If a project is not worth doing without government subsidy, then it is economically not viable.
No.
If a project returns more than you invest, it is economically viable.
That is not the same as it being "worth" doing for any particular individual at any particular point in time.
It is the up-front cash outlay that the GP found prohibitive. They would almost certainly more than make up that investment in the long term since break-even times are well below warranted life times. However that doesn't mean it's "worth" spending that cash when your savings are low and you are worried about losing your job and having to make mortgage payments. Making that money back and more in reduced energy bills over the course of a couple decades doesn't change that. An imminently viable project, not undertaken because of temporary practicalities.
If the subsidy reduces the up-front outlay, then that means more people can take advantage. The more people who use solar energy, the less demand their is for other power sources. An extra coal plant may not have to be built, or at least existing ones produce less, reducing pollution and increasing quality of life, not to mention reducing the costs of environmental cleanup etc. The subsidy itself may not actually break even (though I bet a lot of power plants get subsidies or tax breaks too). I don't know. But it isn't changing an economically non-viable project into a viable one. It already was.
I used to say this, but the answer is that everybody knows those classes don't lead to "good" jobs. That's what feminists told me, and I have to say I agree.
It's going to be a big concern when women begin to outnumber men in "good" fields though. I think it's already happening with medical schools but I may be misremembering.
That's exactly correct. Nobody cares about gender disparity in bad jobs. In well-paying high-demand jobs like nursing, the under-representation of men is seen as a serious issue and steps are being taken to address it.
One interesting thing is that people trying to address the lack of men in nursing find that there's a preconception that nursing is "women's work" and that a male nurse is "unmanly". It's a holdover from when all the doctors were men, and beside them stood their subservient female nurse. On-job discrimination mostly comes from male doctors. So here's a nice mirroring: men don't go into nursing because their peers think it's beneath them, while women don't go into IT because their peers think it's above them.
Notice how the GP says that the sexism is all imagined, but that the main reason he wants women to become better represented is to improve the scenery. Nice. Me, I want women to feel more comfortable taking computer related jobs because we're obviously missing out on a lot of talent by discriminating. But as every slashdot thread on this topic unintentionally proves, we have a long, long way to go.
Theoretical physics has a lot of crap in it too, but at least they try to back up their claims with math and verified evidence. You are doing neither.
Worse, his theory explicitly disclaims the mountains of existing experimental evidence. Say what you will about String Theory, it at least attempts to explain the same observed phenomenon that existing theories explain. This loon thinks you can ignore all the experiments demonstrating Conservation of Momentum simply because you don't like it. It's going to be quite a challenge experimentally demonstrating the opposite.
Sir, I'll have you know that Wikipedia page is well researched, and contains links to a variety of serious scholarly works on the subject and is ergo more informative than any single link to a source you approve of would be. Your refusal to even click on it just demonstrates that you have no affinity for nor desire to learn about the subject that WP page is about.
Yeah, that's exactly what they're saying. They recorded a lot of data, and it was the kind of data they wanted -- just in case you were worried the lack of the predicted totally awesome dust plume meant the whole mission was a failure -- but it's going to take a while to analyze so sorry no conclusions yet.
Personally, I could give a crap about their data analysis and finding water blah blah. To me, the next step is clear: Repeat the mission, but without all that stupid science equipment garbage and instead just a much heavier impactor aimed at a much more visible part of the moon. We need to kick the moon's ass! It's laughing at us right now! "Oh that the best you got?"
If I were in charge of the Ministry of Truth, I'd give a promotion to the guy who developed a central system for detecting whistleblowers and spreading misinformation.
And if I were in charge of MiniTru, I'd give the guy a promotion to highly secret position, and then quietly have him killed. He's obviously too clever to be trusted.
The funny thing is that he keeps rejecting the relativistic kinetic energy equation, when using it actually shows a higher amount of energy needed to accelerate a mass to a given velocity which you would think supports his point.
Like, say, in a car game like a GTA, having actual brands of cars, and having their physics more or less be accurate for the car model (so that the BMWs and Ferraris accelerate much more quickly than, say, the Smart Car, and being able to 'Test Drive' the car in-game by jacking it from a car lot. (Note, I've not yet played any of the Recent GTAs, so they may have even done this, by now, for all I know - the last GTA I played was Vice City, though I'm slowly catching up with the rest of the world).
