I don't have an asterisk by my name and I'm not lying, so I guess the staff moved my comment. Either that or I'm a fast reader, and no one cares about petty little fights between video gamers over who really got the high score to actually try commenting first. The days of the "frist psot" are pretty much over on Slashdot.
I think the government has other, far more important work to do than simply maintain competition--protect and keep track of property rights, prevent fraud and violence, and maintain physical infrastructure, for instance, are important too.
Dickens' work is highly variable because much of it was serialized for mass consumption. A Christmas Carol was written for popular entertainment and isn't considered highly as a literary work, although it makes a decent introduction to Dickens' style (which is probably even more challenging than Shakespeare to modern audiences). Great Expectations though, great characterization.
All of your questions have been answered, all the data has been made available to you.
Don't troll this thread anymore.
Drat and curses, you've found me out. I am indeed an agent of the Zionist-controlled military-industrial complex that evidently owns all the real estate in New York! While you have foiled my mission this time, be assured that our resources are far more extensive than your own!
Seriously, though, I'd love to live in your world for like one day. I'm sure life is interesting if you see fiendish plots worthy of Lex Luthor around every historical event.
SoaP is going for entertaining, not deep, and hits its goal. I consider it an artistic success on those grounds.
It's just a verbal dispute, then. By "deep", you simply mean the same thing that I mean by "artistic". And by "artistic success", you're referring to its success in achieving the creators' goals (as opposed to success in achieving commercial goals, for instance).
Dammage like this to a building right next to the twin tower, a building that never collapsed even though it sustained much more dammage than WTC7?
Rivers have "dammage". The word you're looking for is damage. And, while I'm not sure you have a strong grasp of which building sustained more damage, collapses are as much determined by where the damage is than how much damage there is. Anyone who's ever played Jenga know this.
I'll repeat this fact you conveniently ignore: Buildings do not fall into their own footprints spontaneously. To achieve such a highly coordinated feat, you need expert placement of demolition charges.
I dispute that "fact", which you have never given a shred of evidence for. It's true that controlled demolitions are highly coordinated and require expert placement of charges, but that's because the probability of damage to other buildings needs to be reduced to a very small probability. If you had ever studied engineering or operations management you'd know that a great deal of effort is expended keeping these probabilities down--you don't design a building implosion so that it doesn't damage other buildings, or a car that it continues running. You design a building implosion so it has as small as possible a probability of damaging other buildings. You build a car so that it has a small probability of component failure.
Why would the military-industrial complex (thanks for updating me on which perennial conspiracy-theory villain you're using!) destroy WTC7 so that it would collapse neatly into its own footprint, while failing to destroy WTC 1 and 2 the same way? Why would the military-industrial complex be worried about protecting other buildings from damage when they were deliberately committing an act of terrorism? Why would they go to all the effort to make 19 predominantly Saudi nationals all appear at the same time on the four airplanes they crashed, with Arabic-speaking voices on the cockpit recorders, if they had no intention of attacking Saudi Arabia? Why would they bother crashing planes into the towers if they was rigged with explosives to start with? Why did they arbitrarily restrain the attack to the WTC and Pentagon? Why did none of the 100,000 WTC inhabitants ever notice the explosives being installed? How come no one has come forth admitting to being a part of this gigantic conspiracy? I think the more important question is--what, other than your political biases, leads you to choose a gigantic conspiracy theory over thinking that maybe you were wrong about building collapses?
Is it not possible that Dickens appears better than Tom Clancy because the former reflects your political biases, and the latter does not?
Not really. I'm not a Catholic pro-life militaristic nationalist like Clancy, but that's not nearly as irritating to slog through as the entire European class warfare of the 19th century crap.
I think the distinction is better shown (in terms of film) when you compare 2001: A Space Odyssey with Snakes on a Plane. One is absurdly entertaining, but artistically very dumb (even if you're far, far too postmodernist and think of it as an ironic commentary on the film industry), while the other is interminably dull and yet artistically deep and beautiful.
