I hear on alt.rock.progressive that, say, Spock's Beard is a great band. My choices are to buy the cd without listening to it, or wait until I hear one of their songs on the radio (yeah, right) or go to KaZaA and type spock's beard in the search list...
I've bought nearly a hundred cd's based on nothing more than recommendations from fellow fans and downloads from napster and kazaa. I've also not bought a number of cd's by poor musicians who have recieved rave reviews (reviews which would have caused me to buy the cd's a few years ago)...
Imagine, buying cd's of music you like, instead of music that someone else wants you to like. Sounds like an RIAA nightmare to me.
Judging from your sig, I'd guess you're a gamer. How well do games run under a VMware session? Can you play windows games that don't work with wine yet?
The russian space shuttles are carried by the AN-225 myria, one BIG airplane indeed (it has a payload of over twice hat of the C-5). It is a derivative of the AN-124 condor...
If it sucks as bad as TPM did, then it might. I dl'd TPM and didn't bother seeing it on dvd or in the theater, and I will probably do the same here.
By the same token, I dl'd matrix and saw it afterwards in the theater 4 times. Same with LOTR (I only saw it at the theater twice though).
The point being that P2P services are hollywoods worst nightmare- because if everyone has easy access to free movies, they will only pay to see good ones at the theater. Lucas doesn't want to be forced to make a good movie, but he wants to make $200M anyway--so he will fight KaZaA etc. with everything he has.
The prototype F-22 was also lost due to a sign error in the code which controlled the thrust-vectoring nozzles during landing. Technically it was chalked up to pilot error, since he was supposed to lock the nozzles down before beginning the landing procedure, but it is something that should have been considered in the code.
Frm the unclassified accident report:
"At the time of the crash, Morgenfeld had been carrying out a planned go-around, and he had just switched on his afterburners and had retracted his undercarriage at less than 50 feet off the runway with thrust vectoring active. At a speed of 175 knots, the aircraft began an uncommanded pitchup followed by a severe stick-forward command from the pilot. The aircraft then entered a series of pitch oscillations, with rapid tail and thrust nozzle fluctuations, exacerbated by control surface actuators hitting rate limiters causing commands to get out of synchronization with their execution.
An investigation later showed that Morgenfeld had ignored a test-card that required that the vectoring nozzles to be locked into position in just such a configuration that he had found himself at the time of the crash. However, most engineers had also ignored this instruction since they thought it to be unnecessary. At the time of the accident, the aircraft had made some 760 flights and had logged 100.4 hours in the air."
Out of curiousity, why were there only 4 films nominated? There were at least a half dozen good SF films last year that didn't even make the preliminary ballot. Seems silly to have 18 novels on prelim, narrowed to 7 on the final ballot, and 10 novellas narrowed to 5, etc, and have 4 of 4 preliminary scripts make it to the final ballot (two of which require a very broad definition of SF).
Never before has technology (the lingua franca of sci-fi) played such a role as it currently does, IMO.
Robert Heinlein wrote an editorial to John Campbell@Astounding/Analog to this effect circa 1956. It's pretty much been the staple belief of SF fans and writers everywhere, for as long as SF has been published -- with the publication of this series/book/etc, SF will be taken seriously. Next year, people will notice us.
Unfortunately, it hasn't happened, for reasons which probably say more about the people that DON'T take it seriously than it says about anything intrinsic to the genre. There is such an incredible canvas of ideas available to the SF writer, so many ways to interpret or define the human experience that simply are not available to the standard ho-hum fictioneer; I think the general publics ignorance of SF is one of the great tragedies of our age.
Well, maybe next year.
Then again, the fact that the SFWA gave tripe like "Crouching Tiger" a major award makes me a bit ashamed to think these things...
I'd have to know a whole lot more about it than I do in order to make any kind of comment. Generally speaking, however, if it isn't economically feasible to run a rail system in a town, a private company isn't going to be able o do it any better than a public one. What are the circumstances that led to privatization in the first place? Obviously everyone wasn't satisfied with the rail system, or else the idea to privatize would never have occurred to anyone...
