"Riiiight... That's why the term "rocket scientist" is used as a synonym for intelligence - because the engineering is so easy anyone can do it...
Oh wait, it requires expertise in (per wikipedia) fluid mechanics, structural mechanics, orbital mechanics, flight dynamics, physics, mathematics, control engineering, materials science, aeroelasticity, avionics, reliability engineering, noise control, and flight testing among other domains. Yeah, real easy."
When I said that it was only the autopilot that one could be assuming was a hard barrier to an IBCM, the closely attentive observer will clearly read this in the context that Iran, in successfully launching a satellite, has already demonstrated competence at everything you list above. That leaves the autopilot to bring it down (since going up to a stable orbit clearly worked). So I'm not sure why you think the additional work is particularly hard for the same nation state's scientists that originally put the satellite up.
"I think there's probably a big difference between making a rocket which can reach escape velocity and being able to target a specific location thousands of miles away."
Are you suggesting that the autopilot is the difficult part here? Apollo 11 ran on an insanely sucky chip, and I don't think that Iranian mathematicians are magically incompetent. Thrusters are thrusters, wing surfaces are wing surfaces. It's not a very difficult engineering problem.
Let's turn to the main point, to whit Putin. He has ruthlessly and systematically concentrated power just as much as any Tzar, (to be fair, so have others - think Burlusconi, Chavez...) I suggest it is therefore reasonable to assign the current condition of the Russian economy and state pretty much to him.
Now, do you seriously suggest that those two things are in good shape? Major western economies are in the toilet, for sure, but on all other criteria (democracy, corruption, life expectancy...) we're way ahead. My concern is that the signs are not good for progress in Rusia on ANY front.
I would agree that the West is indeed ahead on all fronts (including economically, in fact) but it is important to bear in mind the legacy that Putin came into power with. It is not entirely propaganda that makes people compare him positively to Yeltsin, I would say. The Russian body politic looks at Putin and compares him to Gorbachev's dismantling of the USSR and Yeltsin's disposal of the assets of the state for pennies on the dollar and loss of societal control. It is therefore not surprising that a program of controlling the oligarchs and bringing them under Kremlin control is popular. The Russian economy was starting to diversify, but was indeed focussed in energy. I think it is however fair to say that the economy did better under Putin than under any Russian leadership for at least a generation.
In terms of democracy, it is of course going backwards. I am however not entirely sure that's not what Russians as a body politic (which is very different from the urban intelligentsia) actually wants. It's a problem. I would also say that in a country where Stalin almost won a greatest Russian poll (while being Georgian, oddly enough) Putin's centralisation of power is not only not as big as any Tzar's but actually quite restrained. The rule of Stalin was essentially that of a Communist Tzar, and he killed millions.
The counterargument is that Putin's air force almost bombed me in Gori, Georgia. I was however mildly amused by this.
"Like China, authoritarianism works on a population accustomed to it and enjoying a rapidly rising standard of living."
This is surely incorrect. The USSR functioned for almost seven decades. The people of the Ukraine clearly had a falling standard of living as Stalin starved them but failed to successfully revolt or change the system. Likewise in China, the cultural revolution was not something associated with a huge rise in living standards but Communism survived. Or the Castros in Cuba after the fall of the USSR and resultant drop in subsidy. Or Afghanistan moving from Soviet subsidy to Taliban control. Or the long reign of Pinochet in Chile. Or, indeed, the continued existence of Zimbabwe as a state.
I would suggest that authoritarianism does not require a rise in living standards to keep on going, and indeed I would suggest that a perception of danger and mass insecurity in the face of either economic or military threat is what often creates it in hard times. If you are American you have surely just lived through a period where the political utility of the perceptual emergency was clear.
Make no mistake, they're in big truoble just like the other major world economies.
If this state is shared with the other large economies, it would fail to support your argument that the Russian government is not in fact reasonably competent. Other than that I would have to infer that you are claiming that all governments are incompetent. While I appreciate that this is a popular position for the Norquist/Libeterian crowd, I do not agree.
Of course, Putin is actually also correct to be worried. The 90s was full of foreign consultants coming over to Moscow and giving unbelievably bad advice that lead to premature loosening of all controls and a kleptocratic oligarchy shortly after that.
Now imagine that combined with a foreign profit seeking company offering to do the helping. I'm not entirely surprised Putin reacted as you would if Bill Gates came over to your FOSS startup and asked if you'd like an MS sales team to give you some free help and advice. Quite how naive do we assume Putin to be here? Russia isn't some failed state that cannot run it's own programs and make it's own choices. Authoritarian, yes, but competent at it.
