If you live in the USA or another country to which "Russia Today" (RT) is beamed, then you can see Russian censorship in action. RT is a news service funded by the Russian government. RT broadcasts news about Russia, and nearly 80% of the Russia-related news is positive. I have yet to see any news that is critical of the Russian government. RT never interviews anyone who criticizes the Russian government.
Compare RT to Deutsche Welle Television (DW-TV). The Germany government funds DW-TV, and it broadcasts German news to the USA and other countries. DW-TV sometimes broadcasts news that is highly critical of the German government.
These attempts at censorship by the Russian government are very disturbing. Check your local PBS television programming. Many PBS stations air both RT and DW-TV.
If we have investments in Russian companies through global depository receipts (GDRs), should we be concerned? Will bad news about corrupt business practices in Russia now be censored? How can I judge the value of my investments if the only information that I can get is falsified to be "positive"?
Increasingly, actual technology is converging toward technology fantasized by Gene Roddenberry. This scanner for blood clots resembles the tricorder often used by Dr. McCoy or Mr. Spock.
Like Martin Luther King of a prior generation, Gary Kasparov leads a peaceful demonstration. Then, the Russian authorities pounce on him, arrest him, and drag him to be booked at the police station.
The Russian stormtroopers then club some of the demonstators.
When we see the phalanx of Russian special-forces police numbering nearly 9000 (outnumbering the demonstrators by 6 to 1), we are reminded of the American police and their dogs as they nearly mauled the civil-rights demonstrators of the 1960s.
Yet, one difference still exists between King and Kasparov. An assassin's bullet felled King. What will happen to Kasparov? Will he end in the same fate.
Intellectual property (IP) is a 2-way street. The news article mentions that Carleton University is teaching its students to protect their IP.
However, the students should also be taught to respect IP. Respecting IP means to not steal another person's IP.
About 10% of Carleton University's student is foreign students. 25% of the foreign students are Chinese students, and China has one of the highest rates of stealing IP. Indeed, vendors openly sell pirated movies on the streets of Hong Kong -- right in front of the police, who do nothing.
The main article mentions that this cloaking technology has military applications. Given the sensitive nature of this technology, should we prohibit certain foreign students from working on research projects exploring cloaking technology?
In the late eighties, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor prohibited certain foreign students from participating in government-funded research related to VLSI circuits. At the time, various alarmists in Washington warned that Japan would soon eclipse the USA in high technology, and some politicians wanted to prevent certain foreign nationals at our universities from accessing VLSI technology.
I imagine that cloaking technology would be very interesting to students from Iran (seeking a nuclear bomb), India (aggressively developing advanced nuclear weapons), and China (aggressively building a blue-water navy). Washington has already agreed to give civilian nuclear technology to India even though the Indians (1) have refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and (2) have aggressively develop nuclear weapons. Should Washington further enhance Indian military ambitions by allowing Indian students to work on cloaking technology at America universities?
Though Turkey is a secular state, the majority of Turks subscribe to Islam. Since Turkey is a democracy, the laws reflect the will of the Turks and, in particular, the Turkish Muslims.
We should respect the right of Turks to build their society in whatever way that they wish. The Turks are entitled to reject Western values, just as both the Chinese and the Indians have rejected Western values.
At the same time, we should terminate the current talks that will lead to Turkey becoming a member of the European Union (EU). We Westerners have every right to prohibit Turkey from becoming a member of the EU. The EU is a bastion of Western values, and we have a right to prevent those values from being contaminated by Turkish values or Islamic values.
The issue is not bigotry. The issue is respect. The Turks expect us to respect how they suppress human rights (by, for example, censoring web sites). We should respect them.
At the same time, they should respect our desire to maintain Western values. We should join Angela Merkel in blocking Turkey's becoming a member of the EU. We should condemn Washington for pressuring the EU into admitting Turkey.
The last 6 years has shown that Washington is incapable of formulating good foreign policy.