Even Vice City had cars based on real cars -- you know, like the things that look like Corvettes but are called something else? -- and with a wide variety of different performance statistics. In fact looking at lists of cars on GameFAQs, there are a lot more parameters than I'd even noticed playing the game; it has a pretty complex driving model. But at the very least it has acceleration, top speed, various handling parameters, front/rear wheel drive, and so on.
The only thing getting real car makers involved would do is introduce all the bullshit politicking around wanting to have their product shown in a positive light that you envision happening with Coke/Pepi. The BMW would accelerate as fast as the Viper, not because that's realistic, but because BMW paid more money than Dodge. Also the Beamer would be immune to damage so it always looked pretty (when driving a beat-up car with the door missing is a big part of the fun).
I've always hated how the character you're playing never needs to eat, drink, sleep or do something fun once in a while. He always just adventures and fights the bad guys till the campaign is over.
There have been games that have done it. Ultima 7 stands out as an obvious one. Your characters would get hungry and thirsty, and you'd have to feed them.
Guess what? It was annoying and added nothing to the game. Other than you had to have a character who was your designated Meat Mule. Or you could waste reagents that could be used to cast something awesome or useful like Fireball or Telekinesis to instead cast Create Food constantly. It just distracted from the game. You're in a dungeon chasing down a villain, and suddenly you need to hand out snacks to your party?
I'm really confused by the way you phrase that "eat, drink, sleep or do something fun once in a while". Is "something fun" supposed to describe eating, drinking or sleeping? Sleeping is fun? Maybe in real life if you have a cool dream or the pleasant feeling of waking up rested, but watching a character sleep? How is that fun? In most games where sleep is a way to restore hit points, the time you spend watching your character sleep is basically punishment for having to use the 'free' hit point restorer.
Yeah The Sims is there, but its not exactly an RPG and haven't been fun since Sims 1 came out (and that stopped being fun after a few expansion packs too).
And why would that be? Insufficient biological function modeling? Or perhaps because it has too much and too little game?
Combine normal "every day in life" things like these with a good, self-thinking AI and it makes a great sandbox game and brings some pause to the constant fighting, massive storytelling and questing in RPG's.
Yeah. I want my pauses in questing to be by choice and to involve going on other quests or doing other fun and useful things. Not serving the needs of my (imaginary) body. "You eat the cheese" is not fun.
Going back to Ultima 7 -- you could do all kinds of things that weren't related to the main quest or any quest at all but that were fun. You could make clothes, weapons, and armor. You could chat up the waitress at the tavern who had nothing to do with the plot. You could cook meals. They wanted to make the world realistic and interactive. Mandatory eating was just another part of that, but a misstep. Because none of those other things were mandatory. You never had to stop mid-dungeon and weave a shirt. That would be annoying and pointless.
I dunno... I can't tell you that you don't want to play an RPG where you have to periodically dig a whole to shit in. But I have a suspicion that you might not be as enamored with the idea once actually confronted with it. I thought "Oh you have to actually eat, that's neat!" when I started playing U7, and I changed my mind pretty quickly.
I take it you don't watch basic cable TV or basic satellite TV. You pay for it, but it still has ads.
I watch the show, I don't watch the ads.
If the ad were playing side-by-side or within the TV show itself, then no, I wouldn't watch that TV at all.
They aren't talking about having ads during loading screens, or as separate cut-scenes, where I can flip the channel or go get another beer. They're talking about planting the ads within the game so that you can't both play the game and avoid the ads.
Yeah, getting them to agree to allow inspectors into their nuclear site, and getting Russia and China to agree to sanctions against Iran if they don't satisfy the inspectors, is totally pushing to let Iran get nuclear arms. Hello, any attempt to stop them that doesn't involve Russia and China would be ineffective. But Russia was never going to do that while we're threatening them with a missile shield.
The intelligence community knew about the "secret" reactor for years. What did Bush do? Make threats he couldn't possibly follow through on because our military was already overstretched? Yeah, that sure stopped Iran in its tracks.
I'm sorry, one sided nuclear disarmament while radical militant islamists hell bent on wiping Israel off the face of the map are getting nuclear weaponry is clearly myopic at best.
