Yeah right. 3-D on linux/Xfree SUCK ASS. Want compairsons? Go play X game (with port to linux) on windows and then play it on Linux. You get shit for framerates, and dont tell me you're different.
Well, I did that, with Q3 and the Quakeforge. I get better framerates in Linux than WinXP. It's possible the 3dfx Banshee windows drivers just suck, but at least for me it works better (and no annoying BSOD either).
Now under WineX, well, everything's slow. But hey, I didn't expect much seeing that my machine doesn't meet the minimum requirements.
It feels klunky and laggy. And no, I'm not using KDE to use as a test. I'm using TWM. The smallest gui manager out there.
Really? I'll admit that the mouse isn't quite as responsive under X, and I didn't ever run Win98 on the same machine, but my P233 with 64MB and a lowly S3Virge seemed to run just fine. It took a little while to load KDE but GNOME was quite responsive (with TWM even). Of course, I didn't have much running, just squid, dante, sshd and X. Mozilla was a bit slow, but you can't blame that on X... I was running a fairly low resolution though, maybe that was the difference.
Well, clearly we have different interpretations of the world...
Well, if they're scared shitless it's because they don't understand how our country works. Certainly I understand their position, clearly we are for democracy and that's a threat to a good portion of the world's leaders. The thing is we'll let you be as long as you treat the people OK and don't stomp all over their rights. We'll probably even let you get away with that unless you start bringing other countries into it. Also, I don't think "every" country is afraid of us invading. Come on, I thought you were leaving the hype out of this.;-)
I think it's pretty clear where the orders are coming from, but there's that interpretation thing again... I don't know, the devil? Mabye he has some black ninjas forcing him to do stuff? I think it comes down to the fact that Hussein wants more power, he wants more to rule. As ruthless as he is, I'm sure he has his government setup so that opposing factions provide him the information he needs. I can't see where anyone could significantly influence his thinking. I'm sure he's been influenced by something he's read, probably something religious. It's tough to say without knowing, but sometimes things come together at the right time. Had Hitler been gone and it taken another year for someone like him to arrive, I think things would have been quite different. After all, the main reason he did so well was due to the appalling economic (and moral) condition in Germany at the time. He used that to his advantage.
Come on, I don't beat people up either. I'm just saying if you see someone getting beat down for voicing an opinion or whatever, don't you feel the need to defend them? I'm not saying you beat them to a pulp. And certainly the US isn't going after every other country on the face of the earth. We're just saying if you're going to be threatening the world (eventually those missles will be able to reach us like North Korea's can now, we don't want that...) and fund terrorism while making it clear what you'd like nothing better than to see us gone off the face of the earth, we might just take notice of you. He doesn't comply with the international voice right now, do you really think that will change when he gets more WMD?
We did call some friends over, and I assume this relates to UN Security Council. In that case we probably have 4 with us (Spain, Mexico, Pakistan, and Britain) with 4 clearly against us (France, Germany, China, and Russia) on the action resolution. I doubt a resolution calling for more time would face much better odds. What that means to me is that the countries are quite divided on the issue.
I guess the UN is a propaganda machine as well? Just take a look at the recent Iraq humanitarian violations. If torturing, raping, killing, abducting, threatening, imprisoning, and intimidating ones own people is not "evil", I don't know what is... Let's just have a look a the definition of evil in the webster's dictionary:
Evil \E"vil\ ([=e]"v'l) n. 1. Anything which impairs the happiness of a being or deprives a being of any good; anything which causes suffering of any kind to sentient beings; injury; mischief; harm; -- opposed to good.
I'm not sure what you mean about evil hype... I searched for the word evil and got 990 hits on FoxNews and 1880 hits on CNN. I don't know what that means to you, it doesn't mean anything to me. One leans right, one leans left. If you find FoxNews evil and CNN not evil, then I suspect you lean towards the left (as if I haven't gathered that yet anyway). I can be perfectly honest, one leans right, one leans left. Both hype. I personally lean somewhat right, so I read FoxNews. I still don't think I would use the word evil on CNN just because it leans left and hence expresses views contrary to my own.
Are you not working towards the same goal here? Wouldnt it make sense, save time, money, American Lives, to let him keep on gassing his own people?
If this was the ONLY thing Hussein was doing wrong, your argument would be valid (though still morally horrifying). The fact that he gasses his own people shows that he is willing to use these weapons, and certainly he wouldn't hesitate using them against another nation. I guess I must mention that this makes him a very dangerous person. And as the leader of a nation this makes him a global threat to peace and stability.
We, on the other hand, want to attack/another/ country. Seems to me like he's got more a right to kill his own people than we do.
The poster that you're replying to already brought up the argument that we aren't going in there to kill civilians. Yes, it is a sad fact that people die in war. The only place this logic leads is to "we can't fight a war because we don't have the right to kill the opposition's forces". Yeah, some fine logic that is. Again, we're not going in there with the goal of killing people or opposition, rather we are targeting Hussein and the government.
If a bankrobber is holding someone hostage, and is pointing a gun at a croud, and you take him out with a grenade- you have just killed both of them on purpose.
Hahahahahaha!! Is this an argument? OK, I guess I'll take it seriously. Again, war is a messy pursuit and innocents will die, that is a fact. We're not proposing taking a nuke to Iraq and saying, there we go, he's dead. You can't honestly claim that we really intended to kill civilians, what you're arguing is that we know that innocents will die. That's a big difference. We do what we can to avoid killing innocent people, but when a government uses civilians as shields, sometimes that cannot be avoided. Also, sometimes bombs just end up in the wrong place, again, a sad fact of war. That does not make it "on purpose", that makes it an unintended accident.
To clarify the final statement, "This" war is the war on terror, a very different thing from a war on Iraq. [to use an example from a previous comment] It would be like declaring war on Europe, and then attacking France.
