"Within 12 hours the server picked up hits from the NSA. Then they were dumb enough to be using windows machines. For anyone wanting to penetrate their security - its pretty trivia. A simple honeypot is a good start"
Pardon me for doubting you but I'm a bit skeptical about the veracity of your tale. Maybe in the early days of the net they would have done something that foolish. Its a certainty today they would use Tor or some other onion router to visit your server which would completely mask the origin of the access. I really doubt you would ever see such an obvious red flag that the NSA or any other competent spying agency was monitoring your email, at least any time since onion routers came on the scene. But the NSA is a bureaucracy and bureaucracies do stupid things so anything is possible.
" I suppose that was a loophole, but the IRS was quite happy with what I did, and refunded me US$7500."
I assure you that sounds way to good to be true. I hope it was a long time ago. They often send you the refund right away because if its wrong they charge you interest and penalties to make up for all the money they gave you temporarily. It often takes them a year or two before they really review your return and catch stuff like that. Then they send you a nasty letter asking for it back with interest and penalties. If you can't pay it then they start levying your paychecks and bank accounts, or seizing your property. I assure you the IRS is just as nasty as any tax collecting agency you will find in the world. You just haven't been here long enough to figure it out yet. I pity your naivete.
"I once did an analysis..."
That analysis is really hard to make. Health care and pension costs and benefits are completely different between the two places and Canada's health costs are more in taxes, so if you do a head to head without allowing for it its not an accurate comparison. Health insurance isn't cheap though maybe your employer is covering it so you don't notice.
If you are in an upper bracket taxes are pretty cheap now thanks to Bush tax cuts in the last five years and the fact they are looting the Social Security surplus right now to cover some of the shortfall. The low tax rates are being paid for with borrowed money. Its nice while it lasts but its unlikely its a policy that will be sustainable. Medicare and Social Security are going to go in to the red, the U.S. can't borrow money at the rate it is much longer and then someting will give. When it does I doubt you will be so happy with American tax rates.
"It's a heinous, murderous place."
Well at this point arguing with you is a waste of time so I quit. Murderous is an especially silly choice of words. The murder rate in Canada is dramatically lower than the U.S. The U.S. is the murder capital of the two.
Maybe you should qualify "Quebec is a heinous, murderous place". I've never lived there and it is a place somewhat hard on people who aren't Francophone. All the years I lived in other parts of Canada, I would never have described it with such over the top language, nor did I see anything to justify such language. The U.S. and Canada are a lot more alike that different. They sure aren't night and day different like you are claiming. I'm relatively sure you just had a bad personal experience in one place, and not the other and are mistakenly make extrapolations about the two countries that simply aren't true.
"Canadians, in contrast, appear to be too busy eating their own bullshit to notice how bad it tastes."
Well all I can say to that is you seem to be describing yourself more than your country or countrymen. You have been really slinging some bullshit about the U.S. I don't think most Americans would even buy, and trashing Canada to an extent I don't think most of your countrymen would even recognizing you are talking about Canada.
"As for the taxes, Google "Canadian Revenue Agency" and compare."
Dude the IRS is just as bad as Revenue Canada if not worse. The one thing I can say for Canada is their tax forms and laws are dramatically simpler, I way preferred them over U.S. tax filing, while it sounds like you enjoying working all the loopholes like deducting your mortgage expenses. The problem with the U.S. tax code is its been so butchered by Congress that if you are a ruthless, rich SOB with a good accountant you pay nothing, while most ordinary people take it in the nose.
From the little I've read of your life history I'm willing to bet you had bad experiences in Canada and it left a bitter taste in your mouth so you moved to the U.S. So far you haven't had any bad experiences of the same level in the U.S. so you think its heaven on earth. Most immigrants have this attitude until something bad happens in their new homeland. I wager many Muslim immigrants were singing praises of the U.S. 5 years ago and now have seen the reality that the U.S. has a very dark side.
I assure you the government, tax enforcement, people in general the U.S is just as bad or worse than Canada, you just haven't had a head on with it yet. I hope you never do but you really are kidding yourself if you think the U.S. is inherently superior, it just ain't so. America is richer and more powerful, so maybe if you are in to that I could see your point, but acting like the U.S. has a statue of liberty on every corner is delusional.
"Can you spend your money on medicinal marijuana in the US.....You can in California"
You might want to read up on Gonzales v. Raich. As best I recall on June 6, 2005 the Supreme court once again dramatically expanded the power of the Federal government over states and individuals and completely mangled the Commerce clause in the Constitution, to give the Federal government the power to override states which have legalized medical marijuana or in fact any controlled substance laws the Feds don't approve of.
In another great recent decision the Supreme court gave governments at all levels the green light to seize your property and turn it over to other private individuals. The end result is a developer can now corrupt local officials and get them to seize your land and home and give it to him, saving him the hinderence of having to buy it for not being able to buy it all if you don't want to sell. In the People's Republic of China one of the more common sources of local protests is corrupt party official seizing peoples homes and turning it over to developer friends. It appears the U.S. and China now have one more thing in common.
To be honest I really don't get how you can have such vitriol to Canada and such praise for the U.S. I've lived in both and in most respects Canada is the nicer of the two places. They both have serious flaws, but the big plus for Canada is they aren't seeking to create a global empire, so they are a substantially less arrogant people.
You really seem to have a problem with socialized medicine, well in the U.S. its selectively socialized. One big problem with the U.S. is there are something like 40 million uninsured people and the number is skyrocketing with the cost of health care and insurances, along with employers slashing insurance coverage to save money. Given these two choices:
A. Socialized medicine in Canada with waiting lines, rationing etc
B. Being uninsured in America where a major illness will completely wipe you out or you may in fact be denied care all together.
I think I would take A. Obviously having gold plated insurance in America is best but ever larger numbers of don't.
Well at least in the eyes of Americans who are completely stuck on themselves and their country.
"best place on earth" is a totally subjective statement. I think you should probably qualify with "I think the U.S. remains the best place on earth". That would a be a true statement apparently. Without the "I think" part a few billion people would probably be willing to argue your point and would have a valid case. Different people value different things, apparently you value America as it today, many others would not.
Since 9/11, DMCA and the disappearance of the certainty of due process in the U.S. many people are simply refusing to even visit the U.S. for conferences and the like. If its so great why would that be?
I might have agreed with you before 2000 that the U.S. was one of the best places in the world. The Constitution our founders created was a remarkable document that laid a foundation for a remarkable and unique nation. They hoped it would last, they did everything they could to protect it, but they thoroughly expected it to be torn asunder by despots. The one thing they couldn't prevent was complete indifference on the part of the American people to the precious nature of that document.
