Hey, if the Republicans can hire bloggers to promote their agenda, then Microsoft can hire them to promote their products. Besides fake bloggers are cheaper to hire than real journalists.
The democrats have been able to safely ignore the blogsphere because they already have the 'mainstream media' shilling for them. That has been the case for 40 years. A major contributing factor to the growth of blogs in political discourse has been liberal hegemony over the traditional press. Thankfully, with the ascent of Fox News and the passing
of the stalwart network news anchors this is no longer the case. To paraphrase Condi Rice, "The New York Times and Washington posts are still outposts of yellow journalism", however. I guess you mean them when you say 'real journalists'.
Very true. Consider also that the business end of an SSME, the combustion chamber, is the size of a garbage can and operates at 6000 degrees F! These are truely amazing devices. Lets hope that in the frenzy to scrap the shuttle the next generation of boosters benefits from this technology.
WHen you're working with an 8 bit 4Mhz processor thats a *teensy* bit more important than having a design framework for your program that you could have impressed other fellow Ivory Tower inhabitants with when the wind wasn't blowing from the direction of Smalltalk Island.
Then keep your face emersed in the primodial ooze and use C to program your wristwatches. But if the art of computer program is to ever advance programmers need to embrace good ideas, not broken, confused methods that are 'good enough'.
It is such a shame that C-based languages took over the computer world in the 1980's. If we had followed the Lisp path instead things might be so much better. C++ with all of the template, RTTI, and STL grunge is such a half-assed imitation of powerful Lisp constructs that have been perfected for 15 years. I won't even go into Java, Python, C#, PHP. What a waste. I suggest you non-Lisp programmers grab a copy of SICP and start over.
FYI dozens of international airports have started to upgrade to welcome the A380.
Yes, I have heard that JFK, LAX, etc.. in the US are ready for the A380. What about the 100's of international airports that are not? The 747 basically defined size requirements for airports around the world. Billions have been spent meeting those requirements over a 30 year period. The new A380 requirements require capital improvements that won't be made overnight, if ever.
Additionally, the cost of the "gamble" has already nearly been covered by all the firm orders (more than 150 A380s have been ordered by fifteen different companies.
Laudable, but the break even point for the A380 is widely quoted as 250 and is probably much more.
The required strength of runways for the A380 is the same as the 787. It was one of the design requirement of the A380. If fact, where a 787 could land, an A380 can land.
I would be interested to see documentation of this.
Boeing's presales of the 787 have been quite strong. I think it is Airbus that has made the big bet. The vast majority of the world's airports are not compatable with the A380 either at the gates, or with the required strength of runways. Airbus has made the real gamble. As with the Concorde, Airbus's (Europe's) desire to trump Boeing (US) may be clouding their business judgement.
So, if a man makes a mistake 15 years ago, you yourself no longer have to make any choices, ever again?
What is your point? That 13 elapsed years make Saddam's transgressions less egregious? That he should get a break for good behavior? That is probably a popular view in central Europe, but you are not thinking clearly.
The USA hasn't declared a war since 1941. If Bush wants a war against those guys, he's free to ask Congress to make that declaration.
LOL! So over a point of procedure we should let known terrorists go free? No, I prefer the current legal stalemate and letting these guys rot in Gitmo until some country claims them or we find them safe to be harmless enough to release.
Until that happens, the War on Terror is equally legitimate as the War On Drugs.
Drug use is way down in the last 10 years, a bothersome fact to those would would like to see drug legalization in the US.
Besides, Bush has declared victory in Afganistan years ago, and he says that he no longer cares about pursuing the rest of Al Quaeda.
President Bush wisely chooses other ways of measuring progress other than killing Bin Laden,
like establishing democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq for instance.
The Chicken Little arguments about oil are actually still around - and as convincing as they ever were. We are running out of oil, it'll happen fairly soon, it's just that no-one knows quite how soon it'll happen. You haven't been paying attention.
I never fail to be impressed with the zeal apocalypse predictions are made and how they never come true. Don't you get discouraged? Well, someday you may be right. Fairly soon, huh? As John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long run we are all dead."
To be fair, nuclear power is a tricky beast. The main problem is the safe storage of the byproducts, which tend to be very nasty. The best I can see is dumping them into some subduction trench and let the earth itself recycle it (how's that for irony). All of these issues does add to the overall cost of things.
I have often heard the idea of subducting nuclear waste thrown around and, as a geologist, I have never heard of a worse idea. If you bury nuclear waste in a container in the upper layers of oceanic crust near a subduction zone you will be subjecting it to:
Immediate exposure to a corrosive salt water and increasing temperature environment
Increasing compressional stress due to accumulation of sediment and stresses in the accretion wedge.