Well, frankly we are attacking terror. This is both a war on Iraq and a war on terror. Just because he is attached to terrorism doesn't mean this is the only reason we are going after him. And another thing, that argument is hugely flawed. Let's use a metaphor here... That's like saying, let's go paint my car. With your logic, we can't paint one panel at a time, but rather we have to paint the entire car at the same time. Now let's make this applicable by saying that I'm the one that needs to do this and that I don't have access to a huge automated factory painting booth. The fact is that I cannot paint the entire car all at once, it's just impossible. So, the US attacks terrorism with the help of governments where possible. Where it is not possible we try to coerce them through international pressure, and when that fails we wage war. We don't propose waging war simultaneously on all the nations supporting terrorism, that would overextend our resources. Besides, by attacking one at a time, hopefully that will prove to doubting nations that we are serious. Again, I don't believe this solely a war based on fighting terror, but even if it was your argument seems flawed.
"Sadam is evil" blah, is it Sadam or the entire Iraqi government? Does Sadam even exist? There are reports that say nobody has seen the "real Sadam" in years, publically. He could be dead already.
And Elvis is alive... Didn't Dan Rather just interview Hussein, and didn't Barbara Walters do that not long ago as well (and she had interviewed him earlier, so she would know if he was the real Hussein). Besides, it's widely regarded that the rest of the government is just a puppet and has no real say in what goes on.
Has Sadam really gassed "his own people"? Well, who are "his own people"? Iraqi citizens? What does it take to be an Iraqi? Loyalty to Sadam. Sadam has not gassed his own people, would never gas his own people. No one ever would. He just has a different definition of what his own people are.
So we agree that Iraq is not democratic and kills people that are not loyal to him. So at least we agree on something, and that is that Hussein is bad for a lot of his people. What we don't agree on is how to solve the problem and apparently whether we should care about other human beings living in opression. Perhaps you're not one that likes to stick his neck out to defend a person in need. I guess that's just something we're not going to agree on then. The only thing then to discuss is "what is the real reason for this war", and "should we wait". I think Hussein and UN non-compliance are the reasons for this war with other positives on his removal from power. I think we should not wait any longer, I think we have waited long enough.
Well I can't think of another, more clear, way to say "using terrorism to fight terrorism and using war as an excuse to take away rights is not good"
Exactly what rights are being taken away? The right of a government to oppress the people? The right of a government to bully other nations with WMD?
And no, I don't think that is what the Bush does. He does not threaten to attack the world. He does not threaten to conquer France (though it would be insanely easy) because they do not support our policies on Iraq. All Bush does is threaten force if Iraq does not start clearly and seriously complying with the UN resolutions that the vast majority of the nations agreed should be followed.
If Hussein was really interested in disarming, wouldn't you think he would have started disarming years ago and invited inspectors back? The FACT is that Hussein responds only to force, and that is clear as he reluctantly and half-heartedly complies with the resolutions (note: only under threat of force). No nation besides Iraq argues that he is fully complying with these resolutions.
It is easy to overlook the fact that Sept 11 occurred after Bush took office. Don't you think it highly likely that the threat of governments bent on developing WMD and supporting terrorism endanger our national security, especially in a post-9/11 world? As with anything, if you take it out of context and reduce it to a narrow enough scope you lose sight of the truth. That's like focusing on the last year and ignoring the 100 that came before...
Without the threat of force (and the will to back it up) tyrants reign. Need we wait for the use of a WMD on another country or our own before we act?
And don't even bring up sanctions, what have those done except to starve the people of Iraq? Even in the hard times of sanctions, Hussein manages to build new palaces and develop a missle program. Not to mention the aluminum tubes and the finger they point towards a nuclear weapons program. That's not even mentioning the US intelligence on his chemical and biological programs, nor his ability to sell those weapons to terrorists who are quite likely to use them against nations such as the US.
But hey, let's give him some more time to prepare and yank our chains? I mean, that worked in WWII now didn't it?
If Iraq is such a great place and these batteries are so interesting, why hasn't anyone been over there to study them?
I don't have a lot of experience with laptops, but I've worked on an old compaq lately. I'm not sure what you mean by "option type keys" but it did have a row of those buttons (well, not IE) along the top of the keyboard. The power button was similar to a the hardware power-off you're talking about, it locked up so I held the button down for 4 seconds (like an ATX MB set up that way) and it turned off.
I have an ergonomic keyboard and it has a split spacebar. The left one is a nice place to rest my thumb, but I can tell by the fact that it's still rough and my right one is smooth, which one I could do away with. Of course, an ergonomic keyboard wouldn't work on a laptop. Still, I'm against putting anything under the space bar. Just maybe split it in two and make the right or left side something else. Make it something common, my left thumb needs to do something.
I have issue with a vocal based replacement. I maybe strange, but damn if I don't write and code better with my hands (i.e. writing or using the keyboard). If I want to talk, it most certainly won't be to my computer.
OTOH I wouldn't mind chat programs taking voice commands. Of course we'll probably end up with just sound instead of a text-based chat when that happens.
That should have been "frequently used keys aren't where you need them".
IIRC DVORAK was designed to be more ergonomic and efficient, with less movement of the fingers for the most commonly used letters. Personally I have no issue with QWERTY, but I've never tried DVORAK...
I thought the idea wasn't neccesarily to "slow down typing" but rather prevent frequently used letters from occurring next to each other, hence preventing the jams you speak of. Of course, it does end up slowing typing down because frequently used keys are where you need them. That's more a symptom of the disease though...
On the other hand, I don't find it enough of a hinderance to move from my current QWERTY keyboard to another layout such as DVORAK. The fact is that my fingers just can't move fast enough for this to be a problem.
Would it really have mattered? As I understand it, due to its heavy weight, the shuttle couldn't even get another 100 miles up to the orbit of the ISS.
So, they inspect the panels and see that something is wrong....
What do you propose they do at that point? Suffocate, or try to land and hope for the best?
Space flight is a risky proposition and there are constraints as to what all can be piled into the shuttle. Until the US invests more in NASA so that they can replace the shuttle with newer, safer, more robust technology, there will always be risks of losing tiles off the craft and hence a catastrophic re-entry. I venture to guess that any attempts to repair tile damage in orbit would cause more harm than good.
Ultimately, we should wait for the results of the investigation before concluding who/what is to blame, despite how obvious the cause may appear. After all, some modes of failure are unrecoverable, and hence the only cure, is prevention.
