is to do a correctness proof.
Furthermore, how do you know there aren't any bugs in the reference code?
That said, it does seem useful, and would probably lead to reasonably bug-free code, but only for a certain class of problems - those where you have existing, correct reference code that for some reason you don't want to use.
As I understand it, even if ChinaNet gets an SPF record, all that does is identify them as ChinaNet... and then ISPs and mailers can just drop their connections. SPF won't actually do anything without a blacklist; it is intended to make it impossible (or difficult) for ChinaNet to say that an email isn't coming from them, so it's easy for us to just blackhole their emails and pretend that they don't even exist. That's better than they deserve; lousy spammer-harboring assholes...
I suggest an experiment: let's attempt to drastically reduce our emissions . ..
That sure is one hell of an expensive "experiment". Ever stop to consider that we can't do that without bankrupting ourselves? Isn't that the whole reason there's so much opposition to things like the Kyoto Protocol? We would be possibly lowering the temperature slightly for an enormous human cost, as poverty leads to deaths, and all the money lost could be spent on much better, more life-saving things... We wouldn't even necessarily be cleaning our air and water, since greenhouse gasses aren't really "dirty".
Multiplication tables may be boring, but they are necessary. It's important to teach kids how to multiply in their heads, or we'll soon have a whole generation of kids who can't multiply anything without a calculator. Even worse, because they have no inherent idea how to multiply, they will have no idea what to expect from a given product, and no way of easily telling that they've made a mistake.
Calculators are a good thing for speeding up work, but you still have to understand the basics first, just like how they teach you to solve linear equations by hand before you get to use Maple or Matlab. It sounds like you don't like math very much at all.
They still haven't come up with a good explanation of how space can have 0 curvature yet still be finite and unbounded.
I think this is why the leading theory is that the universe is, in fact, infinite in size. Did you see that slashdot article from last summer where they were discussing all the parallel universes? They linked to an article that I found here. It's interesting because of what is implied if the universe is indeed infinite in size... But we don't know that for sure.
Personally, I hope the universe is infinite in space, because that's so wicked cool to think about.
3) That's like saying that patent sharking companies who take out vague patents, wait for others to implement them without realizing it, and then sue them for profit aren't doing anything wrong and can't be held accountable. Or that corporations like HP who lay off all their American workers despite being profitabile already aren't doing anything wrong. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
4) Others have already pointed out how false this is.
5) I don't buy music from it, and it's specifically because of the DRM. But don't get me wrong: I don't think there's anything wrong with DRM technology itself. I just don't want it on anything on my computer. The ironic thing is that the existence of Playfair made me reconsider my anti-Itunes stance. But now I think I made the right choice before.
6) So many communist slashbots on this site are against DRM as a technology, like it's possible for a technology to be evil, like guns, or nuclear reactors. No, it's not: it's just a way of getting things done, and it does have some interesting applications when it comes to workstations with critical data on them. The problem here is not DRM: but the DMCA. Apple is perfectly within their rights to use DRM to protect their content: nothing wrong with that. But it should be our right to try and break it for fair use purposes! Nobody should go to jail for that, but under this law, they can. There are ligitimate purposes for removing the DRM protection.
The really ironic thing is that, as far as I know, all or most of the songs sold on Itunes are songs already on CDs in stores. This means that they're already in mp3 form on thousands or millions of computers already. If anyone wants to pirate them, they already can, and at decent quality too. What difference does it make if someone's sharing an AAC or a mp3 of the same song on Kazaa? It's the same song! I seriously doubt they will lose a single sale over this... aside from those from people who might boycott them now.
Stop being deliberately obtuse. He never said that he never reacts to impersonal communication: he said that his ability to use his intuition is hampered. For a supposed university researcher, you sure can be pretty stupid.
You cite Munich, but you fail to realize that they aren't so much using open source as they are using Linux, and a few other well-known pieces of software. Software like that doesn't need any special consideration for the needs of users: they have developers knocking down their doors, trying to contribute patches. But there's far more to open source than just Linux: and the vast majority are small projects, relatively unknown to most others. For them, my comment still applies.
People should do what they like, it's even better if you can make a living. But the worst of both is doing what you don't like for no reward.
I never said that you're somehow obligated to support software you write. Moreover, I don't think anyone in this thread said that. You are not, of course, obligated to add any feature for anyone if you don't want to. Do whatever you like. But your software sucks if it's not written for people to use. Which leads me to my next point...