Regardless of how technologically superior China might be, technology alone does not create a high-quality society. To this day, many members of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continue to emigrate to the United States (even while their relatives and other comrades in the CCP brutalize North Korean refugees). They could live like kings in China due to their CCP-derived wealth, yet they choose to go to the USA.
Look closely at Vietnam. Though it is still an authoritarian society, the Vietnamese have made significant strides towards democracy and human rights. We rarely hear of pompous national goals like "First Vietnamese in Space" from Hanoi. The Vietnamese focus on things that matter: economy and social liberalization (e.g., human rights). In fact, "The Economist" reports that the strongest voices of support for democracy is coming from the membership of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
The Chinese focus on pompous national goals (e.g., space weapons and the like), but the Vietnamese focus on the things that matter to the common people. Note that the Vietnamese are specifically not developing nuclear weapons while Beijing is spending huge sums on aggressively developing nuclear-tipped missiles.
With the new national technology program, the Chinese may create the most advanced robot in the world, but their society will be socially impoverished. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese create a liberal democracy.
15 years from now, in which society -- China or Vietnam -- would you prefer to live? Another bowl of Pho please!
This domestic spying is almost identical to what the FSB in Russia has done since Putin ascended to power. The FSB has been extensively spying on anyone who supports peaceful, democratic dissent. Spying, by itself, does not suppress democracy. The trouble is that spying often leads to abusing civil rights and other egregious activities that do ruin democratic society.
Once the FSB determines who the troublemakers are, the Kremlin orders its loyalists in the city governments to suppress dissent. In fact, on March 24, Russian authorities arrested all the peaceful protestors before they could begin their rally.
Will Washington follow in the footsteps of Moscow and go to the next logical step after spying? I hope that the answer is "no", but I cannot be 100% certain that the answer is "no".
The collusion between American agribusiness and the government is an excellent example of why we should oppose all tort reform. This sneaky collusion is a powerful force that destroys people's lives. Imagine being killed by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. It tortures you with excruciating pain before it finally kills you.
The only force with sufficient power to counteract the power of government-business collusion is the force of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit filed against the top managers of the FDA, the top managers of the cattle-processing companies, and all the middle men between the cattle-processing companies and the supermarket. Using the courts to suck sufficient money out of these money-grubbing scum (who would sacrifice the lives of children to antibiotic-resistant bacteria for the sake of a buck) is the only way to force the scum to deal fairly and humanely with the American people. When I say, "suck sufficient money", I mean that we should force the scum to pay so much money to the victims (of antibiotic-resistant bacteria) that the scum can afford only to live in a studio apartment and to take the bus to work in the halfway house.
Once someone dies (indirectly) due to the feeding of Cefquinome to cattle, then we initiate the multi-billion dollar lawsuit. Financially bleed the scum until the scum wishes that it were dead.
Feed Cefquinome to cattle? "Go ahead. Make my day!"
According to a report issued by Human Rights Watch in 2006 March 17, "The systematic abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in China became internationally known in late 1999, when large numbers of Falungong practitioners were reportedly interned in psychiatric hospitals. However, experts have long asserted that political abuse of psychiatry in China includes among its victims several other main target groups. In August 2002, GIP and HRW jointly published a 298-page report, 'Dangerous Minds: Political Psychiatry in China Today and its Origins in the Mao Era', which detailed China's extensive use of psychiatric detention as a means of silencing political dissidents, spiritual nonconformists, trade union activists, whistleblowers, and others. The report estimated that since the early 1980s more than 3,000 people had been incarcerated on such grounds."
One political dissident in China was imprisoned for 13 years in a psychiatric hospital.
That the Chinese government imprisons an Internet addict at the request of his own parents should surprise no one. The Chinese, not merely the government, regularly abuse psychiatry to achieve social or political goals.
The Chinese entity that is psychologically ill is not the Internet addict, the political dissident, or the other victims improperly imprisoned for supposed psychological problems.
Rather, the Chinese entity that is psychologically ill is Chinese society itself.