I dunno, I thought Great Expectations was pretty funny in parts. Other "literary authors" I like are Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Mark Twain.
A lot of Dickens' books were "commercial" (in the sense that they were written for the masses instead of for artistic purposes), while a lot of them were more literary and many fell in between. In any case, the distinction arose because a certain audience decided they liked to think about books when they read them. It's not a hard science to think about books when you read them, but it usually does better than reading books without thinking about them in terms of determining depth and quality. There's a lot more that can be thought or said about Great Expectations than The Hunt for Red October.
Ya didn't read my link huh? "a building implosion is actually one of the most precisely planned, delicately balanced engineering feats you'll ever see."
And you think this one just... happened all by itself? By magic?
Building implosions are carefully controlled to avoid property damage to surrounding buildings. You want to get it down to a less than 1% chance of damaging other buildings. That doesn't mean that, if a building collapses uncontrolled, it's guaranteed to damage other buildings. It only means that random building collapses have an unacceptably high probability (which in practice may mean greater than 1%, or even greater than 0.1%) of damaging other buildings. Besides, it makes no sense to suppose WTC 7 was destroyed by controlled demolition, because WTC 1 and 2 *did* cause damage to surrounding buildings (thus making it inconsistent to be so cautious with WTC 7) and because there's no reason to make a neatly contained implosion when your objective is to destroy inhabited office buildings to further your Masonic plot from outer space.
You know, whoever designed the WTC must be pretty happy that you have so much faith in them that you think it's more plausible that reptilian Jewish Freemasons from the outer space Illuminati secretly planted explosives than they were simply more vulnerable to aircraft and debris collision than they hoped. Also, I'm not sure if you realize it, but a smallish tower with a poster on it that says "BOOM!" in the middle of bumfuck Alberta (or wherever) will collapse differently from explosives planted at the foundation than a 110-story skyscraper will collapse from airplane impact, or a 40-story skycraper will collapse from debris impact. Other WTC 7 videos show a progressive collapse.
Oh, hush. America shipped the British shipfuls of spam and bullets from the beginning. Besides, the UK and France didn't declare war until Poland was invaded (so much for Austria and Czechoslovakia), and didn't really do anything about it until France was invaded, at which point France lost and Britain withdrew and only defended itself from attack. In fact, it wasn't until after the US got involved that anyone did anything but try to defend their own territory. WWII in Europe can be divided into three stages: Germany and Russia (separately) invading nearby countries without outside intervention, Germany invading Russia, and the English-speaking powers recapturing Africa and western Europe while Russia went back to capturing nearby countries with the explicit permission of the English-speaking powers. The United States is the only power that intervened in Europe without being attacked by Germany or Italy, and they were even foresightful enough to rebuild Europe. (Americans are proud of WWII, but we should be even prouder of the Marshall Plan.)
The ZP Experiment cannot and should not be used as an excuse for torture, ever.
Who the hell is trying to justify anything? We're discussing whether torture is a consequence of personality or of environment in the interest of preventing it, we're not trying to justify it. Try to remember that there is a difference between "ought" and "is".
Finland? As far as I can tell, Finland was the only country that freed itself without being liberated by the Allies. Pretty good feat, and probably the only way you managed to keep yourselves from becoming yet another east European communist state. Of course, the Germans were a bit distracted at the time, but that's still rather amazing.
At the moment, though, it's not too unreasonable to say that the Iraqi insurgents (primarily the extremist Shi'ite type) have ties to Iran (which is controlled by extremist Shi'ites).