If the government is subsidizing roads, subways, buses etc., then obviously a private company cannot be competitive. Privatization is not a magic bullet, it won't save a sinking ship all by itself. To make this a useful case study you would have to have had the government privatize ALL transportation systems in the city simultaneously. Or better yet, built the city from the ground up with a private transportation system (or systems).
Interesting, I have only driven on it once, on a trip from DC up to NYC. I thought I-95 was one of the worst roads I'd ever seen, while I thought the NJ turnpike portion was pretty nice. It was late at night, however, and a couple of years ago, so I may be completely mistaken.
My comparison was based on toll roads in places I've lived (Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas). It is night and day going from a toll portion to a non-toll portion; toll roads seem to be always well paved and "clean" looking, while I find myself dodging potholes on nontoll roads. Thinking primarily of I-70 through kansas/MO, 425? in Denver and 35 from OKC to Tulsa...
Nice troll; I'll bite anyway, because I am bored as hell at work and spouting vitriol is much more fun than analyzing structural fatigue in airframe components:). Keep in mind that these are my personal beliefs, and not necessarily those of any other libertarian or especially not those of the LP.
The parent post has given a reasoned, and insightful response
First off, the parent post was not reasoned in any sense I am familiar with. If you look closer, you'll see that his argument is based on a feeling that taxes are ok, because he likes the way the world is, and because he is proud to be an American. He makes several ad hominem attacks, and uses an argument from authority, but in no way does he construct a logical argument for his feelings. In addition, he is quite badly mistaken in the one or two concrete examples he gives. Because of this, I'm forced to assume your definition of "well-reasoned" is "something I agree with", which is your perogative, but that doesn't make it so. (if you consider pointing this out to be sophistry, I'm guilty, but at least I'm honest about it.)
Anyway no sane person advocates complete abolition of taxation, even those closest to the LP. I don't mind paying taxes for things that form the basis of civilization. The difference is that my idea of what constitutes a base for a civilization is somewhat different than yours. I also have a very strong belief that INCOME should not be taxed -- but that is a different post.
So, now that I have conceded the straw man and accepted the inevitability of taxation, the real argument becomes: what, exactly, IS the role of government? How do you define it, and which principles do you use to establish right-of-rule? Does "civilization" imply "government-sponsored"? I propose that it does not. A civilization can and should be supported primarily on the efforts of its citizens, not on a blind faith in the government to solve all problems (real and imagined)...
I believe the fundamental law of man should be: men should be free from harm at the hands of another man. I also believe that every intrusion of government into man's affairs must be justified by this law.
For this reason, I advocate a strong military, to keep men from other places from coming here and hurting us (and destroying our way of life).
I also advocate an efficient police force, operating independently of the military, which enforces laws and prevents domestic violence.
In order to prevent the police force from becoming too powerful, and to resolve issues which are not criminal but still require arbitration (contract law, child care law, product liability etc) I advocate a well endowed court system.
Finally, someone has to make the laws. IMHO it should be VERY difficult to get a new law passed, and it should be very EASY to overturn existing laws; again, this is just my opinion.
I realize that our current system in these 4 areas is not perfect, but it is beter than any other system which has been tried. Therefore I support that system, and would make only very minor changes in it.
Anything else- from NASA to the DOT to public school system- can be better handled by private citizens. Why do the best roads ALWAYS seem to be toll roads? Why do the best schools ALWAYS seem to be private schools? Why do the best hospitals... housing projects... retirement plans... research projects... you get the idea. Anything government can do, the private sector can do better. And cheaper. AND faster.
Unfortunately, we don't have the option of privatizing most government functions at this time. Therefore, since a certain number of people are dissatisfied with the current distribution of tax revenue, and have no real way to either have their voices heard or otherwise support programs they feel are worthy, perhaps a way should be created for them to do so.
Which seems to be what this article is about: how can we find alternative methods of funding organizations which we feel are worthy, without forcing people who have no interest in funding those organizations from contributing against their will? A very libertarian idea, imho.
I would say #4 is the real killer. Microsoft's interface blows, and is only considered good because it is intuitive to people who have been beaten over the head with it for 12 years. When OSS developers try to implement microsoft-looking guis, all they end doing is repeating microsoft's mistakes and then adding their own on top, thus creating an interface that not only blows, but blows even worse than MS.
