the 200+ year old hard-won freedom that Bin Laden so hated,
Please spare us the outdated cold-war rhetoric. Al-Qaeda and the Mujahideen started in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Their anger with the US had nothing to do with domestic freedoms and everything to do with US foreign policy. What do the Soviets and US have in common? Not freedom. Al Qaeda was not bombing other liberal democracies. Yes they are horrible nasty people, but they really couldn't care less about your "freedoms".
Sorry for the OT rant. Yes, airlines are safe, and I'd happily fly on Malaysian airlines again. (Its their neighbours in Indonesia who have the relatively poor safety record.)
Until recently no one has bothered to invest in Africa
What is "recent" ? Western powers were kept out for a long time because of malaria. Once that was controlled, the British invested heavily. But lack of reliable local labour forced then to bring in large numbers of Indian and Chinese, as well as Europeans, to get anything done. You cannot do that now, plus there are massive barriers with the local bureaucracy. Just getting spare parts into the country is extremely slow, even with bribes.
And people in the first world do stupid things like believing that vaccines cause autism
Unfortunately, sub-Saharan Africa goes *way* beyond that level. Its hard to explain to someone who has never been to Africa. We've had President Mbeki of South Africa, the most advanced economy in Africa, denying that HIV causes AIDS and treating victims with herbs instead of anti-retrovirals. President Zuma thinks it is OK to rape an AIDS-infected woman if he showers afterwards. Yes, the US has some dumb people, and past presidents, but they are not really in the same league.
If we call a spade a spade, Clarkson is basically a dick.
You say dick, May called him a knob, Clarkson would refer to himself as a "bell-end". Thats what he gets paid for - a professional arsehole would be a better metaphor IMHO. And we love him for it.
But does one vs ten picosecond matter? And I'm pretty sure you do not want a laser of this size pointed at your arm, unless you are looking for instant amputation.
Why should anyone care about the power level, as opposed to the pulse energy? ie why does it matter if the kilojoule is spread over one or ten picoseconds? Without this vital piece of information, it is hard to get excited (pardon the pun).
I just mean it enables the US to develop new weapons, e.g. bunker busters, without live testing. Yes, the simulations are that good. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, especially as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty was never ratified. But the NPT is a problem.
This particular backyard is just a few blocks from the Blue Lick Airport. Surely he can expect a little less privacy? The operator says he was photographing a friends house. Seems reasonable - you don't normally hover directly over your subject.
In any case, it is no excuse for firing a gun in a city. In any (other) civilised country, he'd have a very hard time arguing why he should get to keep his gun license after that.
No chance of a white guy losing his license in Kentucky, I suppose? (Why am I hearing banjos?)
It is not the NSA driving this, but the Department of Energy. The current fastest supercomputer in the US is at Oak Ridge - the nuclear weapons labs since the Manhattan Project. It enables the US to violate the spirit, but not the letter, of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And now China has a bigger computer, so of course we need more supercomputers, and more Mine Shafts.
Rhetorical question. Feel free to take it seriously (who does gain what from DRM?), but thats getting off-topic.
Just saying that a self-destructing email is like uncopyable media. Neither works as claimed, but that doesn't stop it making a lot of money for the people selling it.
They don't even protect the digital path very well, because the consumer needs the keys to view the content. The idea is fundamentally broken. (As are the above-mentioned DRM schemes.)
playing content (text, image/sound/video) requires, BY NECESSITY, the ability to duplicate that content.
Ridiculous. If that were true, why would all those clever companies spend countless millions on advanced technologies like BD+ and HDCP? You think they just enjoy flushing money down the toilet?
Huh? There is nothing in there about retro-fitted central heating. I'm sure they already had it, and the article talks about insulation, regenerative brakes on the elevators, LED lights... all good things but irrelevant to French homes' choice of central vs split-system AC.
If a lot of people switched to central heating the country could probably be more energetically efficient.
