Once upon a time the principles of sound scientific knowledge said that it was energeticly impossible to get out of Earth's gravity pit.
Once upon a time the principles of sound scientific knowledge said it was impossible to break the sound barrier.
Once upon a time the principles of sound scientific knowledge said that with the atomic model physics was complete.
Yes we now know far more than ever before, and yes maybe there is a hard rule that you can't accelerate to/past light speed. But that doesn't mean we won't find a some other way.
And if worst comes to worst there's always generational ships/going close to lightspeed for time dilated one way trips.
No actually not enough said. Between '39 and '45 every German boy older then 14 was required by law to join the Hitler Youth.
The problem with the Catholic Church is (and was) the same as with all groups that have power: they are both corrupted and corrupt those in them. Now having said that: they catholic church has also done plenty of good in it's 1600 odd years of existence.
From what I've read, I highly doubt the Bush administration is spending extra funding on Climate Change science. Not when they're censoring reports which dare to mention it.
Now spending extra money on military research I can buy. Or on "energy independence" (meaning overwhelmingly ways to get more oil in stead of using less).
erm.... Climate Change isn't supposed to simply cause much higher temperatures. It's supposed to upset the climate balance and result in an overall higher temperature. But that doesn't mean you can no longer have below average winters/years.
Western Europe, for example, could very well be on course for a long term significant drop in temperatures, if the climate change upsets the North Atlantic Drift.
Further: Climate change didn't begin with Kyoto. Kyoto was a response (by politicians, so you know it was quite a while after the problem manifested itself). It hasn't been 2,4 or 5 years. It has been decades.
Finally: what always confuses me about these discussions is that the CO2 level is hardly mentioned. The CO2 part of our atmosphere is undeniably far higher than it has been in millions of years. Given its properties, that must have an impact on our climate. Even if you really believe that impact hasn't shown up, it seems to me that this would be a good enough reason to cut down on CO2.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. [..]And I will have a pickup truck... maybe even a "recreational vehicle." And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Captain Ramius: I suppose.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: No papers?
Captain Ramius: No papers, state to state.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Well then, in winter I will live in... Arizona. Actually, I think I will need two wives.
Captain Ramius: Oh, at least.
The only fair view is that they are ALL interesting. Per land mass is interesting if you want to measure the ecological footprint and the carrying capacity of your land and base any levels off of that.
While they're all interesting, there's only one that count: total production. That is what has to go down. If production per capita goes down, but the total population goes up we're still doomed.
Absolutely. But we aren't talking about the U.S. placing an offensive missile system in Eastern Europe, are we.
It's a system that could stop Russia from launching it's missiles (well not right now, since it's a crap system, but you know, at some point). Undermining the offensive capability of a country/enemy is an offensive move. It Creates a situation in which Russia can be attacked witouth being able to retaliate.
The reason MAD is called MAD is because there is no defense, there is only deterrent. A defensive system would have the capability of thwarting an attack if it is launched, like the anti-missile defense system. A MAD system does not defend against an attack, it only ensures that both sides are severely pummeled.
The point is that by putting a defensive system in place you break the MAD. You give one country the capability to attack/destroy an other country with impunity. That's what makes a defensive system an offensive risk.
If the U.S. was installing anti-missile defense systems in Eastern Europe AND had nuclear weapon bearing missiles in Turkey pointed at Russian targets, then we would have some serious issues to argue about.
Why would the US need missiles in Turkey? They have perfectly nice ICBMs stationed in the US itself and on submarines which could hit Russia within half an hour or so.
I see, and do you suppose that Cuba is now at risk of an imminent attack by the Jamaicans now that Russia has shut down the radar installation in Lourdes, Cuba [bbc.co.uk] which operated from 1964 to 2002? Or perhaps it was actually an offensive weapon to be used against the U.S.? Myself, I'm sure it was used for intelligence purposes in the on going cold war but I doubt it was used to kill anyone in the U.S.
That's a nice way to muddy up the waters. Obviously a listening station (which is what Lourdes mostly was) is different from an X-band radar capable of sweeping most of your country. But even accepting that, the US put a lot of pressure on Russia to close that listening station in Cuba. How is Russia's reaction to a potentially more dangerous system strange? From Russia's viewpoint Iran is just an excuse to put a base right at it's border.