Ever since Truman refused the MacArthur request to attack China during the Korea war, the US has had this doctrine of limited wars
You misremember history. It was ever since MacArthur defied Truman's orders and advanced towards the Yalu river (the border between China and Korea), inciting China to attack the UN forces in Korea, that we've had this doctrine. Had MacArthur held at Pyongyang, North Korea would be merely a small sliver of the country along the Yalu instead of half the peninsula, or it would have fallen as the North Korean government would have no longer been able to subdue its people, or it would have been absorbed into China. In any case, what happened is the Chinese counterattacked, driving the UN forces out of North Korea, causing a stalemate and allowing the North Korean government and army to rebuild. By not heeding China's demand not to advance to the Yalu River, MacArthur lost North Korea.
The forces in theater at the time were overwhelmed by the Chinese counterattack and withdrew from North Korea from the port of Hungnam, the withdrawal taking three weeks of brutal winter combat in the Chosin Reservoir. The primary military force in the reservoir was the US First Marine Division, which was among the most powerful military forces available. Regrouping and invading China was just plain unfeasible at that point, and would take months if not years of preparation and would have been as large an endeavor as World War II (despite having the almost-certain support of the Nationalists, who at that point were recently constricted to Taiwan).
North Vietnam was never invaded because North Vietnam bordered China, and invading North Vietnam may have easily begun another shooting war with what was then a nuclear power. Vietnam, no matter what, was not worth a nuclear war.
No. There's a fine distinction between writing an entertaining or interesting book and writing a book that has literary merit, just as there's a difference between an entertaining film or a film that has artistic merit. Generally, the distinction hinges upon the work's amenability to literary analysis and evaluation--a novel can be deeply entertaining while having shallow, flat characters and saying nothing beyond a reaffirmation of the author's political biases (most Tom Clancy novels) or a novel can be a deep and insightful exploration of the human condition, capturing strong and sophisticated characters (most of Dickens' work).
Can they run eight instances of a simulation at once, or eight different simulations? Or even four, or two? Parallelism doesn't only help you run one process, it also helps you run multiple processes with less cost.
Well, WTC7 and most of the rest of the WTC had debris rained on it from the collapses of WTC 1 and 2. WTC 7 was evacuated since the collapse was anticipated, but that must have been part of the evil Masonic conspiracy too.
And don't forget that the twin towers were engineered to resist airplane impacts
Yeah, and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was engineered to resist wind. And it's clearly impossible that we didn't know enough about airline impacts at the time, so it must have been a secret government conspiracy.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't have an asterisk by my name and I'm not lying, so I guess the staff moved my comment. Either that or I'm a fast reader, and no one cares about petty little fights between video gamers over who really got the high score to actually try commenting first. The days of the "frist psot" are pretty much over on Slashdot.
I've read this summary six or seven times and I still have no fucking idea what it's supposed to mean.
I'm loath to admit it, but...having tried catnip, it doesn't really work on people.
I think the government has other, far more important work to do than simply maintain competition--protect and keep track of property rights, prevent fraud and violence, and maintain physical infrastructure, for instance, are important too.
iTunes actually lets you gift specific tracks to other people from the store itself. They just sign in and download the tracks you bought for them.
Dickens' work is highly variable because much of it was serialized for mass consumption. A Christmas Carol was written for popular entertainment and isn't considered highly as a literary work, although it makes a decent introduction to Dickens' style (which is probably even more challenging than Shakespeare to modern audiences). Great Expectations though, great characterization.
Drat and curses, you've found me out. I am indeed an agent of the Zionist-controlled military-industrial complex that evidently owns all the real estate in New York! While you have foiled my mission this time, be assured that our resources are far more extensive than your own!
Seriously, though, I'd love to live in your world for like one day. I'm sure life is interesting if you see fiendish plots worthy of Lex Luthor around every historical event.
It's just a verbal dispute, then. By "deep", you simply mean the same thing that I mean by "artistic". And by "artistic success", you're referring to its success in achieving the creators' goals (as opposed to success in achieving commercial goals, for instance).
Rivers have "dammage". The word you're looking for is damage. And, while I'm not sure you have a strong grasp of which building sustained more damage, collapses are as much determined by where the damage is than how much damage there is. Anyone who's ever played Jenga know this.