In what way does it suck? Granted, a good team can be better than the sum of their parts, but, there is no shortage of team ethic in open source.
It sucks in that it's not going to produce software that meets the needs of anyone but the team working on it - unlike closed source software, and commercially supported software. Not a point you care about, but...
I think your reference to other developers is just a red herring. I see no evidence that developers take issue with how open source is managed.
Are you seriously suggesting that none of those open source zealots who think that it's the best development model, and that it will take over the world, are developers themselves? Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of them. I never said that open source is the best way of developing software - and in fact, I don't think it is. What I did say was that if it really is going to be taken seriously and be useful for real things, developers have to consider the users. And they don't want to.
So go ahead. Don't do anything you don't want to. Write whatever you want. And no one will care but you.
But open source developers are often the same people who want to see open source software become more accepted and more used. In your case, perhaps not, but I'm sure many others are. If this truly is what they want, then there is something that they will have to realize: telling users to "write it yourself or STFU" (as is a common response) is not going to help open source become accepted, and might even lead people to tell others to avoid it.
In the end, it comes down to sheer pragmatism. If people want open source to be used, the needs of the common user and other developers will have to be addressed. Otherwise, it's all just a bunch of people programming for themselves. And that kind of self-serving geekiness, in my opinion, really sucks for software development.
I was thinking the same thing. What we really need is for someone to modigy one of these worms to go around and destroy all the zombied hosts that send all the spam and DOS websites. The owners don't care that their computers are infected? We will make them care.
How else can we attack the apathy that's behind all this?
The question of how easy or difficult it is to get people to follow the rules of a methodology is a legimate measure of that methodology's effectiveness.
Not if the people involved are complete fucktards. Sitting there, talking about chicks, not caring that you're paid to sit on your ass and doing nothing productive... Fire these assholes. If you're going to test a methodology by seeing how easy or hard its rules are to follow, then at least test it on people who take their job seriously.
The fact that all the nameservers use the ICANN root servers is why ICANN has an inherent authority. The entire inter-net has agreed to use that namespace. They have to, in order for everything to work together. The morons who decided that they wanted to make their own little world with their own fake TLDs have no one but themselves to blame for the mess that is going to happen when the real inter-net decides to add some new names.
Thank you for your thoughtful response... I appreciate reasonable people much more after some of the responses I've got from such trolls as Adolph Hitler.
I do not think capitalism is a religion, but it is the rules we abide by. Outsourcing is not against those rules. If you want your job to be protected, a lot of other things come along with that tweak to the rules...countries that have been denied this work may hit back with restrictions. Taking this to its logical end and you are basically at communism, with rules and government intervention everywhere.
It doesn't follow that we'll end up with communism just because we have some restrictions on free trade. In fact, if I were running things, there would be far fewer laws and rules, because I feel that it's a government's job to interfere as little as possible for the desired end.
Outsourcing is not against the rules as they are now. But maybe they should change. The fundamental problem is that people overseas can work more cheaply than people here can afford to live. Competition, the cornerstone of free market capitalism, won't work here, because the cost of living is simply too high. The end result is that these jobs, and most outsourceable jobs (which is most non-menial tasks) will simply disappear.
As far as rebelling against the companies, as in a boycott... That won't happen until the effects are hitting enough people. A lot of damage will have been done by then. I want to prevent that.
A violent revolution is unlikely if everyone still has a job - only those with nothing to lose want to lay down their lives for a cause. Of course, there's no reason to assume that that'd be necessary.
If you are going to have the government step in and protect your jobs, why shouldn't they protect the companies interests too and force you to buy their product?
I never said that the government should prevent people from being laid off. I only said that something should be done to stop the trend. A measure as small as taxing more heavily those corporations that don't employ Americans would be enough.
There's nothing remotely unfair about enforcing, or even encouraging, that companies that do business in America must employ Americans. It's certainly not the road to communism. It's funny how I'm derided by many as a communist, when I hate communism above almost all else. I'm a nationalist.
Hey, Son of Tard! I never said that it's a new thing that businesses do whatever they can to cut costs. What is a new thing is that they can lay off ALMOST EVERYONE to save costs. Because of today's communication technology, it's possible to have everyone but management work in India or wherever is cheaper and have just as much control as if they worked in the US.
