Most good movies are adaptations of novels (e.g. "The English Patient"), or of several books on the same subject
That is a gross exaggeration. MOST good films--subjective I admit--are original works. If anything, adaptations often suck and most people prefer the original works to the films...
The problem with that scene is that it was unrealistic and BORING. It was just way too long..clearly the director's fault. If the technology isn't used properly, it means nothing...
Re-reading my message, I think I made some mistakes (apart from some typos:) ). I think I'm a bit harsh towards you. Sorry about that. I don't mean to be bashing you that much.
In any case, how do you propose to improve peace by increasing military tech? Are you just talking about you (ie. USA as a superpower)? The world? Or what?
But I do feel that greater firepower, not less, will make it easier to keep your freedom.
Greater firepower will also enable governments to oppress people, including their own citizens. The worst thing that probably shifted power towards governments was mechanized infantry. A few more notches of military increase and you will have no chance against a govt. Of course, in your perfect world, the govt does what's best for the citizens, which is ok if you are living in some small island I guess...
Well, the rebels did have a weapon the British didn't. Guerilla warfare.
That's what I'm saying. Asymettric warfare (guerilla warfare is part of it) will render military tech useless, except when fighting other countries. The advances that you seek will not help you against terrorists.
I dare say not one of them would be opposed to innovation in military technology in general.
I don't want to speak for them since I don't know anything about their feelings (in any case, their thoughts are not important now). However, I WILL say that they likely would have been against tech improvements if governments ended up improving themselves are more than guerrila groups (which incidentally is always the case because govt can afford to spend more money).
Of course a huge military won't stop it. That's why we need military research.
Military research isn't going to stop it either... you need to go to the root causes...
But I know for a fact that not even the terrorists would opt for the spear and shield of old. Even they recognize the value of technology.
Actually, the terrorists, just like the American rebels, WOULD opt for the "primitive" weapons if given the choice. Governments gain greater power from military increases therefore it is in the interest of smaller parties (terrorists, rebels, etc) to desire less tech.
p.s. Don't mistake me for a warmongerer. There would be nothing more I would like than to see worldwide peace. But it's not going to happen through disarmament.
You ARE a warmonger--not because you are evil or want to kill people, but rather because you have chosen the path of war. Your pointed curly beak and large wings tell me that you are a hawk. You say peace won't happen through disarmament but you are wrong. That is the ONLY way to peace. Once everyone gives up their weapons, there will be peace***. As long as one party keeps increasing their weapons, you will get further and further away from peace...
*** I am using the widely accepted notion of peace, which is cessation of international and domestic conflicts. I personally have a much broader definition which also requires the elimination (or severe reduction) of crime. If I'm scared to walk on the street, that's not very peaceful IMO. I'm not using my definition here. My vision of peace requires far more than a reduction of weapons...
Modern day imperialism does not call for annexing territories. That can still be accomplished but is a last resort and often avoided. Instead, new techniques have been developed in the last 50 or so years to avoid annexing territories. Nowadays, the main objective is to create PROXY STATES and if that fails, to create CLIENT STATES. Both of these are the modern equivalent of imperial conquests of the past.
Examples for US imperialist "successes" include Panama (a proxy state of USA right now), and Saudi Arabia (a client state of USA).
It's not just imperialists who use these new techniques. Even totalitarian regimes have started using proxy and client states, instead of annexing territory...
What you are saying may be true but that is not how it is supposed to be. i386 should be 386-class chips (of course this is upwards compatible with higher ones). Similarly, i686 is Pentium III(??). And so on...
If what you are saying is correct, then you wouldn't have i586, i686, etc. Everyone would simply call it i386 and i64.
I actually remember some guy who came on tv and was suing some fast food restaurant because it made him fat and prone to heart disease (or something like that). Apparently he didn't know that fast food wasn't all that healthy...
hmm... I guess you didn't get the point the US govt was trying to make... they were trying to get American women to the level of "liberated" Afghan women. American women are apparently a bit too "liberal" and Afghan women are supposedly the ideal. Bringing social services for American women to the level of Afghan women is a top priority for the govt...
