Rare earth elements, yes. Oil, no. Oil is a complex molecular soup, yes, but made from fairly common elements - and we can in fact produce it ourselves: http://www.changingworldtech.com/
Oil is therefore not a finite resource, which is one more reason why continuing to be the only major country that doesn't try and develop its own resources, the Bakken reserves, ANWR, the Gulf deposits, and all of the other areas where we could be producing oil on our own land (and certainly cleaner than most other countries drilling processes), is purely idiotic, and religiously environmentalist.
Right. That's why the solar scientists managed to successfully predict the temperatures we've been seeing, both the warmer temperatures from several years ago, as well as the cooler temperatures of this year and last year.
You're following the same line of denial as the Democrats and media keep pushing about the Republicans and their "lack" of health care plans - you just deny that such a thing exists and get like minded people to go along with you.
I never said regulation wasn't necessary - however, in the absence of government regulation, many industries are incredibly good at forming their own regulating organizations.
The Soviet Union managed to have economic growth rates exceeding the U.S. only by manipulating the numbers, overproducing specific items that it knew would be measured, for instance. As for Germany, they managed to have better growth than the U.S. prior to the war, but that's really comparing apples to apples - as our economic policies under FDR honestly weren't too different.
I think you're missing the point of the above commentator, or somewhat superimposing your own. Just as with the technology, there's a serious amount of handwaving that goes on from the writers regarding the economic functions of the star trek universe. Since scarcity does exist in the Star trek universe (not everyone has their own planet, starship, and holodeck yet), it should be dealt with. Admittedly much of the drama of star trek is concerning things that have little to do with anything really economic, and as Star Fleet is a military organization it can leave certain things behind the scenes just as many of our present and past military movies do - but just as with the technology, it would be nice if there was a little less handwaving and a little more thought.
And by the way, study history. Capitalism IS teh best. Pretty much every totalitarian ideology has had some aspect of socialism at it's core, just because it can't stand to leave the economy alone - and every implementation of socialism has involved meddling in plenty of non-economic affairs, because the politicians can't resist. And also, there are plenty of capitalists who have motives that are entirely non-economic, but who realize that the more free our markets are, the easier it is to implement just about any other socially magnanimous change they strive for.
Sarah Palin was quoting Lincoln:
http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3958
Amazing how that proves to the left that she's some sort of radical fundamentalist.
What do you think federalism was supposed to be? Our government is supposed to implement as little as possible at the national level for reasons very similar to that. It just shows you how far we've strayed, and why elevating most issues to national - rather than state - politics is a very poor idea.
Everything I learned in college and life about software design has taught me that the libertarians, and that tiny branch of the Republicans that are essentially Federalists, have things right politically - almost mathematically even - at least at the national level.
What's going on here is pretty simple to explain: Philosophically, the Slashdot community is probably pretty libertarian minded, but politically they tend to lean to the left, and here's why:
The Republicans are a pretty big party, composed of a couple of different aspects. Essentially you've got your foreign policy hawks, your social conservatives, and your economic conservatives. For the past 20 years, the Republican party has been controlled mostly by the foreign policy hawks and the social conservatives, and the economic conservatives have remained only a steady undertone to the whole party's platform, but they've actually consistently remained there the whole time. They're the few who fight for limited government (even against the rest of their party oftentimes), clean and transparent government, against earmarks and pork (definitely against their own party oftentimes), and many of the other policies that Slashdotters (and Americans) in general seem to want.
Slashdotters in general have fallen for the same BS that America as a whole fell for: the socially conservative/foreign policy hawk members of the Republican party proved to be somewhat corruptible - especially as that was an aspect of government that those Republicans didn't really care much about - so most members of the Slashdot community have done what seems to be the obvious choice, and embrace the main political opposition to the Republicans, the Democrats. Even though the Democrats stand for almost nothing the slashdot community values in government. Honestly, have you looked at the record of any Democratic politician? Take a look at how many nominations Obama's gone through that have corruption issues. Or how the Democrats have been running the stimulus bill through without letting anyone (even other Dems) get a good look at it. Or just look at the leaders of the party: Reid and Pelosi both have plenty of financial scandals, and yet America (and the slashdot community) somehow just looked past their actual records and took the "Culture of Corruption" bait in 2006 when the Democrats said they would operate a cleaner, more open government.