You would think that investment in defensive systems would be welcome sanity after decades of MAD.
As I've said before: from the viewpoint of the country without a defensive system the world is safer with MAD than without.
I only hope that the leadership in some of the up and coming nuclear powers aren't as psychotic as they are portrayed by western media or that their own breed of religious nut jobs have any significant influence on the people with control of the weapons. Even with a defensive system it would be a sad day if there was a nuclear exchange anywhere in the world and the repercussions that would surely follow even if a nuclear attack were thwarted
The new nuclear powers aren't in any way more psychotic than those of the past. They are guided just as much by self-preservation as the US, France or China. The only danger I see there is a revolution in Pakistan or North Korea, either putting real nutjobs in temporary power or creating chaos which makes a nuclear theft possible. But even in that case I expect them to just drive a nuke over the border, not launch it for all the world to see.
The proximity of the installations presented a first strike capability with little to no warning for US civil defense plans and the objective of such a system is not defense but to kill as many U.S. civilians as possible if and when they decided to use the system.
You mean just like the American missiles placed in Turkey at the time? In a classical MAD nuclear standoff all weapons systems are both offensive and defensive. If country A can stop missiles from hitting its territory (defensive) it can attack without relation (which makes it part of an offensive system). And vice versa.
The reason the Russians are so unhappy about the proposed missile system in Eastern Europe (gee, anyone else get a flashback from sentences like that?) has less to do with the actual missiles (which after all still couldn't hit the side of a barn if it had a GPS tracker inside) but with radar, which could see very far into Russian territory.
It's hardly an unfair assessment that it is a threatening move by the US from their viewpoint. I highly doubt the US would quietly accept a similar system being installed by the Russians in Cuba to protect them from the nefarious Jamaicans.
... And all of those show had dreadfull seasons (apart from often having bad/filler episode in the *good* seasons). A couple in the case of TNG & DS9, about 5 for X-files and I don't think there ever was a good season for Voyager.
They didn't even have to read it, they could've just watched TV. Just a six months before the attack there was a network (well Fox, but close enough) TV show that had terrorist flying a plane into the the world trade towers. How much more accurate can you get?
Hmm. A Sci-Fi show, presumably with Sc-Fi writers predicting 9/11. Maybe they're on to something. Though on the onther hand in the example it was a chip hijacking the plane, which might be to much imagination
While I agree with your sentiment ( "The terrorist threat is hyped" ), there were these little incidents. Oklahoma, the first WTC bombing, even Beirut in '81 if you count attacks abroad.
1) They didn't know that. As far as they knew surrender might result in the kind of thing that happened to Germany 22 years earlier: decommissioning of the armed forces, very heavy war payments, maybe some loss of territory. Remember the final solution didn't really gather steam until years later.
2) They didn't exactly surrender at the first sign of fighting. Some villages changed hands dozens of times, large parts of the French military where destroyed or captured before the surrender came and it's only ally, the UK, had already given up the fight on the continent (wisely probably, but still devastating for morale. Also by then a significant part of France industry and Farmland had already been conquered.
3) As others have noted you can't understand the situation in 1940 unless you look at what happened between 1914 and 1918. They lost literally millions of people. And not as casualties (e.g. death and wounded) but in deaths. For four years hundreds of thousands of men died without much effect on the opponent.
In 1940 the French simply lost to a better trained opponent. If there had been a land bridge at Calais I doubt the UK would have lasted much longer. The only thing you can accuse the French government of the time of is that they didn't flee and continue the fight. To call them cowardly or weak ignores the reality of the time.
Bush wins the count by ~500 votes out of millions (and loses the popular vote overall, let not forget that part. I always wondered if that wouldn't have been a bigger deal if the whole recount deal hadn't happened).Meanwhile there are large problems with the voting (the Elderly Jews voting for Buchannan due to the butterfly ballots, the thousands of people inappropriately removed from the voter rolls etc.). Gore wants a recount, which is allowed. Bush fights him all the way. Jeb and his administration help Bush every step along the way (remember Katherine Harris?). And then a partisan Supreme court ends the recount by a cheap "well just this once" order.
