If MD5(a) == MD5(b), then MD5(a + c) == MD5(b + c), where "a", "b", and "c" are arbitrary payloads and "+" is the concatenation operator.
The difference between a collision and a preimage attack is that in a collision, "a", "b", and "c" are all of your own design, while in a pre-image attack, "a" is a pre-existing document and you want to create a second document "b", that results in the same hash.
It's much easier to find two arbitrary payloads which collide than it is to start with a fixed payload and then find another payload which collides with it.
If I remember correctly, anesthesiologists are never part of a PPO or HMO.
When I had sinus surgery in 2003, my PPO plan covered the anesthesia to the tune of the same 80% it covered everything at, up to my annual out-of-pocket limit which I easily hit paying my 20% of the surgeon, hospital, anesthesiologist, etc. The full anesthesia cost by itself was more than my out-of-pocket limit, so this meant my costs for the surgery would have basically doubled had the PPO not covered it. But this plan was extremely permissive and the only way I wouldn't have been covered would have been if for some reason the anesthesiologist refused to accept the insurance company's money.
Of course my employer no longer offers this plan. Now with our new insurance provider there's a "PPO" plan but it's essentially an HMO where you have to carefully select all your care-givers from the approved list. The only differences being you don't need a referral in order to see a specialist, and it pays for less than the HMO plan.
Ha, touche. Well, in The Wind Waker, Ganondorf kidnaps Zelda, but she kicks some arse on your behalf in the final fight. Such a shame that the final battle comes only after a ridiculous time-wasting search-and-find quest, because it's one of the best end battles in any game anywhere and I think a lot of people never got to it.
Besides, what's an action/adventure game without someone to rescue? Even in Beyond Good and Evil (yes, I love that game), you end up rescuing a friend. What creative twist are you going to put on the formula that's so unique, yet at the same time compelling?
Meh. As long as they keep making games in the same genre, I see no reason not to keep making games for that genre be part of the same franchise. I still love the Action/Adventure genre as much now as I did in the 80s when The Legend of Zelda basically invented it, so what purpose does it serve for Nintendo to make a new action-adventure game that doesn't use the Zelda brand?
Beyond Good and Evil is an action/adventure that I recommend to friends by calling it "a better Zelda that Zelda", but that wasn't because it didn't feature Zelda characters. It was because it had excellent gameplay in exploration, combat, and sneaking sequences, tightly integrated dungeons, and a lack of time-killing hunt-and-find quests. Okay, the story was also significantly better than your average action-adventure too, but there's nothing that says a Zelda can't have a good story either (and some do).
If StarFox Adventures had been whatever it was before being getting slapped with the license, would it still have been a piece of crap? Most likely, though getting to play as the female character for more than an intro sequence as originally planned might have taken the edge off the suck.
Mario Kart would be an ever better example for a genre where having it be the same franchise makes little to no difference to me.
So, I guess my point is... As long as I like the genre, I don't mind a franchise in that genre. Of course it's very nice when they inject originality into the franchise... But honestly, did Twilight Princess disappoint Miyamoto because the Zelda franchise locks the developers into certain cliches of gameplay (which are equally well cliches in nearly all other games in the genre), or because coming up with completely original gameplay is hard regardless of whether or not you call your game "Zelda", and the dev team just failed to be creative enough?
Yes, the wireless network is listed in the saved list. No, you can't get it to connect from that list, you have to create a manual connection and reenter everything. No, you can't copy-paste the WPA key in, that doesn't work for some reason.
Well I've never been able to get wireless working under Ubuntu without manually editing/etc/network/interfaces, but once I've done that it works -perfectly-.
We'll see if it becomes the law of the land or not, then, a few years from now should it be appealed-- and my guess is that it will be despite its strong tone.
Or it could be something that they deliberately don't appeal, and they and other companies avoid going against in other cases so as to avoid an even stronger SCOTUS precedent. Kinda like when in Microsoft vs AT&T, they got close enough to the issue of software patent-ability that one of the Justices questioned whether they were assuming it to be the case, as they'd(SCOTUS) never held software to be patentable before, and the counsel for both sides backed way off so as to avoid any possible ruling for or against software patents. Seems especially prudent when the Justice semi-implies what the answer would be.