What compounds the confusion is when America and Slashdot remember the few triumphs the economic conservatives have actually had in recent years. They get attributed to Clinton! When Newt Gingrich led the Republicans back into power in Congress in 1996, enough economic conservatives came to power that they were able to do two key things that the Americans loved: Pass a balanced budget, and reform welfare. The balanced budget led to a surplus (rather than a deficit) and welfare reform has been amazingly successful. And somehow they constantly get attributed to Clinton, even though he vetoed both multiple times until they were passed with veto proof majorities (and then he signed them so he could have his name attached in the off chance they worked).
Considering how small the footprint is, and how well Haiku/BeOS can play media, it seems like it would be ideally suited to be the OS of a smartphone, with minimal modification.
Cloning a mammoth is such a likely possibility because we have so many frozen specimens throughout Siberia and Canada. As far as I know, there are no Neanderthal specimens in any reasonably comparable state.
Apart from the advances that most of the other posters are mentioning, I would mention that Spacex has really focused not just on the rockets, but on the production line, which I consider their biggest innovations. Once they've got the kinks worked out, Elon Musk (the company president) has revealed that they've got a production line that will be able to turn out these rockets at an amazing pace of multiple rockets per month. This will really lower the costs to space, and is my favorite thing about Spacex.
Along those lines I would point out that Smalltalk was designed to be easy for children as well, so you might want to take a look at http://www.squeak.org/
It's never too early to pick up good programming habits.
Actually, the price of oil is severely overpriced: Congress has stopped our oil companies from developing any of the new oil fields they've discovered since the 70s, and we haven't allowed them to build any more refineries since then either.
I would point out that there are a couple other microkernels out there that have reached that point. The main one I'm familiar with is BeOS, which is currently being reborn in Haiku.
Simple Facts. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_wars for a list of current conflicts. Kashmir, Chechnya, Sudan, Kenya, The Phillipines, Thailand, and most of the other current African conflicts also involve Muslims, in addition to the various middle eastern conflicts. Recent conflicts that are considered resolved and so aren't on the list also include Kosovo. Admittedly, there's a couple conflicts I didn't know about, so I'll retract my statement of almost every conflict and change it to the majority of conflicts.
As for nearly all terrorists around the world being Islamic, lets look at the numbers there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_organizations
Notice that the Islamic and West Bank/Gaza organizations outnumber the non-Islamic organizations 40 to 26 - and that several of the non-Islamic organizations have disbanded, or disarmed (like the Northern Ireland organizations. Of course, number of organizations is different from number of members. So lets go by the number of attacks. Here's the past couple years, and I'll let you count:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents%2C_2008http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents%2C_2007http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents%2C_2006
Keep in mind that all of the terrorist incidents in Kashmir, Pakistan, The Phillipines, Algiers, and Europe (and many in Kosovo too) are all of Muslim origin. It is in fact quite a search not to find terrorist attacks not by Islamists.
Yes, Christians have behaved badly throughout history, as have Muslims. The difference is that Christianity stopped being a religion that resolves its differences by killing hundreds of years ago. Islam still orders hits taken on people who write books that criticize it.
"Holy Blood, Holy Grail" compares to the Danish cartoon riots? Please. "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", the piss christ, the elephant dung madonna - Christianity takes such violations daily, and they speak out about it, sure, but they don't riot in the streets and issue death warrants for those who created the violations.
My arguments can be applied to any religion, anywhere, anytime? Yeah, sure. Its funny, cause I can't think of the last time Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, or Jews have attacked others in the name of religion, or at least wearing their religion on their sleeves and not been loudly denounced by the rest of their religion for their violence. Only the Muslims have this problem. Large portions of their religion are stuck in a completely medieval mindset, and the others rarely protest about it.
And I'm not talking about the Muslims who live in the middle east or Africa protesting "not in our name". Why will Muslims in Europe, England, and America take to the streets to protest Danes drawing cartoons, but not the daily, despicable acts performed in the name of their religion, the daily violations of woman's rights, human rights, and fundamental liberties?