Huge accoustical stresses from large earthquake in the decending slab.
Melting of the already leaking container within a few million years (at most) due to subduction.
Efficient aerial dispersal magma laced with radioactive goo through pyroclastic eruptions, lahars, and lava flows
Will people still work (and live) in them without A/C?
Where I live it can be over 90 for 100 days each year. A/C is no less optional here then heating is in northern climates.
All I know is that we are emptying the [oil] resevoirs faster than they are filling up.
I agree with you. You should have said this earlier.
Do you realize the energy it takes to get off this planet?
A fully fueled Space Shuttle is often touted as containing the explosive power of a tactical nuclear weapon. So I guess that is the energy equivalent of a few 10's of kilograms of Uranium. Not that much if you think about it.
...Why is solar, wind and conservation a "rickety tripod" ?
Because the power density of these sources is
orders of magnitudes lower than what is needed.
These are toys when what we need are engineering solutions.
Does hydroelectric count as solar? (think hard here, what drives the water back to the resevoir?)
Well numb nuts, by your bizarre reasoning I also come to the conclusion that petroleum is derived from solar power as well. Organic material is buried in sediments by the hydrologic cycle and heated in an anoxic environment to produce oil.
Perhaps I should have clarified and say solar-electric.
Asteroids for uranium source? Can I get what you are smoking?
I point out that Uranium is abundant in the Solar System and is present in significant concentrations in metallic asteroids. Do you disagree with that? I thought it was important to stress this in considering Uranium a long term power source after terrestrial suppies are depleted. Got it?
My mind got changed on the subject a few years ago by an Indian acquaintance who told me that in Indian villages the women obeyed their husbands and family elders, pounded grain, and sang. But, the acquaintance explained, when Indian women immigrated to cities, they got jobs, started businesses, and demanded their children be educated.
When I read this I thought of Hillary Clinton's memorable tome, "It Takes a Village". In retrospect it was about a prescient as Bill Gates' "The Road Ahead". Did she get anything right?
In a few decades time,
the cheap U ores would have run out, and the remaining deposits would absorb
more energy to extract a gram of U than that gram can ever hope give back.
Over reliance on Nuclear energy can easily turn us away from looking at
real alternatives. That's my gripe with Newkiller. Not some quasi-religious
aversion.
And what are those real alternatives pray tell? Not solar power, wind power, conservation - that rickety tripod of enviromentalist dogma. Your statement that Uranium availability is in decline is absurd. The same Chicken Little arguments were used by environmentalists in the '70's about oil, and came to nothing. Uranium is still in plentiful supply on the Earth's surface and, for the very long term, in asteroids.
It is good to see environmental pseudo-science challenged in articles like this.
(Boggle) No relevance to reality? Has Bush's WMD excuse for invading Iraq proven to be totally empty, or not?
I think President George H. W. Bush should have restarted hostilities back in 1991 when Saddam started to break the cease fire agreement. I think President Clinton should have wasted him 10 different times for No-Fly-Zone violations. I needed no further convincing. I ignored the whole debate. I thought it was a mistake to suspend the first Iraq war without getting rid of Saddam when we had all the rats in one trap. Press whining about WMD influences my opinion not at all.
Did Americans torture their prisoners in Abu Ghraib
Yes, and they are being prosecuted for it. Do you think that the solders should be turned over to the Kangaroo court at the Hague? Besides, what did they do? Some minor hazing; ruffled the prisoners pride a little bit. What is that compared to war;^)
and Guantanamo, in defiance of the Geneva Conventions, or not?
The enemy combatants are rightly and legally being held while the war against Al-Qaida is being fought.
"Decency" is not in Bush's vocabulary. (See his heist of the University of Houston's trust fund.) It is certainly in "Chemical" Rumsfeld's vocabulary, but he sneers at it.
You dislike the Neo-cons, that is ok, this is a democracy. But you shouldn't slander them. The idea that the US armed Iraq with chemicals is absurd. You should get behind the good President and Rummy and come in for the big win in Iraq!
Thus Bush's claim of "spreading democracy" is a total lie. As I said, you cannot tell me that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been motivated by any shred of decency.
