The only time you have to play with video drivers under Linux is with ATI or nVidia, and only if your distro doesn't do it automatically for you. I use Fedora and it doesn't; my sister uses Xubuntu and it does. I've changed nVidia cards more than once and had the old driver work just as well, but there are times you have to get the right one. Printers, actually, can be worse because not all companies make Linux drivers available or release the specs so that OSS drivers can be written.
Nice piece of FUD there. I've been running Linux exclusively for almost a decade now. I've changed video cards, hard drives NICs and mobos, without any trouble. Most of the time, you make the swap, boot and It Just Works. Once in a while, you have to boot into a CLI to get a new video driver, but that's about it. Maybe you should actually learn something about Linux before you come back and slam it again.
We are living in a world where the west is increasingly persecuting people for ideas.
There's nothing new about this. If you look at history, you'll see things like this happening over and over. Look at how Rome treated Christians, look at the Spanish Inquisition and their expulsion of Jews, look at the Holocaust, look at Stalin's Great Purge. For that matter, remember that the Pilgrims weren't interested in letting everybody worship they way they wanted, they were interested in creating a colony where everybody had to worship the way the Pilgrims said they should. Up until recently, the US has been an exception to the general trend of mankind to punish anybody who doesn't think the same way as the ruler does, but I'm afraid that this is coming to an end. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't fight the trend, just that we shouldn't fool ourselves by thinking that this is something new in the world, because it isn't.
That may be so, but the San Joaquin Valley is only the southernmost part of the Central Valley. And, a large part of the irrigation water comes from the northern half of the valley, AKA the Sacramento Valley which normally has more water than it needs.
Most of California isn't desert, only parts of Southern California. As an example, the Central Valley, the state's biggest agricultural area isn't, nor are the wine growing areas near San Francisco, and yet, they're being hit by the drought just as badly.
That class proved to me that I was not, in fact, a chemical engineer.
If so, taking it wasn't a mistake because it kept you from spending years learning something you weren't really cut out for. And, if you count in the tuition money you saved, it may have been the best thing you ever did while at Rice.
Armor designed to protect against impact gets heavy, very fast. Armor against lasers, maybe not, but I think we need to think in terms of shielding, not armor because that includes ablative protection which may not be as massive. And yes, there's a trade off, as shown by the fact that the bursting charge in an armor piercing shell is much smaller than what's used in a bombardment round. The problem, of course, is working out the optimal balance, and I have no idea how that's done, but I'm sure that the people designing these things know how to decide how much shielding is enough.
Part of penetration comes from mass and momentum. That's why the fuse of an armor piercing shell is at the back and has a time delay. Assuming that the impact velocity isn't lowered, more mass means more momentum. And, of course, if you can't increase the velocity, the only way to increase the impact energy is to increase the mass, which is why musket balls were so big.
I think we're both in agreement here that armor piercing isn't the main issue any more, although I'd be willing to argue that maybe it should be. I'm just trying to explain why I think that some sort of shielding, either reflective or ablative (if not both) isn't a waste of mass on a missile that's going against a laser defense.
'Most' Missiles are a hell of a lot lighter than a 16" shell.
Well, yes. Of course. I quoted those figures simply to show the difference (both in total mass and bursting charge) between an armor piercing and a bombardment round because I happen to know them. And, BTW, I'm not sure if the max range is quite right because back when I was in Uncle Sam's Navy, they were listed as reaching out to 25 nautical (not statute) miles. That 38km might be right, I just don't have either the time nor the inclination to calculate it for myself and it's not exactly important. Just thought I'd mention it.
You miss my point. Shielding on a missile isn't wasted mass. Either it protects the weapon from the laser or its mass does extra damage to the target. (You can think of it as extra shrapnel if you want.) Within reasonable limits, it's a win-win situation. I gave the details on the 16" shells just as an example.
Not all of the damage is done by the warhead, some of it comes from mass and momentum, and any shielding that survives until the missile hits just adds to that effect. In fact, most of the weight of a classic armor-piercing shell is simply a mass of metal in front of the bursting charge (with a time-delay fuse) that's intended to batter its way into (and if possible through) the target's armor before the warhead detonates. As an example, a 16 inch armor piercing shell weighs 2700 pounds of which only 150 pounds are HE. Bombardment rounds are 2200 pounds, including 500 pounds of HE.