Now it is in tatters and the U.S. is heading towards the same gutters where all the world's police states live, not very remarkable at all anymore. In the U.S. you can now be arrested and detained indefinitely without charge, without access to a lawyer or family, without trial. You can be tortured or killed while detained and no one will ever know unless a brave whistleblower steps forward. The government is detaining people in complete secrecy, people are being disappeared just like they were in Pinochet's Chile. Worse people are being snatched by the U.S. around the globe, in violation of international law and being whisked away for indefinite torture and interrogation by Rendition. You can be spied upon, the government can monitor your reading habits at the library or bookstore, they can do sneak and peak searches where they basically the break in to your home, and rummage through your belonging without you ever knowing. The government has fabricated "terrorism" cases against innocent people, in particular in Detroit two Arab men were convicted of terrorism charges based on a home video of their trip to Disneyland and the word of a conman who testified against them in return for reduced charges from the government. The conmen admitted he'd lied in a jailhouse confession which is the only reason these two innocent men aren't in jail today and we know the extent of the governments sham trials. Sham trials are another characteristic of a police state.
It seems the executive in the U.S. has in fact taken unto itself every dictatorial power you would need for a police state. They are using some restraint in applying them, especially focusing their malevolence on Muslims, so the U.S. doesn't look or feel like a police state, especially if you aren't Muslim, but if the executive branch felt like it nothing is really stopping them. If there is another 9/11 class incident to justify it I am confident the U.S. could descend in to martial law in a heart beat. The executive has drawn up all the plans for it.
About the only thing left that is not a dictatorship is we still have elections and could throw the people in power out, assuming the elections aren't rigged. But, police states have elections too, they just rig them so they aren't really elections, they are just a con to make people think they still have some power. After major irregularities in 2000, 2002 and 2004 it is quite open to debate if we do in fact still have free, democratic elections.
"And, most of all, no one goes around robbing you blind (tax-wise) to pay for those undelivered guarantees"
Damn... did the U.S. government repeal Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes while I wasn't looking. Last I heard you were still paying heft
Slashdot karma would be a lot more entertaining if it was like the Warcraft honor system where there is a ranking system and you can go see who the #1 karma whore is for the week, month, year etc. If we were all competing against each other for #1, with virtual prizes, then there would be some real fireworks.
"The problem with American CEOs is the metric by which they are judged. Things like considering what's good for society, the environment or even their own employees aren't factored in."
Like this is ever gonna happen:) your bleeding heart liberalness is showing. This is a jungle we are talking about...
Welcome to the jungle... We got everything you want Honey... We know the names... We are the people that can find whatever you may need...
The reality on environmental laws is you are going to maintain minimal compliance because over compliance is expensive and under compliance is expensive if you get busted. The reality of globalization is a company in China can pollute with abandon and undersell you due to your tree hugging greenness. This is a reason why China's rivers are currently black, sludgy toxic waste dumps, the air is unbreathable in most cities, and they are making money at a breathtaking rate.
I recall Koch oil was looking at $214 million in fines for cheating on Federal oil leases and $352 million in pollution fines in 1999 from the Clinton administration. They sunk a half million in to the Bush campaign and when they won, the Bush administration dropped the fines to $20 million each. In the good ole boy network those are some EXCELLENT businessmen. What a return on investment. Why would you wate money trying to prevent oil spills, as I recall Koch has record of about 300, when you can just buy a politician and get off for nothing.
As for being nice to workers it does work for some companies, especially ones involving hard to find skills or where happy workers translates in to happy customers. In manufacturing and many other businesses the customer never sees the worker and could care less if they are happy as long as the goods they produce are cheap and reasonable quality, mostly cheap. You can get quality through quality control (i.e. firing people for low quality), you don't have to be nice. If China is paying a worker 32 cents an hour and you are paying your workers $32 dollars an hours its a losing proposition in a globalized market place in most industries. You can keep doing it and not lay any of them off and which point you hit bankruptcy and you failed as a corprate executive.
Yea, unless the network is completely taken over by complete assholes, then you end up with a system run by complete assholes in perpetuity. It is a system with massive inertia and when the inertia is going the wrong direction it is bad. The bubble and the rash of blatant fraud we've had in the last few years indicates the inertia is not in a good direction. The U.S. is also in a freefall in terms of global competitiveness which is another indicator.
"the networks need good people, and its not that hard to get in..."
My golf swing sucks:) Case closed.
I also have a penchant for honesty, to the point its a fault, and you wont make it in this network unless you are a master of telling people above and to the side of you what they want to hear. We have successful yes men in abundance in these networks for a reason. It works.
Companies are like a tree full of monkeys.
The monkeys on the top limbs look down and see nothing but smiling faces.
The monkeys on the bottom limbs look up and see nothing but assholes about to shit on them
The monkeys on the top limb get pushed off they float to the ground on a golden parachute.
The monkeys on the bottom limbs get pushed off they fall hard and break their asses.
The key problem is bosses ARE screened.... by each other. The people doing the hiring LIKE people with this psychopathic profile, because they want people just like them. Its no accident sales and marketing people are the ones most like to make the jump in to senior management because aggressive salesman with no morales are the one this good ole boy network promotes. Its also why R&D is cratering in the U.S. and most U.S. companies are fixated on making their quarterly sales numbers instead of making companies that are built to last, that and the stock market totally incentivizes companies to nail quarters and cannibalize the future.
Worst problem with American CEO's is they are hired by boards that are basically a good ole boy crony network. They all golf together, are members of the same country clubs, go to the same parties, and were in the same partying fraternities in college. They tend to not evaluate CEO's with a critical eye they are just hiring their friends, with the understanding that the people hire will in turn do favors for them and serve on their boards.
Then the problem extends downward. The CEO in turn hires good ole boys as President and VP's who in turn hire good ole boys in training to be middle management.
The one obstacle I seem to remember, and Feynman refers to is the Shuttle computers are short on memory. One of the main roles of the humans on board is about 4 times a mission to load the next part of the mission in to the computers from tape, punch a button and make it go.
Now maybe you could load one profile in for launch and then the ISS crew could load another to reenter. If the mission has to abort before it docks with the ISS you would need to insure the computers have the program for the abort and reentry without human intervention.
A big hurdle is I don't think the shuttle is designed to auto dock with the ISS, though I could be wrong. The Russians are lot fonder of auto docking than the Americans. If it can't do it now it would take a lot of R&D and a pretty dangerous first test flight.
The Shuttle does let the human take over for the vary last part of the landing but that is really totally to indulge the ego's of the pilots on board. I wager a computer could do it better and more consistently than the humans barring equipment failure. Some humans do it better than others.
A question is why would you want to fly it unmanned other than to not risk lives. You still don't want another catastrophic failure of a Shuttle because that would probably devastate the program even if it was unmanned. If you lost a shuttle with a key ISS component in it during launch that would devastate completion of the ISS too. Loss of life of astronauts is a bit overrated. They know its dangerous and they will still do it. No point in needlessly risking their lives but its a bit silly to stop them flying all together too.