"they still need their designer here. They still need the main coders here."
Really? Why? Is lead programmer something Indians are incapable of doing? I hardly think so. Even the designer could live completely in a foreign company. They could all be contractors for a distributor in the US. Perhaps there's an advantage to having a game designer who's part of our culture, but that's not always the case.
As far as IT companies go... With most computing work done overseas, what is there going to be for them to do around here? Not nearly as much... And those are SERVICE JOBS which are what I said would stay. Menial tasks. No design, that's all gone. You can fix a computer, but you can't write software. Why not just drive a truck?
These are actual good jobs that are disappearing. Jobs that people want.
Then again, what incentives are there to have run a business in this country PERIOD?
What? Are you serious? How about... if you're good, and lucky, you can become rich! How's that for an incentive? But wait, you say, why not start a business in India, if it's cheaper there? Well, if you're rich, and the US is your home, why the hell would you want to live in India? From all I've heard, it's a pretty shitty place to live. (And stating facts isn't racist.)
There is no reason to assume that low-level shit jobs are all that's going to go overseas. Like I said: today's technology makes it easy to make almost ALL high-level jobs overseas, where they can be done by people who can live like kings off of salaries that would reduce people here to starvation. Even if new industries will spring up, there's no reason that people overseas can't do those jobs, too! They have smart people over there, you know!
But you said before: "Stopping employers from hiring who they want compromises our fundemental ideas of freedom. If those ideas of freedom mean that we cannot maintain a viable economy in a global world..." It seemed as though you were suggesting that we do hold on to "freedom" as an ideal even at the expense of our well-being. Evidently that's not what you meant.
At any rate, don't tell me that outsourcing doesn't harm anything. Of course it does. It harms those who've lost their jobs, and who spent years developing skills that aren't needed anymore. The question is whether or not there's an overall benefit to outsourcing, because it does bring good as well as harm: just to different people. At the present, this is debateable; but my whole point is that it isn't going to stop. With very few "good" jobs that can't be outsourced, and all the rest done cheaper overseas, why would it stop? Corporations do whatever they can to save money; why wouldn't they do this? And the end result will be that menial service jobs, management, legal, and public service jobs will be all that's left. That's what freedom gets you. People don't do what's best for themselves AND the whole; they just do what's best for themselves, and everyone else be damned.
I think this is going to get worse, and that's why I think something needs to be done to stop it. Our quality of life will not get better from continually having to retrain for different jobs every few decades, even if they do exist, or having to uproot your family to follow the jobs. This is not better!
(By the way, I'm not a socialist: I despise socialism, because people who don't help themselves deserve nothing. But to me, there's no sense in letting a nation of people who are hard workers to get fucked over for an ideal. There's a real danger of that here. I'm a pragmatist, plain and simple.)
Slashdot Mirror
Finally... Someone who realizes that this smug feeling of superiority Canadians have over Americans has NO basis in reality.
By the way, mods, I'm Canadian too. And I HATE Anti-Americanism.
Did you notice that in that linked article, they mentioned that they irradiated the letters with chemicals? What the hell? Isn't radiation... you know... something you would beam at a target, whether X-rays, or gamma rays, or even high-energy nuclei?
Did that make any sense to you? Or do you know what they mean, and how they did it?
Are you serious? Since when are they telling people what it is? It's just a filename - it doesn't necessarily have to be anything in particular. There's no guarantee, and hence no fraud. Besides, they used their bandwidth of their own volition, trying to download something without knowing what it is. You can't hold the jammers responsible for something that's your own goddamned fault.
Ie... never.
Write an algorithm to analyze a stream of pseudo-random data from any source I give you, knowing only that it's pseudo-random, and compress it.
I wouldn't say that it leads to 100% bug-free code: that's a pretty strong statement. It seems to me that that's not guaranteed unless all possible code paths are taken during development, which seems unlikely for code of any serious complexity. I think the only way to really be certain that there are no bugs at all is to do a correctness proof.
Furthermore, how do you know there aren't any bugs in the reference code?
That said, it does seem useful, and would probably lead to reasonably bug-free code, but only for a certain class of problems - those where you have existing, correct reference code that for some reason you don't want to use.
Yup, because there's no way it could use the BSD-licensed NetBSD or FreeBSD drivers... No way, that could never work! GPL is the one true way!