Even if we find out the tiles were at fault, we shouldn't blame NASA for not having gear on board to correct/diagnose the problem, but for having allowed the problem to occur in the first place.
It seems the general concensus from engineers was that the saftey of the re-entry would not be affected. If it turns out that this indeed was the cause, it's hard to say who to blame until we know what exactly the higher management knew (if anything) about this insulation problem and its effect on earlier missions (since this wasn't the first time the foam fell off during launch).
Sorry about posting AC, I didn't realize that was clicked...
Yeah, that does, and I agree. It also points out how much these people care, which to me discards some of the sentiments raised about how NASA downplays the risks. I have a hard time believing that people who care that much would take any risks unless they truly believed the shuttle was safe.
On the other hand, I don't think we would see much sympathy from many CEOs. Rather, I'd expect to see more concern for the company's bottom line more than anything. To be fair, that's glossing over the fact that airlines are strapped for cash... Still, one would hope the risk of a problem due to poor maintainence (from cost-cutting) would rule-out taking chances that could endanger the crew and passengers.
But it seems a lot of the recent crashes point to poor upkeep by the airlines...
...Nevermind the fact that this "civilian" (give me a break!!) country is ruled by an overbearing madman who has used weapons of mass destruction without regret in the past. Disregard the fact that this same dictator kills and/or tortures any opposition sometimes torturing children in front of their parents as well. Forget the fact that he is harboring terrorists and has not provided any evidence of having destroyed his large stockpile of weapons. Ignore the facts and let's just wait and see if he will comply. What's another 12 years anyway? I'm sure he won't sell any weapons to terrorists....
Let's just have America crawl back into a hole and disregard the rest of the world. If there are problems, we will pretend that they don't exist. Look at how well that's worked in the past (WWII ring any bells)?
Bush is a strongly religious man, and it's sad that you can't see past your disagreement and take his words for what they are...
I wouldn't go the extent of calling NASA engineers idiots...
First, they would have to start moving out a shuttle to the launchpad immediately after launching the first one, I'm not sure they could even get the launchpad up to their safety standards in time. Secondly, as I understand it, if it rains, it can ruin the heat tiles, so they can't just set a shuttle on the launch pad indefinetly.
Further, I think the ISS was out of reach (another 100 miles higher in orbit) of Columbia as heavy as it was. A NASA official also commented that they did not have supplies on board or any way of repairing heat shield damage if it occurred. He said the only thing they could do on that front was to equip the ship "robustly" enough that it could do with missing tiles. There are some heat shields that it cannot do without, but as NASA said, the astronauts understood the risks of a tile falling off of one of the critial areas. Without a robotic arm, lightening the load enough to allow a ISS docking was probably out of the question. That basically leaves the option of waiting for a rescue shuttle, which was probably too far off to do any good.
Sometimes there just isn't a way out. The space program has its risks and losing a critical tile is one of those. If you want to blame something, blame the fact that we haven't invested enough in NASA for them to design a superior orbiter.
"There are cheaper ways to get the science data they provide."
I agree and so does NASA. But the thing we can't get through cheaper methods is human experience in space. Ultimately, I think we can agree that we would like to travel beyond Earth and around the universe. We won't ever get there unless we actually put our asses on the line and push the envelope (and increase the monetary cost) by getting first hand experience.
No insult intended, but using your line of thought we can just send out an endless array of unmanned ships and have them do the exploring for us. After all, manned flight won't ever be proven unless we actually go out and do it.
As I understand, the shuttle never docked with the space station (apparently the Columbia was much heavier than other orbiters). I can't verify that for sure since I can't get to the mission news on NASA's website.
Even if they determined something may have been wrong, it is hard to say if anything could have been done. I'm sure we will here more about that if indeed the cause of the failure can be traced to the insulation incident. The NASA news conference touched on this a bit, saying that there was no way to replace missing tiles while in space. I guess the only thing they could have done was dock with the station (which may not have been possible due to weight). The could have sent up an additional shuttle to pick them up, but I think the crawler takes a few days to even get a shuttle to the launchpad. Further, they didn't have a way to even inspect the tiles in space anyhow, since their bay was filled with experiments and didn't have a robotic arm. I think the lack of the robotic arm would probably also have made it impossible to unload the bay to reduce weight so that they could get to the ISS.
Seems to me they were pretty much screwed, and the NASA official said the "loss of tile" was a "risk that the astronauts accepted when the shuttle left the launchpad".
I think rather they will focus not on the flight director (who really didn't seem to have many options), but on how to better secure the tiles and prevent the loss of one tile from sacrificing the integrity of the entire ship (since a tile coming off of the critical leading edge section can cause all the tiles behind it to peel off).
I don't know if this matters given what I just heard on TV regarding left wing heating...but
I heard that the range is about 10-15 degrees on ABC. I thought it was a smaller range (2 degrees), but I'm probably thinking angle of descent, not shuttle attitude.
But I think the whole reason that we focus on this is because what we were trying to accomplish. I really don't think that's a bad thing.
Personally, I feel just as bad when a plane crashes (which really is more of a tragedy). It's one thing for a space shuttle which is really pushing the boundaries (why else would there be so many redundant systems unless if things went bad it could get really ugly), it's entirely another if a 737 crashes because of some seemingly stupid overlooked error.
I think the real reason everyone is focusing on this is because despite the fact that we know there is a huge risk in space flight, Americans (at least) generally consider space flight as routine and safe. Even those that know the risk, still don't expect anything bad to happen, otherwise there would be some changes.
People unfortunately die every day. Accidents happen.
The magnitude of this is not just the lives lost, but the tragedy in pursuit of a greater purpose. This is a blow to space exploration, a frontier.
That is not to trivialize the loss of life from other causes around the globe, but the loss of life in what I widely view as selfless pursuits impart more of a sense of tragedy to me.
I think that's probably not true. There have been over 100 successful flights without this ever happening. Further, there are 4 computers in the main system that calculate the same thing (plus a backup that takes over if those computer "vote themselves out"). From what I heard on ABC, all of those computers would have to see the same thing in order for that to happen.