Do you work for NASA? They said the same thing and used it to rationalize doing nothing about it until Columbia. They were really panicky about it when they saw tile damage in all the early launches, but hey they landed OK. After a while since they kept getting away with it they made the assumption it was OK. They were wrong. There is a scathing indictment of your attitude by Feynman.
Basically NASA was shooting craps with the foam because its always been dangerous and on Columbia they rolled snake eyes.
Space flight IS dangerous but that is no reason to let fixable problems that heighten that danger go unfixed. The only contradiction to this point is the foam and tile damage may not be fixable. They may be a fundamental design flaw which means you either abandon the design or keep shooting craps.
Radiation in the Van Allen belts is a potentially solvable problem. Here is a design for a space tether that would take most of the punch out of particles in the belts in about six months. If we ever become serious about deep space travel a tether to defang the betls is almost certainly a good first step.
Its the cosmic radiation thats hard. Shielding against that takes a lot of mass.
"To do that you need a place to study long duration spaceflight"
First problem ISS does very little to progress dealing with radiation exposur which is probably the biggest problem on a Mars mission.
Second, after a decades on Mir, Skylab or ISS has anyone developed a real solution to zero G issues there. Unless you know something I don't the one big answer is its a good idea to exercise a lot. Not sure that conclusion is worth $160 billion. Russians have already established endurance records long enough to get to Mars.
Third, no one has a feel for how Moon 1/6 G or Mars 1/3 G compares to zero G issues. The ISS ain't going to help there either.
Forth, one solution to zero G is build a ship with the ability to produce artificial gravity. Again the ISS is no help.
Fifth if you change the Mars mission profile to one way colonization instead of a round trip, the people never have to return to 1G which is where the worst of the problems come from. Then what you want to know is how they fare when they get to and stay in 1/3G and ISS is no help.
In most respect a Moon base would be a lot more useful place to be until you go to Mars. There you do have to deal with radiation and you can start developing the experience working on a place with land and resources at your feet. You also get data on long term exposure to 1/6 G to compare to all the zero G we already have.
Mike Griffin summed this up pretty well in his congressional testimony before he became administrator. Back then he only really supported Shuttle and ISS if Congress would give NASA buckets of money to do it and fast track CEV, and unless they redirect all the money being squandered on Iraq, its unlikely NASA will get buckets of money to do both. Maybe now that he is administrator he has to be more diplomatic and support the Shuttle and ISS more.
"But the more important question is whether the return to be obtained from the use of ISS to support exploration objectives is worth the money yet to be invested in its completion. The nation, through the NASA budget, plans to allocate $32 B to ISS (including ISS transport) through 2016, and another $28 B to shuttle operations through 2011. This total of $60 B is significantly higher than NASA's current allocation for human lunar return. It is beyond reason to believe that ISS can help to fulfill any objective, or set of objectives, for space exploration that would be worth the $60 B remaining to be invested in the program."
"Equally important is the delay in pursuing the President's vision. Respecting present budget constraints, we return to the moon in 2020, thus accomplishing in 16 years what it required eight years to achieve in the 1960s. This is not because the task is so much more difficult, or because we are today so much less capable than our predecessors, but because we do not actually begin work on the task until 2011. I do not need to point out to this body the political pitfalls endemic to such a plan."
"I, and others, have elsewhere advocated that the shuttle should be returned to flight and the ISS brought to completion, if only because the program's two-decade advocacy by the United States and commitment to its international partners should not be cavalierly abandoned. But, if there is no additional money to be allocated to space exploration, this position becomes increasingly difficult to justify. It is worth asking whether our international partners might judge the issue similarly."
I'm starting to develop this fear that it might be better if CXV stayed obscure and they keep their progress and success secret. If they start getting to much good press, make to much progress and make CEV, the NASA politburo, and the behemoth contractors look bad that could be bad. They may unite to squash CXV like a bug and once the politics start engineering excellence wont matter a bit.
The contrast between CXV doing stuff and CEV not, is so stark its kind of embarrassing to the CEV team.
I wager Mike Griffin will do everything in his power to keep it alive but he runs the risk he may get squashed like a bug too if he rocks the leaky NASA barge to much. Everything I've seen of him I really like him. I wager if anyone can turn NASA aroound he might be the man with a little prodding from below from Rutan. He's about the only Bush appointee I can think of where I can say "That guy is good". His worst problem is I don't think he has enough good people in the upper and middle management to support him. O'Keefe was an embarrassing catastrophe more in line with the Bush track record.
I'd agree the 64 bit part is a bit overrated and bleeding edge for most applications, unless you are handling massive data sets. Video editing, simulation, circuit design, seismic all can use it. Of course all the supercomputing fields need it. I imagine some big databases probably can too. Some games will probably need it to in a few years. Film animators are about to the point they will need 64 bit address space if the software developers will take the plunge.
The best thing in the x86-64 API is they just added a lot more registers which are sorely lacking in IA32. 8 new registers and 8 SIMD registers can help performance a lot if you compile for them.
Are you compiling for and taking advantage of all the new registers?
They might have an even better chip if they had just tacked on the new registers on IA32 but since they were breaking the ABI anyway you can understand why they would go 64 bit since it has longer legs for the future. There are going to be more and more applications that will need 64 bit as RAM and disk capacity grows, and people start working with bigger data sets.
Running Gentoo on amd64 is a bit bleeding edge. There are still a lot of apps that are masked out for it, partially just because no one tests and owns them since the user community is still pretty small. I find most things work fine when you unmask them. I need to start volunteering to support the packages I use that no one has blessed for amd64.
"It includes photos and video of their recent full-scale capsule drop test and water landing:"
Thats the thing I like about Rutan most. He bends metal and tries stuff instead of producing endless studies, artists conceptions and expendive half hour animations like NASA and its behemoth contractors. If you watch NASA TV they seem to have a penchant for expensive CG videos about how cool it would be if they did all this stuff. They aren't going to actually get around to bending metal and actually doing it, but aren't our animations cool? I suspect NASA needs to fire everyone who produces these animations and hit them with a clue stick, bend metal and stop the mental masturbation producing animation.
I also like the fact Rutan exploits available, simple, proven technology instead of relying on stuff that is high risk, going to cost a fortune and take forever to develop.
I know this is rhetorical, but it ended up so big because of DOD requirements to win their approval and participation. They need a big cargo capability AND worse they demanded a 1000+ mile cross range landing capability to launch from Vandenburgh, do 1 polar orbit and land back at Vandenburgh. To do this the Shuttle wings had to be dramatically enlarged, which led to the whole thing getting much bigger. Since the $6 billion launch pad at Vandenburgh was abandoned after Challenger, in fact the DOD largely abandoned the Shuttle at this point, the irony is this cross range capability was never really needed.
