"The police here is governend by _your_ laws, and guided by _your_ interests, with a guiding principle of fear, feeded by _your_ government because some fscking Saudi Arab made up some so-called global terrorist group which is _absolutely_ no threat to the imperialist empire the states have become."
Wow. You were sounding pretty rational until you said "so-called global terrorist group." What would you call them? Local ruffians? Freedom fighters? Heroes? I think terrorist group works pretty well. I also think that calling them _absolutely_ no threat is a bit of a stretch. I seem to recall they set off a bomb in someone's parking garage, essentially took over a Middle Eastern country, blew a big hole in a destroyer, and knocked some big buildings over or some such. That isn't a Soviet Union, but it sounds a teeny bit threatening to me.
Also, let's look at the definition of an empire, shall we? A political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority.
Well, yes, the US is pretty big, but somehow I don't think that's what you meant. Perhaps the word you're looking for is "hegemony." The EU or UN is closer to the definition of an empire.
"No World Police? What's the UN supposed to be then?"
The UN should be (IMHO) a forum for discussion. It should not be a police force, a tax collector, nor a governing body. The UN has shown itself to be as susceptible to corruption and mismanagement as most any government. It also gives a disturbing amount of attention and credibility to a variety of oppressive, totalitarian, theocratic, and otherwise undesireable and unaccountable nations. I am not eager to hand control of my country and my life to such a group.
"...what kind of legitimate peacetime missions would require such stealth?"
The article does specify that these are intended for special forces. Although they are tough cookies in a firefight, special forces are not supposed to be used as the front line in battle; they are more for reconnaissance and unconventional warfare. These gliders would be very handy for inserting special forces into an unfriendly county to poke around to find where the good targets are or to start organizing locals who are more sympathetic to our cause than that of their own government. Such missions can be begun a war has started, and could be ended / denied if the war were averted.
I might argue that we do indeed consider war to be atrocious. This does not mean that, if we find ourselves in a war, we don't want to win it. Hence funding research such as this.
As for how we find ourselves in a war, please let's not start that discussion all over again. I believe that topic has been beaten so far into the ground we'd need miners to get it back out.
Took me a minute to figure out what this thread was about. As a former owner of a TG-16, and given the context of this article, I thought it was about the game Air Zonk. Never mind.:-)
The implausibility of this device moving into another dimension seems to be attracting the most interest here, but don't forget the article also claims that this is a reactionless drive. That is, it makes the ship go without throwing stuff out the back end. That is, according to physics as I understand it, also impossible.
If the cooky hyperspace dimension doesn't pan out (and I'm inclined to think it won't) but reactionless aspect of the drive worked (also inclined to think not), that would also be a boon to space travel. Having to carry propellent is a bummer.
Most Americans like charity; that is, we like giving to the poor, helping them improve their living situations and their abilities to fend for themselves. We do not, however, like having someone else (such as the government), telling us how much we must give and to whom we must give it.
Forcefully taking one person's earned money against his will and then giving it to another is not charity, it is theft. If you don't believe it is forceful, try to stop your taxes from being witheld and claim $0 tax liability on your next return. Police will come with guns and put you in jail.
Remember, Robin Hood did not steal from the rich to give to the poor, he stole from the tax collector to give to the citizens (who were all poor).
"All of the negative noise about SP2 is alot of FUD"
I think that's too strong a statement. If you haven't had any trouble, that doesn't mean that all the negative noise is FUD. I, for one, had to remove SP2 from my laptop because it would lock up when it was supposed to be going into power save mode or when it tried to shut down.
The manufacturer has since released a BIOS update that fixes it, but if I hadn't been able to remove SP2 or prevent it from being installed I would have seriously irked. SP2 has had some real compatibility issues.
The Green Party platform states in section II.A.2 that,
"Education starts with CHOICE and within public education we believe in broad choices. "Magnet schools," "Site-based Management," "Schools within Schools," alternative models and parental involvement are ways in which elementary education can be changed to make a real difference in the lives of our children."
Since the Green Party believes so strongly in school choice, do you support giving parents the option of receiving vouchers with which they can send their children to private schools (secular or religous) or to pay for the expense of home schooling? If not, why do you only support choice within government-controlled schools?
No! The "hardware" refers to the appliances, pans, and such. The "software" refers to the ingredients.