Quick, label everyone a bigot who points out that despite being labeled a religion of peace, nearly all terrorists around the world are Islamic, and at least one side of almost every conflict being fought on our planet is Muslim. Of course, those are just simple facts, so saying them makes me a bigot too, doesn't it?
There are indeed peace loving Muslims out there, who support liberty, human rights, and all that jazz. However, while Muslims will take to the streets in riots when some Danes draw cartoons of Mohammed, the streets remain empty and few, if any Muslims rise to denounce the honor killings, female circumcision, targeting of civilian (Heck, even civilian non-Jewish) populations by Al Qaeda/Hamas/Hezbollah/Fatah, executions for being raped without four male witnesses around to vouch for the woman, executions for converting to a different religion...etc. And all of these activities are committed by people claiming to do so in the name of Islam.
If Muslims are truly opposed to these activities, why aren't they protesting day after day, saying, "Not in our name!"?
This company is doing part of what I proposed ANSI submit a standard to allow:
http://taoist.wordpress.com/2007/02/14/a-better-wa y/
Abstract IDs to the point where you can use one card for every single ID you need -- including credit and debit cards.
Despite the paranoia of many of the posters above, if you made it a commercial standard you could guarantee the security for everyone, including the companies and the ID holders, at a much higher level than we have currently.
Unfortunately my proposal has been tabled indefinitely.
Not to mention it doesn't support the popular viewpoint that the Earth is heating up to what will next month be catastrophic levels entirely due to BusHitler's failure to sign Kyoto, and anyone who says otherwise, whether or not they're a supporter of the Bush administration, is either mallevelantly evil, or stupid, or most likely, both.
You're forgetting that terrorism has a definition: the deliberate targeting of civilians with the intent to either exploit the death or suffering of the civilians (as is done with kidnappings or hostages) or with the intent to cause terror (and probably use that politically). Hamas, Hezbollah, and Fatah are all terrorist organizations, having, on an organizational level, deliberately targeted civilians for such purposes. The U.S. and Isreal are not: The bombing of a building with one terrorist or legitimate military target, and any number of civilians is not a terrorist act if the primary objective is the terrorist or legitimate target, it may be reprehensible depending on the worth of the target and the number of civilians (any civilian deaths are to a certain extent reprehensible), but it is not terrorist. Rogue U.S. soldiers who do deliberately kill civilians help prove that the U.S. is not a terrorist organization since we do subject them to the full persecution of the law and definitely do not condone such actions on an organizational level (meaning, yes, you could brand those individual soldiers as terrorists).
In the distant past, the U.S. has been a terrorist organization, certainly we targeted innocent Native Americans, and I'm sure I could think of other innocents if I tried.
I get that flexibility is one of the main points, but I don't think it's necessarily the main point. For one thing, it's fairly cheap, that's always important. The other thing is that during an impact, it becomes incredibly impact resistant. So during a crash, what are the things you want to be able to withstand any shrapnel?
You're making the mistake about government that most non-geeks classically make about software: i.e. getting confused about open source software being insecure by design. The best open source software is as secure as can be, but everyone can see exactly what's going on and so can trust it. Don't you want government to work the same way?
Umbilical cord stem cells are Adult stem cells, not Embryonic Stem cells. Adult stem cells are already in clinical trials in 4 or 5 different incredible areas in the medical field, but don't get nearly the funding of embryonic stem cells because people want to support something that gives them a scientific justification for supporting abortion.
I think interstellar travel will be achievable in the next century or two. Just about all the theories we have for what gravity actually is allow schemes to manipulate space time to achieve effective FTL (saying effective because you never actually travel faster than light, but you end up covering the distance faster than light could). The problem right now is we hardly have any evidence about which theory is correct.