"And also put that doohickey on the very top like with the Saturn V. What's it for? It's a little escape pod rocket and parachute to get the people the fuck away from the big explosive bits if something really bad happens."
Transformational and Burt Rutan's CRX design has a good point on this. They are proposing an air launch at 25,000 ft. The advantage is if there is a problem when lighting the first stage its easy to get the capsule away in any direction and there is plenty of time to open parachutes to soft land the capsule or even have the crew bail out of the capsule if there is a problem with the capsule chutes.
Its actually pretty challenging to safely get the capsule clear from booster if there is major failure on a launch pad, and get it high enough for the parachutes to safely deploy.
The problem with CRX is it takes a BIG plane, 747 class, to carry an LEO capable launch stack to 25,000 feet. On the plus side the mother ship saves 10-25% of the fuel needed to get to orbit versus a ground launch
The CRX URL above is a great read because its short, concise, innovative but more importantly you can see they are totally focused on safety, simplicity, low cost and reliability which is the antithesis of Shuttle thinking for the last 30 years.
"Only the engines are the big monetary per-launch loss,"
If you air launch at high altitude you can build a much cheaper engine. The Falcon/CRX VAPAK concept heats and presssurizes the Propane fuel so it pushes itself out of the tank. Couple this with high altitude and you don't need expensive turbopumps to pressurize the fuel. This dramatically simplifies and lowers cost of the booster. You can't do this with from a launch pad because the atmospheric pressure makes it harder to get the fuel out of the tank.
To get people in to space affordably I vote for either Kliper or CRX.
The Russians just announced the Kliper launch targets, 2011 first unmanned flight and 2012 first manned flight. It will carry six so if it works its the best bet to actually fully man the ISS. It can't be over 3 people now due to the emergency lifeboat limit which is currently a Soyuz. At a 3 man crew very little research or manufacturing can be done.
CRX is essentially Burt Rutan's LEO successor to SpaceShipOne in partnership with Transformational space and under a small contract from NASA. CRX is not as well known as CEV. Its intended to just get people to and from LEO and the Space Station reliably, safely and affordably. Its a leader, follower NASA contractor. If the leader, which is I think Transformational and Scale succeeds they stay the leader, if they fail the followers move up on the funding ladder. A real improvement in competition over NASA's usual approach which is just pick between Boeing, Lockheed or a consortium of the big names.
As for the grandparent's assertion that NASA's problem is not enough money THAT is absurd. NASA has squandered $100 billion and heading for $160 billion on the ISS by 2010. The Shuttle averages over its life $1.3 billion a launch. Its the most expensive launcher in history.
NASA's problem is waste not insufficient funding. If its budget is getting cut by the politicians its because they to waste much doing to little in their manned space program. Of course politicians in Florida, Texas, Utah and Mississippi, in particular, fan the flames by encouraging NASA to maintain bloated payrolls so they have lots of nice jobs in their states and districts. The Shuttle and ISS are great for a bloated payroll, jobs program. In that regard they will be missed. The danger is new programs like CEV will have to maintain the same bloated payroll to win political and budget support. If you keep the bloated payroll the bloated launch costs will live on.
"We should be eating the animals that aren't being eaten by packs of wolves anymore."... excepting people are squeamish about eating diseased animals. Wasting disease, which is running rampant in Elk herds in the rockies is a very close cousin to mad cow disease. Though its not currently thought to be transmitable to humans, I doubt you want to go out of your way to eat Elk infected with it.
But, these scientists really don't have a clue what kind of buzz saw they would face trying to introduce foreign predators in to the U.S. Farmers and ranchers who have substantial political clout, especially with the current administration, would fight it to the death unless its in heavily fenced parks more like zoos. They need to look no further than the massive resistance there has been to protecting and reintroducing the grizzly and wolves.
I saw on the news a week or so ago states around Yellowstone are probably going to resume hunting the formerly endangered grizzly bear if they are foolish enough to wander outside the bounds of the park. Ranchers have zero tolerance for predators, and they control most of the land not in parks.
One reason elephants are endangered is they don't mesh well with farmers or any kind of civilization because its nearly impossible to stop them from demolishing farms, unless you put them in small areas with major, expensive, fencing.
After hearing of the new law Sean "P. Diddy" Combs appeared on the Today show with Kati Curic to announce he was dropping the "P." from his name in order to come in to compliance with the new law, and beside the "P." was separating him from his fans, all three of them.
An important thread to note here is that none other than Carly Fiorina is the one of the principals in spinning off Lucent and Bell Labs from AT&T. She looked like a superstar for it though in fact Lucent was mostly just a beneficiary of being a telecom/networking company during the bubble when none could fail. Their stock history is interesting from a peak around $80 in 2000 to $2.88 today. Carly's time in the sun at Lucent was from the spinoff in 1996 until she jumped to HP in 1999. Here is a glowing Businessweek article on her when she took the helm at HP then. One interesting quote:
"she helped to turbocharge product development by the long-coddled Bell Labs engineers."
A guy told me once on an airplane beware any company or person who makes the cover of Businessweek because it usually means they've peaked and are starting down. He said it in context of SGI and its a rule that worked just as well for Carly.
Hindsight being 20/20 you have to wonder if Carly didn't get lucky at Lucent thanks to the bubble and she was made to look like a superstar when in fact she was a one women wrecking ball for research and development at both Lucent/Bell Labs and HP and its labs.
Another Carly theme at Bell Labs, if you go to their web site today they are a case study in out sourcing with their greatest achievement today looking to be the fact that they have labs in China, India and Ireland.
What field is that. I actually want to look at what one of their divisions that is known for doing world class stuff of the caliber of the old Bell Labs, PARC, etc. And if you don't mind me asking how can you come to the conclusion its top quality? Is it because they churn out large numbers of semi impressive papers for the premier conference in your field, SIGGRAPH in graphics for instance.
My jaundiced view of research papers is that yes some of them are ground breaking, revolutionary and the foundation for greater things. Many of them unfortunately are the product of someone desperate to produce a paper, and get it accepted at a conference to make a name for themselves. Microsoft's research presence at SIGGRAPH for the last decade, for example, feels more like they are spending vast sums, more than anyone else, to flood the conference with their papers, in order to impress everyone with their research prowess while the real breakthroughs happen elsewhere, and they rip them off and put them in DirectX.
I think I'm saying that I'm more impressed with people who produce groundbreaking things that end up making a difference in the world, and write papers about it kind of after the fact. As opposed to people who are producing impressive research for research's sake, building a resume, and aren't focused on producing something that will eventually make a real difference in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
"Within 12 hours the server picked up hits from the NSA. Then they were dumb enough to be using windows machines. For anyone wanting to penetrate their security - its pretty trivia. A simple honeypot is a good start"
Pardon me for doubting you but I'm a bit skeptical about the veracity of your tale. Maybe in the early days of the net they would have done something that foolish. Its a certainty today they would use Tor or some other onion router to visit your server which would completely mask the origin of the access. I really doubt you would ever see such an obvious red flag that the NSA or any other competent spying agency was monitoring your email, at least any time since onion routers came on the scene. But the NSA is a bureaucracy and bureaucracies do stupid things so anything is possible.