One time he even referred to cooking oil as hardware. I believe he was deep-frying something and his argument for calling it hardware was because it was being used to get heat into the food, not to become part of the food itself. Does anyone remember that episode?
I mainly ride my bike on biking trails that have separate pavement from the roads for that very reason. Cars generally behave irrationally around bicycles.
And yes, speed difference is what kills, but the difference between the speed of a 65mph motorcycle and the pavement is 65mph. That's plenty to mess you up quite badly even if there weren't cars right behind you.
I would _love_ to ride a motorcycle. I have to bicycles (one street, one mountain) which I ride on various trails around Atlanta (and once a year at an organized ride in Savannah). Having a motorcycle would be like biking to work, only a lot faster and without so much sweat.:-)
My problem with them is safety. I'm allergic to death. If only I didn't have to worry about people mowing me down on the roads.
I feel I can speak with some authority here since I bought a hybrid Civic very soon after they were available here in Atlanta, GA. I've gotten over 50mpg on every tank of gas since I bought the thing; right now it reads 53mpg. I think a lot of it has to do with how you drive. I am not an aggressive driver; I don't accelerate as quickly as I can and I stay in the second-from-the-right lane on the interstates. I've driven it 24,000 miles, mixed highway and city driving. I can't imagine how anyone can manage to get as poor a mileage as 35.
Big problem number one is that a tank of hydrogen is several orders of magnitude more frightening than a tank of gasoline. Hydrogen seeps through cast iron, exactly like acetylene but faster. And it burns with a hell-fire, requiring far less ignition energy and over a wider air/fuel mixture than gasoline.
I agree with most of your post except for the danger of hydrogen fuel tanks. While it's really easy to get hydrogen to burn, the fire it produces won't harm you unless you are almost in the flame. I'd also much rather hang around a freshly busted hydrogen tank than gas tank because hydrogen is lighter than air and dissipates quickly. Petrol fumes are heavier and tend to hang around longer, making for an explosive mixture.
Although the order did come from Gov. Sonny Perdue, the decision originated from the Attorney General Thurbert Baker. It seems he was the one in the Governor's office that reviewed the books and decided MATRIX was illegal. Of course, that makes sense what with him being the attorney and all.
It is similar to the subsidizing of the nuclear industry, yes. You read my post and assumed that I don't want alternative power to ever succeed. You assume too much. I just stated my opinion that alternative power will not take off until it's cheaper than what we already have, and I gave an example of an alternative power source that's still too expensive. Way to go straight for the throat.
"Again, I just cannot figure why we still persist with nuclear, oil, coal, with all the attendant problems (pollution, wars over oil, etc), when we could cover a small proportiion of the deserts of the world with solar cells, and the roofs of our buildings, and the coasts with huge offsiore wind farms (British Wind Enrgy Association page) & tidal turbines, and have all the power we need?"
There's a very good reason why, and it isn't politicians and evil oil companies. It's money. When alternative power sources become cheaper than fossil fuels people will use them more. Go visit http://www.bpsolar.com/homesolutions/ and see how long it would take for your solar panels to pay for themselves. If you don't live in a state like California who subsidizes the heck out of them (and coincidentally has a budget disaster in progress) then it takes 30 years. And that doesn't count the investment earnings you lose by ponying up $$$ for the equipment and installation.
The article stated that this method is mainly only good at generating small amounts of electric power. This could still be useful for thing like pacemakers, however; I imagine people would rather have one of these powering their pacemakers than have surgery every few years to change batteries.
I wonder -- would it work on blood? The channes are 10um thick; how wide is a red blood cell?
Is it just me, or has Slashdot gotten disturbingly political (and specifically Leftsist)? I just want news for nerds, not news for Comrades.
Look, some corporate types got some of their money through devious and immoral means. Just look at the Delta executives who asked their employees to take big pay cuts while the executives themselves were ensuring that their pension plan could never run out of money. That was legal, but wrong. Some executives at other companies straight-out broke the law (take your pick).
This said, you can create wealth that exceeds the dollar value of all the work you could possibly perform in your lifetime and THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT STEALING. If you get rich by cleverly trading stocks, like #2 on the list Warren Buffett, you have used the money you previously earned (not stolen) to buy a thing of value (stock in a company). At some later date someone else OFFERED TO BUY IT FROM YOU FOR MORE MONEY. You did not force them to give you that money! You did not steal it! This is neither illegal nor immoral!