I do strongly believe the invasion of Iraq was motivated by decency. It was indecent for a cynical world, led by Old Europe and the UN, that allowed Saddam to brutalize Kurdistan and reign for 12 additional years after the first gulf war. Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld have made things right. The middle east is now alight with the flame of democracy. The traditional arguments of the liberal left have been completely refuted by events on the ground. You still see conspiracies where there are none. All you can do is make hyperbolic assertions with no relevance to real events. Aren't you embarrassed?
I can see you are no fan of Alawi. But your argument fails miserably because Alawi is a Shiite. Don't you think that it is laudible that the US has accepted the results of the January election and allowed the Shiite majority to assume power? The proud display of inked fingers by voters who risked their lives going to the polls should tell you something about the legitimacy of the election. History will remember Mr. Alawi the father of the new Iraq. History will also look kindly apon President Bush for dealing decisively with the Iraq issue.
Falluja was the seat of the Sunni/Al-Qaida insurgency. That insurgency had to be crushed. It is sad that Falluja had to be destroyed at the same time. But even a fertile field must be plowed occasionally.
Not all of pre-Columbus America was equally primitive.
Certainly not. The Inca, Aztec, Maya.. civilizations were not primitive culturally. Perhaps 'Stone Age' is not an accurate description perhaps for people who had some metalurgy, lived in cities and cultivated crops. They certainly were brutal, and technologically backward compared to Europe. I don't know much about the Iroqois Confederacy. What you state is interesting. I'd like to learn more.
The US is not alone as a society that is in denial about its past transgressions. Indeed, it is not the worst offender considering historal interpretations that prevail in
Japan, China, Russia, France... I think the majority of Americans are proud of the role they play in Iraq, crushing tyranny and establishing democracy. The war against Saddam has been a great success.
Your cynicism is predictable and misguided. X11 has been a rich garden growing great UI ideas for 15 years. There are a large number of highly successful UI and desktop projects that make GNU/Linux/X11 the diverse and exciting platform it is. Windowmaker, Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Enlightment and a millions others. Hell I even like TWM! Disatisfied with X? Propose something better. The Xgl server work is most promising.
Slashdot Mirror
it seems likely that they won't play ball with Microsoft and will offer machines with no OS or with Linux pre-installed.
Yah, you get Red Flag installed for free, and a BIOS to protect the user from any OS not approved by the Party. Can't wait, comrade.
Hey, if the Republicans can hire bloggers to promote their agenda, then Microsoft can hire them to promote their products. Besides fake bloggers are cheaper to hire than real journalists.
The democrats have been able to safely ignore the blogsphere because they already have the 'mainstream media' shilling for them. That has been the case for 40 years. A major contributing factor to the growth of blogs in political discourse has been liberal hegemony over the traditional press. Thankfully, with the ascent of Fox News and the passing of the stalwart network news anchors this is no longer the case. To paraphrase Condi Rice, "The New York Times and Washington posts are still outposts of yellow journalism", however. I guess you mean them when you say 'real journalists'.
"The lad doesn't know our rule."
"There can be no yielding in the tahaddi-challenge. Death is the test of it."
Very true. Consider also that the business end of an SSME, the combustion chamber, is the size of a garbage can and operates at 6000 degrees F! These are truely amazing devices. Lets hope that in the frenzy to scrap the shuttle the next generation of boosters benefits from this technology.
WHen you're working with an 8 bit 4Mhz processor thats a *teensy* bit more important than having a design framework for your program that you could have impressed other fellow Ivory Tower inhabitants with when the wind wasn't blowing from the direction of Smalltalk Island.
Then keep your face emersed in the primodial ooze and use C to program your wristwatches. But if the art of computer program is to ever advance programmers need to embrace good ideas, not broken, confused methods that are 'good enough'.
It is such a shame that C-based languages took over the computer world in the 1980's. If we had followed the Lisp path instead things might be so much better. C++ with all of the template, RTTI, and STL grunge is such a half-assed imitation of powerful Lisp constructs that have been perfected for 15 years. I won't even go into Java, Python, C#, PHP. What a waste. I suggest you non-Lisp programmers grab a copy of SICP and start over.
The authors, Stephen Bullen, Rob Bovey, and John Green, show a level of sophistication well beyond the norm
If they showed that then they would not develop in Excel at all. Why would /. run a puff piece on one of the most reviled of M$ bloatware?
FYI dozens of international airports have started to upgrade to welcome the A380.
Yes, I have heard that JFK, LAX, etc.. in the US are ready for the A380. What about the 100's of international airports that are not? The 747 basically defined size requirements for airports around the world. Billions have been spent meeting those requirements over a 30 year period. The new A380 requirements require capital improvements that won't be made overnight, if ever.