I dispute that "fact", which you have never given a shred of evidence for. It's true that controlled demolitions are highly coordinated and require expert placement of charges, but that's because the probability of damage to other buildings needs to be reduced to a very small probability. If you had ever studied engineering or operations management you'd know that a great deal of effort is expended keeping these probabilities down--you don't design a building implosion so that it doesn't damage other buildings, or a car that it continues running. You design a building implosion so it has as small as possible a probability of damaging other buildings. You build a car so that it has a small probability of component failure.
Why would the military-industrial complex (thanks for updating me on which perennial conspiracy-theory villain you're using!) destroy WTC7 so that it would collapse neatly into its own footprint, while failing to destroy WTC 1 and 2 the same way? Why would the military-industrial complex be worried about protecting other buildings from damage when they were deliberately committing an act of terrorism? Why would they go to all the effort to make 19 predominantly Saudi nationals all appear at the same time on the four airplanes they crashed, with Arabic-speaking voices on the cockpit recorders, if they had no intention of attacking Saudi Arabia? Why would they bother crashing planes into the towers if they was rigged with explosives to start with? Why did they arbitrarily restrain the attack to the WTC and Pentagon? Why did none of the 100,000 WTC inhabitants ever notice the explosives being installed? How come no one has come forth admitting to being a part of this gigantic conspiracy? I think the more important question is--what, other than your political biases, leads you to choose a gigantic conspiracy theory over thinking that maybe you were wrong about building collapses?
Not really. I'm not a Catholic pro-life militaristic nationalist like Clancy, but that's not nearly as irritating to slog through as the entire European class warfare of the 19th century crap.
I think the distinction is better shown (in terms of film) when you compare 2001: A Space Odyssey with Snakes on a Plane. One is absurdly entertaining, but artistically very dumb (even if you're far, far too postmodernist and think of it as an ironic commentary on the film industry), while the other is interminably dull and yet artistically deep and beautiful.
I dunno, I thought Great Expectations was pretty funny in parts. Other "literary authors" I like are Ken Kesey (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) and Mark Twain.
A lot of Dickens' books were "commercial" (in the sense that they were written for the masses instead of for artistic purposes), while a lot of them were more literary and many fell in between. In any case, the distinction arose because a certain audience decided they liked to think about books when they read them. It's not a hard science to think about books when you read them, but it usually does better than reading books without thinking about them in terms of determining depth and quality. There's a lot more that can be thought or said about Great Expectations than The Hunt for Red October.
Building implosions are carefully controlled to avoid property damage to surrounding buildings. You want to get it down to a less than 1% chance of damaging other buildings. That doesn't mean that, if a building collapses uncontrolled, it's guaranteed to damage other buildings. It only means that random building collapses have an unacceptably high probability (which in practice may mean greater than 1%, or even greater than 0.1%) of damaging other buildings. Besides, it makes no sense to suppose WTC 7 was destroyed by controlled demolition, because WTC 1 and 2 *did* cause damage to surrounding buildings (thus making it inconsistent to be so cautious with WTC 7) and because there's no reason to make a neatly contained implosion when your objective is to destroy inhabited office buildings to further your Masonic plot from outer space.
You know, whoever designed the WTC must be pretty happy that you have so much faith in them that you think it's more plausible that reptilian Jewish Freemasons from the outer space Illuminati secretly planted explosives than they were simply more vulnerable to aircraft and debris collision than they hoped. Also, I'm not sure if you realize it, but a smallish tower with a poster on it that says "BOOM!" in the middle of bumfuck Alberta (or wherever) will collapse differently from explosives planted at the foundation than a 110-story skyscraper will collapse from airplane impact, or a 40-story skycraper will collapse from debris impact. Other WTC 7 videos show a progressive collapse.
