"Nice strawman. Mind quoting the portion of my post where I said that? "
I pointed out an example which was thought to be impossible even 70 years ago. So your history is a bit off.
"How is that remotely relevant to the point I was making? Are you trying to say "It can't happen here" or are you just going for a one line rebuttal? I think you are smart enough to realize that it can happen here because it already has. "
Nope. I'm talking about how USELESS are handguns in a REAL warfare or civil war. And I'd lived quite close (less than 100km at one point, we've heard explosions in our home) to one.
I'd like to see you going out with your handgun against a gang of AK-74-wielding thugs. And don't think that they'll run if you shoot one of them.
In case of civil war you realistically have three options: 1) Run to another country or at least to a more peaceful part of country. 2) Join army/militia - you'll be armed there at no cost with _real_ weapons, not toys. 3) Stay quiet and hope for the best. 4) Handguns are just about useless in a real warfare (I'm a military officer, BTW). Even a semi-automatic hunting gun will serve you better in protecting your household than a handgun. Incidentally, hunting rifles are legal in Europe.
Uhmm.... So France and Germany can NEVER live together and European Union is impossible, right?
"How many more genocides of unarmed populations will we have to see before you people stop looking down on those who want the ability to protect themselves from those who don't share your enlightened morality?"
Have you ever been in a war area or close to one? Never? Thought so.
"No, nothing of the sort is "pretty clear". Not when the closest thing we currently have to a world government (the UN) lets countries like Libya and Cuba sit on human rights commissions."
UN is a joke. It has no power and so nobody cares about its commissions. On the other hand, NATO (the closest we have to the world armed forces) is taken quite seriously and is managed quite effectively.
"So you admit that I'd lose a right that I already have? Way to sell me on the idea:) Saying it's a "plus" demonstrates that you are willing to go along with a policy of taking away the rights of another."
I'm ambivalent about guns, they're just toys for big babies. I wouldn't mind at all if US would be allowed to keep guns when the world government is formed:) We'll probably have a federated republic, not a unitary state.
Also, if you speak about guns as a right, then can you show me why it's a necessary right? It can easily be shown with free speech, right against discrimination and jury trial.
Not so with guns, so I'm inclined to think that it's not really a right.
"Hate speech laws is a tough one, agree." "No, it's not a tough one at all."
I absolutely agree with you. I was only saying that there'll be much disagreements.
Russian society is absolutely compatible with the Western model, and Western model is slowly being built. It _will_ take time, of course. Probably decades, but not generations. I'm certain of that.
It's pretty clear that the right against self-incrimination and jury trial will be included in the 'World Constitutions', since it's there in the laws of most of developed nations.
Not so with guns (and speaking as a European - that's probably a plus).
"Why do you need a global government to tackle world hunger? Government hasn't even been able to completely solve hunger in individual developed nations. What makes you think it could do so on a global scale?"
The world has more than enough resources to feed everyone. The problem is getting food to hungry and the real world government might be able to solve it.
Yes. Flash memory cell is basically a capacitor, and it slowly leaks (because dielectrics are not perfect), no guesses here. Lifetime of data varies between 5 and 10 years.
No, I don't have diabetes, but my girlfriend does. Believe me, I understand that it can be miserable and painful. And I also know about multitude of complications resulting from diabetes (like feet rotting and falling off or kidney diseases).
Transplantation of the whole pancreas is possible. It's actually routinely performed right now. However, bear in mind that 1 year survival is about 95% and 10% patients still have to use insulin injections even after transplantation. And don't forget lifetime use of immunosuppresants.
Refilling a blown tire might be a good analogy for some proposed treatments. An injection of islet cells once a year might be much more tolerable than the life of continuous immune suppression.
First, OpenGL is a mess. And OpenGL 3.0 is a complete failure, so it's no wonder Carmack doesn't want to port his code to use it. Also, in any case OpenGL 3 is implemented only by NVidia and ATI blobs.
And only NVidia currently produces decent drivers and hardware for Linux. ATI's drivers are quite unstable and unreliable. Intel's drivers are good, but their hardware is not.
OpenSource graphics drivers are coming, but they're a long way off. I expect that we won't see them for at least two more years and by that time I'd surprised if there'll be support for OpenGL 3 in them. And by that time Windows will have new DirectX with new features...
UV-lightbulb has to be very thin, I did some calculations earlier (about 2 years ago when I first saw nuclearspace.com site). It's transparent, but not entirely transparent and we're talking about multi-GW per square meter power densities.
Even with a very thin lightbulb it'll still be near the limits of possibility.
So I think we'll need something like launch loops space planes to leave the atmosphere.
You have a heated uranium plasma, separated from rapidly flowing fuel only by a thin (thinner than in a lightbulb!) fused silica wall. All this is subjected to multi-G acceleration, pogo vibrations, malfunctions, etc. And don't forget than the maintenance of the reaction chamber will be quite difficult because of neutron-activated materials there.