Additionally, the cost of the "gamble" has already nearly been covered by all the firm orders (more than 150 A380s have been ordered by fifteen different companies.
Laudable, but the break even point for the A380 is widely quoted as 250 and is probably much more.
The required strength of runways for the A380 is the same as the 787. It was one of the design requirement of the A380. If fact, where a 787 could land, an A380 can land.
I would be interested to see documentation of this.
Boeing's presales of the 787 have been quite strong. I think it is Airbus that has made the big bet. The vast majority of the world's airports are not compatable with the A380 either at the gates, or with the required strength of runways. Airbus has made the real gamble. As with the Concorde, Airbus's (Europe's) desire to trump Boeing (US) may be clouding their business judgement.
So, if a man makes a mistake 15 years ago, you yourself no longer have to make any choices, ever again?
What is your point? That 13 elapsed years make Saddam's transgressions less egregious? That he should get a break for good behavior? That is probably a popular view in central Europe, but you are not thinking clearly.
The USA hasn't declared a war since 1941. If Bush wants a war against those guys, he's free to ask Congress to make that declaration.
LOL! So over a point of procedure we should let known terrorists go free? No, I prefer the current legal stalemate and letting these guys rot in Gitmo until some country claims them or we find them safe to be harmless enough to release.
Until that happens, the War on Terror is equally legitimate as the War On Drugs.
Drug use is way down in the last 10 years, a bothersome fact to those would would like to see drug legalization in the US.
Besides, Bush has declared victory in Afganistan years ago, and he says that he no longer cares about pursuing the rest of Al Quaeda.
President Bush wisely chooses other ways of measuring progress other than killing Bin Laden, like establishing democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq for instance.
The Chicken Little arguments about oil are actually still around - and as convincing as they ever were. We are running out of oil, it'll happen fairly soon, it's just that no-one knows quite how soon it'll happen. You haven't been paying attention.
I never fail to be impressed with the zeal apocalypse predictions are made and how they never come true. Don't you get discouraged? Well, someday you may be right. Fairly soon, huh? As John Maynard Keynes said, "In the long run we are all dead."
Then go here and you will love him!
To be fair, nuclear power is a tricky beast. The main problem is the safe storage of the byproducts, which tend to be very nasty. The best I can see is dumping them into some subduction trench and let the earth itself recycle it (how's that for irony). All of these issues does add to the overall cost of things.
I have often heard the idea of subducting nuclear waste thrown around and, as a geologist, I have never heard of a worse idea. If you bury nuclear waste in a container in the upper layers of oceanic crust near a subduction zone you will be subjecting it to:
Immediate exposure to a corrosive salt water and increasing temperature environment
Increasing compressional stress due to accumulation of sediment and stresses in the accretion wedge.
Huge accoustical stresses from large earthquake in the decending slab.
Melting of the already leaking container within a few million years (at most) due to subduction.
Efficient aerial dispersal magma laced with radioactive goo through pyroclastic eruptions, lahars, and lava flows
Not really a good idea is it?
I have a remarkable proof to this assertion but the web page is too small to contain it.
Will people still work (and live) in them without A/C?
Where I live it can be over 90 for 100 days each year. A/C is no less optional here then heating is in northern climates.
All I know is that we are emptying the [oil] resevoirs faster than they are filling up.
I agree with you. You should have said this earlier.
Do you realize the energy it takes to get off this planet?
A fully fueled Space Shuttle is often touted as containing the explosive power of a tactical nuclear weapon. So I guess that is the energy equivalent of a few 10's of kilograms of Uranium. Not that much if you think about it.
This is the real problem beyond Fermat
Because the power density of these sources is orders of magnitudes lower than what is needed. These are toys when what we need are engineering solutions.
Does hydroelectric count as solar? (think hard here, what drives the water back to the resevoir?)
Well numb nuts, by your bizarre reasoning I also come to the conclusion that petroleum is derived from solar power as well. Organic material is buried in sediments by the hydrologic cycle and heated in an anoxic environment to produce oil. Perhaps I should have clarified and say solar-electric.
Asteroids for uranium source? Can I get what you are smoking?
I point out that Uranium is abundant in the Solar System and is present in significant concentrations in metallic asteroids. Do you disagree with that? I thought it was important to stress this in considering Uranium a long term power source after terrestrial suppies are depleted. Got it?
My mind got changed on the subject a few years ago by an Indian acquaintance who told me that in Indian villages the women obeyed their husbands and family elders, pounded grain, and sang. But, the acquaintance explained, when Indian women immigrated to cities, they got jobs, started businesses, and demanded their children be educated.