A shortage of labor is a normal part of a free market. So is a surplus. Shortages and surpluses are powerful economic forces that correct the underpricing and overpricing, respectively, of labor.
There is no need for the government to intervene by importing desperate labor from either India via the H-1B visa or Mexico via an open-border policy. The free market, by itself and without government intervention, will fix the shortage or surplus. Wages rise, and the shortage disappears. Wages fall, and layoffs occur -- thus fixing the surplus.
Washington does not intervene to fix the labor surplus (which is leading to massive layoffs) in Detroit. Why should Washington intervene to fix a labor shortage?
If Microsoft paid the market wage for computer programmers, then plenty of programmers with the "right" skills would apply for Microsoft jobs. The problem is that Microsoft refuses to pay the market wage. The market wage is not what Microsoft management considers to be the right wage. The market wage (and the market working conditions) is the wage (and quality of working conditions) at which the supply of labor meets the demand for that labor. The market wage is the intersection point of the labor-demand curve and the labor-supply curve.
The bottom line is that Microsoft (and many other American companies) refuse to pay the market wage. So, they want government to intervene in the free market so that Microsoft can pay below-market-wage salaries.
The BBC reported on the status of the EuroFighter in a report in 2006 August. "This [F-22] is very stealthy but costs twice the price of the Eurofighter, and reports suggest that RAF's Eurofighters have flown highly successful missions against the F-22 during recent exercises in the US."
A Scottish report describes a dogfight of 1 EuroFighter against 2 F-15s. The EuroFighter reduced both F-15s to smoking rubble.
Based on these reports, we can surmise that the EuroFighter substantially outclasses an F-15 but does not quite beat an F-22. However, the cost of one F-22 enables the purchaser to buy 2 EuroFighters. The 2 EuroFighters could demolish the the one F-22.
The price of a single F-22 is about $100 million. The price of a single EuroFighter is about $50 million. So, you could buy 2 EuroFighters for the price of a single F-22.
Here is an interesting question.
In a fight between 1 F-22 and 2 EuroFighters, who would prevail? If the F-22 prevails, then the F-22 is an excellent investment.
However, the United States Air Force has never claimed that 1 F-22 can beat 2 EuroFighters. I suspect that the 2 EuroFighters would reduce the 1 F-22 into a pile of smoking rubble.
The cost of developing the F-22 is, thus far, $70 billion.
The cost of developing the EuroFighter is about 19 billion pounds, which is roughly $38 billion.
Are we Americans getting significantly better performance for spending 84% more on developing our fighter than the Europeans spent? If the answer is "no", then why did we not save money by licensing the design of the EuroFighter and souping it up to "American performance levels"?
Tax day is just around the corner, so perhaps we should ask more questions about how Washington is spending our money. We insisted that Tokyo base its next-generation fighter on the F-16 design. Perhaps, the European Union should insist that Washington base its next-generation fighter on the EuroFighter.
The EAP prototype, from which the final EuroFighter was derived, became airborne in 1986. 1986 is the year when the United States Air Force (USAF) selected two American companies to build working prototypes, of which one would become the basis for the F-22. The USAF could have saved a truckload of money by demanding that the American companies base their designs on the EAP prototype.
The Japanese experience with the F-2 albatross (based on the F-16) does not apply in this case. The F-2 was the first major national fighter that the post-war Japanese developed. Cost overruns are inevitable during this steep learning curve.
By contrast, the Americans have decades of experience in building deadly jet fighters. The Americans could have saved money by starting with a European design.
These slick web pages say much about the mentality of the American public.
The American people select candidates in accordance with 2 criteria: physical appearance (i.e., good looks) and nifty sound bites. The flash, not the substance, appeals to the American people.
People like Dennis Kucinich do not have a chance in hell of winning an election. He is not handsome, and, worse, he tries to present substantive opinions on the major issues. Look closely at the video tapes of the 2004 Democratic primary debates. John Kerry and John Edwards spend 5 minutes in talking about something that is unrelated to the question posed by the reporter. By contrast, Kucinich actually answers the question.