BTW the recount after the fact found that Gore *would* have won in a statewide recount. It's just that according to Florida Law you can only request a recount in a limited (4) number of counties. *That* recount alone wouldn't have helped.
The *correct* situation would have been either for both parties to agree on a fair recount, or barring that for the matter to go to Congress which is supposed to determine these kind of lection problems (looking at the composition of congress in 2000 that would likely still have meant a Bush presidency, but at least that would have been by the book).
1) Provide a set amount of TV time for candidates/parties to be used in an election (and limit any 'free' buys). Jurisprudence says it can be done constitutionally - after that's the basis of the FCC's right to regulate it.
That would mean more equal access for smaller parties (once they achieve a certain threshold), and less importance on the total amount raised since TV is a huge part of campaign costs.
2) End soft money completely (corporate and union) and reduce the maximum amount a single person can donate to something almost everyone can afford ( $ 200-500 per candidate?). When they really have to get their money from individuals you might get more attentive politicians.
Both of those option would be hard to get ennacted, but are much more realistic than a far reaching change of the system
No it wasn't. The National-Socialistische Arbeiters Partei was quite legel. It even got the initial part of its power (about a quarter of the seats in parliament) through semi-democratic means (meaning the voting itself was relatively free but there was lots of intimidation).
And rightly so. However, while most people would (hopefully agree that the Eminent domain shouldn't be available for each city council that wants to sell a house block to real estate developers it is precisely meant for things like building a high speed rail link. It's unlikely that the billions needed for the construction would be granted by the government (pork is apparently only for highway construction, but still.
While there is some truth in the idea that the scale of the US is significantly differnt from the EU, you're comparing apples to oranges.
Paris-Brussel is one of the shortest high speed rail (hsr): only about 260 km (as the bird flies) You could also travel from Paris to Madrid or London to Barcelona via hsr. With some 1.1000 km those routes are roughly the same distance as Seattle-San Francisco.
Also there are plenty of shorter, high density routes in the US. Boston-New-York, NY-Washington DC are both around 300 km, slightly more than Paris-Brussels. And L.A.-San Fransisco is a very doable 570 km.
Also important to remember: High speed rail isn't meant for long distances (800 km+) it's most efficient at a medium distance. I never quite understood why there even where cross continental services in the US.
On topic: the eternal argument in these discussions that the US is just so darned big you can't compare it is weak. Yes total coverage is more difficult than in say Belgium. But other countries do connect rather remote villages (a matter of state support for those communities). And worst of all: even in high density areas (is there a more tightly populated place on earth than NY city?) service is often worse than on comparable cities in the rest o the world.
Well, they're not so much regulating the internet (in that case they would have to require al bloggers to post proof of their identity or something like that), they're regulating what corporations can do. It's difficult to enforce things on the internet. It's a lot less difficult prosecuting firms when it turns out they've been conning the public. In all likelyhood the measure is menat as a detterent.
Except that it is precisely the big states that are 'safe'. California, Texas, New York. Add to that the disproportionate representation of smaller states in the Electoral College and it seems highly undemocratic (see the 2000 election).
Besides, people don't calculate how 'big' their influence is, except if it is absent. Otherwise all people wouldn't all go for the huge jackpot when millions of others also play, reducing their chances.
I see this reply a lot in the EU-MS discussions. However, the commission is not asking for something new. They want MS tot disclose protocols that Windows Server already uses. MS should have those details handy.
First of all: current taxes on fuel don't come close to paying for road construction and maintenance.
Second: we know the needed capacity: fibre to every house (well within limit. I doubt extremely remote areas would be hooked up. At least initially). The capacity of fibre is high that the last mile shouldn't be a bottle neck for the next two decades (famous last words, I know) the overall capacity of the network would depend on the part before that. You'd still pay for the actual bits transferred. If network usage were to increase the ISP's/Telco's/TV companies would have an incentive and a clear financial structure to increase capacity.
Basically this system would separate the (expensive but theoretically mostly one off) cost of laying cable to you house and the cost of actually transferring data. Which would increase market transparency. Added benefit: only one cable/fibre to maintain, instead of telephone line, cable, fibre.
You'd offer them for sale, on-line. There's no distribution costs.