Slashdot Mirror
Rare earth elements, yes. Oil, no. Oil is a complex molecular soup, yes, but made from fairly common elements - and we can in fact produce it ourselves: http://www.changingworldtech.com/ Oil is therefore not a finite resource, which is one more reason why continuing to be the only major country that doesn't try and develop its own resources, the Bakken reserves, ANWR, the Gulf deposits, and all of the other areas where we could be producing oil on our own land (and certainly cleaner than most other countries drilling processes), is purely idiotic, and religiously environmentalist.
Right. That's why the solar scientists managed to successfully predict the temperatures we've been seeing, both the warmer temperatures from several years ago, as well as the cooler temperatures of this year and last year. You're following the same line of denial as the Democrats and media keep pushing about the Republicans and their "lack" of health care plans - you just deny that such a thing exists and get like minded people to go along with you.
I never said regulation wasn't necessary - however, in the absence of government regulation, many industries are incredibly good at forming their own regulating organizations.
The Soviet Union managed to have economic growth rates exceeding the U.S. only by manipulating the numbers, overproducing specific items that it knew would be measured, for instance. As for Germany, they managed to have better growth than the U.S. prior to the war, but that's really comparing apples to apples - as our economic policies under FDR honestly weren't too different.
I think you're missing the point of the above commentator, or somewhat superimposing your own. Just as with the technology, there's a serious amount of handwaving that goes on from the writers regarding the economic functions of the star trek universe. Since scarcity does exist in the Star trek universe (not everyone has their own planet, starship, and holodeck yet), it should be dealt with. Admittedly much of the drama of star trek is concerning things that have little to do with anything really economic, and as Star Fleet is a military organization it can leave certain things behind the scenes just as many of our present and past military movies do - but just as with the technology, it would be nice if there was a little less handwaving and a little more thought. And by the way, study history. Capitalism IS teh best. Pretty much every totalitarian ideology has had some aspect of socialism at it's core, just because it can't stand to leave the economy alone - and every implementation of socialism has involved meddling in plenty of non-economic affairs, because the politicians can't resist. And also, there are plenty of capitalists who have motives that are entirely non-economic, but who realize that the more free our markets are, the easier it is to implement just about any other socially magnanimous change they strive for.
Sarah Palin was quoting Lincoln: http://www.getreligion.org/?p=3958 Amazing how that proves to the left that she's some sort of radical fundamentalist.
What do you think federalism was supposed to be? Our government is supposed to implement as little as possible at the national level for reasons very similar to that. It just shows you how far we've strayed, and why elevating most issues to national - rather than state - politics is a very poor idea.
Everything I learned in college and life about software design has taught me that the libertarians, and that tiny branch of the Republicans that are essentially Federalists, have things right politically - almost mathematically even - at least at the national level.
Mmm, I do love achievements
What's going on here is pretty simple to explain: Philosophically, the Slashdot community is probably pretty libertarian minded, but politically they tend to lean to the left, and here's why: The Republicans are a pretty big party, composed of a couple of different aspects. Essentially you've got your foreign policy hawks, your social conservatives, and your economic conservatives. For the past 20 years, the Republican party has been controlled mostly by the foreign policy hawks and the social conservatives, and the economic conservatives have remained only a steady undertone to the whole party's platform, but they've actually consistently remained there the whole time. They're the few who fight for limited government (even against the rest of their party oftentimes), clean and transparent government, against earmarks and pork (definitely against their own party oftentimes), and many of the other policies that Slashdotters (and Americans) in general seem to want. Slashdotters in general have fallen for the same BS that America as a whole fell for: the socially conservative/foreign policy hawk members of the Republican party proved to be somewhat corruptible - especially as that was an aspect of government that those Republicans didn't really care much about - so most members of the Slashdot community have done what seems to be the obvious choice, and embrace the main political opposition to the Republicans, the Democrats. Even though the Democrats stand for almost nothing the slashdot community values in government. Honestly, have you looked at the record of any Democratic politician? Take a look at how many nominations Obama's gone through that have corruption issues. Or how the Democrats have been running the stimulus bill through without letting anyone (even other Dems) get a good look at it. Or just look at the leaders of the party: Reid and Pelosi both have plenty of financial scandals, and yet America (and the slashdot community) somehow just looked past their actual records and took the "Culture of Corruption" bait in 2006 when the Democrats said they would operate a cleaner, more open government. What compounds the confusion is when America and Slashdot remember the few triumphs the economic conservatives have actually had in recent years. They get attributed to Clinton! When Newt Gingrich led the Republicans back into power in Congress in 1996, enough economic conservatives came to power that they were able to do two key things that the Americans loved: Pass a balanced budget, and reform welfare. The balanced budget led to a surplus (rather than a deficit) and welfare reform has been amazingly successful. And somehow they constantly get attributed to Clinton, even though he vetoed both multiple times until they were passed with veto proof majorities (and then he signed them so he could have his name attached in the off chance they worked).