As I understand it, even if ChinaNet gets an SPF record, all that does is identify them as ChinaNet... and then ISPs and mailers can just drop their connections. SPF won't actually do anything without a blacklist; it is intended to make it impossible (or difficult) for ChinaNet to say that an email isn't coming from them, so it's easy for us to just blackhole their emails and pretend that they don't even exist. That's better than they deserve; lousy spammer-harboring assholes...
Doesn't sound like a reasonable experiment to me.
Multiplication tables may be boring, but they are necessary. It's important to teach kids how to multiply in their heads, or we'll soon have a whole generation of kids who can't multiply anything without a calculator. Even worse, because they have no inherent idea how to multiply, they will have no idea what to expect from a given product, and no way of easily telling that they've made a mistake.
Calculators are a good thing for speeding up work, but you still have to understand the basics first, just like how they teach you to solve linear equations by hand before you get to use Maple or Matlab. It sounds like you don't like math very much at all.
Whoops... Wrong link on the last one, even though it's informative anyway. This is the one I intended.
Personally, I hope the universe is infinite in space, because that's so wicked cool to think about.
Your first and second points, I agree with.
3) That's like saying that patent sharking companies who take out vague patents, wait for others to implement them without realizing it, and then sue them for profit aren't doing anything wrong and can't be held accountable. Or that corporations like HP who lay off all their American workers despite being profitabile already aren't doing anything wrong. Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's right.
4) Others have already pointed out how false this is.
5) I don't buy music from it, and it's specifically because of the DRM. But don't get me wrong: I don't think there's anything wrong with DRM technology itself. I just don't want it on anything on my computer. The ironic thing is that the existence of Playfair made me reconsider my anti-Itunes stance. But now I think I made the right choice before.
6) So many communist slashbots on this site are against DRM as a technology, like it's possible for a technology to be evil, like guns, or nuclear reactors. No, it's not: it's just a way of getting things done, and it does have some interesting applications when it comes to workstations with critical data on them. The problem here is not DRM: but the DMCA. Apple is perfectly within their rights to use DRM to protect their content: nothing wrong with that. But it should be our right to try and break it for fair use purposes! Nobody should go to jail for that, but under this law, they can. There are ligitimate purposes for removing the DRM protection.
The really ironic thing is that, as far as I know, all or most of the songs sold on Itunes are songs already on CDs in stores. This means that they're already in mp3 form on thousands or millions of computers already. If anyone wants to pirate them, they already can, and at decent quality too. What difference does it make if someone's sharing an AAC or a mp3 of the same song on Kazaa? It's the same song! I seriously doubt they will lose a single sale over this... aside from those from people who might boycott them now.
That's why this is dumb.
Stop being deliberately obtuse. He never said that he never reacts to impersonal communication: he said that his ability to use his intuition is hampered. For a supposed university researcher, you sure can be pretty stupid.
I never said that you're somehow obligated to support software you write. Moreover, I don't think anyone in this thread said that. You are not, of course, obligated to add any feature for anyone if you don't want to. Do whatever you like. But your software sucks if it's not written for people to use. Which leads me to my next point...
It sucks in that it's not going to produce software that meets the needs of anyone but the team working on it - unlike closed source software, and commercially supported software. Not a point you care about, but...
Are you seriously suggesting that none of those open source zealots who think that it's the best development model, and that it will take over the world, are developers themselves? Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not one of them. I never said that open source is the best way of developing software - and in fact, I don't think it is. What I did say was that if it really is going to be taken seriously and be useful for real things, developers have to consider the users. And they don't want to.
So go ahead. Don't do anything you don't want to. Write whatever you want. And no one will care but you.
But open source developers are often the same people who want to see open source software become more accepted and more used. In your case, perhaps not, but I'm sure many others are. If this truly is what they want, then there is something that they will have to realize: telling users to "write it yourself or STFU" (as is a common response) is not going to help open source become accepted, and might even lead people to tell others to avoid it.
In the end, it comes down to sheer pragmatism. If people want open source to be used, the needs of the common user and other developers will have to be addressed. Otherwise, it's all just a bunch of people programming for themselves. And that kind of self-serving geekiness, in my opinion, really sucks for software development.