I think that's highly unlikely since I'm sure NASA has built a bunch of redundant sensors into it as well. They already use a redundant computer system with yet another backup system based on completely different software.
It's more likely that a mechanical problem occurred that the computer could not correct for, or could not correct for in time to make a difference. That or an electrical system failure, but that seems more unlikely since those are redundant as well. Mechanical items can't always have a backup (i.e. if some critical tiles fall off, you can't replace them). Simple statistics (of course I'm not a statistics major) points toward a mechanical problem.
There's nothing preventing someone from filing off the serial number, which applies both to registering ones firearm or the owner keeping track of the serial number.
Ballistic fingerprinting could be helpful in this regard since once the firearm is recovered one could test it with the same brand of cartridge (which is one of the criticisms of ballistic fingerprinting since just changing the brand can render fingerprinting impossible). Filing off the serial number is free, but I bet there would be fewer people that would go to the length of swapping firearm parts to ruin the firearms ballistic fingerprint (especially if they don't have a large cache of firearms to draw from since they would then be forced to buy or steal parts).
Any type of _effective_ registration program aimed at solving this "stolen firearm" problem would need to address a method of uniquely identifying a firearm in a way that would not significantly increase the manufacturing cost while simultaneously remaining hard to defeat.
And then you have to get the masses behind you and convince them this does not infringe on their rights, won't be used to track gunowner's (what information that the US government has about a citizen isn't used to track them?), and is worth the taxpayer and consumer's dollars.
While I support the premise behind the idea of gun registration, I do not trust that the government will stop there. I would view mandatory firearm registration as a step towards nullifying the second amendment. For that reason alone, I strongly oppose mandatory firearm registration. I'm a firm believer in keeping a watchful eye on the government's encroachment of my rights.
Perhaps a friendlier (and more popular) alternative would be to somehow lend an advantage to those who keep the documentation on their firearms if a cheap and effective means of identification is found. The owner could hold onto the information in the event that their firearm was stolen. At that point they could turn it over to the authorities when filing the police report. That would be the point where the advantage would fall to those who provided the documentation that came with their firearm. I'm not about to propose what that benefit would be but it would have to balance the value of the benefit against those who would wish to exploit it.
This solution would still allow those that did not want to provide the information (for whatever reason) not to, which would help alleviate concerns of firearm owners. There would not be any government database linking firearm owners to particular firearms which would also meet my desires (and many others). Finally, there would be both the motivation and the means to provide information to police that would uniquely identify the firearm recovered by the authorities as stolen. The authorities wouldn't even necessarily have to link the stolen firearm to its former owner, but would only have to enter the information into the database. Anyone who then turns up with the firearm either extorted the government for the benefit (fraud) or has a stolen firearm.
And so what about the criminal who now having been identified will want to kill you? I raise the violence level simply by being able to see.
I propose we all cut our eyes out, that way when we become a member of a violent crime, we can't identify who did it. They'll have a lot less reason to kill us then.
Further, I'm not sure how a robber that has just broken into my house sees me pointing a gun at him from 20-30 feet away then charges towards me to defend his life. Unless on drugs or simply suffering from some sort of invincibility disorder, most people (even criminals) are either going to stand there and drop their weapon, or jump back out the way they came in. Either is fine with me, I'm not going to shoot a fleeing robber (unless he's taking my wife with him;-) Also, the proper use of a gun is not swinging it like a bat. The proper use would be aiming and pulling the trigger. Certainly I wouldn't bring a gun into the mix if it was close combat and I didn't have reason to fear for my life. At the same time, I've got to question the intentions of anyone that pulls a knife on me or my family...
And perhaps you're confusing gang mentality and their use of guns in your "cool, macho" statement. I don't own a gun to be cool or macho, I own a gun to defend myself. I don't bring any friends or aquaintences over and say, "Hey, look I'm cool and macho, I have a gun in my house." It's not an issue of being cool and macho for the vast majority of legal gunowners in America. It's a matter of a constitutional right to defend my life, liberty, and freedom with the power granted by the second amendment (the right to bear arms).
Where do you get your news, the mass media? You can't judge a country by its media coverage.
Sorry, I was replying to the link provided in the message I responded to. From what I could glean from reading Tim Lambert's commentary titled "Do more guns cause less crime?" which aims to discredit Lott's work it does not mention any of these controls. The point I was trying to make was that without these controls the model presented by Tim Lambert would fail as well.
Unfortunately I don't have immediate access to the book so I can hardly comment on what controls he uses. I certainly wasn't attacking Lott's study. What I continually find (in reviews) however is that while Lott finds a correlation, again it does not neccesarily demonstrate causation.
So, when it comes down to it, all that is being shown is a correlation. I'll use a quote from my college psychology book: "Correlation indicates the possibility of a cause-effect relationship, but does not prove causation." The correlation may be sound, but that doesn't mean it's right. You'd have to prove that other uncontrolled variables were not the cause and the only way to do this would be to repeat the test today and see if the correlation still exists. Furthermore, to do such a thing, you'd need to control for all the variables that have changed which is probably impossible. Just because Lott or another researcher discards some variable as being not-significant, does not mean that it is. Tim Lambert uses this predictive test (i.e. Lott's correlation should hold true with updated data) using (presumably) the same controls and finds the test to fail. That still doesn't rule out the fact that there could be a cause-effect relationship since it would also need to rule out other uncontrolled variables that could account for the failure. Then that whole revised theory would need to be tested again and if it passed, we'd be much closer to causation.
So at this point, yes, we're still pissing in the wind if we're trying to use this to form policy (in an ideal world). Really, we shouldn't be making changes unless we KNOW that the results will have the desired effects. Unfortunately that is not the case in this country, where policy is made on guesses and hunches. And in that light Lott's work is very powerful and helpful.
But I'm still an idealist so I'm still stuck pissing in the wind.
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Yeah right. 3-D on linux/Xfree SUCK ASS. Want compairsons? Go play X game (with port to linux) on windows and then play it on Linux. You get shit for framerates, and dont tell me you're different.