Considering how small the footprint is, and how well Haiku/BeOS can play media, it seems like it would be ideally suited to be the OS of a smartphone, with minimal modification.
Cloning a mammoth is such a likely possibility because we have so many frozen specimens throughout Siberia and Canada. As far as I know, there are no Neanderthal specimens in any reasonably comparable state.
Apart from the advances that most of the other posters are mentioning, I would mention that Spacex has really focused not just on the rockets, but on the production line, which I consider their biggest innovations. Once they've got the kinks worked out, Elon Musk (the company president) has revealed that they've got a production line that will be able to turn out these rockets at an amazing pace of multiple rockets per month. This will really lower the costs to space, and is my favorite thing about Spacex.
Along those lines I would point out that Smalltalk was designed to be easy for children as well, so you might want to take a look at http://www.squeak.org/ It's never too early to pick up good programming habits.
Actually, the price of oil is severely overpriced: Congress has stopped our oil companies from developing any of the new oil fields they've discovered since the 70s, and we haven't allowed them to build any more refineries since then either.
I would point out that there are a couple other microkernels out there that have reached that point. The main one I'm familiar with is BeOS, which is currently being reborn in Haiku.
Simple Facts. Look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_wars for a list of current conflicts. Kashmir, Chechnya, Sudan, Kenya, The Phillipines, Thailand, and most of the other current African conflicts also involve Muslims, in addition to the various middle eastern conflicts. Recent conflicts that are considered resolved and so aren't on the list also include Kosovo. Admittedly, there's a couple conflicts I didn't know about, so I'll retract my statement of almost every conflict and change it to the majority of conflicts. As for nearly all terrorists around the world being Islamic, lets look at the numbers there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_designated_terrorist_organizations Notice that the Islamic and West Bank/Gaza organizations outnumber the non-Islamic organizations 40 to 26 - and that several of the non-Islamic organizations have disbanded, or disarmed (like the Northern Ireland organizations. Of course, number of organizations is different from number of members. So lets go by the number of attacks. Here's the past couple years, and I'll let you count: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents%2C_2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents%2C_2007 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents%2C_2006 Keep in mind that all of the terrorist incidents in Kashmir, Pakistan, The Phillipines, Algiers, and Europe (and many in Kosovo too) are all of Muslim origin. It is in fact quite a search not to find terrorist attacks not by Islamists. Yes, Christians have behaved badly throughout history, as have Muslims. The difference is that Christianity stopped being a religion that resolves its differences by killing hundreds of years ago. Islam still orders hits taken on people who write books that criticize it. "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" compares to the Danish cartoon riots? Please. "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", the piss christ, the elephant dung madonna - Christianity takes such violations daily, and they speak out about it, sure, but they don't riot in the streets and issue death warrants for those who created the violations. My arguments can be applied to any religion, anywhere, anytime? Yeah, sure. Its funny, cause I can't think of the last time Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, or Jews have attacked others in the name of religion, or at least wearing their religion on their sleeves and not been loudly denounced by the rest of their religion for their violence. Only the Muslims have this problem. Large portions of their religion are stuck in a completely medieval mindset, and the others rarely protest about it. And I'm not talking about the Muslims who live in the middle east or Africa protesting "not in our name". Why will Muslims in Europe, England, and America take to the streets to protest Danes drawing cartoons, but not the daily, despicable acts performed in the name of their religion, the daily violations of woman's rights, human rights, and fundamental liberties?