Lol, he isn't disarming us any faster than we have been for decades. We can get rid of a lot of nukes and still have enough to make Iran into a glass parking lot with enough to spare to deal with anyone -- everyone -- else. That was kinda Ahmadinejad's whole point about the "hey how can you point fingers at us when you have nukes?" that you may have missed. Don't worry, Obama was not swayed by that "logic".
Of course it is great that everyone else is getting rid of nuclear arms, like Russia, Pakistan, China, North Korea.....
Russia actually is, at more or less the same pace we are. This is largely because we both realize that there's no point to having an arsenal capable of annihilating everything on the planet five times over. It's just an expensive waste and a relic of the Cold War arms race. You only really need enough to, say, blow up every major city in Russia/the U.S. to ensure MAD politics continue to work.
Unless someone decides to build a missile shield.
Oh wait, they aren't. But we have "Hope" and "Change we can Believe in" and "Yes we can" sloganeering, which is good enough for a Peace Prize 11 days after taking office.
Yeah, the peace prize is bullshit. I'm with you on that one.
Philosopher: "I'd like to buy a lever of infinite length and an immovable place to stand"
Storekeeper: "Sorry I'm fresh out of axiomatic mechanisms today".
Again implying you think it's a physical impossibility and thus making you completely, factually wrong.
I guess I must be more of an engineer than you are.
Or that I'm willing to consider a longer development time than you. It's not like we have a deadline of 2019 to create relativistic-speed spacecraft! I think you're short-sighted, a poor trait for an engineer not required to operate under unrealistic deadlines, and that's giving you the benefit of the doubt that once again you have misrepresented yourself.
I took this news as a sign that the Nobel committee determined that the ongoing lengthy engagements with Iraq and Afghanistan are a bloody means to a peaceful end.
Yeah I highly doubt that. It's probably based on his non-war-related foreign diplomacy efforts. I don't agree with awarding him the prize, I think it's far too premature and there has to be a more deserving person at this point in time. Maybe once he has a chance to actually accomplish things and there's even the tiniest bit of hindsight, but not now. Oh well. They gave the prize to Arafat, which is a statement equivalent to "I have little respect for the Peace Prize committee."
I think every president discovers [that the world is more complicated than a sound bite].
And I think Obama already knew this, and it's a lot of the people who support his stated agenda who need to wake up.
I don't think it's Obama who was shocked to discover that closing Gitmo wasn't something that could be done in a day. That would be the ones crying betrayal because he signed the order to close it, but because a lot of those prisoners simply can't be let go, they have to be moved to the mainland and integrated into the justice system, there's a lot of deal-making and planning required. "Close Gitmo now!" is the soundbite that people are unrealistically clinging to.
I honestly have heard no word of [the Responsible, Phased Withdrawal from Iraq]. I guess he got into office and things got too real too fast for him? No word on that although I haven't been scouring his speeches. Now if that's why they gave him the Peace Prize, I'd agree with them. But that was a paragraph buried in his campaign promises (and not in progress yet), not something he's done.
What do you mean "no word"? Forget scouring speeches, did you try googling it? The plan is already being put into effect! Did you miss when Iraq celebrated U.S. troops leaving their cities? The fact that troops are being withdrawn from Iraq is the only reason they can even contemplate sending tens of thousands more to Afghanistan.
Of course most of this is in accordance with the agreement made between Bush and the Iraqi government shortly before he left office. McCain wouldn't have had a lot of leeway to do much different. Not that this really changes that you're slamming Obama for not doing the big thing you voted for him to do, but he's actually doing it and you just didn't know.
I voted for Obama to end the Iraq war and to intelligently address Afghanistan. I voted for him because I think he's a reasonable, practical person. And while I have my fair share of complaints of the "that's not what I would have liked him to do" variety, I don't think the reason I voted for him has been shown to be untrue. I don't think he entered the Presidency wide-eyed and naive and was suddenly slapped with reality. I think a lot of voters did, and it's the disconnect between their dreams and reality that is pissing them off.