As for the 2008 election, we can probably predict the winner of the Democratic primary. Hillary Clinton has the slickest web site, and she is fairly attractive. At least, Dick Morris stated, in an infamous interview in the 1990s, that he considers Hillary to be quite attractive and that he would have sex with her.
WARNING: Firefox 1.5 vs. 2.0 :: Old vs. New
on
A Bad Month for Firefox
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
New software and new cars generally have more defects than old software and old cars. The first-year release of a Toyota Camry relies on customers to find and report the defects. The defect information is fed back to the Toyota engineers, and they redesign the defective parts of the Camry. The third-year release of the Camry should be quite reliable. (Toyota has some of the highest rates of recalls in the automotive industry. Toyota typically recalls nearly 10% of its vehicles -- versus "only" 7% for General Motors.)
Software works in the same way.
If you are using your Web browser to do critical jobs like online banking, you should continue to use the latest iteration of Firefox 1.5. The latest iteration is version 1.5.0.10. If you are still using Firefox 1.5, look under the "Help" option to find the option, "Check for Updates", which will enable your to upgrade to 1.5.0.10.
Continue using version 1.5 until 2007 April 24. On that date, Mozilla programmers will cease fine-tuning version 1.5.
After April 24, switch to version 2 of Firefox. Waiting 2 more months before using version 2 will give vital time to Mozilla programmers to fix any critical problems in the new version.
Such huge demand for Linux is good news. It should convince dial-up ISPs like AOL to release a Linux client. Though many customers now subscribe to broadband, millions of Americans do not need the bandwidth. Dialup is sufficient for the #1 Internet application: e-mail.
Also, this demand for Linux should -- hopefully -- encourage RedHat to resume releasing a Linux distribution. I would not oppose paying the sum of (1) cost of distribution on CD and (2) an additional $5 (or even $10) in profit.
Building a working brain from silicon circuits depends on one profound assumption: consciousness is a function of only newtonian physics. If this assumption holds, then you could just write a massive computer program that computes the newtonian equations. Run the program on a multicore processor. The program would become sentient on its own. Attach some peripherals (e.g., a camera, a microphone, heat sensor, and the like) to the multiprocessor to give sight and sense to the sentient artificial being.
Building a hardware version of that sentient computer program is unnecessarily expensive. A software model of the actual hardware should be sufficient to prove the validity of the idea.
However, some scientists believe that consciousness is not newtonian. Rather, human consciousness is derived from quantum processes.
Numerous writers on SlashDot have stated that they will move out of the USA because Washington has increasingly trampled on civil rights: e.g., the right to privacy. Recently, Washington has announced that law enforcement can, at its discretion, open your mail to read it.
The same writers who justifiably criticize Washington praise the Europeans and Canada. Yet, the British government seems to be just as indifferent to civil rights as Washington.
So, here is an interesting question: Which is the best protector of civil rights? USA or Europe?
The offer to ship Solaris DVDs for free is a last gasp of air for Solaris.
Five years ago, McNealy made a strategic error in refusing to open-source Solaris under a GNU license. He feared that Linux might simply absorb the best parts of Solaris and, thereby, eventually destroy Solaris.
Well, Linux still killed Solaris. The openness of Linux encouraged its proliferation and adoption by key computer giants: IBM, HP, and other companies specializing in commercial computers. IBM, in particular, drastically improved the reliability of Linux. It competed effectively against Solaris in important commercial accounts at telecommunications companies and banks.
Linux hurt Solaris and other commercial UNIXes much more than Linux hurt Windows.
Today, there are only two dominant desktop/server operating systems: Linux and NT-based Windows.
Solaris is headed for burial, and McNealy jumped ship -- with millions of dollars in stock options.
I am more concerned about George Lucas than I am about Harrison Ford. Though Ford is quite old, a good writer and a good director can cast him into the right milieu so that his talent shines on the big screen.