Hmmm...adverts/spam would be the main application I'd imagine. Also a way to get someone to a URL that they cannot check before hand as the symbol is only machine readable. This looks like a great way to get people to exploit pages.
"To be pedantic, it was that Gordon Brown gave up power to the House of Commons - of which the Government have a majority vote. So whatever quibbles we make of the Commons versus the Government, it's still not an example of the Government giving up power."
This is incorrect. To be even more pedantic, the "government" (henceforth executive, if we are discussing constitutional issues) does not have have to be headed by someone who has a party that is a majority vote in the Commons. This is common to the Westminster model, and indeed occured in the Westminster model Scottish Executive in 2007. So a minority government is not some outré possibility.
"(And yes, the rest of the Commons has an influence if Government MPs rebel, but in this situation, the Government does not have a single agreed opinion on the issue, so it does not make sense to talk about whether the "Government" has kept control or not, because there is no longer a single opinion coming out of the Government.)"
what?
THE GOVERNMENT IS ONLY THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE MINISTERS WITHIN THE EXECUTIVE. Members of the same party who sit in the legislature may or may not be in the government. Indeed, MPs from the opposition party may also be in the executive, as selection of ministers is a Prime Ministerial prerogative. It is therefore perfectly possible for MPs who happen to be in the same party to vote against a perfectly unified government and win.
The executive does not contain enough people at present to win a Commons vote, so it requires the support of MPs who are not in it. They are not in the government, they are in the legislature. The government is the executive. Is this clear to you in any way?
I don't know how to put this any more clearly, and frankly given your snarky attitude one would expect you to have at least a basic understanding of UK constitutional issues.
"OMFG, make it stop! That's a $499 shielded twisted pair cable. I'm sorry, but as far as data loss goes, I've pumped GigE and even 10GigE to the limit through ordinary, bargain basement unshielded CAT 5e and CAT 6 cables respectively with 0 data loss. Even ordinary STP cables aren't that expensive if you really need it."...and still with a plastic tab that will inevitably snap off. Quality work(!).
One would think that the Xbox 360 port should come right over...I'm just not sure where all the extra bugs would arise. The actual game logic and assets should be identical.
It depends if you trust the core, or if they just leave a public key on the box that lets the intelligence services and police in.
Also...surely this is the year of the [Chinese] Linux Desktop!
"dont worry,the riots in all magor us cities next summer after obama has'nt come through with his free house,car and living money promise does'nt happen.(i know he did'ny say that but inner city minorities believe it and are most expectent.they dont read or watch anything remotely considered news.but,its the word on the street.)"
It's nice to welcome the KKK crowd to Slashdot! Do you intend to be a pastiche of an insane (and I say this having looked at your full comment history) far right-wing type? I feel like it's a bit too sustained to be merely trolling. But Slashdot isn't intended to be for Cliff Notes versions of the Turner Diaries.
In other news, Intel graphics chips said to be designed for minimal power draw rather than all out performance. This power draw is decidedly not beaten by running a software renderer that will stress the CPU till it sucks power like an electric chair as the CPU is only general hardware, not specific. More at 11.
"Unlimited connections on static IPs. No download or upload limits. No port blocking, no packet shaping, no transparent web caches, no "fair usage" policy, no logging, no Phorm, no ad-serving, no small print. Rolling 1 month contract. No lock in period. Direct Engineer Support 24 hours a day, every day. Good, not cheap.
£60/month"
I think this may be the company I have been waiting for my whole [internet] life.
"The deal isn't that you get threatened just because your wearing a shit. You use the shirt to provoke someone and then instead of leaving it drop, you continue to provoke them into a situation that a reasonable person could claim a fear for their life."
Then the issue is *not the shirt*. Your patronising tone and inability to stop conflating the two issues leads me to think you're trolling and so I am going to stop having this conversation.
The essential point here is that pulling a gun out at someone creates a reasonable fear of death in them. They can therefore shoot you. Wearing certain clothes, no matter how offensive does not (and we also run into First Amendment and civil rights issues here - should the police be allowed to shoot you if you are wearing an NWA top while listening to Fuck the Police?). You can't conflate the two things. If you are arguing that if someone intentionally causes a fear of death in another they commit a crime and cannot complain when the other person shoots them, this is true. But this is substantially different from your original argument legally.
