I just have to say, nice comment, bad moderator rating. Not sure why you, who give an actual reference and logical argument, are the only comment I have seen so far in this sub-thread who has gotten the off-topic label. You think some people are moderating based on their political preference instead of content? No, couldn't be:)
Shocking how politics seem to bring out people's ability to make sweeping statements without any supporting information.
Sure, everyone knows that Bush's last victory was so close that it had to be called by the supreme court, and it seems reasonable to say that previous elections had been the same. But if you do some research, what do you find?
I think a more accurate statement is to say that in recent presidential elections (the last 6), only W's victories have been within the statistical noise. Do you want to revise your previous statement?
Do you have any links or references indicating that there were other sources for the claim that Saddam was trying get uranium from Niger, or are you just making unsupported claims to muddy the water? I recommend that you do a search on the web, not just a few blogs, and read the information that you find from a variety of sources. What I find is that the basis for the Bush Administration's claim that Saddam was seeking uranium from Iraq was information from the British goverment. The British government based it's information on a document that the IAEA was able to determine were forgeries in a few hours. Please note that this link is not from a site I frequent, just one of the first that came up with a goodle search. Also covered in that link is that "Well before the IAEA rained on the pro-war parade, the CIA was telling its masters in the Bush administration that the British intelligence on the Niger connection was nonsense." In otherwords the CIA was telling Bush that the intelligence was bad (as I mentioned), yet bush still included it in his SOTU Address. He lied.
Regarding Europes participation in the War in Iraq, I know it is easier to argue with someone when you put words in their mouth. Much easier than actually providing references and clearly arguing your points. However, I did not say they none of Europe participated. I would say that different countries in Europe made different decisions regarding participation in Iraq, and that some choose to participate with varying levels of committment. The main point I would make is that many of our previously staunch allies did not participate, and that, realistically, only England participated in a significant way. I know some might try to argue that their was a coalition of huge proportion, but only America had over 100K troops, and only America and England had over 10K troops, and everyone else was well below that, measured in the few thousand, a few hundred, or well wishes.
You do bring up an interesting point - it is possible that Bush and his administration believed that Saddam possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction. However, there are many problems with this:
Bush had indicated previously that he wanted to attack Iraq.
The Neo-cons had previously indicated that they wanted to attack Iraq.
Bush had previously indicated that he wanted to be a war president
There was a ton of information available that Saddam did not have WMDs, but this information, and the people who presented this information, was ignored and attacked by the administration.
Also, I didn't believe that Saddam had WMDs - I believed that he wanted them, but I thought it was extremely unlikely that he would be able to hide the WMDs and the infrastructure necessary to produce them from a dedicated multi-year search. Afterall, if the Bush administration had such clear intelligence that Saddam had the WMDs, why couldn't they share that information with the Weapon inspectors?
Sorry to get off topic here, but I cannot let such a pathetic comparison stand.
Are you seriously saying that since Clinton lied about getting a blowjob, it is OK that the Bush administration lied about intelligence to justify going to war? Don't forget, Clinton got impeached for his lie by the House, but not convicted by the Senate. Given the fact that the repurcussions of Bush's lie is so much greater (we are at fucking war and there was no uranium purchased from Africa, no WMDs, no connection to 9/11), shouldn't the consequences be greater? Maybe Impeachment, Conviction and Jail time? I would say one day for each death that has occurred during the Iraq war - that should work out to between 30 to 300 years.
Sorry to not have much of a sense of humor about this, but the repurcussions of this lie are just too tragic and painful.
It is too bad that the person who wrote the title didnt bother to RTFA:
Shapouri's most recent analysis, which the USDA published in 2004, comes to the exact opposite conclusion of Patzek's: Ethanol, he said, has a positive energy balance, containing 67 percent more energy than is used to manufacture it. Optimistic that the process will become even more efficient in the future, he pointed out that scientists are experimenting with using alternative sources like solid waste, grass and wood to make ethanol. If successful on a large scale, these techniques could drastically reduce the amount of fossil fuel needed for ethanol production.