When was the last time any government on planet earth actually spent their resources on foreign threats? Look at all the spy agencies and agents. They spend billions of dollars monitoring their own populations. Classical examples include bodies like KGB, SS, and CIA. How much money does NSA spend on minitoring Americans instead of worrying about foreign threats? I'll bet that 90% of the traffic monitored by NSA, CIA, and Secret Service deal with Americans...
These guys are too stupid to monitor their enemies... The KGB was so good at monitoring their population that they forgot about the enemy
Who exactly is Middle-Eastern looking? I guess what you really mean is skin colour=brown?
I doubt that whatever I say will change your mind so I'll let you figure out stuff on your own. You might want to start with racial profiling of blacks and what it does...
I WILL comment on one thing though: your idea of only checking targets (ie. skipping people who don't fit the profile). This doesn't work. The reason is because the criminals will use people are not targetted to say carry an item past the screener and then get it off them.
For example, I am brown and I'm guessing you are white. So I will get checked under your discrminatory system, while you will get off relatively easily. What I will do is offer you, say, $170,000 to carry a bag past the screeners. $170,000 for just that. I'll get it off you right after you get past the security. The vast majority of the people will accept my offer--not because they don't think I am a criminal but because the money will help them with their fucked up lives. YOU may refuse or turn me in. But chances are that the criminal will get away if they are smart. For instance, they may trail you by a bit and make sure that you aren't doing anything. Your time slot for turning on the criminal (me in this case) is small. You will pass a point at which you can't turn on me. For instance, you may become accessory to the crime and get in a lot more trouble if you turn me in after a point (say you get past the detectors but only turn me in after walking for 5 minutes. This could land you in jail, depending on what the corporation who runs the airports wants to do with you). The criminal (me in this case) will only make my move when everything is clear and I'm reasonably sure that you won't turn on me. To make it even worse, I wouldn't really come to you. I would instead get some guy who is having a horrible life (possibly depressed, meaningless life, etc) or some homeless person or whatever.
So basically your system (at least your latter proposal) will not work at all. What I have described is nothing more than what drug dealers and human traffickers use. I just made up some stuff and created an example to suit the context. Drug dealers (and organized criminals in general) cannot be profiled, not because you don't know who they are but because the person trafficking isn't them.
BTW, I'm not a terrorist... all you right wingers are too stupid to know the real terrorists from the fake ones, and the last thing I need is to have the CIA knocking on my door...
Privacy might not be a human right but it SHOULD be. A lot of your other human rights are meaningless if you don't have privacy. When everything is going well and your life isn't threatened, privacy seems pointless. But when you live in a country where the govt can harm you, then privacy is almost as valuable as anything...
I'm sorry, I most have missed a major news story. I don't remember the US bombing for oil anywhere in the world in the last 2 years.
Yes, it looks like you really did miss a big story.
I see 2 towers that no longer exist and thousands dead.
Care to explain how you are going to get the perpetrators of that crime from Iraq? It's kind of hard to get Al-Qaeda when none of them are in Iraq (although at the rate that USA is "rebuilding" Iraq, you might get you wish)...
I see mass graves of people in Iraq killed by the hand of a dictator no longer in power.
A lot of the Iraqis that were killed was with US backing in the early 80's... In any case, so does this mean you are going to invade a whole bunch of African countries in the near future? I don't see plans being draw up to get rid of these dictators. Besides, some of your closest allies (Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, etc) are some of the worst regimes on the planet. These regimes are so bad that even China looks like a paradise...
I see a list of terrorists who no longer are able to kill innocent poeple around the world.
I must be mistaken or something because... I haven't of too many terrorists that were killed in Iraq. Of course, since you were away from reality for a while, it wouldn't surprise me if you were confusing Afghanistan with Iraq. But then again, may you don't even know they are two seperate countries..
I don't see oil pouring in from anywhere or cheap gas prices, which would be the result of having access to lots of oil.