So it could go either way. Apparently the issue of whether software or business methods are patentable has never reached the Supreme Court before. It'd be rather sad if the whole software patent regime that's caused so many problems over the last couple decades was just a legal fluke that never should have happened. On the other hand, one of the main limits on Judicial power is that they can only rule on issues that come before them.
You know that actually sounds like a great idea. Their army would be clean and efficient and scalable. We could send them to Iraq to replace our poor beleaguered and exhausted troops, and when the Iraqi government says they want the Google Army to be subject to Iraqi laws, we could just tell 'em "Hey, it's still in beta!"
Plus I'd love to see what uniforms they'd wear on various holidays.
But, do you wonder what kind of HST replacement we could have had already if we had not spent so much time and money on repairs?
What do you mean, "already"? There would have had to have been a proposal many years ago in order to be operational today. As far as I know, the James Webb was the first space telescope proposed after Hubble, it's not supposed to go online until 2013, and there are no plans even as of today for a new visible light space telescope. Also as far as I know, the Hubble service missions have not impacted the plan for the JWST.
So while I can imagine many things, practically speaking the only visible light space telescope I see us having without the repairs to Hubble is no visible light space telescope.
Since you say in another post you're against adults spending weeks gaining skills in 'inane games of pretend', your obviously not a fan of video games in general (since that's what they all are). That's nice for you, but why don't you just avoid game-related stories since you don't belong and have nothing to contribute to them?
I think once the US pulls out that more Iraqi civilians will die from secretarian fights than civilians that were killed by US soldiers.
I agree completely.
I also don't think this will substantively change if we stay for ten more years. Or twenty.
Even when Moses parted the Red Sea, the two sides eventually came crashing back together. We aren't Moses; how long must we hold back the waves before we admit we must eventually let them go?
The desire to see us leave Iraq without it descending into civil war strikes me as nothing more than an unrealistic desire to avoid the consequences for our disastrous decision to invade in the first place. And yes, the Iraqis will be the ones paying the majority of that price. Sometimes you can't avoid the consequences of a bad decision. Sometimes those consequences aren't fair. That's life.
No, the underlying point is not valid. Just because the surge was an "unmitigated" success (I thought failures were unmitigated and successes were unqualified), does not mean things are good now, only that they are better than they were before.
Well, I also think the point is not valid because McCain, despite what he says on the campaign trail about how the surge "worked" because it puts a feather in his cap, realizes that the surge was not an unqualified success. It can be called a success, but only in a very narrow and highly qualified way.
What was the purpose of the surge? To reduce violence, in particular sectarian violence, and create an environment of stability and safety sufficient to allow the Iraqi army and police forces to be able to take over the job of security, and allow the Iraqis and their government to engage in political and sectarian reconciliation.
Nobody worth mentioning thought the surge would not accomplish the first part. That's Guerrilla Warfare 101: When the major military force steps up the insurgents step down, go into hiding, and bide their time. It's happened time and time again, where we'd 'pacify' one town and they'd show up in another, then return to the first town when we'd move again*. With more troops on the ground in Iraq and especially Baghdad, of course there's going to be less insurgent activity overall, though part of the consequence of securing Baghdad was an increase in violence in the north.
Also, the greatest part of the Surge's success, the quieting of the Sunni insurgency, had little to nothing to do with the surge at all. It is mostly due to us essentially buying off all the major Sunni tribal leaders and recruiting them to help fight al Qaeda in Iraq (who was, at best, an ally of convenience for the Sunni insurgency). Not that I'm saying this wasn't a great strategy; it's exactly the kind of thing we should have been doing since the beginning, and whoever is responsible for this (Petraeus? Gates?) deserves praise. It's just that this wasn't strictly related to the troop increase.
But what about all that other stuff? The political reconciliation and what not? Well that's gone pretty much nowhere. While the police and army have made improvements, they aren't up to the task of controlling even a U.S.-surge-occupied Iraq. Politically not much has been accomplished either. With whole political blocks boycotting the legislature, including Sunnis which puts our strategy with them at risk, this front is even worse than the other. Hell, only a few months ago two separate Shia political blocks went to war with one another -- the Sadrist block with the Madhi Army militia versus the SCIRI block with their Badr Brigade militia, except the latter being in power got to wear Iraqi uniforms and use cool toys and call for U.S. backup**. You think that even if we convince one side to lay down arms, that they won't pick them back up as soon as the coast is clear?