If you think that's bad, the 1969 hoax, Naked Came the Stranger was a best seller and remained popular even after the hoax was revealed. The story, such as it was, had no cultural, social or literary merit but was filled with gratuitous sex scenes. In fact, parts of it had to be heavily edited because they were too well written.
I don't know how things are done now, but back when I was in school, we were assigned to write essays by word count, not page count for exactly that reason. And, that's why writers talk about how many words they've written recently, not how many pages because page counts are much easier to inflate than word counts. (Double spacing, large fonts and bigger margins can make the same number of words fill more pages.)
I beg to differ. Anybody can predict the future, and millions of people do it every day, when they buy a lottery ticket, bet on a horse, play the stock market or put money into a retirement plan. What I think you mean is that nobody can accurately or reliably predict the future.
If I were to say, "that's clearly begging the question: where did she go?", and you assumed a definition of "assuming the conclusion of an argument" in that sentence, what would that even *mean*?
It would mean that your question assumes that she went someplace but that it hasn't been established that she has actually gone anywhere. It's kind of like the old question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" Not only does it assume that you are married it also assumes that at one time you were in the habit of beating her, neither of which facts are generally established before the question is asked.
But where the hell do you think I should plug in a few dozen dongles?
If they're built right, you daisy chain them. Back in the Good Old Days before USB, dongles were plugged into the printer port and each one had another parallel port on the back. That way, you could have as many dongles as you needed plugged in, and still use your printer. No reason you couldn't do that today, including having the last item in the chain being your USB printer.
Measuring the sides of a triangle only proves that it does or doesn't conform to the Pythagorean Theorem. To prove it, you must demonstrate that correctly describes all applicable triangles.
For that matter, how many Slashdotters remember Tommy any more? There's so, so much of yesterday's pop culture that's just been forgotten because today's youth just doesn't care. Of course, you and I grew up back when most of the movies you saw on TV were from the '30s or '40s, so we got exposed to it and (sometimes) learned to appreciate it whether we wanted to or not.
Currently, our cable TV is TWC, because it's that or nothing. Our Internet is ADSL and that's fast enough for us. More important is the fact that I can't remember the last time our DSL was out unless all phone service was out, and our local company still believes in "9 9's uptime." It used to be well known that if your power and phone both went out in a disaster, your phone service would be back first, and our phone company still works that way. TWC's standard is "next business day" if they have to send somebody out, because that's good enough for TV, even though that means your cable Internet is out too. And, there are enough minor glitches and hangs on our TV service that I don't want to find out what their Internet service is like.
Many years ago I was a programmer. Then, I found myself doing tech support and got a big surprise: not only was I good at it, I liked doing it. Yes, I had my share of ID10T callers, but at the end of the day there was the great satisfaction of knowing that there were people out there who's days were better because they'd talked to me.
Now I'm retired, and instead of using Windows I use Linux. I belong to several tech support forums and mailing lists for Linux and for various FOSS programs I use and I spend part of every day trying to help others, both to keep my hand in and because I still find it satisfying to be of help. And, when needed, I report issues to my distro's Bugzilla and respond, as best I can, to requests for information because if I'm having this issue, others are too and even minor bugs need swatting. I may not have (and maybe never had) the coding skills to contribute code, but I can still give back to the FOSS community by helping others.
And this is what keeps getting you modded down: it's not your opinions, it's your absolute lack of common courtesy towards people who don't hold the exact same opinions as you do. Right now, you've been modded down as Flamebait, and rightfully, because you've expressed yourself in a manner guaranteed to insult everybody you disagree with, and make them even less likely to be persuaded by your post. If you want anybody to pay attention to you, you might consider being more civil and less eager to insult.
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The only time you have to play with video drivers under Linux is with ATI or nVidia, and only if your distro doesn't do it automatically for you. I use Fedora and it doesn't; my sister uses Xubuntu and it does. I've changed nVidia cards more than once and had the old driver work just as well, but there are times you have to get the right one. Printers, actually, can be worse because not all companies make Linux drivers available or release the specs so that OSS drivers can be written.