The analysis showing that Ethanol uses more energy that it produces is based on outdated farming and processing techniques. Using modern techniques, it is energy positive.
For all of his claims that this is a simple case and implying that it will easily be settled for SCOXe, he completely ignores (or is ignorant of) the fact that Novell has waived any contractual claims on SCOXe's behalf based on the contract between Novell and SCOXe. So yes, this guy is correct, this is a simple case, but not for the reasons he thinks, and not for a SCOXe victory.
Working with FPGAs, I was quite curious to find out what kind of FPGA they are using - both Xilinx and Altera have some advanced hard functions (such as Multiply Accumulate functions, Block RAM, etc) that seem like they could have a huge impact on the abilities of this board. Unfortunately, after browsing through the links, I had no luck in finding any information about what FPGA they are using. Was anyone able to find this out? Even looking at the pictures of the board, it only shows the bottom side of the board, so it is impossible to see the chip markings!
Are you serious??? You want the United States to focus on one scientific goal?... The US is still (ostensibly) a free market, capitalist country. Each citizen and industry is free to pursue their own interests. And yes, that even includes interests that might not fit perfectly into narrow-minded people's ideas of what is Best For The Country(tm)... free market economy, non-conformists have made leaps of creativity and ingenuity that have created some of the most helpful technologies used around the world.
You don't mention the many leaps of creativity that have been made in the pursuit of government mandated projects - from satellites to TANG to velcro. You comment implies that the government should not decide that something is the "Right Thing(tm)" to do, but our history has a long history of deciding things were the "Right Thing(tm)" to do:
War of Independence
Apollo program
Vietnam War
WWI/II
Space Shuttle
United Nations
Eradicating Polio
Invading Iraq
Social Security
etc etc etc.
I have deliberately made a list that include items that are inarguable worthwhile and some that inarguable worthless, and others that are debatable - the point is that inarguably, our government will decide somethings are the "Right Thing(tm)" to do, and do them. It is our responsibility to try and offer up possibities of what these endeavors might be.
Arguing that the U.S. Is "(ostensible) a free market capilist coutry" is just an idealistic statement used to avoid debating the merits of the parents statement. As I mentioned it seems that the parents post has a fair bit of validity, and I think that it is deserving of a response of reasoned creitique instead of a miguided rant.
The person that you are responding to is talking about long term goals for the United States as we move through the 21st century. What I read a proposal from the parent advocating trying to free ourselves from dependence on foreign oil. The dependence that the parent is addressing is currently subsidized by our government and tax dollars in the form of wars and political clout. If it weren't for our dependence on oil, significantly less money would be flowing into the middle east, which would probabaly result in significantly less violence radiating from the middle east. In addition, providing for multiple sources of energy would help to prevent decreases in availability of one energy source would not have the ability to drag on the global economy, as oil currently is at $50+ per barrell.
I think that is is particularly ironic that the parent post was advocating redirecting some of our military expenditures towards a commendible goal that would potentially lift all the pies higher. Yet you are complaining about the parents "command-and-control utopia", when he is advocating moving our focus away from the military, the ultimate command-and-control utopia, and moving that focus to what are technologies that will free of us from economically and ecologically damaging energy sources.
Would it be possible to use the existing velocity of the ship and a slingshot around Mars to redirect the ship back towards earth? This would ruin the mission, as it would not actually stop at mars, but would save lives.
It's significant because the debuates give Americans a chance to see the candidates "one-on-one" presenting their ideas and defending their actions. If one of them is using a audio prompt, it gives a significantly unfair advantage to the one with the technological superiority, in this case the incumbent, and misrepresents the candidates ability to think on their feet, and explain themselves.
I don't think that it is possible to call something balanced objective when it was written by a columnist of National Review online, an Associate Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute, particularly when the subject matter is Fahrenheit 9/11. It's like asking Greenpeace to provide a balanced objective take on logging old growth, or the NRA to provied a balanced objective take on anti-gun legislation. Just the fact that you refer to it as a "list of deceipts" displays your own bias.
