Well, ok. I can get a thunderbird for ~$188. Still beats $192, other things being equal.
And as for it not being a winner on price, on PriceWatch a Celeron 700 is about $50-70 more than a Duron 700. It sure looks like a winner to me.
I was comparing Athlons to Durons, not celerons. You are right, of course; unless you want to play UT, the order of price/perf at a given mhz would be athlon/duron/celeron/p3. My point is that it is cheaper to buy a 700 mhz athlon than a 700 mhz duron, and therefore the price that AMD thinks they are going to get for their chips does not match what they are going to get in reality.
The 700MHz, 650MHz, and 600MHz AMD Duron processors are priced at $192, $154, and $112, respectively, each in 1,000-unit quantities.
If I can get a genuine Athlon 700 for ~$150 now, why would I want to buy a Duron? Not a winner on performance; not a winner on price; not a winner, period. Pity.
why, oh why use an MDI interface for a web browser?
My boss is rather short and squarish-looking, so when he comes down the hallway from his office to mine he is easily hidden by the 5' tall cubicle walls. I have absolutely no warning that he is coming until his rotund, sweaty face appears (usually angrily) in my doorway. Upon which time I generally find myself frantically clicking x's to close the 6-8 browser windows I have open. Usually I fail miserably, and have to make up some excuse for why I am reading Slashdot when the TPS reports are late.
If I had only one x to click, I could much more easily maintain the illusion that I actually work, at least some small percentage of the time...
Don't forget that in the next few years, a great deal of the private transportation industry (read, people with automobiles) will be transitioning from internal combustion engines to electric power. When this starts to happen en masse, we'll see a sharp spike in power consumption across the board.
One solution I see is smart appliances; embedded microchips in your air conditioners, car rechargers, refrigerators, etc. that are linked to computers in the electric companies power plants. If you were to give each appliance in your home a ranking based on how valuable it is to you, then the server could adjust power consumption based on available supply. It's not a permanent solution, but it would keep us from losing power to things like iron lungs and quake servers when unimportant things like air conditioners could be sacrificed instead. I could see this being completely client sided, as well- make electricity costs continuously variable, with the demand dependant $/KwH broadcast over the net, so that your smart machines could shut themselves down when the cost of running them becomes prohibitive.
IMHO B.E. the book was a good 250 page story, crammed into 950 pages. I read the thing during a pair of 5 hour layovers at the Kansas City airport, and at times I was so desperate for action that I felt my time would be better spent riding the baggage carousel. Around and around and around... I don't have any problems with long stories when they are like Stephenson's Cryptonomicon or Michael Flynn's Firestar, but length in this case was simply a waste of space. Procrastination.
All in all it wasn't a bad story, it just seriously needed editing. From the intro to the paperback, I think that LRH wrote it at a point in his life where either:
he was (unfortunately) able to tell unbiased editors to kiss off, ignoring suggestions completely, or:
his editors were completely incompetent, or:
they published it as-is in order to embarass someone they thought was an overbearing, overrated loudmouth.
A little consultation with an atomic physicist might have been beneficial as well.
The real shame is that this is a book that could have been made into a good movie -very- easily. Contrasted with movies like Starship Troopers and Blade Runner, where there is some kind of deeper message, BE was a simple action plot that seemed perfect for hollywood adaptation. Bad aliens blow up human civilization in order to strip mine the planet, then heroic humans stage a comeback a thousand years later and blow up the alien planet. You have to be trying pretty hard to muck that up.
where v = velocity, c = speed of light in vacuum, and W = Warp factor. So 300c would be warp 6.69433- easily within the range of any Federation vessel. Warp 300 would be 27e6*c!
Don't ask me why I felt compelled to share this; I don't even like ST.
Well, Sebastian Duron was a baroque musician who lived from 1660-1716. At least as obscure as the French Explorer named Celeron... and less likely to be confused with a vegetable.
Don't confuse the word "passive" with the word "pacifist". They mean completely different things. You have to be somewhat insane to want to go to war; it is a lot easier to send someone else. The difference between "We should do something about Iraq" and "I should do something about Iraq".
Anyway, "a certain tendency towards aggression" pretty much sums up the whole of the human race. The difference exists in what particular form of aggression a man chooses. In my experience, it seems that the specific pathology required to initiate violence on a large scale is far more common in politicians than in military officers. The military just does what it is told, like any other machine.
The early cold war years are often characterised by Hollywood asgenerals just itching to try out the new nuclear toy. With politicians often being the controlling factor preventing them.
Thats the scary bit, politicians acting as the only buffer.
In reality, it was the politicians who gambled so freely with the future of the human race. The word "brinksmanship" was not coined by a man in a uniform. Military people as a whole are the most pacifistic segment of society. Think about it: when the ballon goes up, they get shot. Knowing first hand the horrible consequences of war, the price that men pay for the thirty second sound bites politicians relish so much, they find war distasteful enough not to *ever* wish to face it. That they do is a testament to their courage and to their training.
Granted, early on the full consequences of nuclear weapons was not understood. People who were generals in the early 50's entered service before the airplane or the main battle tank were even factors; technology was advancing so rapidly that no one knew exactly what would come next. Every avenue had to be explored, regardless of whether it was potentially useless, because if Soviet tanks and nuclear artillery came rolling across the Fulda Gap, there may be only one way to stop them.
If you divorce the emotional stigmata that has become associated with nucs, a tactical nuclear weapon is just a big bomb. A device that can be used to disrupt or destroy an enemy. Of course the generals were interested in them; their troops lives as well as their nation's fate depended on having the best weapons, equipment, doctrines, and training. The Strangelovian personification you invoked is simply inaccurate.
One story I remember was about the engineers who maintained control of the huge central nuclear power plant (which ran all of the rolling road cities) going insane because of the pressure they were under; they eventually decided to put the power station in space. On the Moon, if I recall correctly. The thesis was that if the reactor melted down, the entire planet would be destroyed, and that was why we had not made contact with any alien civilizations: By the time a race became advanced enough to have space travel, they developed nuclear power and blew themselves up. Of course it sounds silly now that we know what the real dangers are from nuclear power, but in ~1941 no one really knew wat to expect. And putting power stations in orbit is a great idea that will make traditional issues like smog pollution and gasoline shortages obsolete.
Also I thought the fictional society in which the law was "An Eye for an Eye" was pretty interesting. It was one of the later "nomadic refugee" books, probably either "Job" or "Number of the Beast". The specific example I remember was a guy being run over repeatedly by a truck because he crippled someone while DUI.