Therein lies the danger. Star Wars I, II, and III suggest that Star Wars IV was just a stroke of luck for Lucas. He is a poor storyteller and could easily cast Ford into the wrong kind of story. Ford's career would then end in a wimper. Of course, I would waste my $10 on Star War VII.
In 2004, Gerald Ford gave an interview to Bob Woodward of the "Washington Post". In the interview, "Ford questioned President George W. Bush's rationale for going to war in Iraq and said he never would have instituted the administration's domestic surveillance program."
Where is Gerald Ford when our nation needs him to rescue us from a cowboy?
Unfortunately for Garry Kasparov, dealing with Vladimir Putin differs sharply from simply playing a chess game. In chess, there is a set of rules respected by both players. The rules dictate the means of determining a winner.
However, Putin does no respect the rules of the political game. The rules are essentially basic human rights, the Russian laws, and the spirit and the letter of the Russian constitution.
Putin is analogous to a chess player who, upon seeing an imminent checkmate by his wily opponent, (1) positions a gun (with a silencer) inside his trenchcoat and under the chess table, (2) shoots and kills his opponent beyond view of the audience, (3) then immediately stands up to declare victory by default, revealing blood splattered from the opponent and onto the trenchcoat, and (4) becomes angry when the audience gasps at the scene in front of it. Kasparov must carefully deliberate his next move since he is now playing high-stakes "chess"; the stakes are his life and the lives of his supporters.
Although the moonbase certainly captures the imagination, we must ask whether the high cost of supporting human life on the moon is worth the benefit. Could we get a better return on investment by not supporting human life and by using a crude robot (or remotely controlled mechanism along the lines of the 2 Mars rovers)? The robot would need neither oxygen nor a regulated environment at 72 degrees Fahrenheit. Since the Moon is much closer to the Earth than Mars, remote-control of the robot should have a delay on the order of seconds instead of minutes.
Further, all the money that we save in not transporting life-support systems to the moon could be invested in many more vital science/technology experiments -- conducted by our trusty robots.
In my opinion, sending people on far-away space missions will never be cost effective until we solve the biggest problem: the speed of our space vehicles. They need to be so fast that going to and from Pluto should take no more than an hour. If your spaceship blows a fuse near Jupiter, NASA can send a space taxi in 15 minutes to give you a lift.
A while ago, SlashDot reported on plans by the US Air Force to utilize Heim theory to build a warp drive for space travel. The news about these plans seem to have disappeared from the popular press' radar. Does anyone have more information about progress on this exotic project?
In order for the free market to function properly, we must have competition. As Google grows its marketshare beyond 75%, I hope that the remaining search-engine companies merge into a competitor against Google. The competitor will address any market need that Google (like in this case) deliberately ignores.
Similarly, AMD, though it is much smaller than Intel, provided the necessary competition in the x86 market. When Intel ignored the market need for a 64-bit version of the x86, AMD quickly met that need. AMD's actions vastly enriched the market. Look at the 64-bit x86 servers that are proliferating in the market.
Slashdot Mirror
Compare RT to Deutsche Welle Television (DW-TV). The Germany government funds DW-TV, and it broadcasts German news to the USA and other countries. DW-TV sometimes broadcasts news that is highly critical of the German government.
These attempts at censorship by the Russian government are very disturbing. Check your local PBS television programming. Many PBS stations air both RT and DW-TV.
If we have investments in Russian companies through global depository receipts (GDRs), should we be concerned? Will bad news about corrupt business practices in Russia now be censored? How can I judge the value of my investments if the only information that I can get is falsified to be "positive"?
What's next? Warp drive?
The Russian stormtroopers then club some of the demonstators. When we see the phalanx of Russian special-forces police numbering nearly 9000 (outnumbering the demonstrators by 6 to 1), we are reminded of the American police and their dogs as they nearly mauled the civil-rights demonstrators of the 1960s.
Yet, one difference still exists between King and Kasparov. An assassin's bullet felled King. What will happen to Kasparov? Will he end in the same fate.
However, the students should also be taught to respect IP. Respecting IP means to not steal another person's IP.