" Unemployment is currently at the same level that Clinton ran on in the 1996 election, 5.4%."
Although this is true, it does not reflect the fact that there is a huge number of people that have given up finding work, or are no longer able to get unemployment benefits, so don't count towards the 5.4%. Over 1 Million jobs have been lost under Bush when he had promised to create 5 Million - just this year, they said there would be over 2 million new jobs this year! This is the first time since Herbert Hoover, that a president has lost jobs during his precidency. Claiming that Clinton had a 5.4% unemployment rate, so things are the same is either using statistics to lie, or not understanding the statistics.
On the issue of whether or not the president has control over the unemployment rate is a debate that goes beyond my ability to fairly engage. However, even if he doesn't have complete control, he can influence, and bottom line, if a Republican President, and Republican Senate and a Republican House aren't responsible, who is? This administration has not been big on taking responsibility, but it has got to start some time!
So, here's another hypothetical example. Let's say Novell announces they own lines 5000-5435 of the linux kernel; that those lines were stolen from NetWare by a disgruntled employee who then submitted them to Linux as his own work at some point; that they have indisputable proof of this; and they further announce that anyone who wants to sell linux owes them $699 a copy for Novell's 435 lines of code there.
<NITPICK>Wouldn't that be 436 lines of code? </NITPICK>
Didn't we prove someone could learn communication from chimps and then promptly elect them president? The surprising thing is that it seems like Bush got some of the looks in addition to the mannerisms.
Um, exactly how do you plan on moving a 22,000 mile long cable? In oribit?!
Actually, it's worse than that - the cable is about 100,000 km long, or 60,000 miles! But, if they build it adjacent to the existing one, the way that they would move it is the same way that they would move the elevator to dodge satellites and space debris - by moving the base. Because the actual center of gravity of a space elevator is slightly above geosynch orbit, it has a net pull away from earth. If the base is moved, the elevator will not fall, it will re-orient itself above the new location of the base. It the NIAC phase 2 report, Dr. Edwards talks about moving the base of the Space Elevator a few kilometers a day, just to avoid space debris. Even assuming that the Space elevator can only move a maximum of 50 km a day, that is still enough to gradually move it just about anywhere in the world within a year, which is significantly quicker delivery time than starting from scratch.
Alternatively,if they just put another cable deployment system in orbit, it is easily moved in space to the desired location (potentially in days or even hours) and then deploy the new cable. Because the lift capability of a "mature" space elevator is significantly more than our current launch capabilies, this new cable could be premade to be a "mature" cable. This would allow it bypass the process of gradually addingthickness to the cable through many climber runs, so that it would start off with heavy lift cababilities. Again, a significant time savings over building one from scratch.
Should the ribbon break all that would happen is the ribbion would float back to Earth like paper and no one would get hurt.
This is not necessarily true. While the impact of the cable would be pretty minimal - nothing worse than a ticker tape parade - the real risk is from all of the nanotubes being inhaled. There has not been much research into the effects of inhalation of carbon nano-tubes, but initial studies indicate that the reaction could be extremely toxic.
You might be right if all countries had high regulatory hurdles in place in order to build something like this. For better or for worse, if the technology and money is there, I would take odds that there would be a country somewhere that would be willing to take the risk. Whichever country serves as the access to point to the Space Elevator is suddenly going to ge the center of a huge amount of commerce, trade and tourism. And the best or worse thing - they don't have significantly more risk from having it in their country than any of the other countries nearby.
The cable on mars would need to be significantly shorter. If you check out my journal, I have a discussion about using a Mars based space elevator as a means of doing a sample return mission on Mars, as well as establishing some infrastructure for the use of future missions. Seems like it would be a great means of testing it in a lower requirement setting (due to the lower gravity), and for testing it in a place that would not threaten any (known) life.