"Keep on studying the law. The biggest objections to delf defense killing is that people put themselves into situation to impose the threat of loss of life onto themselves. Ie, I can't pull a gun on you, wait until you reach for your gun, then kill you claiming self defense. I provoked your actions in an intentional or reckless manor (yes, read intentional and reckless as being of significantly important) that resulted in my killing the other person in self defense. In other words, I can't claim self defense and walk away scott free if I manipulate you into the situation that causes me to kill you in self defense."
This is a reasonable fear of immediate threat to life from victim to initiator. The scenario you have created is merely switching the roles of V and I.
"Now granted, in the situation I laid out, it would have probably gone through the courts and a legal self defense shooting would probably become premeditated murder or some variant of manslaughter because they provoked the incident (even if they were within their legal rights) but the concept on the video or photos is really the same- just exaggerated to different levels."
Oh my word. I am a law student and this is wrong on many levels. If someone puts you (henceforth the 'victim') in reasonable and immediate fear of death (henceforth the 'initiator', victim have the right to kill them in self-defence. Provocation requires that the reasonable man would also be unable to control themselves in Initiator's situation. Initiator cannot reasonably claim that victim's choice of clothes was provocation, and therefore the initiator (depending on circumstances) committed attempted murder against the victim with no ability to claim provocation as a defence. Victim has commited no crime, as self-defence is a complete legal defence against a murder or manslaughter charge. Victim's desire to video a shooting does not have a huge bearing on the matter as it is initiator who has unreasonably started the violence. Otherwise we'd be telling women that it wasn't rape as they were wearing a short skirt.
Now, Victim's tape is likely to be evidence and thus sub judice for a period. Victim's tape will however be part of the public record as evidence if this happens (assuming the evidence is not sealed) and Victim is free to refer to this excepting privacy laws in some states.
I am not a lawyer yet, and this is not legal advice.
Also, even if it were not about the experience, I cannot resell books from the Kindle. So the TCO is much higher than the books assuming that I resell all those that do not rock my world.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd conjecture not. Hey, we have the same amount of data!
Actually, it can be seen that the list is viewed at least one ISP directly but can in any case be avoided primarily by use of OpenDNS. Details here.
"Riiiight... That's why the term "rocket scientist" is used as a synonym for intelligence - because the engineering is so easy anyone can do it...
Oh wait, it requires expertise in (per wikipedia) fluid mechanics, structural mechanics, orbital mechanics, flight dynamics, physics, mathematics, control engineering, materials science, aeroelasticity, avionics, reliability engineering, noise control, and flight testing among other domains. Yeah, real easy."
When I said that it was only the autopilot that one could be assuming was a hard barrier to an IBCM, the closely attentive observer will clearly read this in the context that Iran, in successfully launching a satellite, has already demonstrated competence at everything you list above. That leaves the autopilot to bring it down (since going up to a stable orbit clearly worked). So I'm not sure why you think the additional work is particularly hard for the same nation state's scientists that originally put the satellite up.
"I think there's probably a big difference between making a rocket which can reach escape velocity and being able to target a specific location thousands of miles away."
Are you suggesting that the autopilot is the difficult part here? Apollo 11 ran on an insanely sucky chip, and I don't think that Iranian mathematicians are magically incompetent. Thrusters are thrusters, wing surfaces are wing surfaces. It's not a very difficult engineering problem.
If this is true and the satellite reached escape velocity you have just demonstrated that Iran can drop a warhead on any city worldwide.
Super happy fun times to come, good job on easing tensions.
Now, do you seriously suggest that those two things are in good shape? Major western economies are in the toilet, for sure, but on all other criteria (democracy, corruption, life expectancy...) we're way ahead. My concern is that the signs are not good for progress in Rusia on ANY front.
I would agree that the West is indeed ahead on all fronts (including economically, in fact) but it is important to bear in mind the legacy that Putin came into power with. It is not entirely propaganda that makes people compare him positively to Yeltsin, I would say. The Russian body politic looks at Putin and compares him to Gorbachev's dismantling of the USSR and Yeltsin's disposal of the assets of the state for pennies on the dollar and loss of societal control. It is therefore not surprising that a program of controlling the oligarchs and bringing them under Kremlin control is popular. The Russian economy was starting to diversify, but was indeed focussed in energy. I think it is however fair to say that the economy did better under Putin than under any Russian leadership for at least a generation.