So, of course, it will be perfectly safe! Not.
I'm about as pro-nuclear as it gets (even though I live less than 100 km from the infamous Chernobyl powerplant), but I see no way nuclear gas-core rocket will ever fly. And I don't really think that it's such a big loss.
It can not melt down, but it very well can disperse in its gaseous form. Right through your rocket's nozzles. And given that rockets are not noted for being very reliable, it'll be only a question of time.
One possible idea to mitigate it: only use clean uranium fuel, this way the amount of fission by-products in the fallout will be minimized (uranium itself is not that nasty).
Depends on country. For example, in Russia it's legal to use licensed frequencies for low-power transmissions for indoor use. It's illegal to interfere with licensed devices, though.
Uhm... I flew IL-96 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IL-96 ) last week. A decent airplane, not the most advanced of course, but pretty reliable (no catastrophes with human casualties at all, though number of produced planes is not big enough for reliable statistics).
Yes, I don't have reliable statistics, I readily admit it.
This project was not the first project in Scala, we used it for small parts of other our projects since it can be mixed with Java fairly easy. But it was the first our project of a fair size.
The problem starts when you have a team of several programmers (8 in my case). Since most of 'smart' languages usually have many ways to implement a certain task, it results in arguments, disagreements and sometimes in ugly code.
BTW, we wrote several medium-sized projects (for telecoms) in Erlang which would have been quite hard to do in Java. But that's because Erlang was created for such projects.
Slashdot Mirror
"Nice strawman. Mind quoting the portion of my post where I said that? "
I pointed out an example which was thought to be impossible even 70 years ago. So your history is a bit off.
"How is that remotely relevant to the point I was making? Are you trying to say "It can't happen here" or are you just going for a one line rebuttal? I think you are smart enough to realize that it can happen here because it already has. "
Nope. I'm talking about how USELESS are handguns in a REAL warfare or civil war. And I'd lived quite close (less than 100km at one point, we've heard explosions in our home) to one.
I'd like to see you going out with your handgun against a gang of AK-74-wielding thugs. And don't think that they'll run if you shoot one of them.
In case of civil war you realistically have three options:
1) Run to another country or at least to a more peaceful part of country.
2) Join army/militia - you'll be armed there at no cost with _real_ weapons, not toys.
3) Stay quiet and hope for the best.
4) Handguns are just about useless in a real warfare (I'm a military officer, BTW). Even a semi-automatic hunting gun will serve you better in protecting your household than a handgun. Incidentally, hunting rifles are legal in Europe.
"History suggests otherwise."
Uhmm.... So France and Germany can NEVER live together and European Union is impossible, right?
"How many more genocides of unarmed populations will we have to see before you people stop looking down on those who want the ability to protect themselves from those who don't share your enlightened morality?"
Have you ever been in a war area or close to one? Never? Thought so.
"No, nothing of the sort is "pretty clear". Not when the closest thing we currently have to a world government (the UN) lets countries like Libya and Cuba sit on human rights commissions."
UN is a joke. It has no power and so nobody cares about its commissions. On the other hand, NATO (the closest we have to the world armed forces) is taken quite seriously and is managed quite effectively.
"So you admit that I'd lose a right that I already have? Way to sell me on the idea :) Saying it's a "plus" demonstrates that you are willing to go along with a policy of taking away the rights of another."
I'm ambivalent about guns, they're just toys for big babies. I wouldn't mind at all if US would be allowed to keep guns when the world government is formed :) We'll probably have a federated republic, not a unitary state.
Also, if you speak about guns as a right, then can you show me why it's a necessary right? It can easily be shown with free speech, right against discrimination and jury trial.
Not so with guns, so I'm inclined to think that it's not really a right.
"Hate speech laws is a tough one, agree."
"No, it's not a tough one at all."
I absolutely agree with you. I was only saying that there'll be much disagreements.
Bill Gates has nowhere enough power to change governments in many countries.
I'm not trying to impose any government. Why should I do it? It will be formed willingly one day.
And probably by that time Americans will stop clinging to their toy guns...
Bullshit.
Russian society is absolutely compatible with the Western model, and Western model is slowly being built. It _will_ take time, of course. Probably decades, but not generations. I'm certain of that.
For example, read this: http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~jlr/events/Icons%20versus%20Contracts.pdf
If you read Russian try this: http://www.kommersant.ru/doc.aspx?DocsID=1208915
It's pretty clear that the right against self-incrimination and jury trial will be included in the 'World Constitutions', since it's there in the laws of most of developed nations.
Not so with guns (and speaking as a European - that's probably a plus).
Hate speech laws is a tough one, agree.
"Why do you need a global government to tackle world hunger? Government hasn't even been able to completely solve hunger in individual developed nations. What makes you think it could do so on a global scale?"