Why would gas prices drop? It is more profitable for the oil companies if it stayed high. Besides, USA doesn't NEED the oil. Less than 10% of its oil comes from the Middle East. Even if Iraq went to full capacity hardly any of it would be shipped to USA. What USA cares about is the PROFITS made off oil. Nearly all the Iraqi oil will go to Asia and Europe. USA's oil supply is pretty locked up from Venezuela, Mexico and Canada. Even if the Middle East dissapears from the face of earth, US oil consumption won't be affected..
What do you see again?
I see someone who has been on a long vacation or went to another planet or something... someone who is so out of touch that he/she thinks invading Iraq will reduce terrorism...
Your life and freedom depend upon you or your local protector having greater firepower than your enemies.
I guess history isn't your strong topic. Greater firepower will NOT give you freedom. You might want to look up something called asymmetric warfare..something which will become more apparent as the terrorists step up their actions...
You also might want to look up your history, specifically the American revolution. USA defeated the #1 military power at that time, Britain. A bunch of colonial states with very little power defeated a massive colonial power (with a little help from France but that wasn't much)...
For other examples, check out guerrila warfare and various independent movements throughout hte last 100 years (particularly independent movements from colonialism).
On top of all this, the development of weapons of mass destruction basically ensures that military power (at least conventional power) will become next to useless in the future. USA was always scared of USSR, not because USSR was stronger than USA (it wasn't; besides NATO+USA could defeat USSR EASILY), but because of WMD.
Just to see if I'm wrong, watch what happens in USA in the future. I'll bet that there will be more terrorist attacks. Having the largest military in the history of the world won't stop it...
Military power is a tool--nothing more, nothing less. It is just like a police force. Just because you have the most powerful police force in the world doesn't mean that you will have peace. In fact, the cities with the most powerful police forces in the world (some of them in South America) are some of the worst in terms of safety...
What sort of society are you creating if the only way to distribute PURE scientific funding is by lying and deceiving everyone? Shouldn't you...you know...convince people to support direct pure science funding instead of trying to do it through a military entity like DARPA?
I think the reason VisualBasic is popular is because it is a scripting language. For certain tasks, scripting just rules (in fact, I believe that scripting languages will take over as the most popular language in 10-15 years). This is why people use VB. When I first saw VB, I quickly realized it was a piece of junk. I programmed little programs in GW-BASIC when I was a kid so it wasn't the syntax or anything. Perhaps it was the fact that I was a C programmer so VB sucked compared to it...But VB gained popularity for the simple fact that it is a scripting language, which means that it is easier to use and debug...
As far as Delphi is concerned, I don't know much about it. Never studied it in school and didn't run into it in my work. It's based on Pascal (which I learned in high school) so I guess it must be better than VB. Of course, the fact that a company like Borland was behind Delphie vs Microsoft automatically meant that many will avoid Delphi.....
I know that isn't your main point but I felt like I must respond:)...
TCO IS a buzzword. I am not taking a position in favour of Windows or Linux but the way TCO is used is biased and almost meaningless. The people who popularized that term, the business crowd, has even given up on that and started using another concept: ROI (return on investment)... Again, I think ROI is a useless concept when it comes to tech...
Thanks for the responses (both of you: Chatteron and the person who responded below that):)
I guess I need to do some research on my own. What you have said doesn't really help much.... because there must be more to it than just having new states. People have proposed computers with more than two states in the past. In fact, a three state machine using modern technology (ie. transistors) never took off because the advantages weren't that great.
So... what are you guys hiding from me?;) There must be more to the quantum computer than having more than 2 states.
Slashdot Mirror
Most good movies are adaptations of novels (e.g. "The English Patient"), or of several books on the same subject
That is a gross exaggeration. MOST good films--subjective I admit--are original works. If anything, adaptations often suck and most people prefer the original works to the films...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Obviously you haven't been seeing the right films... I suggest that you lay off the movies advertised on tv and look into other stuff...