In terms of democracy, it is of course going backwards. I am however not entirely sure that's not what Russians as a body politic (which is very different from the urban intelligentsia) actually wants. It's a problem. I would also say that in a country where Stalin almost won a greatest Russian poll (while being Georgian, oddly enough) Putin's centralisation of power is not only not as big as any Tzar's but actually quite restrained. The rule of Stalin was essentially that of a Communist Tzar, and he killed millions.
The counterargument is that Putin's air force almost bombed me in Gori, Georgia. I was however mildly amused by this.
This is surely incorrect. The USSR functioned for almost seven decades. The people of the Ukraine clearly had a falling standard of living as Stalin starved them but failed to successfully revolt or change the system. Likewise in China, the cultural revolution was not something associated with a huge rise in living standards but Communism survived. Or the Castros in Cuba after the fall of the USSR and resultant drop in subsidy. Or Afghanistan moving from Soviet subsidy to Taliban control. Or the long reign of Pinochet in Chile. Or, indeed, the continued existence of Zimbabwe as a state.
I would suggest that authoritarianism does not require a rise in living standards to keep on going, and indeed I would suggest that a perception of danger and mass insecurity in the face of either economic or military threat is what often creates it in hard times. If you are American you have surely just lived through a period where the political utility of the perceptual emergency was clear.
If this state is shared with the other large economies, it would fail to support your argument that the Russian government is not in fact reasonably competent. Other than that I would have to infer that you are claiming that all governments are incompetent. While I appreciate that this is a popular position for the Norquist/Libeterian crowd, I do not agree.
Of course, Putin is actually also correct to be worried. The 90s was full of foreign consultants coming over to Moscow and giving unbelievably bad advice that lead to premature loosening of all controls and a kleptocratic oligarchy shortly after that.
Now imagine that combined with a foreign profit seeking company offering to do the helping. I'm not entirely surprised Putin reacted as you would if Bill Gates came over to your FOSS startup and asked if you'd like an MS sales team to give you some free help and advice. Quite how naive do we assume Putin to be here? Russia isn't some failed state that cannot run it's own programs and make it's own choices. Authoritarian, yes, but competent at it.
Hmmm...adverts/spam would be the main application I'd imagine. Also a way to get someone to a URL that they cannot check before hand as the symbol is only machine readable. This looks like a great way to get people to exploit pages.
Tempting!
"Nice job. I realized that as I posted, but I didn't want facts to get in the way of a good post."
So you freely admit you were essentially just lying?
Umm...you do appear to have a bit of an issue about race, don't you?
"To be pedantic, it was that Gordon Brown gave up power to the House of Commons - of which the Government have a majority vote. So whatever quibbles we make of the Commons versus the Government, it's still not an example of the Government giving up power."
This is incorrect. To be even more pedantic, the "government" (henceforth executive, if we are discussing constitutional issues) does not have have to be headed by someone who has a party that is a majority vote in the Commons. This is common to the Westminster model, and indeed occured in the Westminster model Scottish Executive in 2007. So a minority government is not some outré possibility.
"(And yes, the rest of the Commons has an influence if Government MPs rebel, but in this situation, the Government does not have a single agreed opinion on the issue, so it does not make sense to talk about whether the "Government" has kept control or not, because there is no longer a single opinion coming out of the Government.)"
what?
THE GOVERNMENT IS ONLY THOSE PEOPLE WHO ARE MINISTERS WITHIN THE EXECUTIVE. Members of the same party who sit in the legislature may or may not be in the government. Indeed, MPs from the opposition party may also be in the executive, as selection of ministers is a Prime Ministerial prerogative. It is therefore perfectly possible for MPs who happen to be in the same party to vote against a perfectly unified government and win.
The executive does not contain enough people at present to win a Commons vote, so it requires the support of MPs who are not in it. They are not in the government, they are in the legislature. The government is the executive. Is this clear to you in any way?
I don't know how to put this any more clearly, and frankly given your snarky attitude one would expect you to have at least a basic understanding of UK constitutional issues.
"OMFG, make it stop! That's a $499 shielded twisted pair cable. I'm sorry, but as far as data loss goes, I've pumped GigE and even 10GigE to the limit through ordinary, bargain basement unshielded CAT 5e and CAT 6 cables respectively with 0 data loss. Even ordinary STP cables aren't that expensive if you really need it." ...and still with a plastic tab that will inevitably snap off. Quality work(!).