Oh, hush. America shipped the British shipfuls of spam and bullets from the beginning. Besides, the UK and France didn't declare war until Poland was invaded (so much for Austria and Czechoslovakia), and didn't really do anything about it until France was invaded, at which point France lost and Britain withdrew and only defended itself from attack. In fact, it wasn't until after the US got involved that anyone did anything but try to defend their own territory. WWII in Europe can be divided into three stages: Germany and Russia (separately) invading nearby countries without outside intervention, Germany invading Russia, and the English-speaking powers recapturing Africa and western Europe while Russia went back to capturing nearby countries with the explicit permission of the English-speaking powers. The United States is the only power that intervened in Europe without being attacked by Germany or Italy, and they were even foresightful enough to rebuild Europe. (Americans are proud of WWII, but we should be even prouder of the Marshall Plan.)
Indeed, one might suppose that a bad British brigadier might lose his job to a competent colonial colonel from Canada.
Who the hell is trying to justify anything? We're discussing whether torture is a consequence of personality or of environment in the interest of preventing it, we're not trying to justify it. Try to remember that there is a difference between "ought" and "is".
Finland? As far as I can tell, Finland was the only country that freed itself without being liberated by the Allies. Pretty good feat, and probably the only way you managed to keep yourselves from becoming yet another east European communist state. Of course, the Germans were a bit distracted at the time, but that's still rather amazing.
At the moment, though, it's not too unreasonable to say that the Iraqi insurgents (primarily the extremist Shi'ite type) have ties to Iran (which is controlled by extremist Shi'ites).
You misremember history. It was ever since MacArthur defied Truman's orders and advanced towards the Yalu river (the border between China and Korea), inciting China to attack the UN forces in Korea, that we've had this doctrine. Had MacArthur held at Pyongyang, North Korea would be merely a small sliver of the country along the Yalu instead of half the peninsula, or it would have fallen as the North Korean government would have no longer been able to subdue its people, or it would have been absorbed into China. In any case, what happened is the Chinese counterattacked, driving the UN forces out of North Korea, causing a stalemate and allowing the North Korean government and army to rebuild. By not heeding China's demand not to advance to the Yalu River, MacArthur lost North Korea.
The forces in theater at the time were overwhelmed by the Chinese counterattack and withdrew from North Korea from the port of Hungnam, the withdrawal taking three weeks of brutal winter combat in the Chosin Reservoir. The primary military force in the reservoir was the US First Marine Division, which was among the most powerful military forces available. Regrouping and invading China was just plain unfeasible at that point, and would take months if not years of preparation and would have been as large an endeavor as World War II (despite having the almost-certain support of the Nationalists, who at that point were recently constricted to Taiwan).
North Vietnam was never invaded because North Vietnam bordered China, and invading North Vietnam may have easily begun another shooting war with what was then a nuclear power. Vietnam, no matter what, was not worth a nuclear war.
No. There's a fine distinction between writing an entertaining or interesting book and writing a book that has literary merit, just as there's a difference between an entertaining film or a film that has artistic merit. Generally, the distinction hinges upon the work's amenability to literary analysis and evaluation--a novel can be deeply entertaining while having shallow, flat characters and saying nothing beyond a reaffirmation of the author's political biases (most Tom Clancy novels) or a novel can be a deep and insightful exploration of the human condition, capturing strong and sophisticated characters (most of Dickens' work).
Can they run eight instances of a simulation at once, or eight different simulations? Or even four, or two? Parallelism doesn't only help you run one process, it also helps you run multiple processes with less cost.
Well, WTC7 and most of the rest of the WTC had debris rained on it from the collapses of WTC 1 and 2. WTC 7 was evacuated since the collapse was anticipated, but that must have been part of the evil Masonic conspiracy too.
Yeah, and the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was engineered to resist wind. And it's clearly impossible that we didn't know enough about airline impacts at the time, so it must have been a secret government conspiracy.