About 10% of Carleton University's student is foreign students. 25% of the foreign students are Chinese students, and China has one of the highest rates of stealing IP. Indeed, vendors openly sell pirated movies on the streets of Hong Kong -- right in front of the police, who do nothing.
In the late eighties, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor prohibited certain foreign students from participating in government-funded research related to VLSI circuits. At the time, various alarmists in Washington warned that Japan would soon eclipse the USA in high technology, and some politicians wanted to prevent certain foreign nationals at our universities from accessing VLSI technology.
I imagine that cloaking technology would be very interesting to students from Iran (seeking a nuclear bomb), India (aggressively developing advanced nuclear weapons), and China (aggressively building a blue-water navy). Washington has already agreed to give civilian nuclear technology to India even though the Indians (1) have refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and (2) have aggressively develop nuclear weapons. Should Washington further enhance Indian military ambitions by allowing Indian students to work on cloaking technology at America universities?
We should respect the right of Turks to build their society in whatever way that they wish. The Turks are entitled to reject Western values, just as both the Chinese and the Indians have rejected Western values.
At the same time, we should terminate the current talks that will lead to Turkey becoming a member of the European Union (EU). We Westerners have every right to prohibit Turkey from becoming a member of the EU. The EU is a bastion of Western values, and we have a right to prevent those values from being contaminated by Turkish values or Islamic values.
The issue is not bigotry. The issue is respect. The Turks expect us to respect how they suppress human rights (by, for example, censoring web sites). We should respect them.
At the same time, they should respect our desire to maintain Western values. We should join Angela Merkel in blocking Turkey's becoming a member of the EU. We should condemn Washington for pressuring the EU into admitting Turkey.
The last 6 years has shown that Washington is incapable of formulating good foreign policy.
Look closely at Vietnam. Though it is still an authoritarian society, the Vietnamese have made significant strides towards democracy and human rights. We rarely hear of pompous national goals like "First Vietnamese in Space" from Hanoi. The Vietnamese focus on things that matter: economy and social liberalization (e.g., human rights). In fact, "The Economist" reports that the strongest voices of support for democracy is coming from the membership of the Vietnamese Communist Party.
The Chinese focus on pompous national goals (e.g., space weapons and the like), but the Vietnamese focus on the things that matter to the common people. Note that the Vietnamese are specifically not developing nuclear weapons while Beijing is spending huge sums on aggressively developing nuclear-tipped missiles.
With the new national technology program, the Chinese may create the most advanced robot in the world, but their society will be socially impoverished. Meanwhile, the Vietnamese create a liberal democracy.
15 years from now, in which society -- China or Vietnam -- would you prefer to live? Another bowl of Pho please!
Once the FSB determines who the troublemakers are, the Kremlin orders its loyalists in the city governments to suppress dissent. In fact, on March 24, Russian authorities arrested all the peaceful protestors before they could begin their rally.
Will Washington follow in the footsteps of Moscow and go to the next logical step after spying? I hope that the answer is "no", but I cannot be 100% certain that the answer is "no".
The only force with sufficient power to counteract the power of government-business collusion is the force of a multi-billion dollar lawsuit filed against the top managers of the FDA, the top managers of the cattle-processing companies, and all the middle men between the cattle-processing companies and the supermarket. Using the courts to suck sufficient money out of these money-grubbing scum (who would sacrifice the lives of children to antibiotic-resistant bacteria for the sake of a buck) is the only way to force the scum to deal fairly and humanely with the American people. When I say, "suck sufficient money", I mean that we should force the scum to pay so much money to the victims (of antibiotic-resistant bacteria) that the scum can afford only to live in a studio apartment and to take the bus to work in the halfway house.
Once someone dies (indirectly) due to the feeding of Cefquinome to cattle, then we initiate the multi-billion dollar lawsuit. Financially bleed the scum until the scum wishes that it were dead.
Feed Cefquinome to cattle? "Go ahead. Make my day!"
One political dissident in China was imprisoned for 13 years in a psychiatric hospital.