" I suppose that was a loophole, but the IRS was quite happy with what I did, and refunded me US$7500."
I assure you that sounds way to good to be true. I hope it was a long time ago. They often send you the refund right away because if its wrong they charge you interest and penalties to make up for all the money they gave you temporarily. It often takes them a year or two before they really review your return and catch stuff like that. Then they send you a nasty letter asking for it back with interest and penalties. If you can't pay it then they start levying your paychecks and bank accounts, or seizing your property. I assure you the IRS is just as nasty as any tax collecting agency you will find in the world. You just haven't been here long enough to figure it out yet. I pity your naivete.
"I once did an analysis..."
That analysis is really hard to make. Health care and pension costs and benefits are completely different between the two places and Canada's health costs are more in taxes, so if you do a head to head without allowing for it its not an accurate comparison. Health insurance isn't cheap though maybe your employer is covering it so you don't notice.
If you are in an upper bracket taxes are pretty cheap now thanks to Bush tax cuts in the last five years and the fact they are looting the Social Security surplus right now to cover some of the shortfall. The low tax rates are being paid for with borrowed money. Its nice while it lasts but its unlikely its a policy that will be sustainable. Medicare and Social Security are going to go in to the red, the U.S. can't borrow money at the rate it is much longer and then someting will give. When it does I doubt you will be so happy with American tax rates.
"It's a heinous, murderous place."
Well at this point arguing with you is a waste of time so I quit. Murderous is an especially silly choice of words. The murder rate in Canada is dramatically lower than the U.S. The U.S. is the murder capital of the two.
Maybe you should qualify "Quebec is a heinous, murderous place". I've never lived there and it is a place somewhat hard on people who aren't Francophone. All the years I lived in other parts of Canada, I would never have described it with such over the top language, nor did I see anything to justify such language. The U.S. and Canada are a lot more alike that different. They sure aren't night and day different like you are claiming. I'm relatively sure you just had a bad personal experience in one place, and not the other and are mistakenly make extrapolations about the two countries that simply aren't true.
"Canadians, in contrast, appear to be too busy eating their own bullshit to notice how bad it tastes."
Well all I can say to that is you seem to be describing yourself more than your country or countrymen. You have been really slinging some bullshit about the U.S. I don't think most Americans would even buy, and trashing Canada to an extent I don't think most of your countrymen would even recognizing you are talking about Canada.
"As for the taxes, Google "Canadian Revenue Agency" and compare."
Dude the IRS is just as bad as Revenue Canada if not worse. The one thing I can say for Canada is their tax forms and laws are dramatically simpler, I way preferred them over U.S. tax filing, while it sounds like you enjoying working all the loopholes like deducting your mortgage expenses. The problem with the U.S. tax code is its been so butchered by Congress that if you are a ruthless, rich SOB with a good accountant you pay nothing, while most ordinary people take it in the nose.
From the little I've read of your life history I'm willing to bet you had bad experiences in Canada and it left a bitter taste in your mouth so you moved to the U.S. So far you haven't had any bad experiences of the same level in the U.S. so you think its heaven on earth. Most immigrants have this attitude until something bad happens in their new homeland. I wager many Muslim immigrants were singing praises of the U.S. 5 years ago and now have seen the reality that the U.S. has a very dark side.
I assure you the government, tax enforcement, people in general the U.S is just as bad or worse than Canada, you just haven't had a head on with it yet. I hope you never do but you really are kidding yourself if you think the U.S. is inherently superior, it just ain't so. America is richer and more powerful, so maybe if you are in to that I could see your point, but acting like the U.S. has a statue of liberty on every corner is delusional.
"Can you spend your money on medicinal marijuana in the US.....You can in California"
You might want to read up on Gonzales v. Raich. As best I recall on June 6, 2005 the Supreme court once again dramatically expanded the power of the Federal government over states and individuals and completely mangled the Commerce clause in the Constitution, to give the Federal government the power to override states which have legalized medical marijuana or in fact any controlled substance laws the Feds don't approve of.
In another great recent decision the Supreme court gave governments at all levels the green light to seize your property and turn it over to other private individuals. The end result is a developer can now corrupt local officials and get them to seize your land and home and give it to him, saving him the hinderence of having to buy it for not being able to buy it all if you don't want to sell. In the People's Republic of China one of the more common sources of local protests is corrupt party official seizing peoples homes and turning it over to developer friends. It appears the U.S. and China now have one more thing in common.
To be honest I really don't get how you can have such vitriol to Canada and such praise for the U.S. I've lived in both and in most respects Canada is the nicer of the two places. They both have serious flaws, but the big plus for Canada is they aren't seeking to create a global empire, so they are a substantially less arrogant people.
You really seem to have a problem with socialized medicine, well in the U.S. its selectively socialized. One big problem with the U.S. is there are something like 40 million uninsured people and the number is skyrocketing with the cost of health care and insurances, along with employers slashing insurance coverage to save money. Given these two choices:
A. Socialized medicine in Canada with waiting lines, rationing etc
B. Being uninsured in America where a major illness will completely wipe you out or you may in fact be denied care all together.
I think I would take A. Obviously having gold plated insurance in America is best but ever larger numbers of don't.
"U.S. remains the best place on earth"
... did the U.S. government repeal Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes while I wasn't looking. Last I heard you were still paying heft
Well at least in the eyes of Americans who are completely stuck on themselves and their country.
"best place on earth" is a totally subjective statement. I think you should probably qualify with "I think the U.S. remains the best place on earth". That would a be a true statement apparently. Without the "I think" part a few billion people would probably be willing to argue your point and would have a valid case. Different people value different things, apparently you value America as it today, many others would not.
Since 9/11, DMCA and the disappearance of the certainty of due process in the U.S. many people are simply refusing to even visit the U.S. for conferences and the like. If its so great why would that be?
I might have agreed with you before 2000 that the U.S. was one of the best places in the world. The Constitution our founders created was a remarkable document that laid a foundation for a remarkable and unique nation. They hoped it would last, they did everything they could to protect it, but they thoroughly expected it to be torn asunder by despots. The one thing they couldn't prevent was complete indifference on the part of the American people to the precious nature of that document.