I think this was also the same society that killed all of the lawyers... a common Heinlein theme as well.
First, the putz you responded to is a loser who lacks the skill to initiate a proper troll, and thus resorted to writing an off-color testament to his own lack of creativity. You fed him anyway. Bad smkndrkn!
Anyway most of the serious racists in this country are in the Pacific Northwest and the northern Midwest, where minorities *really are* a minority. Seattle is the worst city for minorities in the country, according to the NAACP (you can find the study somewhere in their vast labyrinthine web page, if you really want to). After Seattle comes Portland, Or., and third is Indianapolis, IN. It also really sucks to be Asian in Detroit. You're right about the KKK though; they are a bunch of ac's who should be moderated down immediately. With shotguns.
The probable reason that you think that the South is so bad is because of incredibly dishonest journalism and a few random outbreaks of stupidity perpetrated by isolated individuals (think alabama churches, s. carolina confederate flag, etc.) I used to think the same thing, until I moved to Nashville and actually saw what people are like here; my minority friends all have a deep-seated hatred for the south, and I think it is mostly unwarranted. There are stupid people here, like anywhere else in this country, and a lot of them drive pickup trucks, but violent crime committed with racist intent is relatively low as far as I have seen or heard. IMHO hating southerners because they are from the south is just as bigoted as hating a minority because of his race or creed. Hate any individual racist bastard you want to- mock him for his bigotry and for his obvious lack of education and pity him for his low self esteem - but don't lump them into a group with all of their neighbors, because most people just want to live their lives in peace.
I basically lost my (thai) fiance due to a similar prejudice; she refused to move here from denver because she was afraid of rednecks. So I am quite bitter about this particular kind of misconception. If this is a response to a second order troll, keep that in mind as you gloat...
Go buy a rio, with solidly soldered circuit boards hidden away beneath a nice shiny black case; a mass-produced masterpiece designed by some faceless intrepid entity toiling away in a forgotten corporate cubicle. You will gain an excellent warranty, a pretty cardboard box, and a nice pair of cheap earphones in the process.
But if you take as much joy from the melting of metal as you do from the music itself, if you dream of harnassing the secrets of the universe for your own personal pleasure, then this kind of thing is the only option. Nothing my mother can buy at Wal-Mart will be as exciting or as interesting as something I piece together out of scraps of metal, a broken Walkman and a radio shack chip.
I had no interest whatsoever in portable mp3 players until building my own became a possibility. I don't yet have the skill to design one of these myself- but I can solder, and I think I can read a schematic well enough to put this thing together. I can probably even modify this to do other neat things- and in doing that, I will learn a great deal.
Or maybe you already know everything there is to know about electrical engineering. Maybe you can design one of these in your sleep, and that is why this doesn't excite you. If that's the case, do it. And then put up a web page and show me how- cuz I am excited.
actually you can. At least two ways. You can even moderate yourself, if you post as an ac.
WARNING: I have patented these methods; I refer to them jointly as 'one-click moderating'. Anyone caught using them will be severely beaten, then forced to endure 15 lbs of hot grits poured straight down their pants by my squad of trained ninja pancake tossers.
The first, obvious way is to log out completely after moderating, then post as ac. This is kind of lame and uninventive; call it the brute force method.
The second requires you to open 2 browser windows. The best way to do it is to right-click on 'reply' below the post you want to reply to, then select 'open in new window'. You then post your say. Then you go back to the original window and the mod menus are still active. Since the mod system only checks to see if you moderated anything immediately after you post, and prevents you from moderating a previously posted-in discussion by removing the drop-down boxes, as long as you post first and then mod you are ok. You just can't moderate any posts that come after yours; using browser tricks you may post as many times as you like, as long as you don't mod until you are done posting. This works in every browser I have tried: Netscape 4.x & 6, Ie 4.x, and mozilla.
The funniest thing about this is that if you have mod points and choose 'post as ac', you can moderate your own post. In the page that comes up saying 'there will be a delay before your comment is published', you get a drop down menu to select from. You can mod yourself all the way up to (+5) if you hit back, then moderate, then click 'y' at 'resubmit form data?'
(I have only used these once, when I wanted to test the effect of poor moderation on my karma. I posted a deliberately off-topic, rude remark, IIRC correcting a mistake in a 'devil's letter' troll, then moderated it 'insightful' to see if it would hurt me. Turns out that was the only time I have moderated in the past month that I didn't lose karma! heh. I'm not bitter...)
There also may be a way to get near-infinite mod points within a single story, but if there is I am going to keep that one secret for now.:)
Rev Neh (who will probably be eternally stricken from the ranks of moderator for exposing these. Please, oh great Rob, have mercy!)
The bit at the end about "undiagnosed heart condition" is a standard statement used whenever a torture victim dies. Death implies heart failure by definition, and undiagnosed heart condition means that no doctor documented the fact that 150cc of [insert toxin of choice here] would stop the poor bloke's heart. Remember, the movie is about an uncontrollable bureaucracy and UHC is the ultimate bureaucratic tool for avoiding consequences. It's the doctor's fault, not mine. Especially useful since no one ever came back from an interrogation session.
The first use of this that I know of was in It can't happen here, by Sinclair Lewis, discussing the rise of fascism in the US. Also used recently in a number of movies/films discussing Russian police tactics, most recently (and crudely) in The Jackal.
When I did my AF survival training exercise in early summer of '97, my team had to traverse ~30 kilometers in 5 days on essentially empty stomachs, through rugged, mountainous terrain, with people hunting us at all times. We were dropped in the deep woods with nothing but a single MRE, an obsolete c-ration, and an empty canteen accessorized by a bottle of nasty water purification tablets.
Over the course of that week I became very adept at wrenching the carrot-like biscuit root stalks from the ground with a single thrust from my bolt knife; I could fill a coffee can with those bland pseudo-carrots in under five minutes. I also managed to kill and skin an extremely cute white rabbit which we nicknamed Thumper (after the method of his demise), and even ate a few hundred black ants (delicious if you pinch their heads off first). However, despite the 'abundant' natural resources, I believe that few of us would have completed the course without our MREs.
I dream sometimes about that chicken a la king packet; I managed to save it until the 3rd night, and it was the best meal I've ever had. There was a stamp on the pack of M&M's which I clearly remember stating that they were packaged in 1978. Nineteen year old stew... and I would have killed for another. It was rich, creamy and somehow solid at the same time; even though it was freezing outside, it felt warm on my tongue. I ate it while nestled in a 2 poncho lean-to, between a boulder and a fallen tree, and the other members of my team glared while I sucked the soft essence into my mouth one miniscule drop at a time. I hated teasing them, since they had all long since finished their rations, but it was unavoidable. By the end of the journey I was wishing I had given it away, because some of the weaker members of the team were almost unable to continue. The problem wasn't physiological; they were not injured, or even badly malnourished. Most only lost around five pounds on the trip.