Neh
Re:This is just flat out *wrong*
on
Lineo near Death
·
· Score: 3, Funny
That's what you get for being at work at 5:30 PM on a Friday. If you'd left early to party (like any self-respecting physicist) they'd have had to wait until monday to fire you.
And would probably have waited until the next friday, to "avoid incidents"; if you had left early then too, and every friday since, I bet you'd still have a job.
The moral of this story is obvious (/me looks at watch- one more hour:)
And a final question: Why, oh why, didn't "they" show us anything about how Hartdegen came to the conclusion that a time machine was 1) possible, and 2) doable by him? Why not show us how he went about creating the machine? I don't know about anyone else, but my heart sunk when "they" unveiled the machine--I thought "wow. outta thin air. oh boy. that's hollywood, circa 2002."
Agree with you about the first questions, but I disagree on the last one. Would it have been better if he had said (in his best Star Trek Engineer voice) "By modulating the temporal fields associated with the adamantium antimatter crystals, I've reversed the local flow of entropy"?
In my mind this is far more egregious than simply unveiling a working machine. We don't have a theory for time travel; therefore, any attempt at demonstrating theory would have been annoying at best. Existence of the machine is fundamental to the plot, while the technique used to build the machine is not.
Kind of like how in the early days of SF, every author had to justify how his hyperdrive worked. Nowadays all you have to do is say "FTL drive" and concentrate on characterization, unless a failure in some part of the drive system is required for a plot element.
You dont know much about China do you? Culture is everything, at least to the older generation.
Actually i was a Asian Area Studies minor (aeroengr major:) in undergrad, spent 3 years married to an ethnic chinese immigrant (first gen), and once had a basic speaking knowledge of cantonese (pretty much lost now since I haven't exercised it since the late eighties).
China sees us as cultureless and they dont want to end up like us.
"China" doesn't see us as anything. China is a country, made up of 1.3 billion people. To say that they all think one way or another (despite the best efforts of official propaganda etc) is at best intellectually irresponsible and at worst a blatantly racist generalization.
However, the chinese word for "foreigner" translates more directly to "unhuman"... from this I suspect that in reality what our culture is is irrelevant; we aren't Chinese, therefore we are bad. All this is tangential, however; chinese gov't censorship isn't about culture, it's about freedom of information and the availability of outside ideas.
There is no culture in the USA besides capitalism,
Actually the United States is primarily a socialist culture backed by a capitalist economy. Our culture is dominated by Hollywood movies, produced by people with high creativity but low technical IQ's. I can think of very few writers or filmmakers espousing capitalist ideals. "Save the Children" campaigns take place much more often than "support your local factory"... There are some capitalist cultural influences, but they are by no means the dominant voice. capitalism survives despite the fact that everyone is trained to despise it, for the simple reasons that it is basic human nature and the only effective means of resource distribution.
You have forgotten about communism?
Historically, only a very primative country can improve its standard of living under a communist system. I haven't forgotten about communism, although I wish I could. Sorry, but anyone still defending communism in 2002 is either very dumb or trolling.
So tell me what the Chinese government has in mind, please no "Evil Communist" crap either, i want logical reasons.
Freedom of information leads to dissent. Even the most pro-communist sympathizer must realize the a totalitarian regime (and yes, totalitarian regimes are invariably Evil) will do anything to maintain power through squelching dissent. Familiar with recent events in China? Sucks to be nonhomogeneous there...
In the usa, Oppression was about Capitalism and making money, it was for a reason, Censorship was about making money and maintaining power.
This sentence doesn't parse. Can you please restate it, preferably in complete sentences? And don't give me that "Capitalism is Evil" crap, give me logical reasons:-) Keep in mind that we could be executed for having this conversation if we were writing from beijing coffee shops (except that we couldn't be writing it from there, because they closed them all down).
They arent stupid, they know we dominate the culture of the internet and our culture is about capitalism and greed, They want to improve their own economy not ours, so it makes sense for them to do what they are doing.
And if you really believe that, I've got a bridge in Xinjiang I'll sell you, dirt cheap. US dollars only, please.
(tempering the flame with an honest question: How can you improve an economy without learning about capitalism? The Chinese gov't has only one thing in mind when it censors the internet, and it isn't economic expansion through protection of domestic entrepreneurs.)