The world has more than enough resources to feed everyone. The problem is getting food to hungry and the real world government might be able to solve it.
Another advice:
Use laptop_mode (http://samwel.tk/laptop_mode/)! It gives me additional hour on my 4 hour battery.
Yes. Flash memory cell is basically a capacitor, and it slowly leaks (because dielectrics are not perfect), no guesses here. Lifetime of data varies between 5 and 10 years.
I'm too lazy to google for papers, so here is the top search result:
http://www.nowpublic.com/tech-biz/gonna-live-forever-flash-memory-slower-decay
Bad idea.
Data on USB sticks decays in several years.
No, I don't have diabetes, but my girlfriend does. Believe me, I understand that it can be miserable and painful. And I also know about multitude of complications resulting from diabetes (like feet rotting and falling off or kidney diseases).
Transplantation of the whole pancreas is possible. It's actually routinely performed right now. However, bear in mind that 1 year survival is about 95% and 10% patients still have to use insulin injections even after transplantation. And don't forget lifetime use of immunosuppresants.
Refilling a blown tire might be a good analogy for some proposed treatments. An injection of islet cells once a year might be much more tolerable than the life of continuous immune suppression.
Fix 1: we don't yet know reliable and safe ways to transplant genes using viruses.
Fix 2: way worse than the disease for most of people.
A much more sane variant of Fix 2 is transplantation of islet cells, grown from patient's own stem cells. I'm sure one day it'll be there.
Yes, there are islet cell therapies on the horizon: http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/scireport/chapter7.asp
ATI opened their specs, as well as Intel. Even reverse-engineered drivers for NVidia are coming.
But they're long way off.
Carmack is right.
First, OpenGL is a mess. And OpenGL 3.0 is a complete failure, so it's no wonder Carmack doesn't want to port his code to use it. Also, in any case OpenGL 3 is implemented only by NVidia and ATI blobs.
And only NVidia currently produces decent drivers and hardware for Linux. ATI's drivers are quite unstable and unreliable. Intel's drivers are good, but their hardware is not.
OpenSource graphics drivers are coming, but they're a long way off. I expect that we won't see them for at least two more years and by that time I'd surprised if there'll be support for OpenGL 3 in them. And by that time Windows will have new DirectX with new features...
UV-lightbulb has to be very thin, I did some calculations earlier (about 2 years ago when I first saw nuclearspace.com site). It's transparent, but not entirely transparent and we're talking about multi-GW per square meter power densities.
Even with a very thin lightbulb it'll still be near the limits of possibility.
So I think we'll need something like launch loops space planes to leave the atmosphere.
You have a heated uranium plasma, separated from rapidly flowing fuel only by a thin (thinner than in a lightbulb!) fused silica wall. All this is subjected to multi-G acceleration, pogo vibrations, malfunctions, etc. And don't forget than the maintenance of the reaction chamber will be quite difficult because of neutron-activated materials there.
So, of course, it will be perfectly safe! Not.
I'm about as pro-nuclear as it gets (even though I live less than 100 km from the infamous Chernobyl powerplant), but I see no way nuclear gas-core rocket will ever fly. And I don't really think that it's such a big loss.
It can not melt down, but it very well can disperse in its gaseous form. Right through your rocket's nozzles. And given that rockets are not noted for being very reliable, it'll be only a question of time.
One possible idea to mitigate it: only use clean uranium fuel, this way the amount of fission by-products in the fallout will be minimized (uranium itself is not that nasty).
I like Robert Forward's idea of using highly charged tethers to clean up radiation belts - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiVolt
Of course, the tag 'whatcouldpossiblygowrong' is applicable here.
Obligatory link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ
Nope. MS got what it deserved.
They did not question patent's validity in fear that it might undermine their portfolio. So let them suffer.
"Yeah, it does."
No, it doesn't. You can cool things only by radiation in vacuum. And radiation is quite slow, on Earth the major contributor in cooling is convection.
Depends on country. For example, in Russia it's legal to use licensed frequencies for low-power transmissions for indoor use. It's illegal to interfere with licensed devices, though.
Uhm... I flew IL-96 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IL-96 ) last week. A decent airplane, not the most advanced of course, but pretty reliable (no catastrophes with human casualties at all, though number of produced planes is not big enough for reliable statistics).
Yes, I don't have reliable statistics, I readily admit it.
This project was not the first project in Scala, we used it for small parts of other our projects since it can be mixed with Java fairly easy. But it was the first our project of a fair size.
The problem starts when you have a team of several programmers (8 in my case). Since most of 'smart' languages usually have many ways to implement a certain task, it results in arguments, disagreements and sometimes in ugly code.
BTW, we wrote several medium-sized projects (for telecoms) in Erlang which would have been quite hard to do in Java. But that's because Erlang was created for such projects.