I believe the article states that it will be two years until we can make carbon nanotube cables that meet the 100GPa limit for a space elevator - not that we will be able to produce it in 100000km lengths required for a space elevator. That is why it will take another decade or so to actually build the damn thing!
Slashdot Mirror
Do I get points for consistency? :)
I agree, and agreed I should be more precise upthread.
I just have to say, nice comment, bad moderator rating. Not sure why you, who give an actual reference and logical argument, are the only comment I have seen so far in this sub-thread who has gotten the off-topic label. You think some people are moderating based on their political preference instead of content? No, couldn't be :)
Sure, everyone knows that Bush's last victory was so close that it had to be called by the supreme court, and it seems reasonable to say that previous elections had been the same. But if you do some research, what do you find?
- 1996 - Clinton won 49% to 40%, 379 to 159 electoral college votes. Now you can argue that it was thrown off by Perot, but you cannot say that it was in the statistical margin.
- 1992 - Clinton won 42% to 37%, 370 to 168 EC voltes. Again, Perot threw things off, but again, clearly outide the statistical margin.
- 1988 - Bush Sr. won, 53% to 45%, 426 to 111 EC votes. Not close.
- 1984 - Reagan won 58% to 40%, 525 to 13 EC votes - a landslide.
I think a more accurate statement is to say that in recent presidential elections (the last 6), only W's victories have been within the statistical noise. Do you want to revise your previous statement?Thanks for the correction - I will try to be more precise in the future. And here I was worried about saying "America" instead of "U.S.A." :)
Do you have any links or references indicating that there were other sources for the claim that Saddam was trying get uranium from Niger, or are you just making unsupported claims to muddy the water? I recommend that you do a search on the web, not just a few blogs, and read the information that you find from a variety of sources. What I find is that the basis for the Bush Administration's claim that Saddam was seeking uranium from Iraq was information from the British goverment. The British government based it's information on a document that the IAEA was able to determine were forgeries in a few hours. Please note that this link is not from a site I frequent, just one of the first that came up with a goodle search. Also covered in that link is that "Well before the IAEA rained on the pro-war parade, the CIA was telling its masters in the Bush administration that the British intelligence on the Niger connection was nonsense." In otherwords the CIA was telling Bush that the intelligence was bad (as I mentioned), yet bush still included it in his SOTU Address. He lied.
Regarding Europes participation in the War in Iraq, I know it is easier to argue with someone when you put words in their mouth. Much easier than actually providing references and clearly arguing your points. However, I did not say they none of Europe participated. I would say that different countries in Europe made different decisions regarding participation in Iraq, and that some choose to participate with varying levels of committment. The main point I would make is that many of our previously staunch allies did not participate, and that, realistically, only England participated in a significant way. I know some might try to argue that their was a coalition of huge proportion, but only America had over 100K troops, and only America and England had over 10K troops, and everyone else was well below that, measured in the few thousand, a few hundred, or well wishes.
The blowjob part is hysterical.
{heh heh} he said blowjob {heh heh}
The war part is tragic.
- Bush had indicated previously that he wanted to attack Iraq.
- The Neo-cons had previously indicated that they wanted to attack Iraq.
- Bush had previously indicated that he wanted to be a war president
- There was a ton of information available that Saddam did not have WMDs, but this information, and the people who presented this information, was ignored and attacked by the administration.
Also, I didn't believe that Saddam had WMDs - I believed that he wanted them, but I thought it was extremely unlikely that he would be able to hide the WMDs and the infrastructure necessary to produce them from a dedicated multi-year search. Afterall, if the Bush administration had such clear intelligence that Saddam had the WMDs, why couldn't they share that information with the Weapon inspectors?Sorry to get off topic here, but I cannot let such a pathetic comparison stand.
