You start off accusing me (falsely) of a straw man
I accused you of nothing but confusing opinion with fact. You posted opinion, I posted fact to counter it. So I'll ask again - on what do you base your statement that "the Pentagon still sucks at shooting things out of the sky with a laser"? If its strictly your opinion, then you know what they say about opinions - everybody has one but only a select few use Tucks to keep them clean.
then end off lecturing me in some straw man about my business with classified laser testing literature.
What I said was the truth. You are in no position to know anything about the classified literature in the field of US laser technologies. You're some anonymous loudmouth tool on the Internet with an opinion, and clearly don't have the "need to know" such sensitive information.
The Star Wars tests for 25 years have consistently failed to shoot down anything except the most carefully controlled test targets.
A lie, easily refuted by the links I provided.
But you ridiculous Republicans keep demanding it.
You assume a lot, anonymous loudmouth tool on the Internet.
Frankly, you should stop talking like your made-up pronouncements on national "defense" and what business Americans have in debunking it are worth listening to.
No, the Pentagon still sucks at shooting things out of the sky with a laser.
BS. On what are you basing that statement? That's like saying that the Pentagon still sucks at mining Helium3 on the Moon. Yes it does, but that's only because they're not actually doing it very much if at all. When the Pentagon DOES test laser defense technologies, it tends to do very well.
All of the unclassified literature I've been seeing seems to confirm that the various US laser defense technologies have been very successful in testing to date.
That particular bit of ASCII art has always looked to me like Snoopy standing on stilts while wearing a miner's lantern on his head. That's probably not the impression the troll intended to convey, but c'est la vie.
I wish. Actually, no I don't (insert EWWW smiley here).
I think one was Dr. Spock's book, one was about explaining sex to your kid, another was Fanny Hill, and the rest were first editions (Tom Sawyer, Little Women and a couple of others). I remember being so disappointed when I finally picked the lock - just some old books. Not even any pictures.
"Son, there are certain books in the library in this house that you are not allowed to read. We are the parents and know more than you do, so we get to make these kind of decisions and you have no recourse other than to shut up and agree.
Now then, I am locking the books you are not allowed to read in this cabinet. Your father and I have the only keys to it. So that is that."
To this day, I'm glad that How To Pick Locks and other tomes of that kind weren't locked in that cabinet. And I hope that the suits at NBC and other media outlets had a mother like mine.
In June 1997, seven weeks after the birth of his second child,
Mr. Martin figured his prototype was now powerful enough to lift
its first flier, so long as that person weighed less than 130
pounds. So he turned to his wife. "I said, 'Hey, Vanessa, what
are you doing tonight?"
Mrs. Martin agreed to be her husband's levitating guinea pig.
...
She said she felt, in a way, that she had conquered it - "the
taming of it, that's so exciting." It was, she said, "probably
the best experience of my life."
Doesn't say a lot about being married to Mr. Martin or Mr. Martin's prowess in the sack, does it?
So is a "graphical tour de force" putting on a big turban and cracking stupid fortunetelling jokes about the iPhone on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson? Well, at least it'll get Ed McMahon off the unemployment line for a while.
Nixon wasn't actually impeached. He resigned his office before impeachment became final. The only US Presidents who have ever been impeached (which is a very specific process) were Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.
Mea culpa. I booted the description by leaving a word out. It should have been "... rapidly become the best friend of the fellow who now has to constantly scan 100 surveillance screens for unusual activity."
Don't hold your breath. A significant portion of my total spam load comes from ThePlanet.com servers. They're not exactly well-known for responding to complaints about their spamming customers, and their response time even when they get around to it is pretty much glacial.
As noted in TFA and if the false positive ratio can be reduced to even 10-to-1, this technology might rapidly become the best friend of the fellow who has to constantly scan 100 surveillance screens for unusual activity.
But this system's definition of "unusual activity" intrigues me. If one of these toys is set up for example in a bank to monitor a vault door and a bank guard passes by the door every hour on his rounds, the software would presumably record that as "normal" activity. What is the "unusual" element that would prod the AI into sending an alert if a thief did exactly the same thing? What dynamic does the system employ to determine if a bank guard is a legitimate bank guard or Willie Sutton? The time it happened? Facial recognition? The fact that the "bank guard" pulled a cutting torch or dynamite out of his backpack and started going to town on the vault door?