But wait, you say, the value of that stock was increased by the toil and labor of that company's workers, not by you. That means you stole that value from them! I quote from your post:
"In some cases, the money was stolen from fortunes made by the ideas and productive results of employees of the company. Does anyone truly believe Jobs invented the imac and made it's phenomenal success possible?"
That is bologna. Those employees signed an employment contract when they started working for Apple. They knew it was a publicly traded company. They knew what their salaries were and they decided to accept them. They could have bought company stock at any time. Many did, I'm sure. It's all about who accepts the risk of owning the business; if they wanted a bigger stake in the fruits of their labors they could have started their own private company.
These are all legal, voluntary agreements between adults of sound mind. None of it is theft!
The feature I find most interesting on this list is the 802.11. With that we can finally play multiplayer games with handhelds without tangles of wires! Perhaps it could also be used as a wireless controller for your playstation. And I'd bet money there'll be a web browser.
IBM's old WebExplorer for OS/2 had this feature; they called it the WebMap. I think this would be a gloriously wonderful thing for Mozilla to put in the sidebar. If only I were a good enough coder and had enough time to contribute.:(
I do kind of wonder, however, with all of the dynamically-generated web pages out there, how well this would work today. I'm sure the browser would badly confuse some of the more elaborate web pages (or vise versa).
> OK, what are they? And don't say games, I'm > talking about professional uses for a desktop.
All righty, here I am -- a computing professional. I need >450MHz for my tasks of... 1) Simulating a multi-hundred-thousand gate VHDL design 2) Synthesis of the same (target == Xilinx XC2V1000) 3) Place-and-Route of the output of (2) 4) Backup of important data to server -- backup uses compression and a faster CPU makes a big difference when you're compressing hundreds of MB.
I do this stuff every day. And, please, don't say it. Tasks 1-3 are serial in nature so SMP won't help.
Slashdot Mirror
"The police here is governend by _your_ laws, and guided by _your_ interests, with a guiding principle of fear, feeded by _your_ government because some fscking Saudi Arab made up some so-called global terrorist group which is _absolutely_ no threat to the imperialist empire the states have become."
Wow. You were sounding pretty rational until you said "so-called global terrorist group." What would you call them? Local ruffians? Freedom fighters? Heroes? I think terrorist group works pretty well. I also think that calling them _absolutely_ no threat is a bit of a stretch. I seem to recall they set off a bomb in someone's parking garage, essentially took over a Middle Eastern country, blew a big hole in a destroyer, and knocked some big buildings over or some such. That isn't a Soviet Union, but it sounds a teeny bit threatening to me.
Also, let's look at the definition of an empire, shall we?
A political unit having an extensive territory or comprising a number of territories or nations and ruled by a single supreme authority.
Well, yes, the US is pretty big, but somehow I don't think that's what you meant. Perhaps the word you're looking for is "hegemony." The EU or UN is closer to the definition of an empire.
"No World Police? What's the UN supposed to be then?"
The UN should be (IMHO) a forum for discussion. It should not be a police force, a tax collector, nor a governing body. The UN has shown itself to be as susceptible to corruption and mismanagement as most any government. It also gives a disturbing amount of attention and credibility to a variety of oppressive, totalitarian, theocratic, and otherwise undesireable and unaccountable nations. I am not eager to hand control of my country and my life to such a group.
"...what kind of legitimate peacetime missions would require such stealth?"
The article does specify that these are intended for special forces. Although they are tough cookies in a firefight, special forces are not supposed to be used as the front line in battle; they are more for reconnaissance and unconventional warfare. These gliders would be very handy for inserting special forces into an unfriendly county to poke around to find where the good targets are or to start organizing locals who are more sympathetic to our cause than that of their own government. Such missions can be begun a war has started, and could be ended / denied if the war were averted.
I might argue that we do indeed consider war to be atrocious. This does not mean that, if we find ourselves in a war, we don't want to win it. Hence funding research such as this.
As for how we find ourselves in a war, please let's not start that discussion all over again. I believe that topic has been beaten so far into the ground we'd need miners to get it back out.