The problem was in their minds.
I wasn't affected nearly as badly as other members of my team; I wrestled in college (D-I) and routinely cut between 10 and 25 pounds to make weight, so starvation is a familiar demon. I've seen my skin turn yellow and lost fingernails from dehydration, while being so hungry that my stomach ached at the thought of food; and still had the strength and stamina to defeat some of the toughest people in the country in single combat. However, watching some of my survival team physically stumble, weak to the point of being unable to walk after being away from McDonalds for only a few long days, illustrates a good point: Never underestimate the psychological value of eating a full and satisfying meal. Eating is far more important than the simple intake of nutrients; swallowing a tasty bit of well-cooked cow or freshly processed chicken might sound over-rated or unnecessary while sitting at a computer terminal, but it is tremendously important to the human psyche. Especially under trying conditions, such as when being hunted or subject to enemy fire; an army with no morale is a dead army.
The only real use I see for these is to have in case of emergencies- imagine a pilot being able to carry enough packets in a pocket to survive a month without having to forage for food in case he is shot down. This would greatly increase his ability to evade capture and survive the experience. The same logic applies to soldiers cut off from the lines of supply; it is obviously better to feel hungry and thus demoralized than to be forced to surrender or die in your boots from something as banal as hunger. Everyday rations, however, call for something a little more fulfilling.
I may be trolling a bit here, but I would say that if the guys at darpa do their jobs correctly, foot soldiers should be nearly obsolete for most purposes by 2025 anyway; this is analogous to the situation with piloted fighter aircraft and UCAVs. There are/will be so many faster, better and cheaper ways to kill people than giving assault rifles to 18 year old 'men'.
Excellent point. If you think that any part of the Constitution should be changed, there are ways to go about accomplishing that. However, changing the Constitution to make taxation easier will be very difficult and time-consuming, and probably fail in such a violent and spectacular manner than any politician who touched it would be ruined. Because of this, those who want more power over those of us that actually produce things are forced to approach the matter circuitously. The Constitution is seen as an obstacle by those people, and they will ignore it or attempt to bypass it without confrontation wherever possible.
If we enforce the constitution, making these arrogant politicians publicly face the consequences of their nefarious goals, then we will see much less infringement upon our rights. Ignoring the Constitution is not an option. If they want to get around it, make them change it.
Actually the first verse and chorus of Clone of My Own were originally written for FSF by Randall Garrett. Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, and several others did contribute a number of verses; I don't thing RAH was one of these others, but I could be mistaken.
Obsessive compulsives? Check. Tell me no-one here has never reorganized their CD collection
I once ended a relationship (that was not going well in other areas) with a girl immediately after I caught her rearranging my cd collection. It is one of those things that simply could not be tolerated. Of course it was a final straw type intrusion, but...
Even though she hadn't damaged much, I had to completely rearrange my collection before it felt 'right' again. Something like 400 cd's, including cd's she hadn't touched, had to be taken out of their leather binders and stacked in piles while waiting to be replaced in a suitable fashion.
O-C behavior? heh. Try psychopathic. I like my cd's...
Rev Neh
i or j or w... OT so delayed 24 hours
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Aero types use i, at least those I've worked with or studied under. I've seen j used mostly by people with EE or physics backgrounds.
I have some really old textbooks that use small omega (~w), and some that seem completely unstandardized; one book even uses a different letter across chapters. Simply a matter of convention, I suppose, existing to prevent the addition of an unnecessary level of abstraction to an already complicated subject.
The one fifteen minute ambulance ride I have taken cost me approximately $1200. The state government did not help me to pay for any of it. Thankfully I was well insured.
I pay a small fee, something like $5 a month, to get my garbage picked up. That is in a suburb of Nashville; I've had similar expenditures in St. Louis and Denver when I lived in those cities. I don't know of anyplace in the country that covers the cost of garbage collection with state taxes. If you don't pay it yourself, the odds are very good that your landlord does (which means you pay for it in your rent check). And even if garbage collection were covered by the government, it would be a city level civic function, funded by property taxes or the like.
The one time in my life I have been robbed, in Boston in summer of 98, I stood in line for over an hour to file a police report. The unsympathetic clerk took my paperwork and said he'd get back to me if anything turned up. Obviously I never heard from him again... Of course, the county clerk in the 2-bit town of Wickliffe, KY, whose policeman pulled me over for going 38 in a 35, and then changed the ticket to 65 in a 35 when I refused to say "sir" to him- was happy to accept my check for $163 last September. The fact that it was the third consecutive Labor day I had been pulled over for speeding when I wasn't really speeding, and the fact that the policeman was driving a very shiny white '99 Ford, which cost his town of less than 500 people something like $25,000, adds to my cynicism towards government officials somewhat... at least to the extent that I don't want them taking more of my money than necessary. I have my own car payments to make.
Stop whining. What on earth is wrong with...
I don't think it is whining, so much as it is screams of anguish coming from people who see themselves paying way too much for what dubious returns they receive. People who see excess every day, and are sick of hearing the words "close enough for government work"- especially coming from public school teachers! People who work their fingers to the bone to make the house payment, or to put their daughter through college- and then find that they still owe uncle sam $1500 in taxes. These people aren't necessarily greedy, or selfish; they just exist in the real world, the one people in Washington don't see much of, and are trying to live their lives as free from interference as possible.
Rev. Neh (who thinks that students who use the word 'greedy' vicariously in a/. post should try working on a small farm in southern missouri for a week in July or August)
It really depends what kind of accuracy you are looking for. You can write an engineering level code that solves basic equations for aerodynamic forces, and get first-order accuracy in predicting steady, inviscid, incompressible flow over a two dimensional airfoil at a small angle of attack on a standard pc; you can even get results within seconds if you make enough broad assumptions. However, this will give you very simplified results that are only valid inside the range of the assumptions used. If, for instance, you wanted to solve an off-design screech problem in a modern fighter engine combustor or afterburner, at temperatures outside the range of constant air properties, you would need to solve the full Navier-Stokes equations, probably including unsteady terms, turbulence terms, vitiates, gas chemistry anomalies, airfoil expansion due to temperature gradients (which in turn require complex grid generation/regeneration) etc. Try to do this on even the fastest PC and you will be waiting for years.