I was thinking the same thing. What we really need is for someone to modigy one of these worms to go around and destroy all the zombied hosts that send all the spam and DOS websites. The owners don't care that their computers are infected? We will make them care.
How else can we attack the apathy that's behind all this?
The fact that all the nameservers use the ICANN root servers is why ICANN has an inherent authority. The entire inter-net has agreed to use that namespace. They have to, in order for everything to work together. The morons who decided that they wanted to make their own little world with their own fake TLDs have no one but themselves to blame for the mess that is going to happen when the real inter-net decides to add some new names.
Might want to brush up on your reading comprehension skills there.
Outsourcing is not against the rules as they are now. But maybe they should change. The fundamental problem is that people overseas can work more cheaply than people here can afford to live. Competition, the cornerstone of free market capitalism, won't work here, because the cost of living is simply too high. The end result is that these jobs, and most outsourceable jobs (which is most non-menial tasks) will simply disappear.
As far as rebelling against the companies, as in a boycott... That won't happen until the effects are hitting enough people. A lot of damage will have been done by then. I want to prevent that.
A violent revolution is unlikely if everyone still has a job - only those with nothing to lose want to lay down their lives for a cause. Of course, there's no reason to assume that that'd be necessary.
I never said that the government should prevent people from being laid off. I only said that something should be done to stop the trend. A measure as small as taxing more heavily those corporations that don't employ Americans would be enough.
There's nothing remotely unfair about enforcing, or even encouraging, that companies that do business in America must employ Americans. It's certainly not the road to communism. It's funny how I'm derided by many as a communist, when I hate communism above almost all else. I'm a nationalist.
I hate replying to myself...
continually having to retrain for different jobs every few decades...
I meant every few years. Other than that, I stand by my post.
Really? Why? Is lead programmer something Indians are incapable of doing? I hardly think so. Even the designer could live completely in a foreign company. They could all be contractors for a distributor in the US. Perhaps there's an advantage to having a game designer who's part of our culture, but that's not always the case.
As far as IT companies go... With most computing work done overseas, what is there going to be for them to do around here? Not nearly as much... And those are SERVICE JOBS which are what I said would stay. Menial tasks. No design, that's all gone. You can fix a computer, but you can't write software. Why not just drive a truck?
These are actual good jobs that are disappearing. Jobs that people want.
What? Are you serious? How about... if you're good, and lucky, you can become rich! How's that for an incentive? But wait, you say, why not start a business in India, if it's cheaper there? Well, if you're rich, and the US is your home, why the hell would you want to live in India? From all I've heard, it's a pretty shitty place to live. (And stating facts isn't racist.)
There is no reason to assume that low-level shit jobs are all that's going to go overseas. Like I said: today's technology makes it easy to make almost ALL high-level jobs overseas, where they can be done by people who can live like kings off of salaries that would reduce people here to starvation. Even if new industries will spring up, there's no reason that people overseas can't do those jobs, too! They have smart people over there, you know!
What will be left?
But you said before: "Stopping employers from hiring who they want compromises our fundemental ideas of freedom. If those ideas of freedom mean that we cannot maintain a viable economy in a global world..." It seemed as though you were suggesting that we do hold on to "freedom" as an ideal even at the expense of our well-being. Evidently that's not what you meant.
At any rate, don't tell me that outsourcing doesn't harm anything. Of course it does. It harms those who've lost their jobs, and who spent years developing skills that aren't needed anymore. The question is whether or not there's an overall benefit to outsourcing, because it does bring good as well as harm: just to different people. At the present, this is debateable; but my whole point is that it isn't going to stop. With very few "good" jobs that can't be outsourced, and all the rest done cheaper overseas, why would it stop? Corporations do whatever they can to save money; why wouldn't they do this? And the end result will be that menial service jobs, management, legal, and public service jobs will be all that's left. That's what freedom gets you. People don't do what's best for themselves AND the whole; they just do what's best for themselves, and everyone else be damned.
I think this is going to get worse, and that's why I think something needs to be done to stop it. Our quality of life will not get better from continually having to retrain for different jobs every few decades, even if they do exist, or having to uproot your family to follow the jobs. This is not better!
(By the way, I'm not a socialist: I despise socialism, because people who don't help themselves deserve nothing. But to me, there's no sense in letting a nation of people who are hard workers to get fucked over for an ideal. There's a real danger of that here. I'm a pragmatist, plain and simple.)