One would think that the Xbox 360 port should come right over...I'm just not sure where all the extra bugs would arise. The actual game logic and assets should be identical.
It depends if you trust the core, or if they just leave a public key on the box that lets the intelligence services and police in. Also...surely this is the year of the [Chinese] Linux Desktop!
"dont worry,the riots in all magor us cities next summer after obama has'nt come through with his free house,car and living money promise does'nt happen.(i know he did'ny say that but inner city minorities believe it and are most expectent.they dont read or watch anything remotely considered news.but,its the word on the street.)"
It's nice to welcome the KKK crowd to Slashdot! Do you intend to be a pastiche of an insane (and I say this having looked at your full comment history) far right-wing type? I feel like it's a bit too sustained to be merely trolling. But Slashdot isn't intended to be for Cliff Notes versions of the Turner Diaries.
In other news, Intel graphics chips said to be designed for minimal power draw rather than all out performance. This power draw is decidedly not beaten by running a software renderer that will stress the CPU till it sucks power like an electric chair as the CPU is only general hardware, not specific. More at 11.
"Unlimited connections on static IPs. No download or upload limits. No port blocking, no packet shaping, no transparent web caches, no "fair usage" policy, no logging, no Phorm, no ad-serving, no small print. Rolling 1 month contract. No lock in period. Direct Engineer Support 24 hours a day, every day. Good, not cheap.
£60 /month"
I think this may be the company I have been waiting for my whole [internet] life.
"when I play a dope melody. Anything less than the best is a felony."
If we take it as read that Vanilla Ice is not the best, he is in fact heavily dissuading you from continuing to listen.
"The deal isn't that you get threatened just because your wearing a shit. You use the shirt to provoke someone and then instead of leaving it drop, you continue to provoke them into a situation that a reasonable person could claim a fear for their life."
Then the issue is *not the shirt*. Your patronising tone and inability to stop conflating the two issues leads me to think you're trolling and so I am going to stop having this conversation.
The essential point here is that pulling a gun out at someone creates a reasonable fear of death in them. They can therefore shoot you. Wearing certain clothes, no matter how offensive does not (and we also run into First Amendment and civil rights issues here - should the police be allowed to shoot you if you are wearing an NWA top while listening to Fuck the Police?). You can't conflate the two things. If you are arguing that if someone intentionally causes a fear of death in another they commit a crime and cannot complain when the other person shoots them, this is true. But this is substantially different from your original argument legally.
"Keep on studying the law. The biggest objections to delf defense killing is that people put themselves into situation to impose the threat of loss of life onto themselves. Ie, I can't pull a gun on you, wait until you reach for your gun, then kill you claiming self defense. I provoked your actions in an intentional or reckless manor (yes, read intentional and reckless as being of significantly important) that resulted in my killing the other person in self defense. In other words, I can't claim self defense and walk away scott free if I manipulate you into the situation that causes me to kill you in self defense." This is a reasonable fear of immediate threat to life from victim to initiator. The scenario you have created is merely switching the roles of V and I.
"Now granted, in the situation I laid out, it would have probably gone through the courts and a legal self defense shooting would probably become premeditated murder or some variant of manslaughter because they provoked the incident (even if they were within their legal rights) but the concept on the video or photos is really the same- just exaggerated to different levels."
Oh my word. I am a law student and this is wrong on many levels. If someone puts you (henceforth the 'victim') in reasonable and immediate fear of death (henceforth the 'initiator', victim have the right to kill them in self-defence. Provocation requires that the reasonable man would also be unable to control themselves in Initiator's situation. Initiator cannot reasonably claim that victim's choice of clothes was provocation, and therefore the initiator (depending on circumstances) committed attempted murder against the victim with no ability to claim provocation as a defence. Victim has commited no crime, as self-defence is a complete legal defence against a murder or manslaughter charge. Victim's desire to video a shooting does not have a huge bearing on the matter as it is initiator who has unreasonably started the violence. Otherwise we'd be telling women that it wasn't rape as they were wearing a short skirt.
Now, Victim's tape is likely to be evidence and thus sub judice for a period. Victim's tape will however be part of the public record as evidence if this happens (assuming the evidence is not sealed) and Victim is free to refer to this excepting privacy laws in some states.
I am not a lawyer yet, and this is not legal advice.
Also, even if it were not about the experience, I cannot resell books from the Kindle. So the TCO is much higher than the books assuming that I resell all those that do not rock my world.