Nice piece of FUD there. I've been running Linux exclusively for almost a decade now. I've changed video cards, hard drives NICs and mobos, without any trouble. Most of the time, you make the swap, boot and It Just Works. Once in a while, you have to boot into a CLI to get a new video driver, but that's about it. Maybe you should actually learn something about Linux before you come back and slam it again.
We are living in a world where the west is increasingly persecuting people for ideas.
There's nothing new about this. If you look at history, you'll see things like this happening over and over. Look at how Rome treated Christians, look at the Spanish Inquisition and their expulsion of Jews, look at the Holocaust, look at Stalin's Great Purge. For that matter, remember that the Pilgrims weren't interested in letting everybody worship they way they wanted, they were interested in creating a colony where everybody had to worship the way the Pilgrims said they should. Up until recently, the US has been an exception to the general trend of mankind to punish anybody who doesn't think the same way as the ruler does, but I'm afraid that this is coming to an end. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't fight the trend, just that we shouldn't fool ourselves by thinking that this is something new in the world, because it isn't.
I have my own website, but it's just a vanity site. Why do I need to get a certificate and use https?
That may be so, but the San Joaquin Valley is only the southernmost part of the Central Valley. And, a large part of the irrigation water comes from the northern half of the valley, AKA the Sacramento Valley which normally has more water than it needs.
Most of California isn't desert, only parts of Southern California. As an example, the Central Valley, the state's biggest agricultural area isn't, nor are the wine growing areas near San Francisco, and yet, they're being hit by the drought just as badly.
That class proved to me that I was not, in fact, a chemical engineer.
If so, taking it wasn't a mistake because it kept you from spending years learning something you weren't really cut out for. And, if you count in the tuition money you saved, it may have been the best thing you ever did while at Rice.
Armor tends to be heavy...
Armor designed to protect against impact gets heavy, very fast. Armor against lasers, maybe not, but I think we need to think in terms of shielding, not armor because that includes ablative protection which may not be as massive. And yes, there's a trade off, as shown by the fact that the bursting charge in an armor piercing shell is much smaller than what's used in a bombardment round. The problem, of course, is working out the optimal balance, and I have no idea how that's done, but I'm sure that the people designing these things know how to decide how much shielding is enough.
Part of penetration comes from mass and momentum. That's why the fuse of an armor piercing shell is at the back and has a time delay. Assuming that the impact velocity isn't lowered, more mass means more momentum. And, of course, if you can't increase the velocity, the only way to increase the impact energy is to increase the mass, which is why musket balls were so big.
I think we're both in agreement here that armor piercing isn't the main issue any more, although I'd be willing to argue that maybe it should be. I'm just trying to explain why I think that some sort of shielding, either reflective or ablative (if not both) isn't a waste of mass on a missile that's going against a laser defense.
'Most' Missiles are a hell of a lot lighter than a 16" shell.
Well, yes. Of course. I quoted those figures simply to show the difference (both in total mass and bursting charge) between an armor piercing and a bombardment round because I happen to know them. And, BTW, I'm not sure if the max range is quite right because back when I was in Uncle Sam's Navy, they were listed as reaching out to 25 nautical (not statute) miles. That 38km might be right, I just don't have either the time nor the inclination to calculate it for myself and it's not exactly important. Just thought I'd mention it.
You miss my point. Shielding on a missile isn't wasted mass. Either it protects the weapon from the laser or its mass does extra damage to the target. (You can think of it as extra shrapnel if you want.) Within reasonable limits, it's a win-win situation. I gave the details on the 16" shells just as an example.
Not all of the damage is done by the warhead, some of it comes from mass and momentum, and any shielding that survives until the missile hits just adds to that effect. In fact, most of the weight of a classic armor-piercing shell is simply a mass of metal in front of the bursting charge (with a time-delay fuse) that's intended to batter its way into (and if possible through) the target's armor before the warhead detonates. As an example, a 16 inch armor piercing shell weighs 2700 pounds of which only 150 pounds are HE. Bombardment rounds are 2200 pounds, including 500 pounds of HE.
