I love cool technology as much as next guy. The videos of railgun trials are very cool. But, the Pentagon has lots of cool technology projects that have turned into expensive junk. The F35 is the latest example, billions of dollars over budget, and it still doesn't work.
I am very much in favor of a strong defense and strong US military capabilities, but, I am very concerned by the Pentagon's seeming inability to make tech work on time and on budget.
I read the following in National Review (a very conservative pro defense pro military magazine), and I think that everyone who is interested in railguns and Naval Technology should read it as well:
Mr. Fredenburg's claims include: railguns are nowhere durable enough; railguns will have serious trouble engaging mid-range targets; large-explosive rounds are better than the railgunâ(TM)s small, inert ones; railguns will cost a lot more to operate than more conventional artillery, and less extreme technology could produce results as good as railguns at a fraction of the cost.
I cannot vouch for the correctness of Mr. Fredenbug's claims, but given the Pentagon's poor record on new technology, I think they should be taken seriously.
This report in the main post above was absolutely guaranteed to inflame the condescension so inherent in the liberal coastal mentality that afflicts so many/. posters. No human society can be found that is not riddled with irrational pieties and unfounded self-congratulation. This is not to say that any human being not otherwise non-compis mentis would prefer to live in San Francisco over Peshawar. But, condescending to the rubes who live in Dixie is not only rude, it is foolish. Sometimes they really are smarter than/.ers.
Journalist Seth Mnookin's new book, The Panic Virus: A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear, explores the public health scare over vaccines and autism....
Mnookin warns of grave consequences. Recent outbreaks of measles, whooping cough, and other preventable infections have sickened thousands of children and killed more than a dozen in the United States. Vaccine rates are falling below the level needed to prevent an outbreak in a growing number of communities, including ones with wealthy, educated populations.
Q: There's a perception that vaccine refusal is especially common among affluent, well-educated, politically liberal parentsâ"is there any truth to that?
S.M.: It's dangerous to make broad generalizations about a group, but anecdotally and from the overall data that's been collected it seems to be people who are very actively involved in every possible decision regarding their children's lives. I think it relates to a desire to take uncertainty out of the equation. And autism represents such an unknown. We still don't know what causes it and we still don't have good answers for how to treat it. So I think that fear really resonates.
Also I think there's a fair amount of entitlement. Not vaccinating your child is basically saying I deserve to rely on the herd immunity that exists in a population. At the most basic level it's saying I believe vaccines are potentially harmful, and I want other people to vaccinate so I don't have to. And for people to hide under this and say, "Oh, it's just a personal decision," it's being dishonest. It's a personal decision in the way drunk driving is a personal decision. It has the potential to affect everyone around you.
Q: But why liberals?
S.M.: I think it taps into the organic natural movement in a lot of ways.
I talked to a public health official and asked him what's the best way to anticipate where there might be higher than normal rates of vaccine noncompliance, and he said take a map and put a pin wherever there's a Whole Foods. I sort of laughed, and he said, "No, really, I'm not joking." It's those communities with the Prius driving, composting, organic food-eating people.
IAAL: I always told clients that it is far better not to have a written record of what you said and did. It is always to your advantage to have to rely on your self serving memories than to have your memory contradicted by written evidence.
There are some documents that you must retain by law. You should work with your counsel and accountants to identify those categories of documents and to retain them. But not one day longer than necessary.
That said. notes and drafts are very seldom subject to legal retention guidelines. Once a document is finalized, notes and drafts should be destroyed.
Finally, the easiest document to deal with is one that was not created. Business processes should be engineered to avoid document creation to the extent possible.
I bought a 2014 Honda Accord a few months ago. It has a camera in the trunk lid, that gives an image of what is in back of the car on the center panel display when the transmission is in reverse. When you turn on the right turn signal a camera in the right hand mirror housing displays an image of the right side of the car and the adjacent space. There is no such camera on the left side. I assume this is because they don't want drivers moving left to look to their right towards the center panel display.
I believe that many current model cars have similar cameras and displays.
A 360 display would be a step further in the evolution of these displays. But, I am not sure they are totally necessary. Vision forward and within the front 180 degrees is really not much of a problem. The A pillars are small and it is easy to look around them with very small head movements. Only the areas to the side and back and below the trunk lid are obscured. The back up and right turn cameras cover those areas, the only real blind spot is to the left and back.