Basically none of the true objectives of the Surge were accomplished, it only worked in the most trivial and obvious way that by itself does nothing to end the conflict. Also, this surge is simply unsustainable. Our military is already stretched to the point of breaking, and they can only stop-loss so many people so many times before it becomes self-defeating. So the surge will have to end, the situation will return to largely how it was before, with none of the major goals the surge was supposed to allow accomplished. This is not unqualified success. I hesitate to call it success at all.
Here's the cold hard fact: Iraq is going to see violence once we leave. There is nothing we can do that will cause all the factions to reach an accord, join hands, and celebrate a new peaceful and unified Iraq. We lost the ability to be a force for reconciliation years ago thanks to the multitudinous failings of our President and former Sec Def. All we can do is provide temporary security, but that isn't going to create lasting peace. We
First you'll need to install a stable and strong government. Make sure it can contain sectarian fighting.
And by "contain" the sectarian fighting, that would mean "win" the sectarian fighting.
The Iraqi Army right now is comprised nearly entirely of Shia, and mostly by the former Badr Brigade, the militant wing of the political party formerly known as SCIRI, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. They changed their name to SIIC, Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, ditching the scary "Islamic Revolution" part because it made their ties to Iran (the party was founded in Iran by Iraqi expatriots) too obvious for the comfort of America. The Badr Brigade had been heavily implicated in the sectarian killings that nearly drove the country apart and forced formerly integrated neighborhoods to become segregated. But now that their party is in power, and they have the official sanction of the Iraqi Army Uniform, they can even attack their political opponents (the Madhi Army and Sadr in the most recent case), and count on the aid of the U.S. to do it.
There will be violence in Iraq. Do not count on the Iraqi government to "keep the peace" in a non-violent, non-sectarian manner.
It can be done, at least in principle. Look at Chechnya in Russia for a 'success story'.
Yeah. The powerful central government crushes the opposition and nearly wipes out a generation of men. Chechnya was a bloodbath. Afterwards I suppose it's relatively peaceful. Iraq will be peaceful after the innevitable bloodbath too, when most of the Sunnis have been killed or driven out of the country and all opposition to the ruling party has been crushed. I guess that'll be called "success" by some people.
Wow, that truly is an insightful comment... if of course you don't actually pay any attention to the particulars of, you know, what's actually happening. Both in terms of the behavior of Google vs Microsoft, and the skepticism being leveled at Google which was amply demonstrated in this thread prior to your post.
But hey, principle-not-factual black-and-white argument plus deliberate ignorance equals insight, I guess.
Thus, the net result is that, overall, the user experience for search is now worse than it was 10 years ago.
Do you mean 10 years ago, the day google.com went online? Or 10 years ago, the day before google.com went online? The former I can conditionally agree with, though I'm still not sure the effect of black hats fully counters the improvements to google's algorithms, hardware, and database since that day. The latter, though, I emphatically deny. It is still worlds better than it ever was pre-google.
I agree fully with all your other observations. Especially that competition is needed. The fact that other search engines do exist, but aren't considered even in the running even by techies like us, is sad, but true. Coming up with a better search seems like a hard problem, and it isn't just about hardware outlay or MSN would be a contender, but it isn't. Maybe that's part of the reason for google's stagnation? A truly better search engine would require a new paradigm shift like page-rank was compared to old engines, and that's pretty damned hard to do, especially versus the straightforward approach of tweaking and optimizing the existing algorithms.
He says he did the run in twelve parsecs. The obvious interpretation is 'parsec' was incorrectly used as a unit of time. Hypothetical interpretations assuming the unit used was correct include it having something to do with the space-warping effect of light speed drives, or that part of the run involves navigation e.g. through an asteroid belt and superior navigation/maneuvering results in a shorter distance. The latter doesn't really make sense, though, since it was an answer to the question of whether the ship was fast. Though in any case, given the character, Solo was probably just blowing smoke up their ass anyway.
As to how we can "glorify" a scientific error made in Star Wars by using it in a wryly self-aware joke ala "I'm so smart I can do that in 12 parsecs", the answer is simple: A sense of humor.
and although sexual selection may create arbitrary biological characteristics, the general humanoid body design probably isn't completely arbitrary. so even though there may be alien lifeforms that are drastically different from us, it's also possible that there humanoid species out there that evolved independently from us.