Now it is in tatters and the U.S. is heading towards the same gutters where all the world's police states live, not very remarkable at all anymore. In the U.S. you can now be arrested and detained indefinitely without charge, without access to a lawyer or family, without trial. You can be tortured or killed while detained and no one will ever know unless a brave whistleblower steps forward. The government is detaining people in complete secrecy, people are being disappeared just like they were in Pinochet's Chile. Worse people are being snatched by the U.S. around the globe, in violation of international law and being whisked away for indefinite torture and interrogation by Rendition. You can be spied upon, the government can monitor your reading habits at the library or bookstore, they can do sneak and peak searches where they basically the break in to your home, and rummage through your belonging without you ever knowing. The government has fabricated "terrorism" cases against innocent people, in particular in Detroit two Arab men were convicted of terrorism charges based on a home video of their trip to Disneyland and the word of a conman who testified against them in return for reduced charges from the government. The conmen admitted he'd lied in a jailhouse confession which is the only reason these two innocent men aren't in jail today and we know the extent of the governments sham trials. Sham trials are another characteristic of a police state.
It seems the executive in the U.S. has in fact taken unto itself every dictatorial power you would need for a police state. They are using some restraint in applying them, especially focusing their malevolence on Muslims, so the U.S. doesn't look or feel like a police state, especially if you aren't Muslim, but if the executive branch felt like it nothing is really stopping them. If there is another 9/11 class incident to justify it I am confident the U.S. could descend in to martial law in a heart beat. The executive has drawn up all the plans for it.
About the only thing left that is not a dictatorship is we still have elections and could throw the people in power out, assuming the elections aren't rigged. But, police states have elections too, they just rig them so they aren't really elections, they are just a con to make people think they still have some power. After major irregularities in 2000, 2002 and 2004 it is quite open to debate if we do in fact still have free, democratic elections.
"And, most of all, no one goes around robbing you blind (tax-wise) to pay for those undelivered guarantees"
Damn
Slashdot karma would be a lot more entertaining if it was like the Warcraft honor system where there is a ranking system and you can go see who the #1 karma whore is for the week, month, year etc. If we were all competing against each other for #1, with virtual prizes, then there would be some real fireworks.
"The problem with American CEOs is the metric by which they are judged. Things like considering what's good for society, the environment or even their own employees aren't factored in."
:) your bleeding heart liberalness is showing. This is a jungle we are talking about ...
... We got everything you want Honey ... We know the names ... We are the people that can find whatever you may need ...
Like this is ever gonna happen
Welcome to the jungle
The reality on environmental laws is you are going to maintain minimal compliance because over compliance is expensive and under compliance is expensive if you get busted. The reality of globalization is a company in China can pollute with abandon and undersell you due to your tree hugging greenness. This is a reason why China's rivers are currently black, sludgy toxic waste dumps, the air is unbreathable in most cities, and they are making money at a breathtaking rate.
I recall Koch oil was looking at $214 million in fines for cheating on Federal oil leases and $352 million in pollution fines in 1999 from the Clinton administration. They sunk a half million in to the Bush campaign and when they won, the Bush administration dropped the fines to $20 million each. In the good ole boy network those are some EXCELLENT businessmen. What a return on investment. Why would you wate money trying to prevent oil spills, as I recall Koch has record of about 300, when you can just buy a politician and get off for nothing.
As for being nice to workers it does work for some companies, especially ones involving hard to find skills or where happy workers translates in to happy customers. In manufacturing and many other businesses the customer never sees the worker and could care less if they are happy as long as the goods they produce are cheap and reasonable quality, mostly cheap. You can get quality through quality control (i.e. firing people for low quality), you don't have to be nice. If China is paying a worker 32 cents an hour and you are paying your workers $32 dollars an hours its a losing proposition in a globalized market place in most industries. You can keep doing it and not lay any of them off and which point you hit bankruptcy and you failed as a corprate executive.
"This is a good system, it works."
:) Case closed.
Yea, unless the network is completely taken over by complete assholes, then you end up with a system run by complete assholes in perpetuity. It is a system with massive inertia and when the inertia is going the wrong direction it is bad. The bubble and the rash of blatant fraud we've had in the last few years indicates the inertia is not in a good direction. The U.S. is also in a freefall in terms of global competitiveness which is another indicator.
"the networks need good people, and its not that hard to get in..."
My golf swing sucks
I also have a penchant for honesty, to the point its a fault, and you wont make it in this network unless you are a master of telling people above and to the side of you what they want to hear. We have successful yes men in abundance in these networks for a reason. It works.
Companies are like a tree full of monkeys.
The monkeys on the top limbs look down and see nothing but smiling faces.
The monkeys on the bottom limbs look up and see nothing but assholes about to shit on them
The monkeys on the top limb get pushed off they float to the ground on a golden parachute.
The monkeys on the bottom limbs get pushed off they fall hard and break their asses.
"Why do so many bosses suck?"
.... by each other. The people doing the hiring LIKE people with this psychopathic profile, because they want people just like them. Its no accident sales and marketing people are the ones most like to make the jump in to senior management because aggressive salesman with no morales are the one this good ole boy network promotes. Its also why R&D is cratering in the U.S. and most U.S. companies are fixated on making their quarterly sales numbers instead of making companies that are built to last, that and the stock market totally incentivizes companies to nail quarters and cannibalize the future.
The key problem is bosses ARE screened
Worst problem with American CEO's is they are hired by boards that are basically a good ole boy crony network. They all golf together, are members of the same country clubs, go to the same parties, and were in the same partying fraternities in college. They tend to not evaluate CEO's with a critical eye they are just hiring their friends, with the understanding that the people hire will in turn do favors for them and serve on their boards.
Then the problem extends downward. The CEO in turn hires good ole boys as President and VP's who in turn hire good ole boys in training to be middle management.
Track record indicates Shuttles do fall apart due to tiny failures 1 out of 57 launches.
The one obstacle I seem to remember, and Feynman refers to is the Shuttle computers are short on memory. One of the main roles of the humans on board is about 4 times a mission to load the next part of the mission in to the computers from tape, punch a button and make it go.
Now maybe you could load one profile in for launch and then the ISS crew could load another to reenter. If the mission has to abort before it docks with the ISS you would need to insure the computers have the program for the abort and reentry without human intervention.
A big hurdle is I don't think the shuttle is designed to auto dock with the ISS, though I could be wrong. The Russians are lot fonder of auto docking than the Americans. If it can't do it now it would take a lot of R&D and a pretty dangerous first test flight.
The Shuttle does let the human take over for the vary last part of the landing but that is really totally to indulge the ego's of the pilots on board. I wager a computer could do it better and more consistently than the humans barring equipment failure. Some humans do it better than others.
A question is why would you want to fly it unmanned other than to not risk lives. You still don't want another catastrophic failure of a Shuttle because that would probably devastate the program even if it was unmanned. If you lost a shuttle with a key ISS component in it during launch that would devastate completion of the ISS too. Loss of life of astronauts is a bit overrated. They know its dangerous and they will still do it. No point in needlessly risking their lives but its a bit silly to stop them flying all together too.
"The foam has fallen off on all 200 some flights"
I think its more like 114 flights.