If you run a restaurant, and you serve soft drinks, you can serve Coca-Cola Products or Pepsi products.
Many years ago (before 1997) some restaurant chains objected to Pepsi products because Pepsi owned restaurant chains including Pizza Hut and KFC, and cross promoted its drinks with the restaurants.
Back then Pepsi would pay restaurants to use their products in stead of Coke. So they were able to overcome some of the competitive objections to using their products. Coke never paid.
In the late 90s, Pepsi solved the problem by a corporate separation of the restaurants and the drinks. The restaurant company is now called Yum! Brands. I assume they stopped paying restaurants to take their products.
To me Google vs Yahoo resembles the Coke vs. Pepsi situation. And, it is just as important.
Life expectancy in the USA rose in 2012 to 78.8 years - a record high.
That was an increase of 0.1 year from 2011 when it was 78.7 years, according to a new report on mortality in the USA from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.
"G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.
"The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church..."
The more information you add to the process and the more people who review the information the more subject the process is to manipulation by the operators. Not that the current admissions system completely in the hands of the colleges who play how ever they like for whatever their goals are -- which are mostly to keep the system running with lots of rich kids who can pay the freight.
A lottery subtracts all information and leaves very little room for manipulation. Unqualified kids in the lottery? They will go home after English 101 and Calculus, and be replaced by a new group.
The lottery does not discriminate by race, sex, religion, or national origin. It is completely fair.
Germany's agressive and reckless expansion of wind and solar power has come with a hefty pricetag for consumers, and the costs often fall disproportionately on the poor. Government advisors are calling for a completely new start.
For a decade now, China has been trying to get business and government users to adopt Unix (and later Linux) as their operating system. Yet most Chinese businesses, and many government departments, continue to use Microsoft operating systems. They do this because Microsoft Windows is widely pirated in China, and there's a large amount of pirated software you can use only on Windows systems. Another critical reason is that more games run on Windows machines, and that is important, even in China. Finally, the Chinese government is more resistant to complaints from Microsoft than Russia.
* * *
China has tried to get around this by subsidizing Linux training for Chinese engineers and computer technicians. The government also subsidized the development of the Kylin Unix based server software. Kylin is shareware, and anyone can download it. Kylin is also designed to be very secure, much more secure than Microsoft server software, and most other similar products. China has had more success in getting users to adopt non-Microsoft server software, but the real battleground is PCs.
Slashdot Mirror
Since when is the aim of marketing helping the consumer?
In my experience it is spreading FUD, and chivvying the consumer into wasting his money on buying things he does not need.
It is very hard to find suitable sites for pumped storage. Here is an old example: Storm King Mountain.
You should also read the feasibility analysis of pumped storage by Tom Murphy, a physics professor at UCSD
I love cool technology as much as next guy. The videos of railgun trials are very cool. But, the Pentagon has lots of cool technology projects that have turned into expensive junk. The F35 is the latest example, billions of dollars over budget, and it still doesn't work.
I am very much in favor of a strong defense and strong US military capabilities, but, I am very concerned by the Pentagon's seeming inability to make tech work on time and on budget.
I read the following in National Review (a very conservative pro defense pro military magazine), and I think that everyone who is interested in railguns and Naval Technology should read it as well:
Railguns: The Next Big Pentagon Boondoggle?
The Navy's replacement for traditional artillery may be an expensive fantasy.
By Mike Fredenburg on December 18, 2014
Mr. Fredenburg's claims include: railguns are nowhere durable enough; railguns will have serious trouble engaging mid-range targets; large-explosive rounds are better than the railgunâ(TM)s small, inert ones; railguns will cost a lot more to operate than more conventional artillery, and less extreme technology could produce results as good as railguns at a fraction of the cost.
I cannot vouch for the correctness of Mr. Fredenbug's claims, but given the Pentagon's poor record on new technology, I think they should be taken seriously.
This report in the main post above was absolutely guaranteed to inflame the condescension so inherent in the liberal coastal mentality that afflicts so many /. posters. No human society can be found that is not riddled with irrational pieties and unfounded self-congratulation. This is not to say that any human being not otherwise non-compis mentis would prefer to live in San Francisco over Peshawar. But, condescending to the rubes who live in Dixie is not only rude, it is foolish. Sometimes they really are smarter than /.ers.