The link to MIT quite explicitly states, over and over, that this craft does aileron rolls. I'm not completely familiar with helicopter flight dynamics terminology, but it seems strange to me that a vehicle with no ailerons could do aileron rolls...
Anyone able to shed some light on this? Creative terminology, or something more interesting?
If the average engineer earns 60k/year, and the sgi is 20% faster, then a $12k Fuel will pay for itself in 1 year. In reality, your 80% number is not even close to real world performance- plus, there are so many things you just can't do with a PC.
A 14 day modeling operation on a challenge S would take about 6 hours on a dual athlon... the challenge was NOT designed to be a cfd platform, and using it as one (even back when a 200mhz r4400 was fast) would be as silly as trying to do graphics work on an intel box. The only reason to use a challenge or an indy for that kind of work is if you want to have binary compatible code that will run on an origin. Even that is silly, because irix 6.5 on a challenge S in miserably slow.
which is, i think, the original posters point. Such a pity sgi lost the mhz war b/c their architectures are incredible, but only for what they are designed for.
Greg Douglas at www.reputable.com managed to get 240mhz out of an old sgi indy r5k 200, and someone (can't find article) got 300+ out of an indigo II r4400 (orig 200 or 250 mhz). However, both required cheating- replacing clock oscillators, soldering faster memory into the L2 cache spots, etc. It's a bit more involved than just changing a jumper and pouring liquid nitrogen over it...
No, he used to post to slashdot, back in the days when 30k was a high user id. Probably late 1998 or early 99... What I'm thinking of is actually a comment or thread.
Thanks for doing the research, though. IIRC the article you linked to actually made/. (where he was, somewhat rightfully, lambasted:)
Slashdot Mirror
One of the most fascinating things about Mindstorms is
You did mean to say Battlebots, right?
Although lego mindstorm combat might be cool, too, if we can get Carmen Electra to play.
I hear on alt.rock.progressive that, say, Spock's Beard is a great band. My choices are to buy the cd without listening to it, or wait until I hear one of their songs on the radio (yeah, right) or go to KaZaA and type spock's beard in the search list...
I've bought nearly a hundred cd's based on nothing more than recommendations from fellow fans and downloads from napster and kazaa. I've also not bought a number of cd's by poor musicians who have recieved rave reviews (reviews which would have caused me to buy the cd's a few years ago)...
Imagine, buying cd's of music you like, instead of music that someone else wants you to like. Sounds like an RIAA nightmare to me.
Judging from your sig, I'd guess you're a gamer. How well do games run under a VMware session? Can you play windows games that don't work with wine yet?
The russian space shuttles are carried by the AN-225 myria, one BIG airplane indeed (it has a payload of over twice hat of the C-5). It is a derivative of the AN-124 condor...
If it sucks as bad as TPM did, then it might. I dl'd TPM and didn't bother seeing it on dvd or in the theater, and I will probably do the same here.
By the same token, I dl'd matrix and saw it afterwards in the theater 4 times. Same with LOTR (I only saw it at the theater twice though).
The point being that P2P services are hollywoods worst nightmare- because if everyone has easy access to free movies, they will only pay to see good ones at the theater. Lucas doesn't want to be forced to make a good movie, but he wants to make $200M anyway--so he will fight KaZaA etc. with everything he has.
yes, but then your kids would suddenly find themselves with $400B+ to get rid of, and everyone would hate them for it...
The prototype F-22 was also lost due to a sign error in the code which controlled the thrust-vectoring nozzles during landing. Technically it was chalked up to pilot error, since he was supposed to lock the nozzles down before beginning the landing procedure, but it is something that should have been considered in the code.
:)
Frm the unclassified accident report:
"At the time of the crash, Morgenfeld had been carrying out a planned go-around, and he had just switched on his afterburners and had retracted his undercarriage at less than 50 feet off the runway with thrust vectoring active. At a speed of 175 knots, the aircraft began an uncommanded pitchup followed by a severe stick-forward command from the pilot. The aircraft then entered a series of pitch oscillations, with rapid tail and thrust nozzle fluctuations, exacerbated by control surface actuators hitting rate limiters causing commands to get out of synchronization with their execution.