Do you work for NASA? They said the same thing and used it to rationalize doing nothing about it until Columbia. They were really panicky about it when they saw tile damage in all the early launches, but hey they landed OK. After a while since they kept getting away with it they made the assumption it was OK. They were wrong. There is a scathing indictment of your attitude by Feynman.
Basically NASA was shooting craps with the foam because its always been dangerous and on Columbia they rolled snake eyes.
Space flight IS dangerous but that is no reason to let fixable problems that heighten that danger go unfixed. The only contradiction to this point is the foam and tile damage may not be fixable. They may be a fundamental design flaw which means you either abandon the design or keep shooting craps.
Radiation in the Van Allen belts is a potentially solvable problem. Here is a design for a space tether that would take most of the punch out of particles in the belts in about six months. If we ever become serious about deep space travel a tether to defang the betls is almost certainly a good first step.
Its the cosmic radiation thats hard. Shielding against that takes a lot of mass.
"To do that you need a place to study long duration spaceflight"
First problem ISS does very little to progress dealing with radiation exposur which is probably the biggest problem on a Mars mission.
Second, after a decades on Mir, Skylab or ISS has anyone developed a real solution to zero G issues there. Unless you know something I don't the one big answer is its a good idea to exercise a lot. Not sure that conclusion is worth $160 billion. Russians have already established endurance records long enough to get to Mars.
Third, no one has a feel for how Moon 1/6 G or Mars 1/3 G compares to zero G issues. The ISS ain't going to help there either.
Forth, one solution to zero G is build a ship with the ability to produce artificial gravity. Again the ISS is no help.
Fifth if you change the Mars mission profile to one way colonization instead of a round trip, the people never have to return to 1G which is where the worst of the problems come from. Then what you want to know is how they fare when they get to and stay in 1/3G and ISS is no help.
In most respect a Moon base would be a lot more useful place to be until you go to Mars. There you do have to deal with radiation and you can start developing the experience working on a place with land and resources at your feet. You also get data on long term exposure to 1/6 G to compare to all the zero G we already have.
Mike Griffin summed this up pretty well in his congressional testimony before he became administrator. Back then he only really supported Shuttle and ISS if Congress would give NASA buckets of money to do it and fast track CEV, and unless they redirect all the money being squandered on Iraq, its unlikely NASA will get buckets of money to do both. Maybe now that he is administrator he has to be more diplomatic and support the Shuttle and ISS more.
"But the more important question is whether the return to be obtained from the use of ISS to support exploration objectives is worth the money yet to be invested in its completion. The nation, through the NASA budget, plans to allocate $32 B to ISS (including ISS transport) through 2016, and another $28 B to shuttle operations through 2011. This total of $60 B is significantly higher than NASA's current allocation for human lunar return. It is beyond reason to believe that ISS can help to fulfill any objective, or set of objectives, for space exploration that would be worth the $60 B remaining to be invested in the program."
"Equally important is the delay in pursuing the President's vision. Respecting present budget constraints, we return to the moon in 2020, thus accomplishing in 16 years what it required eight years to achieve in the 1960s. This is not because the task is so much more difficult, or because we are today so much less capable than our predecessors, but because we do not actually begin work on the task until 2011. I do not need to point out to this body the political pitfalls endemic to such a plan."
"I, and others, have elsewhere advocated that the shuttle should be returned to flight and the ISS brought to completion, if only because the program's two-decade advocacy by the United States and commitment to its international partners should not be cavalierly abandoned. But, if there is no additional money to be allocated to space exploration, this position becomes increasingly difficult to justify. It is worth asking whether our international partners might judge the issue similarly."
Your wired article was good too, I forgot to say.
I'm starting to develop this fear that it might be better if CXV stayed obscure and they keep their progress and success secret. If they start getting to much good press, make to much progress and make CEV, the NASA politburo, and the behemoth contractors look bad that could be bad. They may unite to squash CXV like a bug and once the politics start engineering excellence wont matter a bit.
The contrast between CXV doing stuff and CEV not, is so stark its kind of embarrassing to the CEV team.
I wager Mike Griffin will do everything in his power to keep it alive but he runs the risk he may get squashed like a bug too if he rocks the leaky NASA barge to much. Everything I've seen of him I really like him. I wager if anyone can turn NASA aroound he might be the man with a little prodding from below from Rutan. He's about the only Bush appointee I can think of where I can say "That guy is good". His worst problem is I don't think he has enough good people in the upper and middle management to support him. O'Keefe was an embarrassing catastrophe more in line with the Bush track record.
I'd agree the 64 bit part is a bit overrated and bleeding edge for most applications, unless you are handling massive data sets. Video editing, simulation, circuit design, seismic all can use it. Of course all the supercomputing fields need it. I imagine some big databases probably can too. Some games will probably need it to in a few years. Film animators are about to the point they will need 64 bit address space if the software developers will take the plunge.
The best thing in the x86-64 API is they just added a lot more registers which are sorely lacking in IA32. 8 new registers and 8 SIMD registers can help performance a lot if you compile for them.
Are you compiling for and taking advantage of all the new registers?
They might have an even better chip if they had just tacked on the new registers on IA32 but since they were breaking the ABI anyway you can understand why they would go 64 bit since it has longer legs for the future. There are going to be more and more applications that will need 64 bit as RAM and disk capacity grows, and people start working with bigger data sets.
Running Gentoo on amd64 is a bit bleeding edge. There are still a lot of apps that are masked out for it, partially just because no one tests and owns them since the user community is still pretty small. I find most things work fine when you unmask them. I need to start volunteering to support the packages I use that no one has blessed for amd64.
"Don't you mean the CXV?"
Yes, thanks. Acronym fatigue.
"It includes photos and video of their recent full-scale capsule drop test and water landing:"
Thats the thing I like about Rutan most. He bends metal and tries stuff instead of producing endless studies, artists conceptions and expendive half hour animations like NASA and its behemoth contractors. If you watch NASA TV they seem to have a penchant for expensive CG videos about how cool it would be if they did all this stuff. They aren't going to actually get around to bending metal and actually doing it, but aren't our animations cool? I suspect NASA needs to fire everyone who produces these animations and hit them with a clue stick, bend metal and stop the mental masturbation producing animation.
I also like the fact Rutan exploits available, simple, proven technology instead of relying on stuff that is high risk, going to cost a fortune and take forever to develop.
"But why does it have to be so big?"
I know this is rhetorical, but it ended up so big because of DOD requirements to win their approval and participation. They need a big cargo capability AND worse they demanded a 1000+ mile cross range landing capability to launch from Vandenburgh, do 1 polar orbit and land back at Vandenburgh. To do this the Shuttle wings had to be dramatically enlarged, which led to the whole thing getting much bigger. Since the $6 billion launch pad at Vandenburgh was abandoned after Challenger, in fact the DOD largely abandoned the Shuttle at this point, the irony is this cross range capability was never really needed.