Well, I did that, with Q3 and the Quakeforge. I get better framerates in Linux than WinXP. It's possible the 3dfx Banshee windows drivers just suck, but at least for me it works better (and no annoying BSOD either).
Now under WineX, well, everything's slow. But hey, I didn't expect much seeing that my machine doesn't meet the minimum requirements.
It feels klunky and laggy. And no, I'm not using KDE to use as a test. I'm using TWM. The smallest gui manager out there.
Really? I'll admit that the mouse isn't quite as responsive under X, and I didn't ever run Win98 on the same machine, but my P233 with 64MB and a lowly S3Virge seemed to run just fine. It took a little while to load KDE but GNOME was quite responsive (with TWM even). Of course, I didn't have much running, just squid, dante, sshd and X. Mozilla was a bit slow, but you can't blame that on X... I was running a fairly low resolution though, maybe that was the difference.
Well, if they're scared shitless it's because they don't understand how our country works. Certainly I understand their position, clearly we are for democracy and that's a threat to a good portion of the world's leaders. The thing is we'll let you be as long as you treat the people OK and don't stomp all over their rights. We'll probably even let you get away with that unless you start bringing other countries into it. Also, I don't think "every" country is afraid of us invading. Come on, I thought you were leaving the hype out of this.
I think it's pretty clear where the orders are coming from, but there's that interpretation thing again... I don't know, the devil? Mabye he has some black ninjas forcing him to do stuff? I think it comes down to the fact that Hussein wants more power, he wants more to rule. As ruthless as he is, I'm sure he has his government setup so that opposing factions provide him the information he needs. I can't see where anyone could significantly influence his thinking. I'm sure he's been influenced by something he's read, probably something religious. It's tough to say without knowing, but sometimes things come together at the right time. Had Hitler been gone and it taken another year for someone like him to arrive, I think things would have been quite different. After all, the main reason he did so well was due to the appalling economic (and moral) condition in Germany at the time. He used that to his advantage.
Come on, I don't beat people up either. I'm just saying if you see someone getting beat down for voicing an opinion or whatever, don't you feel the need to defend them? I'm not saying you beat them to a pulp. And certainly the US isn't going after every other country on the face of the earth. We're just saying if you're going to be threatening the world (eventually those missles will be able to reach us like North Korea's can now, we don't want that...) and fund terrorism while making it clear what you'd like nothing better than to see us gone off the face of the earth, we might just take notice of you. He doesn't comply with the international voice right now, do you really think that will change when he gets more WMD?
We did call some friends over, and I assume this relates to UN Security Council. In that case we probably have 4 with us (Spain, Mexico, Pakistan, and Britain) with 4 clearly against us (France, Germany, China, and Russia) on the action resolution. I doubt a resolution calling for more time would face much better odds. What that means to me is that the countries are quite divided on the issue.
I guess the UN is a propaganda machine as well? Just take a look at the recent Iraq humanitarian violations. If torturing, raping, killing, abducting, threatening, imprisoning, and intimidating ones own people is not "evil", I don't know what is... Let's just have a look a the definition of evil in the webster's dictionary: I'm not sure what you mean about evil hype... I searched for the word evil and got 990 hits on FoxNews and 1880 hits on CNN. I don't know what that means to you, it doesn't mean anything to me. One leans right, one leans left. If you find FoxNews evil and CNN not evil, then I suspect you lean towards the left (as if I haven't gathered that yet anyway). I can be perfectly honest, one leans right, one leans left. Both hype. I personally lean somewhat right, so I read FoxNews. I still don't think I would use the word evil on CNN just because it leans left and hence expresses views contrary to my own.
Are you not working towards the same goal here? Wouldnt it make sense, save time, money, American Lives, to let him keep on gassing his own people?
/another/ country. Seems to me like he's got more a right to kill his own people than we do.
If this was the ONLY thing Hussein was doing wrong, your argument would be valid (though still morally horrifying). The fact that he gasses his own people shows that he is willing to use these weapons, and certainly he wouldn't hesitate using them against another nation. I guess I must mention that this makes him a very dangerous person. And as the leader of a nation this makes him a global threat to peace and stability.
We, on the other hand, want to attack
The poster that you're replying to already brought up the argument that we aren't going in there to kill civilians. Yes, it is a sad fact that people die in war. The only place this logic leads is to "we can't fight a war because we don't have the right to kill the opposition's forces". Yeah, some fine logic that is. Again, we're not going in there with the goal of killing people or opposition, rather we are targeting Hussein and the government.
If a bankrobber is holding someone hostage, and is pointing a gun at a croud, and you take him out with a grenade- you have just killed both of them on purpose.
Hahahahahaha!! Is this an argument? OK, I guess I'll take it seriously. Again, war is a messy pursuit and innocents will die, that is a fact. We're not proposing taking a nuke to Iraq and saying, there we go, he's dead. You can't honestly claim that we really intended to kill civilians, what you're arguing is that we know that innocents will die. That's a big difference. We do what we can to avoid killing innocent people, but when a government uses civilians as shields, sometimes that cannot be avoided. Also, sometimes bombs just end up in the wrong place, again, a sad fact of war. That does not make it "on purpose", that makes it an unintended accident.
To clarify the final statement, "This" war is the war on terror, a very different thing from a war on Iraq. [to use an example from a previous comment] It would be like declaring war on Europe, and then attacking France.
Well, frankly we are attacking terror. This is both a war on Iraq and a war on terror. Just because he is attached to terrorism doesn't mean this is the only reason we are going after him. And another thing, that argument is hugely flawed. Let's use a metaphor here... That's like saying, let's go paint my car. With your logic, we can't paint one panel at a time, but rather we have to paint the entire car at the same time. Now let's make this applicable by saying that I'm the one that needs to do this and that I don't have access to a huge automated factory painting booth. The fact is that I cannot paint the entire car all at once, it's just impossible. So, the US attacks terrorism with the help of governments where possible. Where it is not possible we try to coerce them through international pressure, and when that fails we wage war. We don't propose waging war simultaneously on all the nations supporting terrorism, that would overextend our resources. Besides, by attacking one at a time, hopefully that will prove to doubting nations that we are serious. Again, I don't believe this solely a war based on fighting terror, but even if it was your argument seems flawed.