Are you seriously saying that since Clinton lied about getting a blowjob, it is OK that the Bush administration lied about intelligence to justify going to war? Don't forget, Clinton got impeached for his lie by the House, but not convicted by the Senate. Given the fact that the repurcussions of Bush's lie is so much greater (we are at fucking war and there was no uranium purchased from Africa, no WMDs, no connection to 9/11), shouldn't the consequences be greater? Maybe Impeachment, Conviction and Jail time? I would say one day for each death that has occurred during the Iraq war - that should work out to between 30 to 300 years.
Sorry to not have much of a sense of humor about this, but the repurcussions of this lie are just too tragic and painful.
For all of his claims that this is a simple case and implying that it will easily be settled for SCOXe, he completely ignores (or is ignorant of) the fact that Novell has waived any contractual claims on SCOXe's behalf based on the contract between Novell and SCOXe. So yes, this guy is correct, this is a simple case, but not for the reasons he thinks, and not for a SCOXe victory.
Working with FPGAs, I was quite curious to find out what kind of FPGA they are using - both Xilinx and Altera have some advanced hard functions (such as Multiply Accumulate functions, Block RAM, etc) that seem like they could have a huge impact on the abilities of this board. Unfortunately, after browsing through the links, I had no luck in finding any information about what FPGA they are using. Was anyone able to find this out? Even looking at the pictures of the board, it only shows the bottom side of the board, so it is impossible to see the chip markings!
You don't mention the many leaps of creativity that have been made in the pursuit of government mandated projects - from satellites to TANG to velcro. You comment implies that the government should not decide that something is the "Right Thing(tm)" to do, but our history has a long history of deciding things were the "Right Thing(tm)" to do:
- War of Independence
- Apollo program
- Vietnam War
- WWI/II
- Space Shuttle
- United Nations
- Eradicating Polio
- Invading Iraq
- Social Security
- etc etc etc.
I have deliberately made a list that include items that are inarguable worthwhile and some that inarguable worthless, and others that are debatable - the point is that inarguably, our government will decide somethings are the "Right Thing(tm)" to do, and do them. It is our responsibility to try and offer up possibities of what these endeavors might be.Arguing that the U.S. Is "(ostensible) a free market capilist coutry" is just an idealistic statement used to avoid debating the merits of the parents statement. As I mentioned it seems that the parents post has a fair bit of validity, and I think that it is deserving of a response of reasoned creitique instead of a miguided rant.
The person that you are responding to is talking about long term goals for the United States as we move through the 21st century. What I read a proposal from the parent advocating trying to free ourselves from dependence on foreign oil. The dependence that the parent is addressing is currently subsidized by our government and tax dollars in the form of wars and political clout. If it weren't for our dependence on oil, significantly less money would be flowing into the middle east, which would probabaly result in significantly less violence radiating from the middle east. In addition, providing for multiple sources of energy would help to prevent decreases in availability of one energy source would not have the ability to drag on the global economy, as oil currently is at $50+ per barrell.
I think that is is particularly ironic that the parent post was advocating redirecting some of our military expenditures towards a commendible goal that would potentially lift all the pies higher. Yet you are complaining about the parents "command-and-control utopia", when he is advocating moving our focus away from the military, the ultimate command-and-control utopia, and moving that focus to what are technologies that will free of us from economically and ecologically damaging energy sources.
Would it be possible to use the existing velocity of the ship and a slingshot around Mars to redirect the ship back towards earth? This would ruin the mission, as it would not actually stop at mars, but would save lives.
It's significant because the debuates give Americans a chance to see the candidates "one-on-one" presenting their ideas and defending their actions. If one of them is using a audio prompt, it gives a significantly unfair advantage to the one with the technological superiority, in this case the incumbent, and misrepresents the candidates ability to think on their feet, and explain themselves.
For a detailed rebuttal of David Kopel's detailed rebuttal of Fahrenheit 9/11, please check out Deception; Desperate Right Wing Attacks on Fahrenheit 9/11 or Debunking '59 Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11'
I don't think that it is possible to call something balanced objective when it was written by a columnist of National Review online, an Associate Policy Analyst at the Cato Institute, particularly when the subject matter is Fahrenheit 9/11. It's like asking Greenpeace to provide a balanced objective take on logging old growth, or the NRA to provied a balanced objective take on anti-gun legislation. Just the fact that you refer to it as a "list of deceipts" displays your own bias.