"And also put that doohickey on the very top like with the Saturn V. What's it for? It's a little escape pod rocket and parachute to get the people the fuck away from the big explosive bits if something really bad happens."
Transformational and Burt Rutan's CRX design has a good point on this. They are proposing an air launch at 25,000 ft. The advantage is if there is a problem when lighting the first stage its easy to get the capsule away in any direction and there is plenty of time to open parachutes to soft land the capsule or even have the crew bail out of the capsule if there is a problem with the capsule chutes.
Its actually pretty challenging to safely get the capsule clear from booster if there is major failure on a launch pad, and get it high enough for the parachutes to safely deploy.
The problem with CRX is it takes a BIG plane, 747 class, to carry an LEO capable launch stack to 25,000 feet. On the plus side the mother ship saves 10-25% of the fuel needed to get to orbit versus a ground launch
The CRX URL above is a great read because its short, concise, innovative but more importantly you can see they are totally focused on safety, simplicity, low cost and reliability which is the antithesis of Shuttle thinking for the last 30 years.
"Only the engines are the big monetary per-launch loss,"
If you air launch at high altitude you can build a much cheaper engine. The Falcon/CRX VAPAK concept heats and presssurizes the Propane fuel so it pushes itself out of the tank. Couple this with high altitude and you don't need expensive turbopumps to pressurize the fuel. This dramatically simplifies and lowers cost of the booster. You can't do this with from a launch pad because the atmospheric pressure makes it harder to get the fuel out of the tank.
To get people in to space affordably I vote for either Kliper or CRX.
The Russians just announced the Kliper launch targets, 2011 first unmanned flight and 2012 first manned flight. It will carry six so if it works its the best bet to actually fully man the ISS. It can't be over 3 people now due to the emergency lifeboat limit which is currently a Soyuz. At a 3 man crew very little research or manufacturing can be done.
CRX is essentially Burt Rutan's LEO successor to SpaceShipOne in partnership with Transformational space and under a small contract from NASA. CRX is not as well known as CEV. Its intended to just get people to and from LEO and the Space Station reliably, safely and affordably. Its a leader, follower NASA contractor. If the leader, which is I think Transformational and Scale succeeds they stay the leader, if they fail the followers move up on the funding ladder. A real improvement in competition over NASA's usual approach which is just pick between Boeing, Lockheed or a consortium of the big names.
As for the grandparent's assertion that NASA's problem is not enough money THAT is absurd. NASA has squandered $100 billion and heading for $160 billion on the ISS by 2010. The Shuttle averages over its life $1.3 billion a launch. Its the most expensive launcher in history.
NASA's problem is waste not insufficient funding. If its budget is getting cut by the politicians its because they to waste much doing to little in their manned space program. Of course politicians in Florida, Texas, Utah and Mississippi, in particular, fan the flames by encouraging NASA to maintain bloated payrolls so they have lots of nice jobs in their states and districts. The Shuttle and ISS are great for a bloated payroll, jobs program. In that regard they will be missed. The danger is new programs like CEV will have to maintain the same bloated payroll to win political and budget support. If you keep the bloated payroll the bloated launch costs will live on.
"It's low power, 64 bit, multi core (up to 16?)"
:) Excepting they don't have 16 cores yet.
Wow!! This could mean they might catch up to AMD's current generation
"We should be eating the animals that aren't being eaten by packs of wolves anymore." ... excepting people are squeamish about eating diseased animals. Wasting disease, which is running rampant in Elk herds in the rockies is a very close cousin to mad cow disease. Though its not currently thought to be transmitable to humans, I doubt you want to go out of your way to eat Elk infected with it.
But, these scientists really don't have a clue what kind of buzz saw they would face trying to introduce foreign predators in to the U.S. Farmers and ranchers who have substantial political clout, especially with the current administration, would fight it to the death unless its in heavily fenced parks more like zoos. They need to look no further than the massive resistance there has been to protecting and reintroducing the grizzly and wolves.
I saw on the news a week or so ago states around Yellowstone are probably going to resume hunting the formerly endangered grizzly bear if they are foolish enough to wander outside the bounds of the park. Ranchers have zero tolerance for predators, and they control most of the land not in parks.
One reason elephants are endangered is they don't mesh well with farmers or any kind of civilization because its nearly impossible to stop them from demolishing farms, unless you put them in small areas with major, expensive, fencing.
After hearing of the new law Sean "P. Diddy" Combs appeared on the Today show with Kati Curic to announce he was dropping the "P." from his name in order to come in to compliance with the new law, and beside the "P." was separating him from his fans, all three of them.
An important thread to note here is that none other than Carly Fiorina is the one of the principals in spinning off Lucent and Bell Labs from AT&T. She looked like a superstar for it though in fact Lucent was mostly just a beneficiary of being a telecom/networking company during the bubble when none could fail. Their stock history is interesting from a peak around $80 in 2000 to $2.88 today. Carly's time in the sun at Lucent was from the spinoff in 1996 until she jumped to HP in 1999. Here is a glowing Businessweek article on her when she took the helm at HP then. One interesting quote:
"she helped to turbocharge product development by the long-coddled Bell Labs engineers."
A guy told me once on an airplane beware any company or person who makes the cover of Businessweek because it usually means they've peaked and are starting down. He said it in context of SGI and its a rule that worked just as well for Carly.
Hindsight being 20/20 you have to wonder if Carly didn't get lucky at Lucent thanks to the bubble and she was made to look like a superstar when in fact she was a one women wrecking ball for research and development at both Lucent/Bell Labs and HP and its labs.
Another Carly theme at Bell Labs, if you go to their web site today they are a case study in out sourcing with their greatest achievement today looking to be the fact that they have labs in China, India and Ireland.
"Top quality research, too (in my field anyway)."
What field is that. I actually want to look at what one of their divisions that is known for doing world class stuff of the caliber of the old Bell Labs, PARC, etc. And if you don't mind me asking how can you come to the conclusion its top quality? Is it because they churn out large numbers of semi impressive papers for the premier conference in your field, SIGGRAPH in graphics for instance.
My jaundiced view of research papers is that yes some of them are ground breaking, revolutionary and the foundation for greater things. Many of them unfortunately are the product of someone desperate to produce a paper, and get it accepted at a conference to make a name for themselves. Microsoft's research presence at SIGGRAPH for the last decade, for example, feels more like they are spending vast sums, more than anyone else, to flood the conference with their papers, in order to impress everyone with their research prowess while the real breakthroughs happen elsewhere, and they rip them off and put them in DirectX.
I think I'm saying that I'm more impressed with people who produce groundbreaking things that end up making a difference in the world, and write papers about it kind of after the fact. As opposed to people who are producing impressive research for research's sake, building a resume, and aren't focused on producing something that will eventually make a real difference in the world.