There's a lot of comments here of the nature of "He's only been in office 8 months, and also he's failed to accomplish anything!" Not in the sense that one leads to the other, but as separate claims that he's new, and also ineffective. That's unrealistic. It takes time to accomplish anything in politics, but somehow people expect him to undo all that? A U.N. resolution to strengthen the NPT, ceasing to antagonize Russia and thus bringing them to the table as allies against Iran's nuclear program, these are all positive steps. Minor steps to be sure, but expecting more is unrealistic.
That wasn't nuclear power, that was an Arc Reactor. Which is short for Story Arc Plot Hole Reactor. It runs on the writer's need for an infinite power source.
Shared memory space among lots of computers, using IP (possibly IPv6) as a protocol.
Why would they need to be shared memory systems? Shared memory sucks for large clusters. Coherence is a latency-intensive bitch. Consistency has to be thrown out the window. IPv6 is a likely protocol, sure, but that more suggests message passing than shared memory. Using IP as a coherence protocol would be shit-tay with a capital SHIT.
Cloud computing in every implementation I'm aware of is more about virtualization, as in making individual computers seem like many, than making many computers seem like one. You want to isolate different customers' applications, not make it seem like one huge system.
Like I said at the end of my post... it makes sense for MS to makes sure Windows 9 is "compatible" with 128-bit addressing. The part that surprises me is that the "partners" listed have 128-bit anywhere on their roadmaps when they aren't even bothering to implement a full 64-bit address space because there's not a machine on earth that's even close to needing it yet.
Contrary to oft-repeated headlines, a patent-holder never wants to block a patent-using technology from the market. They just want to get paid for it. If, indeed, the patent is valid -- and the size of the patent-holder is no indication either way -- Toyota simply needs to pay for the technology...
The article write-up seems like it is written by a Toyota-shill.
Uh, except for the word "tiny" which I guess could be taken to mean they aren't worth respecting (or that they're the underdog in this situation compared to the Toyota behemoth), no it doesn't. It doesn't suggest that the patent is invalid, it doesn't suggest they're just trolling for cash, it doesn't even suggest that Toyota isn't maliciously using the patent. "Paice thinks Toyota is using their patent and is taking them to court." How much more neutral can you get?
And blocking the sale of their product is the worst-case for Toyota, and injunctions are a very common result when someone is found to be violating a patent. Obviously Paice wants Toyota to license the patent, but preventing Toyota from selling Priuses if they don't license is the lever they use to get that done, and in the meantime the injunction would be in place and Toyota couldn't import the cars. If Toyota decided not to play ball, then yeah, they couldn't sell the Prius at all anymore. So, again, that was completely factual.
Haven't found evidence of experiments in the past 100 years with 3000kms-1 spaceships. Closest I get is some spacecraft like Pioneer traveling just over 11.6kms-1. Yes there's been a lot of other interesting work done with accelerating SUBATOMIC PARTICLES, but I can hardly imagine you riding one of those. Oh wait, perhaps I can...
Citation needed for relativity having 100 years of testing? WTF are you talking about? You don't need spaceships to test relativity. What, do you think spaceships are somehow affected by physics differently than anything else? Relativistic effects become measurable well below 3000km/s if your measuring device is precise enough.
As far as the energy required to accelerate a spacecraft (not necessarily one with a person 'riding' it) to some good percentage of c, it's actually more than you even originally said, but still not an unthinkable amount. It's just a lot more than is practical in a chemical rocket. There's lots of other power sources and propulsion methods. This article speculates about one such propulsion method. Power can be acquired in a number of ways, since the power source doesn't have to be on the spacecraft.
At some points, you sound like you're saying that having relativistic-speed spacecraft is practically infeasible for the near term. That's true. At others, where you quote Scotty "you cannae change the laws of physics", you sound like it's actually impossible impossible, which is completely not true. While the particular propulsion method in this story is unproven, in general, physics says it's quite possible to achieve. It's just an engineering problem.
Slashdot Mirror
If a project is not worth doing without government subsidy, then it is economically not viable.
No.
If a project returns more than you invest, it is economically viable.
That is not the same as it being "worth" doing for any particular individual at any particular point in time.
It is the up-front cash outlay that the GP found prohibitive. They would almost certainly more than make up that investment in the long term since break-even times are well below warranted life times. However that doesn't mean it's "worth" spending that cash when your savings are low and you are worried about losing your job and having to make mortgage payments. Making that money back and more in reduced energy bills over the course of a couple decades doesn't change that. An imminently viable project, not undertaken because of temporary practicalities.