Never have I heard a more robust defense of the ST (and other series but especially ST) tradition that the vast majority of aliens (in particular those that have to show up regularly) look basically like humans with weird skin colors and head protrusions.
Kirk: "How long to re-fit?" Scotty: "Eight weeks. But you don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for you in two." Kirk: "Do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?" Scotty: "How else to maintain my reputation as a miracle worker?" Kirk: "Your reputation is safe with me."
As a practical matter, it's quite easy to imagine this coming up if someone accidentally hashes a whole disk in the process of some kind of analysis, even though they don't mean to search for anything.
Exactly what kind of analysis is this that doesn't actually provide any specific information, in which the analyzer is not looking for any particular information, and which if performed by a police officer would not be considered a "search" with regards to the 4th Amendment? The only distinction between "analysis" and "search" of a disk would be algorithmic -- as in you're limiting "search" to mean only those items of information acquired by some form of item-by-item comparison between a prescribed value and data on the disk selected through various means. Yes, that is the correct comp-sci definition. It is not a relevant legal or lay-person definition. It is a useless distinction for these purposes.
Obviously you didn't read my previous messages in which I pointed out that a searching process is one by which something could conceivably be found. So be it.
Of course I read it, and I'm saying that is a pedantic engineering definition of the term that is not used anywhere outside of your slashdot posting.
Your analysis is ridiculous and obviously incorrect. A process by which nothing can be found is not searching in any meaningful sense whatsoever. The police coming into your house of course can never meet this definition because no human being can force themselves not to see things that they look at. A computer hashing your files can.
A policeman coming into your house can promise not to use anything they see against you. That's no better than their promise not to use computer hashes to evaluate the contents of your computer. Oh sure you are correct that in any case the information exists within the brains of the police, so they "know" something even if they keep their promise. Which is my point -- yours is an overly technical, absolutist definition that doesn't resolve the real issues at stake.
Even a careless and superficial reading of my earlier post could not possibly lead to the interpretation that I think searching means trying to find a particular piece of information. If you truly believe that "looking at" and "searching" are equivalent in lay terms, then you simply don't know the meaning of one of those three terms.
The only difference is the word "particular", which I'm sure makes a huge difference if you use the most narrow definition not that this was the intent. An instance of information is a particular piece of information, not necessarily one decided in advance to be found.
"The police looking at your personal effects" and "the police searching your personal effects" are the same to a lay person. That is of course the context in which we're discussing these terms, the context of your 4th Amendment rights, is it not? This is exactly what I expect from a Slashdot pedant -- limiting words to only the most narrow of several definitions, chosen not by the intent of their usage but by how well they serve the pedant, while ignoring the context in which they are used. It is truly the most useless form of reasoning I've ever seen.
Anyway, long story short, the court disagrees with you. Bring your pedantic argument to them, and perhaps they'll realize they've been misusing the word "search"! I'm sure some dictionary.com links, perhaps highlighting exactly what definition you've chosen as the "right" one, would help them see the light.
No, in lay terms, "looking at" is searching, and "reading" is searching. If the police come into your house and go through your file cabinet looking at your tax returns, that's a "search" whether or not they want to find anything specific. To hash your disk they have to read the disk, ergo they "searched" it.
Restricting "search" to only apply specifically to the act of trying to find a particular piece of information is a pedantic engineering definition, not a lay-person's. Nor a legal one, for that matter. Neither lay nor legal person would agree that having the police look through and itemize your possessions doesn't count as a search so long as they are not looking for anything in particular, especially not wrt the 4th Amendment.
So the election looks like the popular mayor of the states largest city vs. an unspecified Republican to be named by Sarah Palin. Hard to think there won't be an enthusiasm gap there.
I think it's worth pointing out that the import of being mayor of the largest city in Alaska can be appropriately thought of in comparison to the largest city in New York State. While NYC is around 30 times larger than the next largest city in NY, Buffalo, and Anchorage is only 9 times larger than Fairbanks, both represent roughly the same fraction of the population of their respective states at around 40%. So the mayor of Anchorage is going to be rather better known than say, to pick an example at random, Wasilla.
Slashdot Mirror
If MD5(a) == MD5(b), then MD5(a + c) == MD5(b + c), where "a", "b", and "c" are arbitrary payloads and "+" is the concatenation operator.