Quick example: to complete a full analysis of an 11.5 stage high pressure compressor on a 48 processor HP workstation (180 mhz) takes 50 days! of wall clock time. This isn't even a full engine, just one component. While obviously an extreme, since the code makes literally no assumptions (within the limits of human understanding of the physics involved in the problem), it comes to mind immediately as an example of the level of complexity involved in calculating any problem, whether it be molecules of air or sub-atomic particles, to the degree of accuracy required by modern scientists/engineers. Disclaimer: I am not completely familiar with the specifics of this code because it is/was a NASA Glenn project. I saw the tail end of a paper presented for it back when it was still Nasa Lewis... I have a copy of the paper, somewhere, but it escapes me. If I find it I will post the TR# and you can look it up at a tech library somewhere.
I have never used the x-planes program you mentioned, but from looking at it I believe they can probably do what they claim. They aren't really claiming a lot, however; the real applications for high performance computing are in high order engineering and design for detailed performance analysis. Engineering level analysis is pretty simple and their level of detail could probably even be accomplished with table look-ups.
re. 1 &2: I've been called worse things than zealot, by people I respect much more than you... In fact, I've called myself that. if you read my userid, you'd know I am a science fiction zealot, and a progressive metal zealot. I am not, however, an LP zealot. I don't agree with everything they say, I don't necessarily or even usually vote Libertarian, and I don't accept anyone's word as doctrine. If I disagree with what someone is saying loudly in a public forum, I am going to state my disagreement in a tone which matches the tone they used in their statement. If they are subsequently able to convince me that I am wrong, I am going to change my ideas. If they snicker and call me names like you did, I am going to feel secure in my ideas because you have not only given me no reason to challenge them, but implicitly admitted defeat through resorting to an ad hominem attack.
re. the fusion of 3 and 4: how can you describe yourself as incurably well-informed, clear-headed, and open-minded, while simultaneously not caring to inform yourself about the issues (or platforms)??? my sense of humor tells me this is funny. So am I laughing at you or with you? just how good is your alleged sense of humor?
Also, I don't have much difficulty interacting socially with people who disagree with me politically. My fiance is a Democratic zealot; i.e. she votes democratic regardless of who is running or what they stand for. She would vote for the antichrist if he was wearing a donkey hat, yet I love her because she is a caring, intelligent, strong-willed person who has an incredible zest for living. In fact, none of my close friends are Libertarians. I look for different qualities in my acquaintences online and off...
Besides, if I didn't have a sense of humor, would I be a chaoist and reverend of the POEE? I take myself seriously only when absolutely necessary. When I feel like my right to not take life seriously might be threatened by ignorance amongst well-meaning people.
Interesting subject line, since afaik the Libertarian Party is the only major American political party whose platform doesn't include government handouts for anyone.
Before you go shooting your mouth off and revealing yourself as an ignorant dolt, you might want to study the things you hate. You might find that your prejudices are irrational and fallacious, and that you were confused about the nature of your self-assumed adversaries.
Of course, you can always just go on living the life of an uninformed, confused bigot; every civilized discussion is enriched by having a complete idiot in the corner shouting boorish sentiments about things he doesn't understand. It allows the people who are actually qualified to discuss politics respite from their usual tedious debate by providing a common jester the entire forum can simultaneously enjoy.
Every Libertarian I know would support John in his quest to recieve payment for his efforts- payment in this case being the source for the code derived from his efforts, as stipulated in the contract (GPL) which was accepted implicitly by the use of Carmack's work. It sounds like you agree with this as well- odds are pretty good your beliefs are compatible with those of the LP, at least on this topic.
And on Alpha Centauri, because the factions have hardcoded leader sexes (yet another failure on fireaxis' part, imo). If I want to play as Spartans I can either be a really pretty guy or a female character... Same with the Gaians. Of course, I edited the datajacks and believers so I can play as male characters (Hiro P. and Rev. Neh., respectively) if everyone I am playing with wants to download my customized.pcx and.txt's before they play; but this is annoying and takes too long usually. Also, most people don't trust an edited faction.txt file... especially when they are losing as badly as most people I play with seem to.:)
Andrew Carnegie was able to use his Pinkertons and strike-breakers to crush the Homestead steel strike because he had government sanction- not despite it. Only a statist would sanction violence against people peacably demonstrating. In a free state, he would have gone to jail- along with everyone else involved, for violating the rights of the people he attacked. Also, John Rockefeller used the state militia to kill striking Colorado miners in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. That is tough to do if there is no state militia.
If you have any understanding of the concept of irony, you will see why I am smiling at you now.
Ask yourself why steelworkers go out of work. I am sure the 3000 employees of the motorola factory in NW Texas- the one that moved to Guadalajara last Nov. because of the interminable taxes in this country- would be singing the praises of a free market... if they had jobs today. I imagine the "indigenous people" of Mexico are, since those jobs are now theirs. I'm not going to pretend to sympathize with american loggers; this is the year 2000. If they want to make their living killing trees, they can move somewhere that has trees that need to be cut. The world has moved on. After all, they have every right to set up a smithery- but I have the right to buy my steel from a machine shop, where they use technology effectively to provide me with a better product cheaper. Last I looked, the local shop was hiring...
And please don't confuse the Libertarian concept of the corporation with the -"conservative republican whom cnn calls libertarian"-'s concept of a corporation. The fact that there would be no corporate welfare in a free state is readily identifiable in the very definition of corporate welfare... i.e. (anti-competitive) legislation passed to allow companies to continue operation in spite of financial inviability.
Do you really believe that we bomb cities for Pepsi's benefit? Please. Corporations don't bomb cities because 1) dead people don't buy pepsi, 2) many living people don't buy Pepsi from people they know are murderers, 3) private armies are hideously expensive. 4) private armies are therefore notoriously poorly equipped, and would be easily defeated by any dedicated resistance. It is difficult enough to get soldiers of a free country to fight a war of aggression under a banner of national bigotry; getting them to scream "for the Inc." as they charge a machine gun bunker filled with people fighting for their homeland would be impossible, impractical, and stupid.
The one specific incident of "market failure" you mentioned was the recent "cremate monsanto" fiasco. Combined with the European boycotts, there are terribly distressing phenomena in themselves. Basically what is happening is that a local charismatic leader is using the Karnatakan's fear of the unknown, in this case the science behind genetic engineering, to destroy what is a terrific boon for India and other countries with huge, poor populations. In cases like this, someone is getting rich off of watching Monsanto's fields burn; I guarantee you it isn't the poor dumb farmers who are doing the burning. Unfortunately, it is their children who will starve because the huge increase in crop yields available through genetic engineering won't be realized. Of course, local activist groups will then claim market failure...