And you wouldn't even need to keep them in stock. Just charge enough to cover printing the inserts and burning the CD. All of the costs are passed on to the buyer. It's pure profit. The "advertising" would be done by the "blogs" mentioned.
Well, there is still a minimal run to do real CD printing (as opposed to 'burning') I think it's in the middle hundreds these days. Same goes for printing the inserts, you can just print a couple, but to have a reasonable price you need more.
If you do this for thousands of albums you'll have to store them somewhere, and in many cases probably for years. That going to cost quite a bit too.
Having said that it seems like a much better investment than spending a couple of million on the latest teen pop princes/boy band who'll have to sell millions of albums just to earn back the money they've invested in 'selling' them to the public.
Slashdot Mirror
Once upon a time the principles of sound scientific knowledge said it was impossible to break the sound barrier.
Once upon a time the principles of sound scientific knowledge said that with the atomic model physics was complete.
Yes we now know far more than ever before, and yes maybe there is a hard rule that you can't accelerate to/past light speed. But that doesn't mean we won't find a some other way.
And if worst comes to worst there's always generational ships/going close to lightspeed for time dilated one way trips.
No actually not enough said. Between '39 and '45 every German boy older then 14 was required by law to join the Hitler Youth.
The problem with the Catholic Church is (and was) the same as with all groups that have power: they are both corrupted and corrupt those in them. Now having said that: they catholic church has also done plenty of good in it's 1600 odd years of existence.
From what I've read, I highly doubt the Bush administration is spending extra funding on Climate Change science. Not when they're censoring reports which dare to mention it.
Now spending extra money on military research I can buy. Or on "energy independence" (meaning overwhelmingly ways to get more oil in stead of using less).
erm.... Climate Change isn't supposed to simply cause much higher temperatures. It's supposed to upset the climate balance and result in an overall higher temperature. But that doesn't mean you can no longer have below average winters/years.
Western Europe, for example, could very well be on course for a long term significant drop in temperatures, if the climate change upsets the North Atlantic Drift.
Further: Climate change didn't begin with Kyoto. Kyoto was a response (by politicians, so you know it was quite a while after the problem manifested itself). It hasn't been 2,4 or 5 years. It has been decades.
Finally: what always confuses me about these discussions is that the CO2 level is hardly mentioned. The CO2 part of our atmosphere is undeniably far higher than it has been in millions of years. Given its properties, that must have an impact on our climate. Even if you really believe that impact hasn't shown up, it seems to me that this would be a good enough reason to cut down on CO2.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: I will live in Montana. [..]And I will have a pickup truck... maybe even a "recreational vehicle." And drive from state to state. Do they let you do that?
Captain Ramius: I suppose.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: No papers?
Captain Ramius: No papers, state to state.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Well then, in winter I will live in... Arizona. Actually, I think I will need two wives.
Captain Ramius: Oh, at least.
It's a system that could stop Russia from launching it's missiles (well not right now, since it's a crap system, but you know, at some point). Undermining the offensive capability of a country/enemy is an offensive move. It Creates a situation in which Russia can be attacked witouth being able to retaliate.
The point is that by putting a defensive system in place you break the MAD. You give one country the capability to attack/destroy an other country with impunity. That's what makes a defensive system an offensive risk.
Why would the US need missiles in Turkey? They have perfectly nice ICBMs stationed in the US itself and on submarines which could hit Russia within half an hour or so.
That's a nice way to muddy up the waters. Obviously a listening station (which is what Lourdes mostly was) is different from an X-band radar capable of sweeping most of your country. But even accepting that, the US put a lot of pressure on Russia to close that listening station in Cuba. How is Russia's reaction to a potentially more dangerous system strange? From Russia's viewpoint Iran is just an excuse to put a base right at it's border.
As I've said before: from the viewpoint of the country without a defensive system the world is safer with MAD than without.
The new nuclear powers aren't in any way more psychotic than those of the past. They are guided just as much by self-preservation as the US, France or China. The only danger I see there is a revolution in Pakistan or North Korea, either putting real nutjobs in temporary power or creating chaos which makes a nuclear theft possible. But even in that case I expect them to just drive a nuke over the border, not launch it for all the world to see.