Quick, label everyone a bigot who points out that despite being labeled a religion of peace, nearly all terrorists around the world are Islamic, and at least one side of almost every conflict being fought on our planet is Muslim. Of course, those are just simple facts, so saying them makes me a bigot too, doesn't it?
There are indeed peace loving Muslims out there, who support liberty, human rights, and all that jazz. However, while Muslims will take to the streets in riots when some Danes draw cartoons of Mohammed, the streets remain empty and few, if any Muslims rise to denounce the honor killings, female circumcision, targeting of civilian (Heck, even civilian non-Jewish) populations by Al Qaeda/Hamas/Hezbollah/Fatah, executions for being raped without four male witnesses around to vouch for the woman, executions for converting to a different religion...etc. And all of these activities are committed by people claiming to do so in the name of Islam.
If Muslims are truly opposed to these activities, why aren't they protesting day after day, saying, "Not in our name!"?
This company is doing part of what I proposed ANSI submit a standard to allow: http://taoist.wordpress.com/2007/02/14/a-better-wa y/
Abstract IDs to the point where you can use one card for every single ID you need -- including credit and debit cards.
Despite the paranoia of many of the posters above, if you made it a commercial standard you could guarantee the security for everyone, including the companies and the ID holders, at a much higher level than we have currently.
Unfortunately my proposal has been tabled indefinitely.
Not to mention it doesn't support the popular viewpoint that the Earth is heating up to what will next month be catastrophic levels entirely due to BusHitler's failure to sign Kyoto, and anyone who says otherwise, whether or not they're a supporter of the Bush administration, is either mallevelantly evil, or stupid, or most likely, both.
1 106?show_comments=no
9 /14/23#c23
By the way, by taking the position you did, you might be facing Nuremburg style trials in the future:
http://gristmill.grist.org/print/2006/9/19/11408/
And also, Bush is also responsible for the earthquake in Hawaii:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/10/15/19492
You're forgetting that terrorism has a definition: the deliberate targeting of civilians with the intent to either exploit the death or suffering of the civilians (as is done with kidnappings or hostages) or with the intent to cause terror (and probably use that politically). Hamas, Hezbollah, and Fatah are all terrorist organizations, having, on an organizational level, deliberately targeted civilians for such purposes. The U.S. and Isreal are not: The bombing of a building with one terrorist or legitimate military target, and any number of civilians is not a terrorist act if the primary objective is the terrorist or legitimate target, it may be reprehensible depending on the worth of the target and the number of civilians (any civilian deaths are to a certain extent reprehensible), but it is not terrorist. Rogue U.S. soldiers who do deliberately kill civilians help prove that the U.S. is not a terrorist organization since we do subject them to the full persecution of the law and definitely do not condone such actions on an organizational level (meaning, yes, you could brand those individual soldiers as terrorists).
In the distant past, the U.S. has been a terrorist organization, certainly we targeted innocent Native Americans, and I'm sure I could think of other innocents if I tried.
I get that flexibility is one of the main points, but I don't think it's necessarily the main point. For one thing, it's fairly cheap, that's always important. The other thing is that during an impact, it becomes incredibly impact resistant. So during a crash, what are the things you want to be able to withstand any shrapnel?
That's true: you wouldn't put it in auto paint, but you might put it around gas lines, the gas tank, and windows and such.
No, not in cars. Cars are meant to crumple, it keeps the occupants safer.
You're making the mistake about government that most non-geeks classically make about software: i.e. getting confused about open source software being insecure by design. The best open source software is as secure as can be, but everyone can see exactly what's going on and so can trust it. Don't you want government to work the same way?
Umbilical cord stem cells are Adult stem cells, not Embryonic Stem cells. Adult stem cells are already in clinical trials in 4 or 5 different incredible areas in the medical field, but don't get nearly the funding of embryonic stem cells because people want to support something that gives them a scientific justification for supporting abortion.
I think interstellar travel will be achievable in the next century or two. Just about all the theories we have for what gravity actually is allow schemes to manipulate space time to achieve effective FTL (saying effective because you never actually travel faster than light, but you end up covering the distance faster than light could). The problem right now is we hardly have any evidence about which theory is correct.