If the subsidy reduces the up-front outlay, then that means more people can take advantage. The more people who use solar energy, the less demand their is for other power sources. An extra coal plant may not have to be built, or at least existing ones produce less, reducing pollution and increasing quality of life, not to mention reducing the costs of environmental cleanup etc. The subsidy itself may not actually break even (though I bet a lot of power plants get subsidies or tax breaks too). I don't know. But it isn't changing an economically non-viable project into a viable one. It already was.
You might complain, but you probably won't say it to his face. And you'll still go and buy the crack.
Ah, but if the dealer set up an online forum that he didn't really read...
I used to say this, but the answer is that everybody knows those classes don't lead to "good" jobs. That's what feminists told me, and I have to say I agree.
It's going to be a big concern when women begin to outnumber men in "good" fields though. I think it's already happening with medical schools but I may be misremembering.
That's exactly correct. Nobody cares about gender disparity in bad jobs. In well-paying high-demand jobs like nursing, the under-representation of men is seen as a serious issue and steps are being taken to address it.
One interesting thing is that people trying to address the lack of men in nursing find that there's a preconception that nursing is "women's work" and that a male nurse is "unmanly". It's a holdover from when all the doctors were men, and beside them stood their subservient female nurse. On-job discrimination mostly comes from male doctors. So here's a nice mirroring: men don't go into nursing because their peers think it's beneath them, while women don't go into IT because their peers think it's above them.
Notice how the GP says that the sexism is all imagined, but that the main reason he wants women to become better represented is to improve the scenery. Nice. Me, I want women to feel more comfortable taking computer related jobs because we're obviously missing out on a lot of talent by discriminating. But as every slashdot thread on this topic unintentionally proves, we have a long, long way to go.
Theoretical physics has a lot of crap in it too, but at least they try to back up their claims with math and verified evidence. You are doing neither.
Worse, his theory explicitly disclaims the mountains of existing experimental evidence. Say what you will about String Theory, it at least attempts to explain the same observed phenomenon that existing theories explain. This loon thinks you can ignore all the experiments demonstrating Conservation of Momentum simply because you don't like it. It's going to be quite a challenge experimentally demonstrating the opposite.
Suddenly robot spiders that crawl around spying on your outsides doesn't seem quite so dystopian, now does it?
I don't know about the GP but I only needed one look. Do you realise you have reinvented Luminiferous ether?
Though at least the Luminiferous Ether guys understood Conservation of Energy...
Speaking of disasters, the amount of "whoosh" in this thread is enough to create a Category 5 hurricane.
Sir, I'll have you know that Wikipedia page is well researched, and contains links to a variety of serious scholarly works on the subject and is ergo more informative than any single link to a source you approve of would be. Your refusal to even click on it just demonstrates that you have no affinity for nor desire to learn about the subject that WP page is about.
Here you go.
Yeah, that's exactly what they're saying. They recorded a lot of data, and it was the kind of data they wanted -- just in case you were worried the lack of the predicted totally awesome dust plume meant the whole mission was a failure -- but it's going to take a while to analyze so sorry no conclusions yet.
Personally, I could give a crap about their data analysis and finding water blah blah. To me, the next step is clear: Repeat the mission, but without all that stupid science equipment garbage and instead just a much heavier impactor aimed at a much more visible part of the moon. We need to kick the moon's ass! It's laughing at us right now! "Oh that the best you got?"
Crap, this Macguyver stuff is harder than I thought. Maybe those are tools to build a bong?
As seen in "MacGuyver: The College Years".
If I were in charge of the Ministry of Truth, I'd give a promotion to the guy who developed a central system for detecting whistleblowers and spreading misinformation.
And if I were in charge of MiniTru, I'd give the guy a promotion to highly secret position, and then quietly have him killed. He's obviously too clever to be trusted.
The funny thing is that he keeps rejecting the relativistic kinetic energy equation, when using it actually shows a higher amount of energy needed to accelerate a mass to a given velocity which you would think supports his point.