;)
The number of times a movie is advertised on tv is inversely proportional to its quality
Sivaram Velauthapillai
The problem with that scene is that it was unrealistic and BORING. It was just way too long..clearly the director's fault. If the technology isn't used properly, it means nothing...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Re-reading my message, I think I made some mistakes (apart from some typos :) ). I think I'm a bit harsh towards you. Sorry about that. I don't mean to be bashing you that much.
In any case, how do you propose to improve peace by increasing military tech? Are you just talking about you (ie. USA as a superpower)? The world? Or what?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
But I do feel that greater firepower, not less, will make it easier to keep your freedom.
Greater firepower will also enable governments to oppress people, including their own citizens. The worst thing that probably shifted power towards governments was mechanized infantry. A few more notches of military increase and you will have no chance against a govt. Of course, in your perfect world, the govt does what's best for the citizens, which is ok if you are living in some small island I guess...
Well, the rebels did have a weapon the British didn't. Guerilla warfare.
That's what I'm saying. Asymettric warfare (guerilla warfare is part of it) will render military tech useless, except when fighting other countries. The advances that you seek will not help you against terrorists.
I dare say not one of them would be opposed to innovation in military technology in general.
I don't want to speak for them since I don't know anything about their feelings (in any case, their thoughts are not important now). However, I WILL say that they likely would have been against tech improvements if governments ended up improving themselves are more than guerrila groups (which incidentally is always the case because govt can afford to spend more money).
Of course a huge military won't stop it. That's why we need military research.
Military research isn't going to stop it either... you need to go to the root causes...
But I know for a fact that not even the terrorists would opt for the spear and shield of old. Even they recognize the value of technology.
Actually, the terrorists, just like the American rebels, WOULD opt for the "primitive" weapons if given the choice. Governments gain greater power from military increases therefore it is in the interest of smaller parties (terrorists, rebels, etc) to desire less tech.
p.s. Don't mistake me for a warmongerer. There would be nothing more I would like than to see worldwide peace. But it's not going to happen through disarmament.
You ARE a warmonger--not because you are evil or want to kill people, but rather because you have chosen the path of war. Your pointed curly beak and large wings tell me that you are a hawk. You say peace won't happen through disarmament but you are wrong. That is the ONLY way to peace. Once everyone gives up their weapons, there will be peace***. As long as one party keeps increasing their weapons, you will get further and further away from peace...
*** I am using the widely accepted notion of peace, which is cessation of international and domestic conflicts. I personally have a much broader definition which also requires the elimination (or severe reduction) of crime. If I'm scared to walk on the street, that's not very peaceful IMO. I'm not using my definition here. My vision of peace requires far more than a reduction of weapons...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Modern day imperialism does not call for annexing territories. That can still be accomplished but is a last resort and often avoided. Instead, new techniques have been developed in the last 50 or so years to avoid annexing territories. Nowadays, the main objective is to create PROXY STATES and if that fails, to create CLIENT STATES. Both of these are the modern equivalent of imperial conquests of the past.
Examples for US imperialist "successes" include Panama (a proxy state of USA right now), and Saudi Arabia (a client state of USA).
It's not just imperialists who use these new techniques. Even totalitarian regimes have started using proxy and client states, instead of annexing territory...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
What you are saying may be true but that is not how it is supposed to be. i386 should be 386-class chips (of course this is upwards compatible with higher ones). Similarly, i686 is Pentium III(??). And so on...
If what you are saying is correct, then you wouldn't have i586, i686, etc. Everyone would simply call it i386 and i64.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I actually remember some guy who came on tv and was suing some fast food restaurant because it made him fat and prone to heart disease (or something like that). Apparently he didn't know that fast food wasn't all that healthy...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
New York is too sophisticated for a REGULAR court ;)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
hmm... I guess you didn't get the point the US govt was trying to make... they were trying to get American women to the level of "liberated" Afghan women. American women are apparently a bit too "liberal" and Afghan women are supposedly the ideal. Bringing social services for American women to the level of Afghan women is a top priority for the govt...