Why central? Retro-fitting to old buildings would be unnecessarily expensive. (except perhaps single-storey homes, but they are not common.) Just replace the electric radiators with split-system reverse-cycle air-conditioners. Modern systems can use a quarter the energy, or less. And the next time a summer heatwave hits, the French won't be dying en-masse from heat exhaustion.
... or already broken, depending on your viewpoint. While fossil fuels reduce atmospheric C14, atmospheric nuclear detonations increase it dramatically. In 1963, C14 levels reached double the earlier level. But even before any of that, radiocarbon dating needed to be calibrated according the varying level of atmospheric CO2 over the aeons. And it is already easy to make fake ancient parchment or paper using greenhouses and fossil fuel.
Combining carbon dating with other techniques should be enough to remove ambiguity in dating.
Because it is far too big, and incredibly wasteful. So much is just political pork. I'm not just talking about the mythical $6000 hammer, but whole programs that should be scrapped, like the JSF. US military spending is equal to the next nine countries combined. Be careful. With such a bloated military, you run the risk of launching wars of aggression against distant countries that are no threat to the US, killing countless people, destabilising regions, and giving rise to devastating fundamentalist armies.
The AC is confusing scientific proof with formal mathematical proof.
Science makes observations of the real world. If those observations make successful predictions, it is real science.
For example, if science can observe an MRI image of brain activity, and correctly determine the gender 99% of the time, this is proof of a difference. The greater the sample size, the higher the confidence.
Slashdot Mirror
the 200+ year old hard-won freedom that Bin Laden so hated,
Please spare us the outdated cold-war rhetoric. Al-Qaeda and the Mujahideen started in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Their anger with the US had nothing to do with domestic freedoms and everything to do with US foreign policy. What do the Soviets and US have in common? Not freedom. Al Qaeda was not bombing other liberal democracies. Yes they are horrible nasty people, but they really couldn't care less about your "freedoms".
Sorry for the OT rant. Yes, airlines are safe, and I'd happily fly on Malaysian airlines again. (Its their neighbours in Indonesia who have the relatively poor safety record.)
I have to submit anonymously because this is the first time I've visited this site.
Be kind to a 'virgin' please folks?
Thats OK. It is traditional here for clueless rants opposing all factual evidence to be posted as AC. It reduces work for the mods.
What does it matter, since Americans don't use metric anyway.
Google tells me 21GW is about 28 million horsepower. (or should I use BTUs?)
Until recently no one has bothered to invest in Africa
What is "recent" ? Western powers were kept out for a long time because of malaria. Once that was controlled, the British invested heavily. But lack of reliable local labour forced then to bring in large numbers of Indian and Chinese, as well as Europeans, to get anything done. You cannot do that now, plus there are massive barriers with the local bureaucracy. Just getting spare parts into the country is extremely slow, even with bribes.
And people in the first world do stupid things like believing that vaccines cause autism
Unfortunately, sub-Saharan Africa goes *way* beyond that level. Its hard to explain to someone who has never been to Africa. We've had President Mbeki of South Africa, the most advanced economy in Africa, denying that HIV causes AIDS and treating victims with herbs instead of anti-retrovirals.
President Zuma thinks it is OK to rape an AIDS-infected woman if he showers afterwards. Yes, the US has some dumb people, and past presidents, but they are not really in the same league.
Why do these crazy conspiracy theories always blame the Jews?
If we call a spade a spade, Clarkson is basically a dick.
You say dick, May called him a knob, Clarkson would refer to himself as a "bell-end". Thats what he gets paid for - a professional arsehole would be a better metaphor IMHO. And we love him for it.
But does one vs ten picosecond matter?
And I'm pretty sure you do not want a laser of this size pointed at your arm, unless you are looking for instant amputation.
Why should anyone care about the power level, as opposed to the pulse energy?
ie why does it matter if the kilojoule is spread over one or ten picoseconds? Without this vital piece of information, it is hard to get excited (pardon the pun).
violate the spirit?