Like, say, in a car game like a GTA, having actual brands of cars, and having their physics more or less be accurate for the car model (so that the BMWs and Ferraris accelerate much more quickly than, say, the Smart Car, and being able to 'Test Drive' the car in-game by jacking it from a car lot. (Note, I've not yet played any of the Recent GTAs, so they may have even done this, by now, for all I know - the last GTA I played was Vice City, though I'm slowly catching up with the rest of the world).
Even Vice City had cars based on real cars -- you know, like the things that look like Corvettes but are called something else? -- and with a wide variety of different performance statistics. In fact looking at lists of cars on GameFAQs, there are a lot more parameters than I'd even noticed playing the game; it has a pretty complex driving model. But at the very least it has acceleration, top speed, various handling parameters, front/rear wheel drive, and so on.
The only thing getting real car makers involved would do is introduce all the bullshit politicking around wanting to have their product shown in a positive light that you envision happening with Coke/Pepi. The BMW would accelerate as fast as the Viper, not because that's realistic, but because BMW paid more money than Dodge. Also the Beamer would be immune to damage so it always looked pretty (when driving a beat-up car with the door missing is a big part of the fun).
I've always hated how the character you're playing never needs to eat, drink, sleep or do something fun once in a while. He always just adventures and fights the bad guys till the campaign is over.
There have been games that have done it. Ultima 7 stands out as an obvious one. Your characters would get hungry and thirsty, and you'd have to feed them.
Guess what? It was annoying and added nothing to the game. Other than you had to have a character who was your designated Meat Mule. Or you could waste reagents that could be used to cast something awesome or useful like Fireball or Telekinesis to instead cast Create Food constantly. It just distracted from the game. You're in a dungeon chasing down a villain, and suddenly you need to hand out snacks to your party?
I'm really confused by the way you phrase that "eat, drink, sleep or do something fun once in a while". Is "something fun" supposed to describe eating, drinking or sleeping? Sleeping is fun? Maybe in real life if you have a cool dream or the pleasant feeling of waking up rested, but watching a character sleep? How is that fun? In most games where sleep is a way to restore hit points, the time you spend watching your character sleep is basically punishment for having to use the 'free' hit point restorer.
Yeah The Sims is there, but its not exactly an RPG and haven't been fun since Sims 1 came out (and that stopped being fun after a few expansion packs too).
And why would that be? Insufficient biological function modeling? Or perhaps because it has too much and too little game?
Combine normal "every day in life" things like these with a good, self-thinking AI and it makes a great sandbox game and brings some pause to the constant fighting, massive storytelling and questing in RPG's.
Yeah. I want my pauses in questing to be by choice and to involve going on other quests or doing other fun and useful things. Not serving the needs of my (imaginary) body. "You eat the cheese" is not fun.
Going back to Ultima 7 -- you could do all kinds of things that weren't related to the main quest or any quest at all but that were fun. You could make clothes, weapons, and armor. You could chat up the waitress at the tavern who had nothing to do with the plot. You could cook meals. They wanted to make the world realistic and interactive. Mandatory eating was just another part of that, but a misstep. Because none of those other things were mandatory. You never had to stop mid-dungeon and weave a shirt. That would be annoying and pointless.
I dunno... I can't tell you that you don't want to play an RPG where you have to periodically dig a whole to shit in. But I have a suspicion that you might not be as enamored with the idea once actually confronted with it. I thought "Oh you have to actually eat, that's neat!" when I started playing U7, and I changed my mind pretty quickly.
Professional ball sports have ads on the walls of the field. Stock car racing even has ads on the cars. Is it so different?
No, it's no different at all. I don't watch those programs that fill the program itself with ads, I don't play games that put ads in the game.
I take it you don't watch basic cable TV or basic satellite TV. You pay for it, but it still has ads.
I watch the show, I don't watch the ads.
If the ad were playing side-by-side or within the TV show itself, then no, I wouldn't watch that TV at all.
They aren't talking about having ads during loading screens, or as separate cut-scenes, where I can flip the channel or go get another beer. They're talking about planting the ads within the game so that you can't both play the game and avoid the ads.
It's very different. And annoying.
You mean his push to let Iran get nuclear arms?
Yeah, getting them to agree to allow inspectors into their nuclear site, and getting Russia and China to agree to sanctions against Iran if they don't satisfy the inspectors, is totally pushing to let Iran get nuclear arms. Hello, any attempt to stop them that doesn't involve Russia and China would be ineffective. But Russia was never going to do that while we're threatening them with a missile shield.