Using carefully engineered acts of terrorism-for-profit as an indicator of market failure is about as accurate as proudly placing the word 'libertarian' next to the word 'socialist'.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, ok. I can get a thunderbird for ~$188. Still beats $192, other things being equal.
And as for it not being a winner on price, on PriceWatch a Celeron 700 is about $50-70 more than a Duron 700. It sure looks like a winner to me.
I was comparing Athlons to Durons, not celerons. You are right, of course; unless you want to play UT, the order of price/perf at a given mhz would be athlon/duron/celeron/p3. My point is that it is cheaper to buy a 700 mhz athlon than a 700 mhz duron, and therefore the price that AMD thinks they are going to get for their chips does not match what they are going to get in reality.
Rev Neh
From the AMD press release:
The 700MHz, 650MHz, and 600MHz AMD Duron processors are priced at $192, $154, and $112, respectively, each in 1,000-unit quantities.
If I can get a genuine Athlon 700 for ~$150 now, why would I want to buy a Duron? Not a winner on performance; not a winner on price; not a winner, period. Pity.
Rev Neh
why, oh why use an MDI interface for a web browser?
My boss is rather short and squarish-looking, so when he comes down the hallway from his office to mine he is easily hidden by the 5' tall cubicle walls. I have absolutely no warning that he is coming until his rotund, sweaty face appears (usually angrily) in my doorway. Upon which time I generally find myself frantically clicking x's to close the 6-8 browser windows I have open. Usually I fail miserably, and have to make up some excuse for why I am reading Slashdot when the TPS reports are late.
If I had only one x to click, I could much more easily maintain the illusion that I actually work, at least some small percentage of the time...
Rev Neh
Don't forget that in the next few years, a great deal of the private transportation industry (read, people with automobiles) will be transitioning from internal combustion engines to electric power. When this starts to happen en masse, we'll see a sharp spike in power consumption across the board.
One solution I see is smart appliances; embedded microchips in your air conditioners, car rechargers, refrigerators, etc. that are linked to computers in the electric companies power plants. If you were to give each appliance in your home a ranking based on how valuable it is to you, then the server could adjust power consumption based on available supply. It's not a permanent solution, but it would keep us from losing power to things like iron lungs and quake servers when unimportant things like air conditioners could be sacrificed instead. I could see this being completely client sided, as well- make electricity costs continuously variable, with the demand dependant $/KwH broadcast over the net, so that your smart machines could shut themselves down when the cost of running them becomes prohibitive.
Food for thought?
Rev Neh
All in all it wasn't a bad story, it just seriously needed editing. From the intro to the paperback, I think that LRH wrote it at a point in his life where either:
he was (unfortunately) able to tell unbiased editors to kiss off, ignoring suggestions completely, or:
his editors were completely incompetent, or:
they published it as-is in order to embarass someone they thought was an overbearing, overrated loudmouth.
A little consultation with an atomic physicist might have been beneficial as well.
The real shame is that this is a book that could have been made into a good movie -very- easily. Contrasted with movies like Starship Troopers and Blade Runner, where there is some kind of deeper message, BE was a simple action plot that seemed perfect for hollywood adaptation. Bad aliens blow up human civilization in order to strip mine the planet, then heroic humans stage a comeback a thousand years later and blow up the alien planet. You have to be trying pretty hard to muck that up.
Rev Neh
but...
the formula used in the original Star Trek series for warp travel is
v = (W ^ 3) * c
where v = velocity, c = speed of light in vacuum, and W = Warp factor. So 300c would be warp 6.69433- easily within the range of any Federation vessel. Warp 300 would be 27e6*c!
Don't ask me why I felt compelled to share this; I don't even like ST.
Rev Neh
Well, Sebastian Duron was a baroque musician who lived from 1660-1716. At least as obscure as the French Explorer named Celeron... and less likely to be confused with a vegetable.
Rev Neh
Don't confuse the word "passive" with the word "pacifist". They mean completely different things. You have to be somewhat insane to want to go to war; it is a lot easier to send someone else. The difference between "We should do something about Iraq" and "I should do something about Iraq".
Anyway, "a certain tendency towards aggression" pretty much sums up the whole of the human race. The difference exists in what particular form of aggression a man chooses. In my experience, it seems that the specific pathology required to initiate violence on a large scale is far more common in politicians than in military officers. The military just does what it is told, like any other machine.
Rev Neh
The early cold war years are often characterised by Hollywood as generals just itching to try out the new nuclear toy. With politicians often being the controlling factor preventing them.
Thats the scary bit, politicians acting as the only buffer.
In reality, it was the politicians who gambled so freely with the future of the human race. The word "brinksmanship" was not coined by a man in a uniform. Military people as a whole are the most pacifistic segment of society. Think about it: when the ballon goes up, they get shot. Knowing first hand the horrible consequences of war, the price that men pay for the thirty second sound bites politicians relish so much, they find war distasteful enough not to *ever* wish to face it. That they do is a testament to their courage and to their training.
Granted, early on the full consequences of nuclear weapons was not understood. People who were generals in the early 50's entered service before the airplane or the main battle tank were even factors; technology was advancing so rapidly that no one knew exactly what would come next. Every avenue had to be explored, regardless of whether it was potentially useless, because if Soviet tanks and nuclear artillery came rolling across the Fulda Gap, there may be only one way to stop them.
If you divorce the emotional stigmata that has become associated with nucs, a tactical nuclear weapon is just a big bomb. A device that can be used to disrupt or destroy an enemy. Of course the generals were interested in them; their troops lives as well as their nation's fate depended on having the best weapons, equipment, doctrines, and training. The Strangelovian personification you invoked is simply inaccurate.
Rev. Neh
One story I remember was about the engineers who maintained control of the huge central nuclear power plant (which ran all of the rolling road cities) going insane because of the pressure they were under; they eventually decided to put the power station in space. On the Moon, if I recall correctly. The thesis was that if the reactor melted down, the entire planet would be destroyed, and that was why we had not made contact with any alien civilizations: By the time a race became advanced enough to have space travel, they developed nuclear power and blew themselves up. Of course it sounds silly now that we know what the real dangers are from nuclear power, but in ~1941 no one really knew wat to expect. And putting power stations in orbit is a great idea that will make traditional issues like smog pollution and gasoline shortages obsolete.
Also I thought the fictional society in which the law was "An Eye for an Eye" was pretty interesting. It was one of the later "nomadic refugee" books, probably either "Job" or "Number of the Beast". The specific example I remember was a guy being run over repeatedly by a truck because he crippled someone while DUI.