For a rebuttal of David Kopel's list, please check out Deception; Desperate Right Wing Attacks on Fahrenheit 9/11 or Debunking '59 Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11'
" Unemployment is currently at the same level that Clinton ran on in the 1996 election, 5.4%."
Although this is true, it does not reflect the fact that there is a huge number of people that have given up finding work, or are no longer able to get unemployment benefits, so don't count towards the 5.4%. Over 1 Million jobs have been lost under Bush when he had promised to create 5 Million - just this year, they said there would be over 2 million new jobs this year! This is the first time since Herbert Hoover, that a president has lost jobs during his precidency. Claiming that Clinton had a 5.4% unemployment rate, so things are the same is either using statistics to lie, or not understanding the statistics.
On the issue of whether or not the president has control over the unemployment rate is a debate that goes beyond my ability to fairly engage. However, even if he doesn't have complete control, he can influence, and bottom line, if a Republican President, and Republican Senate and a Republican House aren't responsible, who is? This administration has not been big on taking responsibility, but it has got to start some time!
Didn't we prove someone could learn communication from chimps and then promptly elect them president? The surprising thing is that it seems like Bush got some of the looks in addition to the mannerisms.
{ducks tomatoes}
Um, exactly how do you plan on moving a 22,000 mile long cable? In oribit?!
Actually, it's worse than that - the cable is about 100,000 km long, or 60,000 miles! But, if they build it adjacent to the existing one, the way that they would move it is the same way that they would move the elevator to dodge satellites and space debris - by moving the base. Because the actual center of gravity of a space elevator is slightly above geosynch orbit, it has a net pull away from earth. If the base is moved, the elevator will not fall, it will re-orient itself above the new location of the base. It the NIAC phase 2 report, Dr. Edwards talks about moving the base of the Space Elevator a few kilometers a day, just to avoid space debris. Even assuming that the Space elevator can only move a maximum of 50 km a day, that is still enough to gradually move it just about anywhere in the world within a year, which is significantly quicker delivery time than starting from scratch.
Alternatively,if they just put another cable deployment system in orbit, it is easily moved in space to the desired location (potentially in days or even hours) and then deploy the new cable. Because the lift capability of a "mature" space elevator is significantly more than our current launch capabilies, this new cable could be premade to be a "mature" cable. This would allow it bypass the process of gradually addingthickness to the cable through many climber runs, so that it would start off with heavy lift cababilities. Again, a significant time savings over building one from scratch.
Should the ribbon break all that would happen is the ribbion would float back to Earth like paper and no one would get hurt. This is not necessarily true. While the impact of the cable would be pretty minimal - nothing worse than a ticker tape parade - the real risk is from all of the nanotubes being inhaled. There has not been much research into the effects of inhalation of carbon nano-tubes, but initial studies indicate that the reaction could be extremely toxic.
You might be right if all countries had high regulatory hurdles in place in order to build something like this. For better or for worse, if the technology and money is there, I would take odds that there would be a country somewhere that would be willing to take the risk. Whichever country serves as the access to point to the Space Elevator is suddenly going to ge the center of a huge amount of commerce, trade and tourism. And the best or worse thing - they don't have significantly more risk from having it in their country than any of the other countries nearby.
The cable on mars would need to be significantly shorter. If you check out my journal, I have a discussion about using a Mars based space elevator as a means of doing a sample return mission on Mars, as well as establishing some infrastructure for the use of future missions. Seems like it would be a great means of testing it in a lower requirement setting (due to the lower gravity), and for testing it in a place that would not threaten any (known) life.
I believe the article states that it will be two years until we can make carbon nanotube cables that meet the 100GPa limit for a space elevator - not that we will be able to produce it in 100000km lengths required for a space elevator. That is why it will take another decade or so to actually build the damn thing!