The intelligence community knew about the "secret" reactor for years. What did Bush do? Make threats he couldn't possibly follow through on because our military was already overstretched? Yeah, that sure stopped Iran in its tracks.
I'm sorry, one sided nuclear disarmament while radical militant islamists hell bent on wiping Israel off the face of the map are getting nuclear weaponry is clearly myopic at best.
Lol, he isn't disarming us any faster than we have been for decades. We can get rid of a lot of nukes and still have enough to make Iran into a glass parking lot with enough to spare to deal with anyone -- everyone -- else. That was kinda Ahmadinejad's whole point about the "hey how can you point fingers at us when you have nukes?" that you may have missed. Don't worry, Obama was not swayed by that "logic".
Of course it is great that everyone else is getting rid of nuclear arms, like Russia, Pakistan, China, North Korea .....
Russia actually is, at more or less the same pace we are. This is largely because we both realize that there's no point to having an arsenal capable of annihilating everything on the planet five times over. It's just an expensive waste and a relic of the Cold War arms race. You only really need enough to, say, blow up every major city in Russia/the U.S. to ensure MAD politics continue to work.
Unless someone decides to build a missile shield.
Oh wait, they aren't. But we have "Hope" and "Change we can Believe in" and "Yes we can" sloganeering, which is good enough for a Peace Prize 11 days after taking office.
Yeah, the peace prize is bullshit. I'm with you on that one.
Philosopher: "I'd like to buy a lever of infinite length and an immovable place to stand"
Storekeeper: "Sorry I'm fresh out of axiomatic mechanisms today".
Again implying you think it's a physical impossibility and thus making you completely, factually wrong.
I guess I must be more of an engineer than you are.
Or that I'm willing to consider a longer development time than you. It's not like we have a deadline of 2019 to create relativistic-speed spacecraft! I think you're short-sighted, a poor trait for an engineer not required to operate under unrealistic deadlines, and that's giving you the benefit of the doubt that once again you have misrepresented yourself.
I took this news as a sign that the Nobel committee determined that the ongoing lengthy engagements with Iraq and Afghanistan are a bloody means to a peaceful end.
Yeah I highly doubt that. It's probably based on his non-war-related foreign diplomacy efforts. I don't agree with awarding him the prize, I think it's far too premature and there has to be a more deserving person at this point in time. Maybe once he has a chance to actually accomplish things and there's even the tiniest bit of hindsight, but not now. Oh well. They gave the prize to Arafat, which is a statement equivalent to "I have little respect for the Peace Prize committee."
I think every president discovers [that the world is more complicated than a sound bite].
And I think Obama already knew this, and it's a lot of the people who support his stated agenda who need to wake up.
I don't think it's Obama who was shocked to discover that closing Gitmo wasn't something that could be done in a day. That would be the ones crying betrayal because he signed the order to close it, but because a lot of those prisoners simply can't be let go, they have to be moved to the mainland and integrated into the justice system, there's a lot of deal-making and planning required. "Close Gitmo now!" is the soundbite that people are unrealistically clinging to.
I honestly have heard no word of [the Responsible, Phased Withdrawal from Iraq]. I guess he got into office and things got too real too fast for him? No word on that although I haven't been scouring his speeches. Now if that's why they gave him the Peace Prize, I'd agree with them. But that was a paragraph buried in his campaign promises (and not in progress yet), not something he's done.
What do you mean "no word"? Forget scouring speeches, did you try googling it? The plan is already being put into effect! Did you miss when Iraq celebrated U.S. troops leaving their cities? The fact that troops are being withdrawn from Iraq is the only reason they can even contemplate sending tens of thousands more to Afghanistan.
Of course most of this is in accordance with the agreement made between Bush and the Iraqi government shortly before he left office. McCain wouldn't have had a lot of leeway to do much different. Not that this really changes that you're slamming Obama for not doing the big thing you voted for him to do, but he's actually doing it and you just didn't know.
