There isn't a huge amount of overlap between "Republican" and "fiscal conservative" any more. That's why they got creamed in 2006 and it also gave birth to the Tea Party movement.
Obviously you've never dealt with the VA. Imagine your experience with private health care and then imagine a similar system run by people who can't be fired.
I've been hearing about phage therapies for years. Apparently they're effective against bacterial films and other hard-to-treat bacterial infections. I wonder if we'll see them in western hospitals.
That's what I was wondering. With those kinds of relativistic influences emerging as considerations, it seems like they're past the point where additional accuracy provides any sort of real benefit.
ME 2 looks gorgeous, has good acting, and a good story. But it's not as good as the first Mass Effect. It moves along a lot better than the first version, but it's not nearly as immersive.
My biggest gripe is how the game was console-ified. The interface is dumbed down, along with inventory. They took a fun game and removed some of the stuff that made it fun in an effort to release it on lots of platforms, turning it into a relatively mediocre game. And then apparently it's unplayable on consoles unless you have a high-def TV.
How fast the other guy is really shouldn't affect your own draw. There's no point in shooting from the hip against a better shot if you're just going to miss. The best you could hope for is the other guy has a misfire, malfunction, or just a bad day.
Sometimes you're just screwed. Why would gun fighting be different from any other area of life?
If you plot military spending as a percentage of GDP the the US comes in a #27. We spend about 4% of our GDP on the military (well, a bit more lately because our GDP went down). That's down from over 10% during the cold war. Also, we spend more per soldier than almost any other country, both because we don't have a draft and because even in recessionary times people with technical skills have lots of other options.
This is an unpopular thing to say on slashdot, but the real reason we don't spend more on NASA is we're getting a terrible return on our money. The shuttle program became the Monster That Ate the Budget, crowding out all kinds of useful things the agency could be doing. The reality is that as long as the kg/orbit costs are in the tens of thousands there's nothing useful you can do with a manned space program. Machines will always be cheaper because it's economical to purpose-build them for the task.
Every dime that's going into manned space should instead be going into the development of launch systems to get that cost down. Get the cost down to $50/kg and astronauts make sense because designing a robot to bolt on a solar array is more expensive than sending up a guy with a wrench.
Software development is one of those industries which will always be very resistant to unionization because it's so easy to move production to somewhere else. If these guys unionize they'll simply be out of a job when Rockstar moves production to Atlanta. Or India. Or China.
There are plenty of openings out there for people with skills. These guys should just refuse to work so many hours. Or quit.
You're missing a possibility, and one that's by far the most common resolution: They agree to patent swaps so they can use each others patents. That way when you or I try to break into the business all the large companies have a patent-enforced cartel to keep us out.
The New York Times can make an effective paywall because they hold the rights to columnists that share opinions that are nationally relevant.
Nope. That's exactly what they tried to do with TimesSelect, and the result was their columnists became instantly irrelevant. Opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one. People will read witty columns if they're free, but not enough people are willing to pay for opinion journalism to make it work.
The "killer app" for newspapers is... news, believe it or not. That's what people are willing to pay for. People don't buy the WSJ for opinions. They buy it because the WSJ has news you can't find other places.
Given that the significant bulk of social networkers are American, this might mean 'American behavior' could cause changes in the interpretation of English law (which is not to say English people don't also post their intimate details on Facebook)."
And here we have yet another European academic blaming me for problems in his own country. I guess you don't have to fix things that are someone else's fault.
I've seen a similar scheme proposed for water - run a long pipe from the deepest depths of the ocean to the surface, then start the water moving toward the surface. As the water moves up it becomes less pressurized and dissolved gases come out of solution, forming bubbles that keep the water moving fast to draw cold water into the deep end of the pipe and power a turbine at the top.
At the same time some people in the industry are talking about sandboxes other people are talking about adding yet more features to the browser so we apps can compete with boxed software. Added functionality nearly always wins over added security, so I expect we'll go into 2011 with even more avenues for Russian mobsters to lift your identity.
Java has had a sandbox since forever, and it's virtually unused in commercial applications. Why? Because it's a pain in the ass to give the user everything he wants when you can't do things like connect to random URLs, use a printer, or open ports.
At some point there won't be enough paying customers to support POTS on land lines because the few remaining customers can't reasonably pay enough money to keep it going. When that happens either the rest of us will support it through new taxes or it will go away. My guess is people using cell phones will be pretty reluctant to pay for a land line network they don't use.
I agree with what you say as a general rule. However. At my company we've been trying to hire people with a pretty basic skill set (Java with GWT/XWT). We don't do H1-B and we're having real problems filling the slots. So there really does seem to be a shortage in specific areas.
...private companies that are loathe to pay additional money for the cost of upgrading the infrastructure so that HS passenger rail could become a reality.
It's not that simple. High speed rail requires track that's straighter than the low speed tracks we have in place, so most of the existing right-of-way won't work at higher speeds. In most cases it would require all new rights-of-way. Which is why it'll probably never happen - too expensive.
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There isn't a huge amount of overlap between "Republican" and "fiscal conservative" any more. That's why they got creamed in 2006 and it also gave birth to the Tea Party movement.
Obviously you've never dealt with the VA. Imagine your experience with private health care and then imagine a similar system run by people who can't be fired.