I think this was also the same society that killed all of the lawyers... a common Heinlein theme as well.
Rev Neh
(Post delayed a week due to off-topic-ness)
First, the putz you responded to is a loser who lacks the skill to initiate a proper troll, and thus resorted to writing an off-color testament to his own lack of creativity. You fed him anyway. Bad smkndrkn!
Anyway most of the serious racists in this country are in the Pacific Northwest and the northern Midwest, where minorities *really are* a minority. Seattle is the worst city for minorities in the country, according to the NAACP (you can find the study somewhere in their vast labyrinthine web page, if you really want to). After Seattle comes Portland, Or., and third is Indianapolis, IN. It also really sucks to be Asian in Detroit. You're right about the KKK though; they are a bunch of ac's who should be moderated down immediately. With shotguns.
The probable reason that you think that the South is so bad is because of incredibly dishonest journalism and a few random outbreaks of stupidity perpetrated by isolated individuals (think alabama churches, s. carolina confederate flag, etc.) I used to think the same thing, until I moved to Nashville and actually saw what people are like here; my minority friends all have a deep-seated hatred for the south, and I think it is mostly unwarranted. There are stupid people here, like anywhere else in this country, and a lot of them drive pickup trucks, but violent crime committed with racist intent is relatively low as far as I have seen or heard. IMHO hating southerners because they are from the south is just as bigoted as hating a minority because of his race or creed. Hate any individual racist bastard you want to- mock him for his bigotry and for his obvious lack of education and pity him for his low self esteem - but don't lump them into a group with all of their neighbors, because most people just want to live their lives in peace.
I basically lost my (thai) fiance due to a similar prejudice; she refused to move here from denver because she was afraid of rednecks. So I am quite bitter about this particular kind of misconception. If this is a response to a second order troll, keep that in mind as you gloat...
Rev Neh
Then don't build one.
Go buy a rio, with solidly soldered circuit boards hidden away beneath a nice shiny black case; a mass-produced masterpiece designed by some faceless intrepid entity toiling away in a forgotten corporate cubicle. You will gain an excellent warranty, a pretty cardboard box, and a nice pair of cheap earphones in the process.
But if you take as much joy from the melting of metal as you do from the music itself, if you dream of harnassing the secrets of the universe for your own personal pleasure, then this kind of thing is the only option. Nothing my mother can buy at Wal-Mart will be as exciting or as interesting as something I piece together out of scraps of metal, a broken Walkman and a radio shack chip.
I had no interest whatsoever in portable mp3 players until building my own became a possibility. I don't yet have the skill to design one of these myself- but I can solder, and I think I can read a schematic well enough to put this thing together. I can probably even modify this to do other neat things- and in doing that, I will learn a great deal.
Or maybe you already know everything there is to know about electrical engineering. Maybe you can design one of these in your sleep, and that is why this doesn't excite you. If that's the case, do it. And then put up a web page and show me how- cuz I am excited.
Rev Neh
actually you can. At least two ways. You can even moderate yourself, if you post as an ac.
:)
WARNING: I have patented these methods; I refer to them jointly as 'one-click moderating'. Anyone caught using them will be severely beaten, then forced to endure 15 lbs of hot grits poured straight down their pants by my squad of trained ninja pancake tossers.
The first, obvious way is to log out completely after moderating, then post as ac. This is kind of lame and uninventive; call it the brute force method.
The second requires you to open 2 browser windows. The best way to do it is to right-click on 'reply' below the post you want to reply to, then select 'open in new window'. You then post your say. Then you go back to the original window and the mod menus are still active. Since the mod system only checks to see if you moderated anything immediately after you post, and prevents you from moderating a previously posted-in discussion by removing the drop-down boxes, as long as you post first and then mod you are ok. You just can't moderate any posts that come after yours; using browser tricks you may post as many times as you like, as long as you don't mod until you are done posting. This works in every browser I have tried: Netscape 4.x & 6, Ie 4.x, and mozilla.
The funniest thing about this is that if you have mod points and choose 'post as ac', you can moderate your own post. In the page that comes up saying 'there will be a delay before your comment is published', you get a drop down menu to select from. You can mod yourself all the way up to (+5) if you hit back, then moderate, then click 'y' at 'resubmit form data?'
(I have only used these once, when I wanted to test the effect of poor moderation on my karma. I posted a deliberately off-topic, rude remark, IIRC correcting a mistake in a 'devil's letter' troll, then moderated it 'insightful' to see if it would hurt me. Turns out that was the only time I have moderated in the past month that I didn't lose karma! heh. I'm not bitter...)
There also may be a way to get near-infinite mod points within a single story, but if there is I am going to keep that one secret for now.
Rev Neh (who will probably be eternally stricken from the ranks of moderator for exposing these. Please, oh great Rob, have mercy!)
The bit at the end about "undiagnosed heart condition" is a standard statement used whenever a torture victim dies. Death implies heart failure by definition, and undiagnosed heart condition means that no doctor documented the fact that 150cc of [insert toxin of choice here] would stop the poor bloke's heart. Remember, the movie is about an uncontrollable bureaucracy and UHC is the ultimate bureaucratic tool for avoiding consequences. It's the doctor's fault, not mine. Especially useful since no one ever came back from an interrogation session.
The first use of this that I know of was in It can't happen here, by Sinclair Lewis, discussing the rise of fascism in the US. Also used recently in a number of movies/films discussing Russian police tactics, most recently (and crudely) in The Jackal.
Rev Neh
When I did my AF survival training exercise in early summer of '97, my team had to traverse ~30 kilometers in 5 days on essentially empty stomachs, through rugged, mountainous terrain, with people hunting us at all times. We were dropped in the deep woods with nothing but a single MRE, an obsolete c-ration, and an empty canteen accessorized by a bottle of nasty water purification tablets.
Over the course of that week I became very adept at wrenching the carrot-like biscuit root stalks from the ground with a single thrust from my bolt knife; I could fill a coffee can with those bland pseudo-carrots in under five minutes. I also managed to kill and skin an extremely cute white rabbit which we nicknamed Thumper (after the method of his demise), and even ate a few hundred black ants (delicious if you pinch their heads off first). However, despite the 'abundant' natural resources, I believe that few of us would have completed the course without our MREs.