;)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
When was the last time any government on planet earth actually spent their resources on foreign threats? Look at all the spy agencies and agents. They spend billions of dollars monitoring their own populations. Classical examples include bodies like KGB, SS, and CIA. How much money does NSA spend on minitoring Americans instead of worrying about foreign threats? I'll bet that 90% of the traffic monitored by NSA, CIA, and Secret Service deal with Americans...
These guys are too stupid to monitor their enemies... The KGB was so good at monitoring their population that they forgot about the enemy
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Who exactly is Middle-Eastern looking? I guess what you really mean is skin colour=brown?
I doubt that whatever I say will change your mind so I'll let you figure out stuff on your own. You might want to start with racial profiling of blacks and what it does...
I WILL comment on one thing though: your idea of only checking targets (ie. skipping people who don't fit the profile). This doesn't work. The reason is because the criminals will use people are not targetted to say carry an item past the screener and then get it off them.
For example, I am brown and I'm guessing you are white. So I will get checked under your discrminatory system, while you will get off relatively easily. What I will do is offer you, say, $170,000 to carry a bag past the screeners. $170,000 for just that. I'll get it off you right after you get past the security. The vast majority of the people will accept my offer--not because they don't think I am a criminal but because the money will help them with their fucked up lives. YOU may refuse or turn me in. But chances are that the criminal will get away if they are smart. For instance, they may trail you by a bit and make sure that you aren't doing anything. Your time slot for turning on the criminal (me in this case) is small. You will pass a point at which you can't turn on me. For instance, you may become accessory to the crime and get in a lot more trouble if you turn me in after a point (say you get past the detectors but only turn me in after walking for 5 minutes. This could land you in jail, depending on what the corporation who runs the airports wants to do with you). The criminal (me in this case) will only make my move when everything is clear and I'm reasonably sure that you won't turn on me. To make it even worse, I wouldn't really come to you. I would instead get some guy who is having a horrible life (possibly depressed, meaningless life, etc) or some homeless person or whatever.
So basically your system (at least your latter proposal) will not work at all. What I have described is nothing more than what drug dealers and human traffickers use. I just made up some stuff and created an example to suit the context. Drug dealers (and organized criminals in general) cannot be profiled, not because you don't know who they are but because the person trafficking isn't them.
BTW, I'm not a terrorist... all you right wingers are too stupid to know the real terrorists from the fake ones, and the last thing I need is to have the CIA knocking on my door...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
You are black...that's what the system told me.
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Privacy might not be a human right but it SHOULD be. A lot of your other human rights are meaningless if you don't have privacy. When everything is going well and your life isn't threatened, privacy seems pointless. But when you live in a country where the govt can harm you, then privacy is almost as valuable as anything...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Congratulations... I guess some people are allergic to the truth. ;)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I'm sorry, I most have missed a major news story. I don't remember the US bombing for oil anywhere in the world in the last 2 years.
Yes, it looks like you really did miss a big story.
I see 2 towers that no longer exist and thousands dead.
Care to explain how you are going to get the perpetrators of that crime from Iraq? It's kind of hard to get Al-Qaeda when none of them are in Iraq (although at the rate that USA is "rebuilding" Iraq, you might get you wish)...
I see mass graves of people in Iraq killed by the hand of a dictator no longer in power.
A lot of the Iraqis that were killed was with US backing in the early 80's... In any case, so does this mean you are going to invade a whole bunch of African countries in the near future? I don't see plans being draw up to get rid of these dictators. Besides, some of your closest allies (Saudia Arabia, Kuwait, etc) are some of the worst regimes on the planet. These regimes are so bad that even China looks like a paradise...
I see a list of terrorists who no longer are able to kill innocent poeple around the world.
I must be mistaken or something because... I haven't of too many terrorists that were killed in Iraq. Of course, since you were away from reality for a while, it wouldn't surprise me if you were confusing Afghanistan with Iraq. But then again, may you don't even know they are two seperate countries..
I don't see oil pouring in from anywhere or cheap gas prices, which would be the result of having access to lots of oil.