"Why the 'Prius Driving, Composting' Set Fears Vaccines By Greg Miller at ScienceMag.org on 31 January 2011
My solution to the problem would be to repeal the federal gasoline tax and shut down DOT. No more 300 page reports on why they need more money.
I would like to be a fly on the wall when this is explained to Tim Cook or Eric Schmidt.
Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet and Kitten Bowl on Hallmark Channel. Then Downton Abbey on PBS followed by Grantchester.
2*0=0
IAAL: I always told clients that it is far better not to have a written record of what you said and did. It is always to your advantage to have to rely on your self serving memories than to have your memory contradicted by written evidence.
There are some documents that you must retain by law. You should work with your counsel and accountants to identify those categories of documents and to retain them. But not one day longer than necessary.
That said. notes and drafts are very seldom subject to legal retention guidelines. Once a document is finalized, notes and drafts should be destroyed.
Finally, the easiest document to deal with is one that was not created. Business processes should be engineered to avoid document creation to the extent possible.
I bought a 2014 Honda Accord a few months ago. It has a camera in the trunk lid, that gives an image of what is in back of the car on the center panel display when the transmission is in reverse. When you turn on the right turn signal a camera in the right hand mirror housing displays an image of the right side of the car and the adjacent space. There is no such camera on the left side. I assume this is because they don't want drivers moving left to look to their right towards the center panel display.
I believe that many current model cars have similar cameras and displays.
A 360 display would be a step further in the evolution of these displays. But, I am not sure they are totally necessary. Vision forward and within the front 180 degrees is really not much of a problem. The A pillars are small and it is easy to look around them with very small head movements. Only the areas to the side and back and below the trunk lid are obscured. The back up and right turn cameras cover those areas, the only real blind spot is to the left and back.
BTW: Car talk has a detailed explanation of how to position your side mirrors to minimize your blind spots.
"A happily married Ontario woman was shocked and dismayed last January to discover that she had an active account with dating site Zoosk.com."
At least, that is what she told her husband.
6 is nervous, because 7 8 9
Hint. Say it out loud.
If you run a restaurant, and you serve soft drinks, you can serve Coca-Cola Products or Pepsi products.
Many years ago (before 1997) some restaurant chains objected to Pepsi products because Pepsi owned restaurant chains including Pizza Hut and KFC, and cross promoted its drinks with the restaurants.
Back then Pepsi would pay restaurants to use their products in stead of Coke. So they were able to overcome some of the competitive objections to using their products. Coke never paid.
In the late 90s, Pepsi solved the problem by a corporate separation of the restaurants and the drinks. The restaurant company is now called Yum! Brands. I assume they stopped paying restaurants to take their products.
To me Google vs Yahoo resembles the Coke vs. Pepsi situation. And, it is just as important.
"Average life expectancy has actually been going down recently, at least in the US."
That is very interesting. Can you cite a source for your statement.
Here is what I read recently:
Life expectancy in the USA hits a record high by Larry Copeland, USA TODAY 3:54 a.m. EDT October 9, 2014:
As Umberto Eco wrote:
"G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.
"The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church ..."
The more information you add to the process and the more people who review the information the more subject the process is to manipulation by the operators. Not that the current admissions system completely in the hands of the colleges who play how ever they like for whatever their goals are -- which are mostly to keep the system running with lots of rich kids who can pay the freight.
A lottery subtracts all information and leaves very little room for manipulation. Unqualified kids in the lottery? They will go home after English 101 and Calculus, and be replaced by a new group.
The lottery does not discriminate by race, sex, religion, or national origin. It is completely fair.
I won't eat octopus, because chewing on octopus is like chewing rubber tubing. It is not a pleasant experience.
Think Pads, now made by Lenovo, are still good, still solidly built, and very difficult to break. They are my go to advice for Windows laptops.
"They also don't think there's any chance the NFL will move its games to pay-per-view."
ROTFLMAO.
What are they smoking? The NFL will go PPV, ASAP.
Book it.
"Germany's Energy Poverty: How Electricity Became a Luxury Good" By SPIEGEL Staff on 09/04/2013:
Groan
rimshot
They still do in San Francisco.
From the lead article:
"In May, China banned government use of Windows 8, Microsoft's latest operating system"
It seems to be a needless gesture. Even in the US, no one uses Windows 8.
Information Warfare: Running For Linux January 9, 2011