Took me a minute to figure out what this thread was about. As a former owner of a TG-16, and given the context of this article, I thought it was about the game Air Zonk. Never mind. :-)
The implausibility of this device moving into another dimension seems to be attracting the most interest here, but don't forget the article also claims that this is a reactionless drive. That is, it makes the ship go without throwing stuff out the back end. That is, according to physics as I understand it, also impossible.
If the cooky hyperspace dimension doesn't pan out (and I'm inclined to think it won't) but reactionless aspect of the drive worked (also inclined to think not), that would also be a boon to space travel. Having to carry propellent is a bummer.
Most Americans like charity; that is, we like giving to the poor, helping them improve their living situations and their abilities to fend for themselves. We do not, however, like having someone else (such as the government), telling us how much we must give and to whom we must give it.
Forcefully taking one person's earned money against his will and then giving it to another is not charity, it is theft. If you don't believe it is forceful, try to stop your taxes from being witheld and claim $0 tax liability on your next return. Police will come with guns and put you in jail.
Remember, Robin Hood did not steal from the rich to give to the poor, he stole from the tax collector to give to the citizens (who were all poor).
"All of the negative noise about SP2 is alot of FUD"
I think that's too strong a statement. If you haven't had any trouble, that doesn't mean that all the negative noise is FUD. I, for one, had to remove SP2 from my laptop because it would lock up when it was supposed to be going into power save mode or when it tried to shut down.
The manufacturer has since released a BIOS update that fixes it, but if I hadn't been able to remove SP2 or prevent it from being installed I would have seriously irked. SP2 has had some real compatibility issues.
Mr. Cobb,
The Green Party platform states in section II.A.2 that,
"Education starts with CHOICE and within public education we believe in broad choices. "Magnet schools," "Site-based Management," "Schools within Schools," alternative models and parental involvement are ways in which elementary education can be changed to make a real difference in the lives of our children."
Since the Green Party believes so strongly in school choice, do you support giving parents the option of receiving vouchers with which they can send their children to private schools (secular or religous) or to pay for the expense of home schooling? If not, why do you only support choice within government-controlled schools?
I remember Tim Curry as the butler in the movie Clue. Somehow I love that movie dearly while my friends mainly, erm, don't.
The body!
What body?
Body's body!
It's gone!
How can you not love that?
No! The "hardware" refers to the appliances, pans, and such. The "software" refers to the ingredients.
One time he even referred to cooking oil as hardware. I believe he was deep-frying something and his argument for calling it hardware was because it was being used to get heat into the food, not to become part of the food itself. Does anyone remember that episode?
I mainly ride my bike on biking trails that have separate pavement from the roads for that very reason. Cars generally behave irrationally around bicycles.
And yes, speed difference is what kills, but the difference between the speed of a 65mph motorcycle and the pavement is 65mph. That's plenty to mess you up quite badly even if there weren't cars right behind you.
I would _love_ to ride a motorcycle. I have to bicycles (one street, one mountain) which I ride on various trails around Atlanta (and once a year at an organized ride in Savannah). Having a motorcycle would be like biking to work, only a lot faster and without so much sweat. :-)
My problem with them is safety. I'm allergic to death. If only I didn't have to worry about people mowing me down on the roads.
I feel I can speak with some authority here since I bought a hybrid Civic very soon after they were available here in Atlanta, GA. I've gotten over 50mpg on every tank of gas since I bought the thing; right now it reads 53mpg. I think a lot of it has to do with how you drive. I am not an aggressive driver; I don't accelerate as quickly as I can and I stay in the second-from-the-right lane on the interstates. I've driven it 24,000 miles, mixed highway and city driving. I can't imagine how anyone can manage to get as poor a mileage as 35.
I agree with most of your post except for the danger of hydrogen fuel tanks. While it's really easy to get hydrogen to burn, the fire it produces won't harm you unless you are almost in the flame. I'd also much rather hang around a freshly busted hydrogen tank than gas tank because hydrogen is lighter than air and dissipates quickly. Petrol fumes are heavier and tend to hang around longer, making for an explosive mixture.
Although the order did come from Gov. Sonny Perdue, the decision originated from the Attorney General Thurbert Baker. It seems he was the one in the Governor's office that reviewed the books and decided MATRIX was illegal. Of course, that makes sense what with him being the attorney and all.
a tr ix.html
:)
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/1003/22m
Nice to see something go right in my home state.