"Sadam is evil" blah, is it Sadam or the entire Iraqi government? Does Sadam even exist? There are reports that say nobody has seen the "real Sadam" in years, publically. He could be dead already.
And Elvis is alive... Didn't Dan Rather just interview Hussein, and didn't Barbara Walters do that not long ago as well (and she had interviewed him earlier, so she would know if he was the real Hussein). Besides, it's widely regarded that the rest of the government is just a puppet and has no real say in what goes on.
Has Sadam really gassed "his own people"? Well, who are "his own people"? Iraqi citizens? What does it take to be an Iraqi? Loyalty to Sadam. Sadam has not gassed his own people, would never gas his own people. No one ever would. He just has a different definition of what his own people are.
So we agree that Iraq is not democratic and kills people that are not loyal to him. So at least we agree on something, and that is that Hussein is bad for a lot of his people. What we don't agree on is how to solve the problem and apparently whether we should care about other human beings living in opression. Perhaps you're not one that likes to stick his neck out to defend a person in need. I guess that's just something we're not going to agree on then. The only thing then to discuss is "what is the real reason for this war", and "should we wait". I think Hussein and UN non-compliance are the reasons for this war with other positives on his removal from power. I think we should not wait any longer, I think we have waited long enough.
Sex toys.
.8 volts...
Ah the pleasant tingling of
Well I can't think of another, more clear, way to say "using terrorism to fight terrorism and using war as an excuse to take away rights is not good"
Exactly what rights are being taken away? The right of a government to oppress the people? The right of a government to bully other nations with WMD?
And no, I don't think that is what the Bush does. He does not threaten to attack the world. He does not threaten to conquer France (though it would be insanely easy) because they do not support our policies on Iraq. All Bush does is threaten force if Iraq does not start clearly and seriously complying with the UN resolutions that the vast majority of the nations agreed should be followed.
If Hussein was really interested in disarming, wouldn't you think he would have started disarming years ago and invited inspectors back? The FACT is that Hussein responds only to force, and that is clear as he reluctantly and half-heartedly complies with the resolutions (note: only under threat of force). No nation besides Iraq argues that he is fully complying with these resolutions.
It is easy to overlook the fact that Sept 11 occurred after Bush took office. Don't you think it highly likely that the threat of governments bent on developing WMD and supporting terrorism endanger our national security, especially in a post-9/11 world? As with anything, if you take it out of context and reduce it to a narrow enough scope you lose sight of the truth. That's like focusing on the last year and ignoring the 100 that came before...
Without the threat of force (and the will to back it up) tyrants reign. Need we wait for the use of a WMD on another country or our own before we act?
And don't even bring up sanctions, what have those done except to starve the people of Iraq? Even in the hard times of sanctions, Hussein manages to build new palaces and develop a missle program. Not to mention the aluminum tubes and the finger they point towards a nuclear weapons program. That's not even mentioning the US intelligence on his chemical and biological programs, nor his ability to sell those weapons to terrorists who are quite likely to use them against nations such as the US.
But hey, let's give him some more time to prepare and yank our chains? I mean, that worked in WWII now didn't it?
If Iraq is such a great place and these batteries are so interesting, why hasn't anyone been over there to study them?
I don't have a lot of experience with laptops, but I've worked on an old compaq lately. I'm not sure what you mean by "option type keys" but it did have a row of those buttons (well, not IE) along the top of the keyboard. The power button was similar to a the hardware power-off you're talking about, it locked up so I held the button down for 4 seconds (like an ATX MB set up that way) and it turned off.
I have an ergonomic keyboard and it has a split spacebar. The left one is a nice place to rest my thumb, but I can tell by the fact that it's still rough and my right one is smooth, which one I could do away with. Of course, an ergonomic keyboard wouldn't work on a laptop. Still, I'm against putting anything under the space bar. Just maybe split it in two and make the right or left side something else. Make it something common, my left thumb needs to do something.
I have issue with a vocal based replacement. I maybe strange, but damn if I don't write and code better with my hands (i.e. writing or using the keyboard). If I want to talk, it most certainly won't be to my computer.
OTOH I wouldn't mind chat programs taking voice commands. Of course we'll probably end up with just sound instead of a text-based chat when that happens.
That should have been "frequently used keys aren't where you need them".
IIRC DVORAK was designed to be more ergonomic and efficient, with less movement of the fingers for the most commonly used letters. Personally I have no issue with QWERTY, but I've never tried DVORAK...
I thought the idea wasn't neccesarily to "slow down typing" but rather prevent frequently used letters from occurring next to each other, hence preventing the jams you speak of. Of course, it does end up slowing typing down because frequently used keys are where you need them. That's more a symptom of the disease though...
On the other hand, I don't find it enough of a hinderance to move from my current QWERTY keyboard to another layout such as DVORAK. The fact is that my fingers just can't move fast enough for this to be a problem.
I'd like to be the Devil's advocate on this one...
But I agree.
But really, I think the question should be: "If Apple got rid of all the 'useless' stuff, would there still be a Mac?"
DISCLAIMER: This is HUMOR, not a TROLL.
Would it really have mattered? As I understand it, due to its heavy weight, the shuttle couldn't even get another 100 miles up to the orbit of the ISS.
So, they inspect the panels and see that something is wrong....
What do you propose they do at that point? Suffocate, or try to land and hope for the best?
Space flight is a risky proposition and there are constraints as to what all can be piled into the shuttle. Until the US invests more in NASA so that they can replace the shuttle with newer, safer, more robust technology, there will always be risks of losing tiles off the craft and hence a catastrophic re-entry. I venture to guess that any attempts to repair tile damage in orbit would cause more harm than good.
Ultimately, we should wait for the results of the investigation before concluding who/what is to blame, despite how obvious the cause may appear. After all, some modes of failure are unrecoverable, and hence the only cure, is prevention.
Even if we find out the tiles were at fault, we shouldn't blame NASA for not having gear on board to correct/diagnose the problem, but for having allowed the problem to occur in the first place.