The difference between a collision and a preimage attack is that in a collision, "a", "b", and "c" are all of your own design, while in a pre-image attack, "a" is a pre-existing document and you want to create a second document "b", that results in the same hash.
It's much easier to find two arbitrary payloads which collide than it is to start with a fixed payload and then find another payload which collides with it.
If I remember correctly, anesthesiologists are never part of a PPO or HMO.
When I had sinus surgery in 2003, my PPO plan covered the anesthesia to the tune of the same 80% it covered everything at, up to my annual out-of-pocket limit which I easily hit paying my 20% of the surgeon, hospital, anesthesiologist, etc. The full anesthesia cost by itself was more than my out-of-pocket limit, so this meant my costs for the surgery would have basically doubled had the PPO not covered it. But this plan was extremely permissive and the only way I wouldn't have been covered would have been if for some reason the anesthesiologist refused to accept the insurance company's money.
Of course my employer no longer offers this plan. Now with our new insurance provider there's a "PPO" plan but it's essentially an HMO where you have to carefully select all your care-givers from the approved list. The only differences being you don't need a referral in order to see a specialist, and it pays for less than the HMO plan.
Ha, touche. Well, in The Wind Waker, Ganondorf kidnaps Zelda, but she kicks some arse on your behalf in the final fight. Such a shame that the final battle comes only after a ridiculous time-wasting search-and-find quest, because it's one of the best end battles in any game anywhere and I think a lot of people never got to it.
Besides, what's an action/adventure game without someone to rescue? Even in Beyond Good and Evil (yes, I love that game), you end up rescuing a friend. What creative twist are you going to put on the formula that's so unique, yet at the same time compelling?
Meh. As long as they keep making games in the same genre, I see no reason not to keep making games for that genre be part of the same franchise. I still love the Action/Adventure genre as much now as I did in the 80s when The Legend of Zelda basically invented it, so what purpose does it serve for Nintendo to make a new action-adventure game that doesn't use the Zelda brand?
Beyond Good and Evil is an action/adventure that I recommend to friends by calling it "a better Zelda that Zelda", but that wasn't because it didn't feature Zelda characters. It was because it had excellent gameplay in exploration, combat, and sneaking sequences, tightly integrated dungeons, and a lack of time-killing hunt-and-find quests. Okay, the story was also significantly better than your average action-adventure too, but there's nothing that says a Zelda can't have a good story either (and some do).
If StarFox Adventures had been whatever it was before being getting slapped with the license, would it still have been a piece of crap? Most likely, though getting to play as the female character for more than an intro sequence as originally planned might have taken the edge off the suck.
Mario Kart would be an ever better example for a genre where having it be the same franchise makes little to no difference to me.
So, I guess my point is... As long as I like the genre, I don't mind a franchise in that genre. Of course it's very nice when they inject originality into the franchise... But honestly, did Twilight Princess disappoint Miyamoto because the Zelda franchise locks the developers into certain cliches of gameplay (which are equally well cliches in nearly all other games in the genre), or because coming up with completely original gameplay is hard regardless of whether or not you call your game "Zelda", and the dev team just failed to be creative enough?
I swear to God they let Trent Reznor say "fuck" on the air in the video for Closer.
Once I saw that video, followed by a rap video where they bleeped both "fuck" and "nine m".
Yes, the wireless network is listed in the saved list. No, you can't get it to connect from that list, you have to create a manual connection and reenter everything. No, you can't copy-paste the WPA key in, that doesn't work for some reason.
Well I've never been able to get wireless working under Ubuntu without manually editing /etc/network/interfaces, but once I've done that it works -perfectly-.
We'll see if it becomes the law of the land or not, then, a few years from now should it be appealed-- and my guess is that it will be despite its strong tone.
Or it could be something that they deliberately don't appeal, and they and other companies avoid going against in other cases so as to avoid an even stronger SCOTUS precedent. Kinda like when in Microsoft vs AT&T, they got close enough to the issue of software patent-ability that one of the Justices questioned whether they were assuming it to be the case, as they'd(SCOTUS) never held software to be patentable before, and the counsel for both sides backed way off so as to avoid any possible ruling for or against software patents. Seems especially prudent when the Justice semi-implies what the answer would be.
So it could go either way. Apparently the issue of whether software or business methods are patentable has never reached the Supreme Court before. It'd be rather sad if the whole software patent regime that's caused so many problems over the last couple decades was just a legal fluke that never should have happened. On the other hand, one of the main limits on Judicial power is that they can only rule on issues that come before them.