If you think that's bad, the 1969 hoax, Naked Came the Stranger was a best seller and remained popular even after the hoax was revealed. The story, such as it was, had no cultural, social or literary merit but was filled with gratuitous sex scenes. In fact, parts of it had to be heavily edited because they were too well written.
I don't know how things are done now, but back when I was in school, we were assigned to write essays by word count, not page count for exactly that reason. And, that's why writers talk about how many words they've written recently, not how many pages because page counts are much easier to inflate than word counts. (Double spacing, large fonts and bigger margins can make the same number of words fill more pages.)
That would be appropriate, especially if one of the co-authors was Gracie Bermudez.
Nobody can predict the future...
I beg to differ. Anybody can predict the future, and millions of people do it every day, when they buy a lottery ticket, bet on a horse, play the stock market or put money into a retirement plan. What I think you mean is that nobody can accurately or reliably predict the future.
If I were to say, "that's clearly begging the question: where did she go?", and you assumed a definition of "assuming the conclusion of an argument" in that sentence, what would that even *mean*?
It would mean that your question assumes that she went someplace but that it hasn't been established that she has actually gone anywhere. It's kind of like the old question, "When did you stop beating your wife?" Not only does it assume that you are married it also assumes that at one time you were in the habit of beating her, neither of which facts are generally established before the question is asked.
But where the hell do you think I should plug in a few dozen dongles?
If they're built right, you daisy chain them. Back in the Good Old Days before USB, dongles were plugged into the printer port and each one had another parallel port on the back. That way, you could have as many dongles as you needed plugged in, and still use your printer. No reason you couldn't do that today, including having the last item in the chain being your USB printer.
Ethics and journalism do not belong in the same sentence without negation, e.g., "There is no ethics in journalism."
Measuring the sides of a triangle only proves that it does or doesn't conform to the Pythagorean Theorem. To prove it, you must demonstrate that correctly describes all applicable triangles.
For that matter, how many Slashdotters remember Tommy any more? There's so, so much of yesterday's pop culture that's just been forgotten because today's youth just doesn't care. Of course, you and I grew up back when most of the movies you saw on TV were from the '30s or '40s, so we got exposed to it and (sometimes) learned to appreciate it whether we wanted to or not.
If you want to prove that a chimp deserves human rights, you don't name him Tommy, you name him Jerry.
Currently, our cable TV is TWC, because it's that or nothing. Our Internet is ADSL and that's fast enough for us. More important is the fact that I can't remember the last time our DSL was out unless all phone service was out, and our local company still believes in "9 9's uptime." It used to be well known that if your power and phone both went out in a disaster, your phone service would be back first, and our phone company still works that way. TWC's standard is "next business day" if they have to send somebody out, because that's good enough for TV, even though that means your cable Internet is out too. And, there are enough minor glitches and hangs on our TV service that I don't want to find out what their Internet service is like.
Many years ago I was a programmer. Then, I found myself doing tech support and got a big surprise: not only was I good at it, I liked doing it. Yes, I had my share of ID10T callers, but at the end of the day there was the great satisfaction of knowing that there were people out there who's days were better because they'd talked to me.
Now I'm retired, and instead of using Windows I use Linux. I belong to several tech support forums and mailing lists for Linux and for various FOSS programs I use and I spend part of every day trying to help others, both to keep my hand in and because I still find it satisfying to be of help. And, when needed, I report issues to my distro's Bugzilla and respond, as best I can, to requests for information because if I'm having this issue, others are too and even minor bugs need swatting. I may not have (and maybe never had) the coding skills to contribute code, but I can still give back to the FOSS community by helping others.
The shorter version: fuck Republican stupidity.
And this is what keeps getting you modded down: it's not your opinions, it's your absolute lack of common courtesy towards people who don't hold the exact same opinions as you do. Right now, you've been modded down as Flamebait, and rightfully, because you've expressed yourself in a manner guaranteed to insult everybody you disagree with, and make them even less likely to be persuaded by your post. If you want anybody to pay attention to you, you might consider being more civil and less eager to insult.