You mean just like the American missiles placed in Turkey at the time? In a classical MAD nuclear standoff all weapons systems are both offensive and defensive. If country A can stop missiles from hitting its territory (defensive) it can attack without relation (which makes it part of an offensive system). And vice versa.
The reason the Russians are so unhappy about the proposed missile system in Eastern Europe (gee, anyone else get a flashback from sentences like that?) has less to do with the actual missiles (which after all still couldn't hit the side of a barn if it had a GPS tracker inside) but with radar, which could see very far into Russian territory.
It's hardly an unfair assessment that it is a threatening move by the US from their viewpoint. I highly doubt the US would quietly accept a similar system being installed by the Russians in Cuba to protect them from the nefarious Jamaicans.
... And all of those show had dreadfull seasons (apart from often having bad/filler episode in the *good* seasons). A couple in the case of TNG & DS9, about 5 for X-files and I don't think there ever was a good season for Voyager.
They didn't even have to read it, they could've just watched TV. Just a six months before the attack there was a network (well Fox, but close enough) TV show that had terrorist flying a plane into the the world trade towers. How much more accurate can you get?
Hmm. A Sci-Fi show, presumably with Sc-Fi writers predicting 9/11. Maybe they're on to something. Though on the onther hand in the example it was a chip hijacking the plane, which might be to much imagination
While I agree with your sentiment ( "The terrorist threat is hyped" ), there were these little incidents. Oklahoma, the first WTC bombing, even Beirut in '81 if you count attacks abroad.
1) They didn't know that. As far as they knew surrender might result in the kind of thing that happened to Germany 22 years earlier: decommissioning of the armed forces, very heavy war payments, maybe some loss of territory. Remember the final solution didn't really gather steam until years later.
2) They didn't exactly surrender at the first sign of fighting. Some villages changed hands dozens of times, large parts of the French military where destroyed or captured before the surrender came and it's only ally, the UK, had already given up the fight on the continent (wisely probably, but still devastating for morale. Also by then a significant part of France industry and Farmland had already been conquered.
3) As others have noted you can't understand the situation in 1940 unless you look at what happened between 1914 and 1918. They lost literally millions of people. And not as casualties (e.g. death and wounded) but in deaths. For four years hundreds of thousands of men died without much effect on the opponent.
In 1940 the French simply lost to a better trained opponent. If there had been a land bridge at Calais I doubt the UK would have lasted much longer. The only thing you can accuse the French government of the time of is that they didn't flee and continue the fight. To call them cowardly or weak ignores the reality of the time.
Yes, thank god Paris Hilton has such a large inheritance. Just think, otherwise she might not have cured cancer or stopped global warming!
Bush wins the count by ~500 votes out of millions (and loses the popular vote overall, let not forget that part. I always wondered if that wouldn't have been a bigger deal if the whole recount deal hadn't happened).Meanwhile there are large problems with the voting (the Elderly Jews voting for Buchannan due to the butterfly ballots, the thousands of people inappropriately removed from the voter rolls etc.). Gore wants a recount, which is allowed. Bush fights him all the way. Jeb and his administration help Bush every step along the way (remember Katherine Harris?). And then a partisan Supreme court ends the recount by a cheap "well just this once" order.
BTW the recount after the fact found that Gore *would* have won in a statewide recount. It's just that according to Florida Law you can only request a recount in a limited (4) number of counties. *That* recount alone wouldn't have helped.
The *correct* situation would have been either for both parties to agree on a fair recount, or barring that for the matter to go to Congress which is supposed to determine these kind of lection problems (looking at the composition of congress in 2000 that would likely still have meant a Bush presidency, but at least that would have been by the book).
As far as I can see it there are two options.
1) Provide a set amount of TV time for candidates/parties to be used in an election (and limit any 'free' buys). Jurisprudence says it can be done constitutionally - after that's the basis of the FCC's right to regulate it.
That would mean more equal access for smaller parties (once they achieve a certain threshold), and less importance on the total amount raised since TV is a huge part of campaign costs.
2) End soft money completely (corporate and union) and reduce the maximum amount a single person can donate to something almost everyone can afford ( $ 200-500 per candidate?). When they really have to get their money from individuals you might get more attentive politicians.