That the Chinese government imprisons an Internet addict at the request of his own parents should surprise no one. The Chinese, not merely the government, regularly abuse psychiatry to achieve social or political goals.
The Chinese entity that is psychologically ill is not the Internet addict, the political dissident, or the other victims improperly imprisoned for supposed psychological problems.
Rather, the Chinese entity that is psychologically ill is Chinese society itself.
There is no need for the government to intervene by importing desperate labor from either India via the H-1B visa or Mexico via an open-border policy. The free market, by itself and without government intervention, will fix the shortage or surplus. Wages rise, and the shortage disappears. Wages fall, and layoffs occur -- thus fixing the surplus.
Washington does not intervene to fix the labor surplus (which is leading to massive layoffs) in Detroit. Why should Washington intervene to fix a labor shortage?
If Microsoft paid the market wage for computer programmers, then plenty of programmers with the "right" skills would apply for Microsoft jobs. The problem is that Microsoft refuses to pay the market wage. The market wage is not what Microsoft management considers to be the right wage. The market wage (and the market working conditions) is the wage (and quality of working conditions) at which the supply of labor meets the demand for that labor. The market wage is the intersection point of the labor-demand curve and the labor-supply curve.
The bottom line is that Microsoft (and many other American companies) refuse to pay the market wage. So, they want government to intervene in the free market so that Microsoft can pay below-market-wage salaries.
A Scottish report describes a dogfight of 1 EuroFighter against 2 F-15s. The EuroFighter reduced both F-15s to smoking rubble.
Based on these reports, we can surmise that the EuroFighter substantially outclasses an F-15 but does not quite beat an F-22. However, the cost of one F-22 enables the purchaser to buy 2 EuroFighters. The 2 EuroFighters could demolish the the one F-22.
Here is an interesting question.
In a fight between 1 F-22 and 2 EuroFighters, who would prevail? If the F-22 prevails, then the F-22 is an excellent investment.
However, the United States Air Force has never claimed that 1 F-22 can beat 2 EuroFighters. I suspect that the 2 EuroFighters would reduce the 1 F-22 into a pile of smoking rubble.
The cost of developing the EuroFighter is about 19 billion pounds, which is roughly $38 billion.
Are we Americans getting significantly better performance for spending 84% more on developing our fighter than the Europeans spent? If the answer is "no", then why did we not save money by licensing the design of the EuroFighter and souping it up to "American performance levels"?
Tax day is just around the corner, so perhaps we should ask more questions about how Washington is spending our money. We insisted that Tokyo base its next-generation fighter on the F-16 design. Perhaps, the European Union should insist that Washington base its next-generation fighter on the EuroFighter.
The EAP prototype, from which the final EuroFighter was derived, became airborne in 1986. 1986 is the year when the United States Air Force (USAF) selected two American companies to build working prototypes, of which one would become the basis for the F-22. The USAF could have saved a truckload of money by demanding that the American companies base their designs on the EAP prototype.
The Japanese experience with the F-2 albatross (based on the F-16) does not apply in this case. The F-2 was the first major national fighter that the post-war Japanese developed. Cost overruns are inevitable during this steep learning curve.
By contrast, the Americans have decades of experience in building deadly jet fighters. The Americans could have saved money by starting with a European design.
The American people select candidates in accordance with 2 criteria: physical appearance (i.e., good looks) and nifty sound bites. The flash, not the substance, appeals to the American people.
People like Dennis Kucinich do not have a chance in hell of winning an election. He is not handsome, and, worse, he tries to present substantive opinions on the major issues. Look closely at the video tapes of the 2004 Democratic primary debates. John Kerry and John Edwards spend 5 minutes in talking about something that is unrelated to the question posed by the reporter. By contrast, Kucinich actually answers the question.
As for the 2008 election, we can probably predict the winner of the Democratic primary. Hillary Clinton has the slickest web site, and she is fairly attractive. At least, Dick Morris stated, in an infamous interview in the 1990s, that he considers Hillary to be quite attractive and that he would have sex with her.