When I read this I thought of Hillary Clinton's memorable tome, "It Takes a Village". In retrospect it was about a prescient as Bill Gates' "The Road Ahead". Did she get anything right?
In a few decades time, the cheap U ores would have run out, and the remaining deposits would absorb more energy to extract a gram of U than that gram can ever hope give back.
Over reliance on Nuclear energy can easily turn us away from looking at real alternatives. That's my gripe with Newkiller. Not some quasi-religious aversion.
And what are those real alternatives pray tell? Not solar power, wind power, conservation - that rickety tripod of enviromentalist dogma. Your statement that Uranium availability is in decline is absurd. The same Chicken Little arguments were used by environmentalists in the '70's about oil, and came to nothing. Uranium is still in plentiful supply on the Earth's surface and, for the very long term, in asteroids.
It is good to see environmental pseudo-science challenged in articles like this.
(Boggle) No relevance to reality? Has Bush's WMD excuse for invading Iraq proven to be totally empty, or not?
I think President George H. W. Bush should have restarted hostilities back in 1991 when Saddam started to break the cease fire agreement. I think President Clinton should have wasted him 10 different times for No-Fly-Zone violations. I needed no further convincing. I ignored the whole debate. I thought it was a mistake to suspend the first Iraq war without getting rid of Saddam when we had all the rats in one trap. Press whining about WMD influences my opinion not at all.
Did Americans torture their prisoners in Abu Ghraib
Yes, and they are being prosecuted for it. Do you think that the solders should be turned over to the Kangaroo court at the Hague? Besides, what did they do? Some minor hazing; ruffled the prisoners pride a little bit. What is that compared to war ;^)
and Guantanamo, in defiance of the Geneva Conventions, or not?
The enemy combatants are rightly and legally being held while the war against Al-Qaida is being fought.
"Decency" is not in Bush's vocabulary. (See his heist of the University of Houston's trust fund.) It is certainly in "Chemical" Rumsfeld's vocabulary, but he sneers at it.
You dislike the Neo-cons, that is ok, this is a democracy. But you shouldn't slander them. The idea that the US armed Iraq with chemicals is absurd. You should get behind the good President and Rummy and come in for the big win in Iraq!
Thus Bush's claim of "spreading democracy" is a total lie. As I said, you cannot tell me that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has been motivated by any shred of decency.
I do strongly believe the invasion of Iraq was motivated by decency. It was indecent for a cynical world, led by Old Europe and the UN, that allowed Saddam to brutalize Kurdistan and reign for 12 additional years after the first gulf war. Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld have made things right. The middle east is now alight with the flame of democracy. The traditional arguments of the liberal left have been completely refuted by events on the ground. You still see conspiracies where there are none. All you can do is make hyperbolic assertions with no relevance to real events. Aren't you embarrassed?
I can see you are no fan of Alawi. But your argument fails miserably because Alawi is a Shiite. Don't you think that it is laudible that the US has accepted the results of the January election and allowed the Shiite majority to assume power? The proud display of inked fingers by voters who risked their lives going to the polls should tell you something about the legitimacy of the election. History will remember Mr. Alawi the father of the new Iraq. History will also look kindly apon President Bush for dealing decisively with the Iraq issue.
Falluja was the seat of the Sunni/Al-Qaida insurgency. That insurgency had to be crushed. It is sad that Falluja had to be destroyed at the same time. But even a fertile field must be plowed occasionally.
Not all of pre-Columbus America was equally primitive.
Certainly not. The Inca, Aztec, Maya.. civilizations were not primitive culturally. Perhaps 'Stone Age' is not an accurate description perhaps for people who had some metalurgy, lived in cities and cultivated crops. They certainly were brutal, and technologically backward compared to Europe. I don't know much about the Iroqois Confederacy. What you state is interesting. I'd like to learn more.
The US is not alone as a society that is in denial about its past transgressions. Indeed, it is not the worst offender considering historal interpretations that prevail in Japan, China, Russia, France... I think the majority of Americans are proud of the role they play in Iraq, crushing tyranny and establishing democracy. The war against Saddam has been a great success.
Your cynicism is predictable and misguided. X11 has been a rich garden growing great UI ideas for 15 years. There are a large number of highly successful UI and desktop projects that make GNU/Linux/X11 the diverse and exciting platform it is. Windowmaker, Gnome, KDE, XFCE, Enlightment and a millions others. Hell I even like TWM! Disatisfied with X? Propose something better. The Xgl server work is most promising.