Both of those option would be hard to get ennacted, but are much more realistic than a far reaching change of the system
No it wasn't. The National-Socialistische Arbeiters Partei was quite legel. It even got the initial part of its power (about a quarter of the seats in parliament) through semi-democratic means (meaning the voting itself was relatively free but there was lots of intimidation).
And rightly so. However, while most people would (hopefully agree that the Eminent domain shouldn't be available for each city council that wants to sell a house block to real estate developers it is precisely meant for things like building a high speed rail link. It's unlikely that the billions needed for the construction would be granted by the government (pork is apparently only for highway construction, but still.
While there is some truth in the idea that the scale of the US is significantly differnt from the EU, you're comparing apples to oranges.
Paris-Brussel is one of the shortest high speed rail (hsr): only about 260 km (as the bird flies)
You could also travel from Paris to Madrid or London to Barcelona via hsr. With some 1.1000 km those routes are roughly the same distance as Seattle-San Francisco.
Also there are plenty of shorter, high density routes in the US. Boston-New-York, NY-Washington DC are both around 300 km, slightly more than Paris-Brussels. And L.A.-San Fransisco is a very doable 570 km.
Also important to remember: High speed rail isn't meant for long distances (800 km+) it's most efficient at a medium distance. I never quite understood why there even where cross continental services in the US.
On topic: the eternal argument in these discussions that the US is just so darned big you can't compare it is weak. Yes total coverage is more difficult than in say Belgium. But other countries do connect rather remote villages (a matter of state support for those communities). And worst of all: even in high density areas (is there a more tightly populated place on earth than NY city?) service is often worse than on comparable cities in the rest o the world.
Well, they're not so much regulating the internet (in that case they would have to require al bloggers to post proof of their identity or something like that), they're regulating what corporations can do. It's difficult to enforce things on the internet. It's a lot less difficult prosecuting firms when it turns out they've been conning the public. In all likelyhood the measure is menat as a detterent.
You have seen his poll numbers for the past year or so right? Right now he's only beating Nixon and Carter in the unpopularity sweepstakes.
Except that it is precisely the big states that are 'safe'. California, Texas, New York. Add to that the disproportionate representation of smaller states in the Electoral College and it seems highly undemocratic (see the 2000 election).
Besides, people don't calculate how 'big' their influence is, except if it is absent. Otherwise all people wouldn't all go for the huge jackpot when millions of others also play, reducing their chances.
I see this reply a lot in the EU-MS discussions. However, the commission is not asking for something new. They want MS tot disclose protocols that Windows Server already uses. MS should have those details handy.
in answer to your question: yes.
Only a few years ago Volkswagen was fined about 450 million for anti-competitive practices
First of all: current taxes on fuel don't come close to paying for road construction and maintenance.
Second: we know the needed capacity: fibre to every house (well within limit. I doubt extremely remote areas would be hooked up. At least initially). The capacity of fibre is high that the last mile shouldn't be a bottle neck for the next two decades (famous last words, I know) the overall capacity of the network would depend on the part before that. You'd still pay for the actual bits transferred. If network usage were to increase the ISP's/Telco's/TV companies would have an incentive and a clear financial structure to increase capacity.
Basically this system would separate the (expensive but theoretically mostly one off) cost of laying cable to you house and the cost of actually transferring data. Which would increase market transparency. Added benefit: only one cable/fibre to maintain, instead of telephone line, cable, fibre.
Just how much "demand" does it take?
You'd offer them for sale, on-line. There's no distribution costs.
And you wouldn't even need to keep them in stock. Just charge enough to cover printing the inserts and burning the CD. All of the costs are passed on to the buyer. It's pure profit. The "advertising" would be done by the "blogs" mentioned.
Well, there is still a minimal run to do real CD printing (as opposed to 'burning') I think it's in the middle hundreds these days. Same goes for printing the inserts, you can just print a couple, but to have a reasonable price you need more.
If you do this for thousands of albums you'll have to store them somewhere, and in many cases probably for years. That going to cost quite a bit too.
Having said that it seems like a much better investment than spending a couple of million on the latest teen pop princes/boy band who'll have to sell millions of albums just to earn back the money they've invested in 'selling' them to the public.