You know that actually sounds like a great idea. Their army would be clean and efficient and scalable. We could send them to Iraq to replace our poor beleaguered and exhausted troops, and when the Iraqi government says they want the Google Army to be subject to Iraqi laws, we could just tell 'em "Hey, it's still in beta!"
Plus I'd love to see what uniforms they'd wear on various holidays.
How fucking cool?
Super fucking cool!
But, do you wonder what kind of HST replacement we could have had already if we had not spent so much time and money on repairs?
What do you mean, "already"? There would have had to have been a proposal many years ago in order to be operational today. As far as I know, the James Webb was the first space telescope proposed after Hubble, it's not supposed to go online until 2013, and there are no plans even as of today for a new visible light space telescope. Also as far as I know, the Hubble service missions have not impacted the plan for the JWST.
So while I can imagine many things, practically speaking the only visible light space telescope I see us having without the repairs to Hubble is no visible light space telescope.
Blah blah blah.
Since you say in another post you're against adults spending weeks gaining skills in 'inane games of pretend', your obviously not a fan of video games in general (since that's what they all are). That's nice for you, but why don't you just avoid game-related stories since you don't belong and have nothing to contribute to them?
I think once the US pulls out that more Iraqi civilians will die from secretarian fights than civilians that were killed by US soldiers.
I agree completely.
I also don't think this will substantively change if we stay for ten more years. Or twenty.
Even when Moses parted the Red Sea, the two sides eventually came crashing back together. We aren't Moses; how long must we hold back the waves before we admit we must eventually let them go?
The desire to see us leave Iraq without it descending into civil war strikes me as nothing more than an unrealistic desire to avoid the consequences for our disastrous decision to invade in the first place. And yes, the Iraqis will be the ones paying the majority of that price. Sometimes you can't avoid the consequences of a bad decision. Sometimes those consequences aren't fair. That's life.
No, the underlying point is not valid. Just because the surge was an "unmitigated" success (I thought failures were unmitigated and successes were unqualified), does not mean things are good now, only that they are better than they were before.
Well, I also think the point is not valid because McCain, despite what he says on the campaign trail about how the surge "worked" because it puts a feather in his cap, realizes that the surge was not an unqualified success. It can be called a success, but only in a very narrow and highly qualified way.
What was the purpose of the surge? To reduce violence, in particular sectarian violence, and create an environment of stability and safety sufficient to allow the Iraqi army and police forces to be able to take over the job of security, and allow the Iraqis and their government to engage in political and sectarian reconciliation.
Nobody worth mentioning thought the surge would not accomplish the first part. That's Guerrilla Warfare 101: When the major military force steps up the insurgents step down, go into hiding, and bide their time. It's happened time and time again, where we'd 'pacify' one town and they'd show up in another, then return to the first town when we'd move again*. With more troops on the ground in Iraq and especially Baghdad, of course there's going to be less insurgent activity overall, though part of the consequence of securing Baghdad was an increase in violence in the north.
Also, the greatest part of the Surge's success, the quieting of the Sunni insurgency, had little to nothing to do with the surge at all. It is mostly due to us essentially buying off all the major Sunni tribal leaders and recruiting them to help fight al Qaeda in Iraq (who was, at best, an ally of convenience for the Sunni insurgency). Not that I'm saying this wasn't a great strategy; it's exactly the kind of thing we should have been doing since the beginning, and whoever is responsible for this (Petraeus? Gates?) deserves praise. It's just that this wasn't strictly related to the troop increase.
But what about all that other stuff? The political reconciliation and what not? Well that's gone pretty much nowhere. While the police and army have made improvements, they aren't up to the task of controlling even a U.S.-surge-occupied Iraq. Politically not much has been accomplished either. With whole political blocks boycotting the legislature, including Sunnis which puts our strategy with them at risk, this front is even worse than the other. Hell, only a few months ago two separate Shia political blocks went to war with one another -- the Sadrist block with the Madhi Army militia versus the SCIRI block with their Badr Brigade militia, except the latter being in power got to wear Iraqi uniforms and use cool toys and call for U.S. backup**. You think that even if we convince one side to lay down arms, that they won't pick them back up as soon as the coast is clear?