I dream sometimes about that chicken a la king packet; I managed to save it until the 3rd night, and it was the best meal I've ever had. There was a stamp on the pack of M&M's which I clearly remember stating that they were packaged in 1978. Nineteen year old stew... and I would have killed for another. It was rich, creamy and somehow solid at the same time; even though it was freezing outside, it felt warm on my tongue. I ate it while nestled in a 2 poncho lean-to, between a boulder and a fallen tree, and the other members of my team glared while I sucked the soft essence into my mouth one miniscule drop at a time. I hated teasing them, since they had all long since finished their rations, but it was unavoidable. By the end of the journey I was wishing I had given it away, because some of the weaker members of the team were almost unable to continue. The problem wasn't physiological; they were not injured, or even badly malnourished. Most only lost around five pounds on the trip.
The problem was in their minds.
I wasn't affected nearly as badly as other members of my team; I wrestled in college (D-I) and routinely cut between 10 and 25 pounds to make weight, so starvation is a familiar demon. I've seen my skin turn yellow and lost fingernails from dehydration, while being so hungry that my stomach ached at the thought of food; and still had the strength and stamina to defeat some of the toughest people in the country in single combat. However, watching some of my survival team physically stumble, weak to the point of being unable to walk after being away from McDonalds for only a few long days, illustrates a good point: Never underestimate the psychological value of eating a full and satisfying meal. Eating is far more important than the simple intake of nutrients; swallowing a tasty bit of well-cooked cow or freshly processed chicken might sound over-rated or unnecessary while sitting at a computer terminal, but it is tremendously important to the human psyche. Especially under trying conditions, such as when being hunted or subject to enemy fire; an army with no morale is a dead army.
The only real use I see for these is to have in case of emergencies- imagine a pilot being able to carry enough packets in a pocket to survive a month without having to forage for food in case he is shot down. This would greatly increase his ability to evade capture and survive the experience. The same logic applies to soldiers cut off from the lines of supply; it is obviously better to feel hungry and thus demoralized than to be forced to surrender or die in your boots from something as banal as hunger. Everyday rations, however, call for something a little more fulfilling.
I may be trolling a bit here, but I would say that if the guys at darpa do their jobs correctly, foot soldiers should be nearly obsolete for most purposes by 2025 anyway; this is analogous to the situation with piloted fighter aircraft and UCAVs. There are/will be so many faster, better and cheaper ways to kill people than giving assault rifles to 18 year old 'men'.
Rev Neh
Excellent point. If you think that any part of the Constitution should be changed, there are ways to go about accomplishing that. However, changing the Constitution to make taxation easier will be very difficult and time-consuming, and probably fail in such a violent and spectacular manner than any politician who touched it would be ruined. Because of this, those who want more power over those of us that actually produce things are forced to approach the matter circuitously. The Constitution is seen as an obstacle by those people, and they will ignore it or attempt to bypass it without confrontation wherever possible.
If we enforce the constitution, making these arrogant politicians publicly face the consequences of their nefarious goals, then we will see much less infringement upon our rights. Ignoring the Constitution is not an option. If they want to get around it, make them change it.
Rev Neh
Actually the first verse and chorus of Clone of My Own were originally written for FSF by Randall Garrett. Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, and several others did contribute a number of verses; I don't thing RAH was one of these others, but I could be mistaken.
Rev Neh
Obsessive compulsives? Check. Tell me no-one here has never reorganized their CD collection
I once ended a relationship (that was not going well in other areas) with a girl immediately after I caught her rearranging my cd collection. It is one of those things that simply could not be tolerated. Of course it was a final straw type intrusion, but...
Even though she hadn't damaged much, I had to completely rearrange my collection before it felt 'right' again. Something like 400 cd's, including cd's she hadn't touched, had to be taken out of their leather binders and stacked in piles while waiting to be replaced in a suitable fashion.
O-C behavior? heh. Try psychopathic. I like my cd's...
Rev Neh
Aero types use i, at least those I've worked with or studied under. I've seen j used mostly by people with EE or physics backgrounds.
I have some really old textbooks that use small omega (~w), and some that seem completely unstandardized; one book even uses a different letter across chapters. Simply a matter of convention, I suppose, existing to prevent the addition of an unnecessary level of abstraction to an already complicated subject.
Rev Neh
The one fifteen minute ambulance ride I have taken cost me approximately $1200. The state government did not help me to pay for any of it. Thankfully I was well insured.
/. post should try working on a small farm in southern missouri for a week in July or August)
I pay a small fee, something like $5 a month, to get my garbage picked up. That is in a suburb of Nashville; I've had similar expenditures in St. Louis and Denver when I lived in those cities. I don't know of anyplace in the country that covers the cost of garbage collection with state taxes. If you don't pay it yourself, the odds are very good that your landlord does (which means you pay for it in your rent check). And even if garbage collection were covered by the government, it would be a city level civic function, funded by property taxes or the like.
The one time in my life I have been robbed, in Boston in summer of 98, I stood in line for over an hour to file a police report. The unsympathetic clerk took my paperwork and said he'd get back to me if anything turned up. Obviously I never heard from him again... Of course, the county clerk in the 2-bit town of Wickliffe, KY, whose policeman pulled me over for going 38 in a 35, and then changed the ticket to 65 in a 35 when I refused to say "sir" to him- was happy to accept my check for $163 last September. The fact that it was the third consecutive Labor day I had been pulled over for speeding when I wasn't really speeding, and the fact that the policeman was driving a very shiny white '99 Ford, which cost his town of less than 500 people something like $25,000, adds to my cynicism towards government officials somewhat... at least to the extent that I don't want them taking more of my money than necessary. I have my own car payments to make.
Stop whining. What on earth is wrong with...
I don't think it is whining, so much as it is screams of anguish coming from people who see themselves paying way too much for what dubious returns they receive. People who see excess every day, and are sick of hearing the words "close enough for government work"- especially coming from public school teachers! People who work their fingers to the bone to make the house payment, or to put their daughter through college- and then find that they still owe uncle sam $1500 in taxes. These people aren't necessarily greedy, or selfish; they just exist in the real world, the one people in Washington don't see much of, and are trying to live their lives as free from interference as possible.
Rev. Neh (who thinks that students who use the word 'greedy' vicariously in a
It really depends what kind of accuracy you are looking for. You can write an engineering level code that solves basic equations for aerodynamic forces, and get first-order accuracy in predicting steady, inviscid, incompressible flow over a two dimensional airfoil at a small angle of attack on a standard pc; you can even get results within seconds if you make enough broad assumptions. However, this will give you very simplified results that are only valid inside the range of the assumptions used. If, for instance, you wanted to solve an off-design screech problem in a modern fighter engine combustor or afterburner, at temperatures outside the range of constant air properties, you would need to solve the full Navier-Stokes equations, probably including unsteady terms, turbulence terms, vitiates, gas chemistry anomalies, airfoil expansion due to temperature gradients (which in turn require complex grid generation/regeneration) etc. Try to do this on even the fastest PC and you will be waiting for years.