It seems the general concensus from engineers was that the saftey of the re-entry would not be affected. If it turns out that this indeed was the cause, it's hard to say who to blame until we know what exactly the higher management knew (if anything) about this insulation problem and its effect on earlier missions (since this wasn't the first time the foam fell off during launch).
Sorry about posting AC, I didn't realize that was clicked...
Yeah, that does, and I agree. It also points out how much these people care, which to me discards some of the sentiments raised about how NASA downplays the risks. I have a hard time believing that people who care that much would take any risks unless they truly believed the shuttle was safe.
On the other hand, I don't think we would see much sympathy from many CEOs. Rather, I'd expect to see more concern for the company's bottom line more than anything. To be fair, that's glossing over the fact that airlines are strapped for cash... Still, one would hope the risk of a problem due to poor maintainence (from cost-cutting) would rule-out taking chances that could endanger the crew and passengers. But it seems a lot of the recent crashes point to poor upkeep by the airlines...
...Nevermind the fact that this "civilian" (give me a break!!) country is ruled by an overbearing madman who has used weapons of mass destruction without regret in the past. Disregard the fact that this same dictator kills and/or tortures any opposition sometimes torturing children in front of their parents as well. Forget the fact that he is harboring terrorists and has not provided any evidence of having destroyed his large stockpile of weapons. Ignore the facts and let's just wait and see if he will comply. What's another 12 years anyway? I'm sure he won't sell any weapons to terrorists....
Let's just have America crawl back into a hole and disregard the rest of the world. If there are problems, we will pretend that they don't exist. Look at how well that's worked in the past (WWII ring any bells)?
Bush is a strongly religious man, and it's sad that you can't see past your disagreement and take his words for what they are...
Yeah, we only landed 113 before it safely...
That'd be like saying, "Commercial airliners can't be made to fly successfully, I don't believe in space flight."
But then you probably already knew the flaws in that argument since you posted as AC.
I wouldn't go the extent of calling NASA engineers idiots...
First, they would have to start moving out a shuttle to the launchpad immediately after launching the first one, I'm not sure they could even get the launchpad up to their safety standards in time. Secondly, as I understand it, if it rains, it can ruin the heat tiles, so they can't just set a shuttle on the launch pad indefinetly.
Further, I think the ISS was out of reach (another 100 miles higher in orbit) of Columbia as heavy as it was. A NASA official also commented that they did not have supplies on board or any way of repairing heat shield damage if it occurred. He said the only thing they could do on that front was to equip the ship "robustly" enough that it could do with missing tiles. There are some heat shields that it cannot do without, but as NASA said, the astronauts understood the risks of a tile falling off of one of the critial areas. Without a robotic arm, lightening the load enough to allow a ISS docking was probably out of the question. That basically leaves the option of waiting for a rescue shuttle, which was probably too far off to do any good.
Sometimes there just isn't a way out. The space program has its risks and losing a critical tile is one of those. If you want to blame something, blame the fact that we haven't invested enough in NASA for them to design a superior orbiter.
"There are cheaper ways to get the science data they provide."
I agree and so does NASA. But the thing we can't get through cheaper methods is human experience in space. Ultimately, I think we can agree that we would like to travel beyond Earth and around the universe. We won't ever get there unless we actually put our asses on the line and push the envelope (and increase the monetary cost) by getting first hand experience.
No insult intended, but using your line of thought we can just send out an endless array of unmanned ships and have them do the exploring for us. After all, manned flight won't ever be proven unless we actually go out and do it.
As I understand, the shuttle never docked with the space station (apparently the Columbia was much heavier than other orbiters). I can't verify that for sure since I can't get to the mission news on NASA's website.
Even if they determined something may have been wrong, it is hard to say if anything could have been done. I'm sure we will here more about that if indeed the cause of the failure can be traced to the insulation incident. The NASA news conference touched on this a bit, saying that there was no way to replace missing tiles while in space. I guess the only thing they could have done was dock with the station (which may not have been possible due to weight). The could have sent up an additional shuttle to pick them up, but I think the crawler takes a few days to even get a shuttle to the launchpad. Further, they didn't have a way to even inspect the tiles in space anyhow, since their bay was filled with experiments and didn't have a robotic arm. I think the lack of the robotic arm would probably also have made it impossible to unload the bay to reduce weight so that they could get to the ISS.
Seems to me they were pretty much screwed, and the NASA official said the "loss of tile" was a "risk that the astronauts accepted when the shuttle left the launchpad".
I think rather they will focus not on the flight director (who really didn't seem to have many options), but on how to better secure the tiles and prevent the loss of one tile from sacrificing the integrity of the entire ship (since a tile coming off of the critical leading edge section can cause all the tiles behind it to peel off).
I don't know if this matters given what I just heard on TV regarding left wing heating...but
I heard that the range is about 10-15 degrees on ABC. I thought it was a smaller range (2 degrees), but I'm probably thinking angle of descent, not shuttle attitude.
I agree.
But I think the whole reason that we focus on this is because what we were trying to accomplish. I really don't think that's a bad thing.
Personally, I feel just as bad when a plane crashes (which really is more of a tragedy). It's one thing for a space shuttle which is really pushing the boundaries (why else would there be so many redundant systems unless if things went bad it could get really ugly), it's entirely another if a 737 crashes because of some seemingly stupid overlooked error.
I think the real reason everyone is focusing on this is because despite the fact that we know there is a huge risk in space flight, Americans (at least) generally consider space flight as routine and safe. Even those that know the risk, still don't expect anything bad to happen, otherwise there would be some changes.
You know, America isn't the only one with a space vehicle.
Russia has a bunch of automated un-manned pods they've been sending up for years.
People unfortunately die every day. Accidents happen.
The magnitude of this is not just the lives lost, but the tragedy in pursuit of a greater purpose. This is a blow to space exploration, a frontier.
That is not to trivialize the loss of life from other causes around the globe, but the loss of life in what I widely view as selfless pursuits impart more of a sense of tragedy to me.
Seven people died and you're worried about your tax money. Typical of America these days....