Could the system be configured to send an alert when an expected activity didn't occur such as a bank guard or jailer missing one of his rounds?
Its difficult to imagine this system being used in any sort of serious anti-shoplifting capability in a retail setting. Would the AI be able to tell the difference between a customer picking up an iPod to look at the fine print on the box and a shoplifter shoving the iPod under his shirt? Would the system alert on me if I innocently tucked in my shirttail while walking down an aisle? As always, the devil is in the details.
You had bit shift registers? In my town, bit shift registers were for the rich people. We just used alligator clips and a battery made out of a lemon, a galvanized nail and a copper penny to set the individual bits on the ferrite core memory.
And as for carrier pigeons, they were far too valuable to us to be used for carrying data. Squab was the only meat some of us got all week.
There are $ome $pecific $ide benefit$ that u$ually accompany employment at tho$e companie$ with $ane, rea$onable and profe$$ional dre$$ code$.
In my business life, the parking lots at the companies where everybody dresses like Larry the Cable Guy seem to be full of Ford Escorts and Kia Rios. Conversely, the lots at the IBMs and Microsofts of the world seem to have a higher percentage of Lexii, BMWs and Harley dressers.
When you start paying your neighbor's electric bills, then you will receive a bit more credibility when you attempt to tell them how much or how little electricity they get to use. Let me be the first to solemnly assure you that your brownouts aren't being caused by the kid next door running SETI@Home or downloading Britney Spears pr0n.
That the two major parties serve this function is why you generally never see minor parties win any elections beyond the local level, because if you aren't either a Democrat or a Republican, you don't get the media time and the campaign donations and the political support that it takes to win major elections.
Slashdot Mirror
But only at night.
You start off accusing me (falsely) of a straw man
I accused you of nothing but confusing opinion with fact. You posted opinion, I posted fact to counter it. So I'll ask again - on what do you base your statement that "the Pentagon still sucks at shooting things out of the sky with a laser"? If its strictly your opinion, then you know what they say about opinions - everybody has one but only a select few use Tucks to keep them clean.
then end off lecturing me in some straw man about my business with classified laser testing literature.
What I said was the truth. You are in no position to know anything about the classified literature in the field of US laser technologies. You're some anonymous loudmouth tool on the Internet with an opinion, and clearly don't have the "need to know" such sensitive information.
The Star Wars tests for 25 years have consistently failed to shoot down anything except the most carefully controlled test targets.
A lie, easily refuted by the links I provided.
But you ridiculous Republicans keep demanding it.
You assume a lot, anonymous loudmouth tool on the Internet.
Frankly, you should stop talking like your made-up pronouncements on national "defense" and what business Americans have in debunking it are worth listening to.
Not on your best day and me on my worst, tool.
No, the Pentagon still sucks at shooting things out of the sky with a laser.
BS. On what are you basing that statement? That's like saying that the Pentagon still sucks at mining Helium3 on the Moon. Yes it does, but that's only because they're not actually doing it very much if at all. When the Pentagon DOES test laser defense technologies, it tends to do very well.
All of the unclassified literature I've been seeing seems to confirm that the various US laser defense technologies have been very successful in testing to date.
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/asat/971022-miracl-mr.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2407807.stm
Frankly, its none of your business what is being said in the classified literature about the results of laser testing.
That particular bit of ASCII art has always looked to me like Snoopy standing on stilts while wearing a miner's lantern on his head. That's probably not the impression the troll intended to convey, but c'est la vie.
I wish. Actually, no I don't (insert EWWW smiley here).
I think one was Dr. Spock's book, one was about explaining sex to your kid, another was Fanny Hill, and the rest were first editions (Tom Sawyer, Little Women and a couple of others). I remember being so disappointed when I finally picked the lock - just some old books. Not even any pictures.
"Son, there are certain books in the library in this house that you are not allowed to read. We are the parents and know more than you do, so we get to make these kind of decisions and you have no recourse other than to shut up and agree.
Now then, I am locking the books you are not allowed to read in this cabinet. Your father and I have the only keys to it. So that is that."