Oh, man, the party is at Balmer's house tonight.
Oh, sure, these criminals may think they're getting away with something, but in Australia the penalty for such things is the boot.
I've been hearing about phage therapies for years. Apparently they're effective against bacterial films and other hard-to-treat bacterial infections. I wonder if we'll see them in western hospitals.
Weird. My girlfriends always come with a big guy who'll beat me up if I don't pay.
Thanks for pointing that out. Based on the summary, my first reaction to the story was "I paid what to give seven guys a nice view?"
That's what I was wondering. With those kinds of relativistic influences emerging as considerations, it seems like they're past the point where additional accuracy provides any sort of real benefit.
ME 2 looks gorgeous, has good acting, and a good story. But it's not as good as the first Mass Effect. It moves along a lot better than the first version, but it's not nearly as immersive.
My biggest gripe is how the game was console-ified. The interface is dumbed down, along with inventory. They took a fun game and removed some of the stuff that made it fun in an effort to release it on lots of platforms, turning it into a relatively mediocre game. And then apparently it's unplayable on consoles unless you have a high-def TV.
How fast the other guy is really shouldn't affect your own draw. There's no point in shooting from the hip against a better shot if you're just going to miss. The best you could hope for is the other guy has a misfire, malfunction, or just a bad day.
Sometimes you're just screwed. Why would gun fighting be different from any other area of life?
If you plot military spending as a percentage of GDP the the US comes in a #27. We spend about 4% of our GDP on the military (well, a bit more lately because our GDP went down). That's down from over 10% during the cold war. Also, we spend more per soldier than almost any other country, both because we don't have a draft and because even in recessionary times people with technical skills have lots of other options.
This is an unpopular thing to say on slashdot, but the real reason we don't spend more on NASA is we're getting a terrible return on our money. The shuttle program became the Monster That Ate the Budget, crowding out all kinds of useful things the agency could be doing. The reality is that as long as the kg/orbit costs are in the tens of thousands there's nothing useful you can do with a manned space program. Machines will always be cheaper because it's economical to purpose-build them for the task.
Every dime that's going into manned space should instead be going into the development of launch systems to get that cost down. Get the cost down to $50/kg and astronauts make sense because designing a robot to bolt on a solar array is more expensive than sending up a guy with a wrench.
NASA was urged not to outsource manned space... by "[a] key U.S. federal aerospace panel"? You don't say.
Software development is one of those industries which will always be very resistant to unionization because it's so easy to move production to somewhere else. If these guys unionize they'll simply be out of a job when Rockstar moves production to Atlanta. Or India. Or China.
There are plenty of openings out there for people with skills. These guys should just refuse to work so many hours. Or quit.
They do 1D6 of Constitution damage and there's no way to get it back.
You're missing a possibility, and one that's by far the most common resolution: They agree to patent swaps so they can use each others patents. That way when you or I try to break into the business all the large companies have a patent-enforced cartel to keep us out.
Nope. That's exactly what they tried to do with TimesSelect, and the result was their columnists became instantly irrelevant. Opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one. People will read witty columns if they're free, but not enough people are willing to pay for opinion journalism to make it work.
The "killer app" for newspapers is... news, believe it or not. That's what people are willing to pay for. People don't buy the WSJ for opinions. They buy it because the WSJ has news you can't find other places.
It might not belong to the museum. It wouldn't at all be unusual for the ship to be on loan at NASA's pleasure.
And here we have yet another European academic blaming me for problems in his own country. I guess you don't have to fix things that are someone else's fault.
I've seen a similar scheme proposed for water - run a long pipe from the deepest depths of the ocean to the surface, then start the water moving toward the surface. As the water moves up it becomes less pressurized and dissolved gases come out of solution, forming bubbles that keep the water moving fast to draw cold water into the deep end of the pipe and power a turbine at the top.
Never found out if anyone made it work, though.
At the same time some people in the industry are talking about sandboxes other people are talking about adding yet more features to the browser so we apps can compete with boxed software. Added functionality nearly always wins over added security, so I expect we'll go into 2011 with even more avenues for Russian mobsters to lift your identity.
Java has had a sandbox since forever, and it's virtually unused in commercial applications. Why? Because it's a pain in the ass to give the user everything he wants when you can't do things like connect to random URLs, use a printer, or open ports.
At some point there won't be enough paying customers to support POTS on land lines because the few remaining customers can't reasonably pay enough money to keep it going. When that happens either the rest of us will support it through new taxes or it will go away. My guess is people using cell phones will be pretty reluctant to pay for a land line network they don't use.
There will be plenty of radiation when your target launches a nuclear strike in response.
I agree with what you say as a general rule. However. At my company we've been trying to hire people with a pretty basic skill set (Java with GWT/XWT). We don't do H1-B and we're having real problems filling the slots. So there really does seem to be a shortage in specific areas.
That's true of virtually every kind of lobby. Lobbies exist to bribe congressmen into doing things they wouldn't otherwise do.
It's not that simple. High speed rail requires track that's straighter than the low speed tracks we have in place, so most of the existing right-of-way won't work at higher speeds. In most cases it would require all new rights-of-way. Which is why it'll probably never happen - too expensive.