It is similar to the subsidizing of the nuclear industry, yes. You read my post and assumed that I don't want alternative power to ever succeed. You assume too much. I just stated my opinion that alternative power will not take off until it's cheaper than what we already have, and I gave an example of an alternative power source that's still too expensive. Way to go straight for the throat.
"Again, I just cannot figure why we still persist with nuclear, oil, coal, with all the attendant problems (pollution, wars over oil, etc), when we could cover a small proportiion of the deserts of the world with solar cells, and the roofs of our buildings, and the coasts with huge offsiore wind farms (British Wind Enrgy Association page) & tidal turbines, and have all the power we need?"
There's a very good reason why, and it isn't politicians and evil oil companies. It's money. When alternative power sources become cheaper than fossil fuels people will use them more. Go visit http://www.bpsolar.com/homesolutions/ and see how long it would take for your solar panels to pay for themselves. If you don't live in a state like California who subsidizes the heck out of them (and coincidentally has a budget disaster in progress) then it takes 30 years. And that doesn't count the investment earnings you lose by ponying up $$$ for the equipment and installation.
The article stated that this method is mainly only good at generating small amounts of electric power. This could still be useful for thing like pacemakers, however; I imagine people would rather have one of these powering their pacemakers than have surgery every few years to change batteries.
I wonder -- would it work on blood? The channes are 10um thick; how wide is a red blood cell?
Is it just me, or has Slashdot gotten disturbingly political (and specifically Leftsist)? I just want news for nerds, not news for Comrades.
Look, some corporate types got some of their money through devious and immoral means. Just look at the Delta executives who asked their employees to take big pay cuts while the executives themselves were ensuring that their pension plan could never run out of money. That was legal, but wrong. Some executives at other companies straight-out broke the law (take your pick).
This said, you can create wealth that exceeds the dollar value of all the work you could possibly perform in your lifetime and THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT STEALING. If you get rich by cleverly trading stocks, like #2 on the list Warren Buffett, you have used the money you previously earned (not stolen) to buy a thing of value (stock in a company). At some later date someone else OFFERED TO BUY IT FROM YOU FOR MORE MONEY. You did not force them to give you that money! You did not steal it! This is neither illegal nor immoral!
But wait, you say, the value of that stock was increased by the toil and labor of that company's workers, not by you. That means you stole that value from them! I quote from your post:
"In some cases, the money was stolen from fortunes made by the ideas and productive results of employees of the company. Does anyone truly believe Jobs invented the imac and made it's phenomenal success possible?"
That is bologna. Those employees signed an employment contract when they started working for Apple. They knew it was a publicly traded company. They knew what their salaries were and they decided to accept them. They could have bought company stock at any time. Many did, I'm sure. It's all about who accepts the risk of owning the business; if they wanted a bigger stake in the fruits of their labors they could have started their own private company.
These are all legal, voluntary agreements between adults of sound mind. None of it is theft!
Made in the USA! Support your local diamond manufacturer. :)
The feature I find most interesting on this list is the 802.11. With that we can finally play multiplayer games with handhelds without tangles of wires! Perhaps it could also be used as a wireless controller for your playstation. And I'd bet money there'll be a web browser.
IBM's old WebExplorer for OS/2 had this feature; they called it the WebMap. I think this would be a gloriously wonderful thing for Mozilla to put in the sidebar. If only I were a good enough coder and had enough time to contribute. :(
I do kind of wonder, however, with all of the dynamically-generated web pages out there, how well this would work today. I'm sure the browser would badly confuse some of the more elaborate web pages (or vise versa).
> OK, what are they? And don't say games, I'm
> talking about professional uses for a desktop.
All righty, here I am -- a computing professional. I need >450MHz for my tasks of...
1) Simulating a multi-hundred-thousand gate VHDL design
2) Synthesis of the same (target == Xilinx XC2V1000)
3) Place-and-Route of the output of (2)
4) Backup of important data to server -- backup uses compression and a faster CPU makes a big difference when you're compressing hundreds of MB.
I do this stuff every day. And, please, don't say it. Tasks 1-3 are serial in nature so SMP won't help.