An investigation later showed that Morgenfeld had ignored a test-card that required that the vectoring nozzles to be locked into position in just such a configuration that he had found himself at the time of the crash. However, most engineers had also ignored this instruction since they thought it to be unnecessary. At the time of the accident, the aircraft had made some 760 flights and had logged 100.4 hours in the air."
neh
aero geek
Out of curiousity, why were there only 4 films nominated? There were at least a half dozen good SF films last year that didn't even make the preliminary ballot. Seems silly to have 18 novels on prelim, narrowed to 7 on the final ballot, and 10 novellas narrowed to 5, etc, and have 4 of 4 preliminary scripts make it to the final ballot (two of which require a very broad definition of SF).
Neh
Never before has technology (the lingua franca of sci-fi) played such a role as it currently does, IMO.
Robert Heinlein wrote an editorial to John Campbell@Astounding/Analog to this effect circa 1956. It's pretty much been the staple belief of SF fans and writers everywhere, for as long as SF has been published -- with the publication of this series/book/etc, SF will be taken seriously. Next year, people will notice us.
Unfortunately, it hasn't happened, for reasons which probably say more about the people that DON'T take it seriously than it says about anything intrinsic to the genre. There is such an incredible canvas of ideas available to the SF writer, so many ways to interpret or define the human experience that simply are not available to the standard ho-hum fictioneer; I think the general publics ignorance of SF is one of the great tragedies of our age.
Well, maybe next year.
Then again, the fact that the SFWA gave tripe like "Crouching Tiger" a major award makes me a bit ashamed to think these things...
Rev. Neh
I'd have to know a whole lot more about it than I do in order to make any kind of comment. Generally speaking, however, if it isn't economically feasible to run a rail system in a town, a private company isn't going to be able o do it any better than a public one. What are the circumstances that led to privatization in the first place? Obviously everyone wasn't satisfied with the rail system, or else the idea to privatize would never have occurred to anyone...
If the government is subsidizing roads, subways, buses etc., then obviously a private company cannot be competitive. Privatization is not a magic bullet, it won't save a sinking ship all by itself. To make this a useful case study you would have to have had the government privatize ALL transportation systems in the city simultaneously. Or better yet, built the city from the ground up with a private transportation system (or systems).
Interesting, I have only driven on it once, on a trip from DC up to NYC. I thought I-95 was one of the worst roads I'd ever seen, while I thought the NJ turnpike portion was pretty nice. It was late at night, however, and a couple of years ago, so I may be completely mistaken.
My comparison was based on toll roads in places I've lived (Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas). It is night and day going from a toll portion to a non-toll portion; toll roads seem to be always well paved and "clean" looking, while I find myself dodging potholes on nontoll roads. Thinking primarily of I-70 through kansas/MO, 425? in Denver and 35 from OKC to Tulsa...
Nice troll; I'll bite anyway, because I am bored as hell at work and spouting vitriol is much more fun than analyzing structural fatigue in airframe components :). Keep in mind that these are my personal beliefs, and not necessarily those of any other libertarian or especially not those of the LP.
The parent post has given a reasoned, and insightful response
First off, the parent post was not reasoned in any sense I am familiar with. If you look closer, you'll see that his argument is based on a feeling that taxes are ok, because he likes the way the world is, and because he is proud to be an American. He makes several ad hominem attacks, and uses an argument from authority, but in no way does he construct a logical argument for his feelings. In addition, he is quite badly mistaken in the one or two concrete examples he gives. Because of this, I'm forced to assume your definition of "well-reasoned" is "something I agree with", which is your perogative, but that doesn't make it so. (if you consider pointing this out to be sophistry, I'm guilty, but at least I'm honest about it.)
Anyway no sane person advocates complete abolition of taxation, even those closest to the LP. I don't mind paying taxes for things that form the basis of civilization. The difference is that my idea of what constitutes a base for a civilization is somewhat different than yours. I also have a very strong belief that INCOME should not be taxed -- but that is a different post.
So, now that I have conceded the straw man and accepted the inevitability of taxation, the real argument becomes: what, exactly, IS the role of government? How do you define it, and which principles do you use to establish right-of-rule? Does "civilization" imply "government-sponsored"? I propose that it does not. A civilization can and should be supported primarily on the efforts of its citizens, not on a blind faith in the government to solve all problems (real and imagined)...