Why would gas prices drop? It is more profitable for the oil companies if it stayed high. Besides, USA doesn't NEED the oil. Less than 10% of its oil comes from the Middle East. Even if Iraq went to full capacity hardly any of it would be shipped to USA. What USA cares about is the PROFITS made off oil. Nearly all the Iraqi oil will go to Asia and Europe. USA's oil supply is pretty locked up from Venezuela, Mexico and Canada. Even if the Middle East dissapears from the face of earth, US oil consumption won't be affected..
What do you see again?
I see someone who has been on a long vacation or went to another planet or something... someone who is so out of touch that he/she thinks invading Iraq will reduce terrorism...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Your life and freedom depend upon you or your local protector having greater firepower than your enemies.
I guess history isn't your strong topic. Greater firepower will NOT give you freedom. You might want to look up something called asymmetric warfare..something which will become more apparent as the terrorists step up their actions...
You also might want to look up your history, specifically the American revolution. USA defeated the #1 military power at that time, Britain. A bunch of colonial states with very little power defeated a massive colonial power (with a little help from France but that wasn't much)...
For other examples, check out guerrila warfare and various independent movements throughout hte last 100 years (particularly independent movements from colonialism).
On top of all this, the development of weapons of mass destruction basically ensures that military power (at least conventional power) will become next to useless in the future. USA was always scared of USSR, not because USSR was stronger than USA (it wasn't; besides NATO+USA could defeat USSR EASILY), but because of WMD.
Just to see if I'm wrong, watch what happens in USA in the future. I'll bet that there will be more terrorist attacks. Having the largest military in the history of the world won't stop it...
Military power is a tool--nothing more, nothing less. It is just like a police force. Just because you have the most powerful police force in the world doesn't mean that you will have peace. In fact, the cities with the most powerful police forces in the world (some of them in South America) are some of the worst in terms of safety...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Ever considered the seperation between defense and offense?
Also... it is questionable how much defending you can really do by going off on imperial pursuits...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
What sort of society are you creating if the only way to distribute PURE scientific funding is by lying and deceiving everyone? Shouldn't you...you know...convince people to support direct pure science funding instead of trying to do it through a military entity like DARPA?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
How dare you call my site lame?
;)
Sivaram Velauthapillai
I think the reason VisualBasic is popular is because it is a scripting language. For certain tasks, scripting just rules (in fact, I believe that scripting languages will take over as the most popular language in 10-15 years). This is why people use VB. When I first saw VB, I quickly realized it was a piece of junk. I programmed little programs in GW-BASIC when I was a kid so it wasn't the syntax or anything. Perhaps it was the fact that I was a C programmer so VB sucked compared to it...But VB gained popularity for the simple fact that it is a scripting language, which means that it is easier to use and debug...
As far as Delphi is concerned, I don't know much about it. Never studied it in school and didn't run into it in my work. It's based on Pascal (which I learned in high school) so I guess it must be better than VB. Of course, the fact that a company like Borland was behind Delphie vs Microsoft automatically meant that many will avoid Delphi.....
Sivaram Velauthapillai
TCO isn't just a buzzword...
:)...
I know that isn't your main point but I felt like I must respond
TCO IS a buzzword. I am not taking a position in favour of Windows or Linux but the way TCO is used is biased and almost meaningless. The people who popularized that term, the business crowd, has even given up on that and started using another concept: ROI (return on investment)... Again, I think ROI is a useless concept when it comes to tech...
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Thanks for the responses (both of you: Chatteron and the person who responded below that) :)
;) There must be more to the quantum computer than having more than 2 states.
I guess I need to do some research on my own. What you have said doesn't really help much.... because there must be more to it than just having new states. People have proposed computers with more than two states in the past. In fact, a three state machine using modern technology (ie. transistors) never took off because the advantages weren't that great.
So... what are you guys hiding from me?
Sivaram Velauthapillai
what's a quantum computer?
Thanks!
Sivaram Velauthapillai
Regardless of what you want, capitalism is going down. It's going to collapse...
Sivaram Velauthapillai