Quick example: to complete a full analysis of an 11.5 stage high pressure compressor on a 48 processor HP workstation (180 mhz) takes 50 days! of wall clock time. This isn't even a full engine, just one component. While obviously an extreme, since the code makes literally no assumptions (within the limits of human understanding of the physics involved in the problem), it comes to mind immediately as an example of the level of complexity involved in calculating any problem, whether it be molecules of air or sub-atomic particles, to the degree of accuracy required by modern scientists/engineers. Disclaimer: I am not completely familiar with the specifics of this code because it is/was a NASA Glenn project. I saw the tail end of a paper presented for it back when it was still Nasa Lewis... I have a copy of the paper, somewhere, but it escapes me. If I find it I will post the TR# and you can look it up at a tech library somewhere.
I have never used the x-planes program you mentioned, but from looking at it I believe they can probably do what they claim. They aren't really claiming a lot, however; the real applications for high performance computing are in high order engineering and design for detailed performance analysis. Engineering level analysis is pretty simple and their level of detail could probably even be accomplished with table look-ups.
Rev Neh
re. the fusion of 3 and 4: how can you describe yourself as incurably well-informed, clear-headed, and open-minded, while simultaneously not caring to inform yourself about the issues (or platforms)??? my sense of humor tells me this is funny. So am I laughing at you or with you? just how good is your alleged sense of humor?
Also, I don't have much difficulty interacting socially with people who disagree with me politically. My fiance is a Democratic zealot; i.e. she votes democratic regardless of who is running or what they stand for. She would vote for the antichrist if he was wearing a donkey hat, yet I love her because she is a caring, intelligent, strong-willed person who has an incredible zest for living. In fact, none of my close friends are Libertarians. I look for different qualities in my acquaintences online and off...
Besides, if I didn't have a sense of humor, would I be a chaoist and reverend of the POEE? I take myself seriously only when absolutely necessary. When I feel like my right to not take life seriously might be threatened by ignorance amongst well-meaning people.
kallisti,
Rev Neh
Interesting subject line, since afaik the Libertarian Party is the only major American political party whose platform doesn't include government handouts for anyone.
Before you go shooting your mouth off and revealing yourself as an ignorant dolt, you might want to study the things you hate. You might find that your prejudices are irrational and fallacious, and that you were confused about the nature of your self-assumed adversaries.
Of course, you can always just go on living the life of an uninformed, confused bigot; every civilized discussion is enriched by having a complete idiot in the corner shouting boorish sentiments about things he doesn't understand. It allows the people who are actually qualified to discuss politics respite from their usual tedious debate by providing a common jester the entire forum can simultaneously enjoy.
Every Libertarian I know would support John in his quest to recieve payment for his efforts- payment in this case being the source for the code derived from his efforts, as stipulated in the contract (GPL) which was accepted implicitly by the use of Carmack's work. It sounds like you agree with this as well- odds are pretty good your beliefs are compatible with those of the LP, at least on this topic.
Rev Neh
And on Alpha Centauri, because the factions have hardcoded leader sexes (yet another failure on fireaxis' part, imo). If I want to play as Spartans I can either be a really pretty guy or a female character... Same with the Gaians. Of course, I edited the datajacks and believers so I can play as male characters (Hiro P. and Rev. Neh., respectively) if everyone I am playing with wants to download my customized .pcx and .txt's before they play; but this is annoying and takes too long usually. Also, most people don't trust an edited faction.txt file... especially when they are losing as badly as most people I play with seem to. :)
Rev. Neh
Andrew Carnegie was able to use his Pinkertons and strike-breakers to crush the Homestead steel strike because he had government sanction- not despite it. Only a statist would sanction violence against people peacably demonstrating. In a free state, he would have gone to jail- along with everyone else involved, for violating the rights of the people he attacked. Also, John Rockefeller used the state militia to kill striking Colorado miners in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. That is tough to do if there is no state militia.
If you have any understanding of the concept of irony, you will see why I am smiling at you now.
Ask yourself why steelworkers go out of work. I am sure the 3000 employees of the motorola factory in NW Texas- the one that moved to Guadalajara last Nov. because of the interminable taxes in this country- would be singing the praises of a free market... if they had jobs today. I imagine the "indigenous people" of Mexico are, since those jobs are now theirs. I'm not going to pretend to sympathize with american loggers; this is the year 2000. If they want to make their living killing trees, they can move somewhere that has trees that need to be cut. The world has moved on. After all, they have every right to set up a smithery- but I have the right to buy my steel from a machine shop, where they use technology effectively to provide me with a better product cheaper. Last I looked, the local shop was hiring...
And please don't confuse the Libertarian concept of the corporation with the -"conservative republican whom cnn calls libertarian"-'s concept of a corporation. The fact that there would be no corporate welfare in a free state is readily identifiable in the very definition of corporate welfare... i.e. (anti-competitive) legislation passed to allow companies to continue operation in spite of financial inviability.
Do you really believe that we bomb cities for Pepsi's benefit? Please. Corporations don't bomb cities because 1) dead people don't buy pepsi, 2) many living people don't buy Pepsi from people they know are murderers, 3) private armies are hideously expensive. 4) private armies are therefore notoriously poorly equipped, and would be easily defeated by any dedicated resistance. It is difficult enough to get soldiers of a free country to fight a war of aggression under a banner of national bigotry; getting them to scream "for the Inc." as they charge a machine gun bunker filled with people fighting for their homeland would be impossible, impractical, and stupid.
The one specific incident of "market failure" you mentioned was the recent "cremate monsanto" fiasco. Combined with the European boycotts, there are terribly distressing phenomena in themselves. Basically what is happening is that a local charismatic leader is using the Karnatakan's fear of the unknown, in this case the science behind genetic engineering, to destroy what is a terrific boon for India and other countries with huge, poor populations. In cases like this, someone is getting rich off of watching Monsanto's fields burn; I guarantee you it isn't the poor dumb farmers who are doing the burning. Unfortunately, it is their children who will starve because the huge increase in crop yields available through genetic engineering won't be realized. Of course, local activist groups will then claim market failure...
Using carefully engineered acts of terrorism-for-profit as an indicator of market failure is about as accurate as proudly placing the word 'libertarian' next to the word 'socialist'.
Rev Neh