I believe the fundamental law of man should be: men should be free from harm at the hands of another man. I also believe that every intrusion of government into man's affairs must be justified by this law.
For this reason, I advocate a strong military, to keep men from other places from coming here and hurting us (and destroying our way of life).
I also advocate an efficient police force, operating independently of the military, which enforces laws and prevents domestic violence.
In order to prevent the police force from becoming too powerful, and to resolve issues which are not criminal but still require arbitration (contract law, child care law, product liability etc) I advocate a well endowed court system.
Finally, someone has to make the laws. IMHO it should be VERY difficult to get a new law passed, and it should be very EASY to overturn existing laws; again, this is just my opinion.
I realize that our current system in these 4 areas is not perfect, but it is beter than any other system which has been tried. Therefore I support that system, and would make only very minor changes in it.
Anything else- from NASA to the DOT to public school system- can be better handled by private citizens. Why do the best roads ALWAYS seem to be toll roads? Why do the best schools ALWAYS seem to be private schools? Why do the best hospitals... housing projects... retirement plans... research projects... you get the idea. Anything government can do, the private sector can do better. And cheaper. AND faster.
Unfortunately, we don't have the option of privatizing most government functions at this time. Therefore, since a certain number of people are dissatisfied with the current distribution of tax revenue, and have no real way to either have their voices heard or otherwise support programs they feel are worthy, perhaps a way should be created for them to do so.
Which seems to be what this article is about: how can we find alternative methods of funding organizations which we feel are worthy, without forcing people who have no interest in funding those organizations from contributing against their will? A very libertarian idea, imho.
Neh
I would say #4 is the real killer. Microsoft's interface blows, and is only considered good because it is intuitive to people who have been beaten over the head with it for 12 years. When OSS developers try to implement microsoft-looking guis, all they end doing is repeating microsoft's mistakes and then adding their own on top, thus creating an interface that not only blows, but blows even worse than MS.
Neh
That's what you get for being at work at 5:30 PM on a Friday. If you'd left early to party (like any self-respecting physicist) they'd have had to wait until monday to fire you.
/me looks at watch- one more hour :)
And would probably have waited until the next friday, to "avoid incidents"; if you had left early then too, and every friday since, I bet you'd still have a job.
The moral of this story is obvious (
An original SGI R5k Indy, with a 2GB scsi hdd and 128mb ram can be had on ebay for around $100 right now...
Of course, it won't run windows, but it'll do anything you want to a bit of video.
And a final question: Why, oh why, didn't "they" show us anything about how Hartdegen came to the conclusion that a time machine was 1) possible, and 2) doable by him? Why not show us how he went about creating the machine? I don't know about anyone else, but my heart sunk when "they" unveiled the machine--I thought "wow. outta thin air. oh boy. that's hollywood, circa 2002."
Agree with you about the first questions, but I disagree on the last one. Would it have been better if he had said (in his best Star Trek Engineer voice) "By modulating the temporal fields associated with the adamantium antimatter crystals, I've reversed the local flow of entropy"?
In my mind this is far more egregious than simply unveiling a working machine. We don't have a theory for time travel; therefore, any attempt at demonstrating theory would have been annoying at best. Existence of the machine is fundamental to the plot, while the technique used to build the machine is not.
Kind of like how in the early days of SF, every author had to justify how his hyperdrive worked. Nowadays all you have to do is say "FTL drive" and concentrate on characterization, unless a failure in some part of the drive system is required for a plot element.
You dont know much about China do you? Culture is everything, at least to the older generation.
:) in undergrad, spent 3 years married to an ethnic chinese immigrant (first gen), and once had a basic speaking knowledge of cantonese (pretty much lost now since I haven't exercised it since the late eighties).
:-) Keep in mind that we could be executed for having this conversation if we were writing from beijing coffee shops (except that we couldn't be writing it from there, because they closed them all down).
Actually i was a Asian Area Studies minor (aeroengr major
China sees us as cultureless and they dont want to end up like us.