Software works in the same way.
If you are using your Web browser to do critical jobs like online banking, you should continue to use the latest iteration of Firefox 1.5. The latest iteration is version 1.5.0.10. If you are still using Firefox 1.5, look under the "Help" option to find the option, "Check for Updates", which will enable your to upgrade to 1.5.0.10.
Continue using version 1.5 until 2007 April 24. On that date, Mozilla programmers will cease fine-tuning version 1.5.
After April 24, switch to version 2 of Firefox. Waiting 2 more months before using version 2 will give vital time to Mozilla programmers to fix any critical problems in the new version.
Also, this demand for Linux should -- hopefully -- encourage RedHat to resume releasing a Linux distribution. I would not oppose paying the sum of (1) cost of distribution on CD and (2) an additional $5 (or even $10) in profit.
Building a hardware version of that sentient computer program is unnecessarily expensive. A software model of the actual hardware should be sufficient to prove the validity of the idea.
However, some scientists believe that consciousness is not newtonian. Rather, human consciousness is derived from quantum processes.
The same writers who justifiably criticize Washington praise the Europeans and Canada. Yet, the British government seems to be just as indifferent to civil rights as Washington.
So, here is an interesting question: Which is the best protector of civil rights? USA or Europe?
Five years ago, McNealy made a strategic error in refusing to open-source Solaris under a GNU license. He feared that Linux might simply absorb the best parts of Solaris and, thereby, eventually destroy Solaris.
Well, Linux still killed Solaris. The openness of Linux encouraged its proliferation and adoption by key computer giants: IBM, HP, and other companies specializing in commercial computers. IBM, in particular, drastically improved the reliability of Linux. It competed effectively against Solaris in important commercial accounts at telecommunications companies and banks.
Linux hurt Solaris and other commercial UNIXes much more than Linux hurt Windows. Today, there are only two dominant desktop/server operating systems: Linux and NT-based Windows.
Solaris is headed for burial, and McNealy jumped ship -- with millions of dollars in stock options.
Therein lies the danger. Star Wars I, II, and III suggest that Star Wars IV was just a stroke of luck for Lucas. He is a poor storyteller and could easily cast Ford into the wrong kind of story. Ford's career would then end in a wimper. Of course, I would waste my $10 on Star War VII.
Ford made the right decision.
Where is Gerald Ford when our nation needs him to rescue us from a cowboy?
However, Putin does no respect the rules of the political game. The rules are essentially basic human rights, the Russian laws, and the spirit and the letter of the Russian constitution.
Putin is analogous to a chess player who, upon seeing an imminent checkmate by his wily opponent, (1) positions a gun (with a silencer) inside his trenchcoat and under the chess table, (2) shoots and kills his opponent beyond view of the audience, (3) then immediately stands up to declare victory by default, revealing blood splattered from the opponent and onto the trenchcoat, and (4) becomes angry when the audience gasps at the scene in front of it. Kasparov must carefully deliberate his next move since he is now playing high-stakes "chess"; the stakes are his life and the lives of his supporters.
Further, all the money that we save in not transporting life-support systems to the moon could be invested in many more vital science/technology experiments -- conducted by our trusty robots.
In my opinion, sending people on far-away space missions will never be cost effective until we solve the biggest problem: the speed of our space vehicles. They need to be so fast that going to and from Pluto should take no more than an hour. If your spaceship blows a fuse near Jupiter, NASA can send a space taxi in 15 minutes to give you a lift.
A while ago, SlashDot reported on plans by the US Air Force to utilize Heim theory to build a warp drive for space travel. The news about these plans seem to have disappeared from the popular press' radar. Does anyone have more information about progress on this exotic project?
Similarly, AMD, though it is much smaller than Intel, provided the necessary competition in the x86 market. When Intel ignored the market need for a 64-bit version of the x86, AMD quickly met that need. AMD's actions vastly enriched the market. Look at the 64-bit x86 servers that are proliferating in the market.