I think that's probably not true. There have been over 100 successful flights without this ever happening. Further, there are 4 computers in the main system that calculate the same thing (plus a backup that takes over if those computer "vote themselves out"). From what I heard on ABC, all of those computers would have to see the same thing in order for that to happen.
I think that's highly unlikely since I'm sure NASA has built a bunch of redundant sensors into it as well. They already use a redundant computer system with yet another backup system based on completely different software. It's more likely that a mechanical problem occurred that the computer could not correct for, or could not correct for in time to make a difference. That or an electrical system failure, but that seems more unlikely since those are redundant as well. Mechanical items can't always have a backup (i.e. if some critical tiles fall off, you can't replace them). Simple statistics (of course I'm not a statistics major) points toward a mechanical problem.
Actually, I guess it is kind of a moot point.
There's nothing preventing someone from filing off the serial number, which applies both to registering ones firearm or the owner keeping track of the serial number.
Ballistic fingerprinting could be helpful in this regard since once the firearm is recovered one could test it with the same brand of cartridge (which is one of the criticisms of ballistic fingerprinting since just changing the brand can render fingerprinting impossible). Filing off the serial number is free, but I bet there would be fewer people that would go to the length of swapping firearm parts to ruin the firearms ballistic fingerprint (especially if they don't have a large cache of firearms to draw from since they would then be forced to buy or steal parts).
Any type of _effective_ registration program aimed at solving this "stolen firearm" problem would need to address a method of uniquely identifying a firearm in a way that would not significantly increase the manufacturing cost while simultaneously remaining hard to defeat.
And then you have to get the masses behind you and convince them this does not infringe on their rights, won't be used to track gunowner's (what information that the US government has about a citizen isn't used to track them?), and is worth the taxpayer and consumer's dollars.
While I support the premise behind the idea of gun registration, I do not trust that the government will stop there. I would view mandatory firearm registration as a step towards nullifying the second amendment. For that reason alone, I strongly oppose mandatory firearm registration. I'm a firm believer in keeping a watchful eye on the government's encroachment of my rights.
Perhaps a friendlier (and more popular) alternative would be to somehow lend an advantage to those who keep the documentation on their firearms if a cheap and effective means of identification is found. The owner could hold onto the information in the event that their firearm was stolen. At that point they could turn it over to the authorities when filing the police report. That would be the point where the advantage would fall to those who provided the documentation that came with their firearm. I'm not about to propose what that benefit would be but it would have to balance the value of the benefit against those who would wish to exploit it.
This solution would still allow those that did not want to provide the information (for whatever reason) not to, which would help alleviate concerns of firearm owners. There would not be any government database linking firearm owners to particular firearms which would also meet my desires (and many others). Finally, there would be both the motivation and the means to provide information to police that would uniquely identify the firearm recovered by the authorities as stolen. The authorities wouldn't even necessarily have to link the stolen firearm to its former owner, but would only have to enter the information into the database. Anyone who then turns up with the firearm either extorted the government for the benefit (fraud) or has a stolen firearm.
Would this be an acceptable alternative?
And so what about the criminal who now having been identified will want to kill you? I raise the violence level simply by being able to see. I propose we all cut our eyes out, that way when we become a member of a violent crime, we can't identify who did it. They'll have a lot less reason to kill us then. Further, I'm not sure how a robber that has just broken into my house sees me pointing a gun at him from 20-30 feet away then charges towards me to defend his life. Unless on drugs or simply suffering from some sort of invincibility disorder, most people (even criminals) are either going to stand there and drop their weapon, or jump back out the way they came in. Either is fine with me, I'm not going to shoot a fleeing robber (unless he's taking my wife with him ;-) Also, the proper use of a gun is not swinging it like a bat. The proper use would be aiming and pulling the trigger. Certainly I wouldn't bring a gun into the mix if it was close combat and I didn't have reason to fear for my life. At the same time, I've got to question the intentions of anyone that pulls a knife on me or my family...
And perhaps you're confusing gang mentality and their use of guns in your "cool, macho" statement. I don't own a gun to be cool or macho, I own a gun to defend myself. I don't bring any friends or aquaintences over and say, "Hey, look I'm cool and macho, I have a gun in my house." It's not an issue of being cool and macho for the vast majority of legal gunowners in America. It's a matter of a constitutional right to defend my life, liberty, and freedom with the power granted by the second amendment (the right to bear arms).
Where do you get your news, the mass media? You can't judge a country by its media coverage.
Sorry, I was replying to the link provided in the message I responded to. From what I could glean from reading Tim Lambert's commentary titled "Do more guns cause less crime?" which aims to discredit Lott's work it does not mention any of these controls. The point I was trying to make was that without these controls the model presented by Tim Lambert would fail as well.
Unfortunately I don't have immediate access to the book so I can hardly comment on what controls he uses. I certainly wasn't attacking Lott's study. What I continually find (in reviews) however is that while Lott finds a correlation, again it does not neccesarily demonstrate causation.
So, when it comes down to it, all that is being shown is a correlation. I'll use a quote from my college psychology book: "Correlation indicates the possibility of a cause-effect relationship, but does not prove causation." The correlation may be sound, but that doesn't mean it's right. You'd have to prove that other uncontrolled variables were not the cause and the only way to do this would be to repeat the test today and see if the correlation still exists. Furthermore, to do such a thing, you'd need to control for all the variables that have changed which is probably impossible. Just because Lott or another researcher discards some variable as being not-significant, does not mean that it is. Tim Lambert uses this predictive test (i.e. Lott's correlation should hold true with updated data) using (presumably) the same controls and finds the test to fail. That still doesn't rule out the fact that there could be a cause-effect relationship since it would also need to rule out other uncontrolled variables that could account for the failure. Then that whole revised theory would need to be tested again and if it passed, we'd be much closer to causation.
So at this point, yes, we're still pissing in the wind if we're trying to use this to form policy (in an ideal world). Really, we shouldn't be making changes unless we KNOW that the results will have the desired effects. Unfortunately that is not the case in this country, where policy is made on guesses and hunches. And in that light Lott's work is very powerful and helpful.
But I'm still an idealist so I'm still stuck pissing in the wind.