Basically none of the true objectives of the Surge were accomplished, it only worked in the most trivial and obvious way that by itself does nothing to end the conflict. Also, this surge is simply unsustainable. Our military is already stretched to the point of breaking, and they can only stop-loss so many people so many times before it becomes self-defeating. So the surge will have to end, the situation will return to largely how it was before, with none of the major goals the surge was supposed to allow accomplished. This is not unqualified success. I hesitate to call it success at all.
Here's the cold hard fact: Iraq is going to see violence once we leave. There is nothing we can do that will cause all the factions to reach an accord, join hands, and celebrate a new peaceful and unified Iraq. We lost the ability to be a force for reconciliation years ago thanks to the multitudinous failings of our President and former Sec Def. All we can do is provide temporary security, but that isn't going to create lasting peace. We
First you'll need to install a stable and strong government. Make sure it can contain sectarian fighting.
And by "contain" the sectarian fighting, that would mean "win" the sectarian fighting.
The Iraqi Army right now is comprised nearly entirely of Shia, and mostly by the former Badr Brigade, the militant wing of the political party formerly known as SCIRI, The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. They changed their name to SIIC, Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, ditching the scary "Islamic Revolution" part because it made their ties to Iran (the party was founded in Iran by Iraqi expatriots) too obvious for the comfort of America. The Badr Brigade had been heavily implicated in the sectarian killings that nearly drove the country apart and forced formerly integrated neighborhoods to become segregated. But now that their party is in power, and they have the official sanction of the Iraqi Army Uniform, they can even attack their political opponents (the Madhi Army and Sadr in the most recent case), and count on the aid of the U.S. to do it.
There will be violence in Iraq. Do not count on the Iraqi government to "keep the peace" in a non-violent, non-sectarian manner.
It can be done, at least in principle. Look at Chechnya in Russia for a 'success story'.
Yeah. The powerful central government crushes the opposition and nearly wipes out a generation of men. Chechnya was a bloodbath. Afterwards I suppose it's relatively peaceful. Iraq will be peaceful after the innevitable bloodbath too, when most of the Sunnis have been killed or driven out of the country and all opposition to the ruling party has been crushed. I guess that'll be called "success" by some people.
Wow, that truly is an insightful comment... if of course you don't actually pay any attention to the particulars of, you know, what's actually happening. Both in terms of the behavior of Google vs Microsoft, and the skepticism being leveled at Google which was amply demonstrated in this thread prior to your post.
But hey, principle-not-factual black-and-white argument plus deliberate ignorance equals insight, I guess.
Thus, the net result is that, overall, the user experience for search is now worse than it was 10 years ago.
Do you mean 10 years ago, the day google.com went online? Or 10 years ago, the day before google.com went online? The former I can conditionally agree with, though I'm still not sure the effect of black hats fully counters the improvements to google's algorithms, hardware, and database since that day. The latter, though, I emphatically deny. It is still worlds better than it ever was pre-google.
I agree fully with all your other observations. Especially that competition is needed. The fact that other search engines do exist, but aren't considered even in the running even by techies like us, is sad, but true. Coming up with a better search seems like a hard problem, and it isn't just about hardware outlay or MSN would be a contender, but it isn't. Maybe that's part of the reason for google's stagnation? A truly better search engine would require a new paradigm shift like page-rank was compared to old engines, and that's pretty damned hard to do, especially versus the straightforward approach of tweaking and optimizing the existing algorithms.
Pu238 is on every terrorist's Christmas wish-list.
And yet they keep getting coal. Santa enjoys the irony.
You're just mad because the only way you'd ever be able to touch a woman's breast would have been to be born female, and you lost that toin coss.
He says he did the run in twelve parsecs. The obvious interpretation is 'parsec' was incorrectly used as a unit of time. Hypothetical interpretations assuming the unit used was correct include it having something to do with the space-warping effect of light speed drives, or that part of the run involves navigation e.g. through an asteroid belt and superior navigation/maneuvering results in a shorter distance. The latter doesn't really make sense, though, since it was an answer to the question of whether the ship was fast. Though in any case, given the character, Solo was probably just blowing smoke up their ass anyway.
As to how we can "glorify" a scientific error made in Star Wars by using it in a wryly self-aware joke ala "I'm so smart I can do that in 12 parsecs", the answer is simple: A sense of humor.
and although sexual selection may create arbitrary biological characteristics, the general humanoid body design probably isn't completely arbitrary. so even though there may be alien lifeforms that are drastically different from us, it's also possible that there humanoid species out there that evolved independently from us.