"China" doesn't see us as anything. China is a country, made up of 1.3 billion people. To say that they all think one way or another (despite the best efforts of official propaganda etc) is at best intellectually irresponsible and at worst a blatantly racist generalization.
However, the chinese word for "foreigner" translates more directly to "unhuman"... from this I suspect that in reality what our culture is is irrelevant; we aren't Chinese, therefore we are bad. All this is tangential, however; chinese gov't censorship isn't about culture, it's about freedom of information and the availability of outside ideas.
There is no culture in the USA besides capitalism,
Actually the United States is primarily a socialist culture backed by a capitalist economy. Our culture is dominated by Hollywood movies, produced by people with high creativity but low technical IQ's. I can think of very few writers or filmmakers espousing capitalist ideals. "Save the Children" campaigns take place much more often than "support your local factory"... There are some capitalist cultural influences, but they are by no means the dominant voice. capitalism survives despite the fact that everyone is trained to despise it, for the simple reasons that it is basic human nature and the only effective means of resource distribution.
You have forgotten about communism?
Historically, only a very primative country can improve its standard of living under a communist system. I haven't forgotten about communism, although I wish I could. Sorry, but anyone still defending communism in 2002 is either very dumb or trolling.
So tell me what the Chinese government has in mind, please no "Evil Communist" crap either, i want logical reasons.
Freedom of information leads to dissent. Even the most pro-communist sympathizer must realize the a totalitarian regime (and yes, totalitarian regimes are invariably Evil) will do anything to maintain power through squelching dissent. Familiar with recent events in China? Sucks to be nonhomogeneous there...
In the usa, Oppression was about Capitalism and making money, it was for a reason, Censorship was about making money and maintaining power.
This sentence doesn't parse. Can you please restate it, preferably in complete sentences? And don't give me that "Capitalism is Evil" crap, give me logical reasons
They arent stupid, they know we dominate the culture of the internet and our culture is about capitalism and greed, They want to improve their own economy not ours, so it makes sense for them to do what they are doing.
And if you really believe that, I've got a bridge in Xinjiang I'll sell you, dirt cheap. US dollars only, please.
(tempering the flame with an honest question: How can you improve an economy without learning about capitalism? The Chinese gov't has only one thing in mind when it censors the internet, and it isn't economic expansion through protection of domestic entrepreneurs.)
The link to MIT quite explicitly states, over and over, that this craft does aileron rolls. I'm not completely familiar with helicopter flight dynamics terminology, but it seems strange to me that a vehicle with no ailerons could do aileron rolls...
Anyone able to shed some light on this? Creative terminology, or something more interesting?
Or for someone who posted an inflammatory remark about Sean O'Keefe on slashdot...
neh
If the average engineer earns 60k/year, and the sgi is 20% faster, then a $12k Fuel will pay for itself in 1 year. In reality, your 80% number is not even close to real world performance- plus, there are so many things you just can't do with a PC.
think about ALL the variables...
neh
A 14 day modeling operation on a challenge S would take about 6 hours on a dual athlon... the challenge was NOT designed to be a cfd platform, and using it as one (even back when a 200mhz r4400 was fast) would be as silly as trying to do graphics work on an intel box. The only reason to use a challenge or an indy for that kind of work is if you want to have binary compatible code that will run on an origin. Even that is silly, because irix 6.5 on a challenge S in miserably slow.
which is, i think, the original posters point. Such a pity sgi lost the mhz war b/c their architectures are incredible, but only for what they are designed for.
neh
You've obviously not played civ3 with 16 civilizations... AI calculations between turns can take 10 minutes on a 1.4ghz athlon.
Greg Douglas at www.reputable.com managed to get 240mhz out of an old sgi indy r5k 200, and someone (can't find article) got 300+ out of an indigo II r4400 (orig 200 or 250 mhz). However, both required cheating- replacing clock oscillators, soldering faster memory into the L2 cache spots, etc. It's a bit more involved than just changing a jumper and pouring liquid nitrogen over it...
neh
No, he used to post to slashdot, back in the days when 30k was a high user id. Probably late 1998 or early 99... What I'm thinking of is actually a comment or thread.
/. (where he was, somewhat rightfully, lambasted :)
Thanks for doing the research, though. IIRC the article you linked to actually made