I voted for Obama to end the Iraq war and to intelligently address Afghanistan. I voted for him because I think he's a reasonable, practical person. And while I have my fair share of complaints of the "that's not what I would have liked him to do" variety, I don't think the reason I voted for him has been shown to be untrue. I don't think he entered the Presidency wide-eyed and naive and was suddenly slapped with reality. I think a lot of voters did, and it's the disconnect between their dreams and reality that is pissing them off.
There's a lot of comments here of the nature of "He's only been in office 8 months, and also he's failed to accomplish anything!" Not in the sense that one leads to the other, but as separate claims that he's new, and also ineffective. That's unrealistic. It takes time to accomplish anything in politics, but somehow people expect him to undo all that? A U.N. resolution to strengthen the NPT, ceasing to antagonize Russia and thus bringing them to the table as allies against Iran's nuclear program, these are all positive steps. Minor steps to be sure, but expecting more is unrealistic.
Come on now, Iron Man isn't real!
That wasn't nuclear power, that was an Arc Reactor. Which is short for Story Arc Plot Hole Reactor. It runs on the writer's need for an infinite power source.
Shared memory space among lots of computers, using IP (possibly IPv6) as a protocol.
Why would they need to be shared memory systems? Shared memory sucks for large clusters. Coherence is a latency-intensive bitch. Consistency has to be thrown out the window. IPv6 is a likely protocol, sure, but that more suggests message passing than shared memory. Using IP as a coherence protocol would be shit-tay with a capital SHIT.
Cloud computing in every implementation I'm aware of is more about virtualization, as in making individual computers seem like many, than making many computers seem like one. You want to isolate different customers' applications, not make it seem like one huge system.
Like I said at the end of my post... it makes sense for MS to makes sure Windows 9 is "compatible" with 128-bit addressing. The part that surprises me is that the "partners" listed have 128-bit anywhere on their roadmaps when they aren't even bothering to implement a full 64-bit address space because there's not a machine on earth that's even close to needing it yet.
Contrary to oft-repeated headlines, a patent-holder never wants to block a patent-using technology from the market. They just want to get paid for it. If, indeed, the patent is valid -- and the size of the patent-holder is no indication either way -- Toyota simply needs to pay for the technology...
The article write-up seems like it is written by a Toyota-shill.
Uh, except for the word "tiny" which I guess could be taken to mean they aren't worth respecting (or that they're the underdog in this situation compared to the Toyota behemoth), no it doesn't. It doesn't suggest that the patent is invalid, it doesn't suggest they're just trolling for cash, it doesn't even suggest that Toyota isn't maliciously using the patent. "Paice thinks Toyota is using their patent and is taking them to court." How much more neutral can you get?
And blocking the sale of their product is the worst-case for Toyota, and injunctions are a very common result when someone is found to be violating a patent. Obviously Paice wants Toyota to license the patent, but preventing Toyota from selling Priuses if they don't license is the lever they use to get that done, and in the meantime the injunction would be in place and Toyota couldn't import the cars. If Toyota decided not to play ball, then yeah, they couldn't sell the Prius at all anymore. So, again, that was completely factual.
[citation needed]
Haven't found evidence of experiments in the past 100 years with 3000kms-1 spaceships. Closest I get is some spacecraft like Pioneer traveling just over 11.6kms-1. Yes there's been a lot of other interesting work done with accelerating SUBATOMIC PARTICLES, but I can hardly imagine you riding one of those. Oh wait, perhaps I can...
Citation needed for relativity having 100 years of testing? WTF are you talking about? You don't need spaceships to test relativity. What, do you think spaceships are somehow affected by physics differently than anything else? Relativistic effects become measurable well below 3000km/s if your measuring device is precise enough.
As far as the energy required to accelerate a spacecraft (not necessarily one with a person 'riding' it) to some good percentage of c, it's actually more than you even originally said, but still not an unthinkable amount. It's just a lot more than is practical in a chemical rocket. There's lots of other power sources and propulsion methods. This article speculates about one such propulsion method. Power can be acquired in a number of ways, since the power source doesn't have to be on the spacecraft.
At some points, you sound like you're saying that having relativistic-speed spacecraft is practically infeasible for the near term. That's true. At others, where you quote Scotty "you cannae change the laws of physics", you sound like it's actually impossible impossible, which is completely not true. While the particular propulsion method in this story is unproven, in general, physics says it's quite possible to achieve. It's just an engineering problem.