Never have I heard a more robust defense of the ST (and other series but especially ST) tradition that the vast majority of aliens (in particular those that have to show up regularly) look basically like humans with weird skin colors and head protrusions.
The Wisdom of Scotty:
Kirk: "How long to re-fit?"
Scotty: "Eight weeks. But you don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for you in two."
Kirk: "Do you always multiply your repair estimates by a factor of four?"
Scotty: "How else to maintain my reputation as a miracle worker?"
Kirk: "Your reputation is safe with me."
As a practical matter, it's quite easy to imagine this coming up if someone accidentally hashes a whole disk in the process of some kind of analysis, even though they don't mean to search for anything.
Exactly what kind of analysis is this that doesn't actually provide any specific information, in which the analyzer is not looking for any particular information, and which if performed by a police officer would not be considered a "search" with regards to the 4th Amendment? The only distinction between "analysis" and "search" of a disk would be algorithmic -- as in you're limiting "search" to mean only those items of information acquired by some form of item-by-item comparison between a prescribed value and data on the disk selected through various means. Yes, that is the correct comp-sci definition. It is not a relevant legal or lay-person definition. It is a useless distinction for these purposes.
Obviously you didn't read my previous messages in which I pointed out that a searching process is one by which something could conceivably be found. So be it.
Of course I read it, and I'm saying that is a pedantic engineering definition of the term that is not used anywhere outside of your slashdot posting.
Your analysis is ridiculous and obviously incorrect. A process by which nothing can be found is not searching in any meaningful sense whatsoever. The police coming into your house of course can never meet this definition because no human being can force themselves not to see things that they look at. A computer hashing your files can.
A policeman coming into your house can promise not to use anything they see against you. That's no better than their promise not to use computer hashes to evaluate the contents of your computer. Oh sure you are correct that in any case the information exists within the brains of the police, so they "know" something even if they keep their promise. Which is my point -- yours is an overly technical, absolutist definition that doesn't resolve the real issues at stake.
Even a careless and superficial reading of my earlier post could not possibly lead to the interpretation that I think searching means trying to find a particular piece of information. If you truly believe that "looking at" and "searching" are equivalent in lay terms, then you simply don't know the meaning of one of those three terms.
The only difference is the word "particular", which I'm sure makes a huge difference if you use the most narrow definition not that this was the intent. An instance of information is a particular piece of information, not necessarily one decided in advance to be found.
"The police looking at your personal effects" and "the police searching your personal effects" are the same to a lay person. That is of course the context in which we're discussing these terms, the context of your 4th Amendment rights, is it not? This is exactly what I expect from a Slashdot pedant -- limiting words to only the most narrow of several definitions, chosen not by the intent of their usage but by how well they serve the pedant, while ignoring the context in which they are used. It is truly the most useless form of reasoning I've ever seen.
Anyway, long story short, the court disagrees with you. Bring your pedantic argument to them, and perhaps they'll realize they've been misusing the word "search"! I'm sure some dictionary.com links, perhaps highlighting exactly what definition you've chosen as the "right" one, would help them see the light.
No, in lay terms, "looking at" is searching, and "reading" is searching. If the police come into your house and go through your file cabinet looking at your tax returns, that's a "search" whether or not they want to find anything specific. To hash your disk they have to read the disk, ergo they "searched" it.
Restricting "search" to only apply specifically to the act of trying to find a particular piece of information is a pedantic engineering definition, not a lay-person's. Nor a legal one, for that matter. Neither lay nor legal person would agree that having the police look through and itemize your possessions doesn't count as a search so long as they are not looking for anything in particular, especially not wrt the 4th Amendment.
So the election looks like the popular mayor of the states largest city vs. an unspecified Republican to be named by Sarah Palin. Hard to think there won't be an enthusiasm gap there.
I think it's worth pointing out that the import of being mayor of the largest city in Alaska can be appropriately thought of in comparison to the largest city in New York State. While NYC is around 30 times larger than the next largest city in NY, Buffalo, and Anchorage is only 9 times larger than Fairbanks, both represent roughly the same fraction of the population of their respective states at around 40%. So the mayor of Anchorage is going to be rather better known than say, to pick an example at random, Wasilla.