I just mean it enables the US to develop new weapons, e.g. bunker busters, without live testing. Yes, the simulations are that good. I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, especially as the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty was never ratified. But the NPT is a problem.
I think I'd prefer the weirdo with the camera to the weirdo with a gun as a neighbour, any day.
Its in the same category as punching someone because they "looked at you funny".
This particular backyard is just a few blocks from the Blue Lick Airport.
Surely he can expect a little less privacy? The operator says he was photographing a friends house. Seems reasonable - you don't normally hover directly over your subject.
In any case, it is no excuse for firing a gun in a city.
In any (other) civilised country, he'd have a very hard time arguing why he should get to keep his gun license after that.
No chance of a white guy losing his license in Kentucky, I suppose? (Why am I hearing banjos?)
It is not the NSA driving this, but the Department of Energy.
The current fastest supercomputer in the US is at Oak Ridge - the nuclear weapons labs since the Manhattan Project.
It enables the US to violate the spirit, but not the letter, of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
And now China has a bigger computer, so of course we need more supercomputers, and more Mine Shafts.
... we really want be able to delete every stupid thing that happened before we were 30. Especially those political posts.
I'm pretty sure I read this morning that these interstitials are what wiped out the wooly mammoth.
http://www.livescience.com/516...
Rhetorical question. Feel free to take it seriously (who does gain what from DRM?), but thats getting off-topic.
Just saying that a self-destructing email is like uncopyable media. Neither works as claimed, but that doesn't stop it making a lot of money for the people selling it.
No, it was just missing the sarcasm tags. Sorry, I misjudged the tone/audience. But still preaching to the choir here :)
They don't even protect the digital path very well, because the consumer needs the keys to view the content.
The idea is fundamentally broken. (As are the above-mentioned DRM schemes.)
playing content (text, image/sound/video) requires, BY NECESSITY, the ability to duplicate that content.
Ridiculous. If that were true, why would all those clever companies spend countless millions on advanced technologies like BD+ and HDCP?
You think they just enjoy flushing money down the toilet?
Huh? There is nothing in there about retro-fitted central heating. I'm sure they already had it, and the article talks about insulation, regenerative brakes on the elevators, LED lights ... all good things but irrelevant to French homes' choice of central vs split-system AC.
If a lot of people switched to central heating the country could probably be more energetically efficient.
Why central? Retro-fitting to old buildings would be unnecessarily expensive. (except perhaps single-storey homes, but they are not common.)
Just replace the electric radiators with split-system reverse-cycle air-conditioners. Modern systems can use a quarter the energy, or less.
And the next time a summer heatwave hits, the French won't be dying en-masse from heat exhaustion.
... or already broken, depending on your viewpoint.
While fossil fuels reduce atmospheric C14, atmospheric nuclear detonations increase it dramatically.
In 1963, C14 levels reached double the earlier level.
But even before any of that, radiocarbon dating needed to be calibrated according the varying level of atmospheric CO2 over the aeons.
And it is already easy to make fake ancient parchment or paper using greenhouses and fossil fuel.
Combining carbon dating with other techniques should be enough to remove ambiguity in dating.
So why are you raiding the military budget?
Because it is far too big, and incredibly wasteful. So much is just political pork. I'm not just talking about the mythical $6000 hammer, but whole programs that should be scrapped, like the JSF.
US military spending is equal to the next nine countries combined.
Be careful. With such a bloated military, you run the risk of launching wars of aggression against distant countries that are no threat to the US, killing countless people, destabilising regions, and giving rise to devastating fundamentalist armies.
The AC is confusing scientific proof with formal mathematical proof.
Science makes observations of the real world. If those observations make successful predictions, it is real science.
For example, if science can observe an MRI image of brain activity, and correctly determine the gender 99% of the time, this is proof of a difference.
The greater the sample size, the higher the confidence.
On the other hand, the US steals some of China's best brains.
I'm not sure where the US head coach, Po-Shen Loh, is from, but the accent ain't Texan.