To this day, I'm glad that How To Pick Locks and other tomes of that kind weren't locked in that cabinet. And I hope that the suits at NBC and other media outlets had a mother like mine.
Especially if you yourself made it.
They're still trying to nail down porting Duke Nukem Forever into the console-mounted Nintendo DS.
In June 1997, seven weeks after the birth of his second child, Mr. Martin figured his prototype was now powerful enough to lift its first flier, so long as that person weighed less than 130 pounds. So he turned to his wife. "I said, 'Hey, Vanessa, what are you doing tonight?"
Mrs. Martin agreed to be her husband's levitating guinea pig.
She said she felt, in a way, that she had conquered it - "the taming of it, that's so exciting." It was, she said, "probably the best experience of my life."
Doesn't say a lot about being married to Mr. Martin or Mr. Martin's prowess in the sack, does it?
He's intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter, Ted.
So is a "graphical tour de force" putting on a big turban and cracking stupid fortunetelling jokes about the iPhone on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson? Well, at least it'll get Ed McMahon off the unemployment line for a while.
Nixon wasn't actually impeached. He resigned his office before impeachment became final. The only US Presidents who have ever been impeached (which is a very specific process) were Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton.
An AC daring somebody to do something publically. Scratch one irony meter.
"Clouds tend not to be brown."
You've obviously never been over to my house on Enchilada Night.
Damn. And the idea of a universal computer virus worked so well in the critically-acclaimed Independence Day too.
Mea culpa. I booted the description by leaving a word out. It should have been "... rapidly become the best friend of the fellow who now has to constantly scan 100 surveillance screens for unusual activity."
Don't hold your breath. A significant portion of my total spam load comes from ThePlanet.com servers. They're not exactly well-known for responding to complaints about their spamming customers, and their response time even when they get around to it is pretty much glacial.
As noted in TFA and if the false positive ratio can be reduced to even 10-to-1, this technology might rapidly become the best friend of the fellow who has to constantly scan 100 surveillance screens for unusual activity.
But this system's definition of "unusual activity" intrigues me. If one of these toys is set up for example in a bank to monitor a vault door and a bank guard passes by the door every hour on his rounds, the software would presumably record that as "normal" activity. What is the "unusual" element that would prod the AI into sending an alert if a thief did exactly the same thing? What dynamic does the system employ to determine if a bank guard is a legitimate bank guard or Willie Sutton? The time it happened? Facial recognition? The fact that the "bank guard" pulled a cutting torch or dynamite out of his backpack and started going to town on the vault door?
Could the system be configured to send an alert when an expected activity didn't occur such as a bank guard or jailer missing one of his rounds?
Its difficult to imagine this system being used in any sort of serious anti-shoplifting capability in a retail setting. Would the AI be able to tell the difference between a customer picking up an iPod to look at the fine print on the box and a shoplifter shoving the iPod under his shirt? Would the system alert on me if I innocently tucked in my shirttail while walking down an aisle? As always, the devil is in the details.
You had bit shift registers? In my town, bit shift registers were for the rich people. We just used alligator clips and a battery made out of a lemon, a galvanized nail and a copper penny to set the individual bits on the ferrite core memory.
And as for carrier pigeons, they were far too valuable to us to be used for carrying data. Squab was the only meat some of us got all week.
There are $ome $pecific $ide benefit$ that u$ually accompany employment at tho$e companie$ with $ane, rea$onable and profe$$ional dre$$ code$.
In my business life, the parking lots at the companies where everybody dresses like Larry the Cable Guy seem to be full of Ford Escorts and Kia Rios. Conversely, the lots at the IBMs and Microsofts of the world seem to have a higher percentage of Lexii, BMWs and Harley dressers.
When you start paying your neighbor's electric bills, then you will receive a bit more credibility when you attempt to tell them how much or how little electricity they get to use. Let me be the first to solemnly assure you that your brownouts aren't being caused by the kid next door running SETI@Home or downloading Britney Spears pr0n.
Finding ET would only strengthen my "outdated superstitious beliefs".
In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. John 14:2
Fair cop. I hack and restore old tube-type radios myself.
If the alien really IS Jodie Foster's father.
That the two major parties serve this function is why you generally never see minor parties win any elections beyond the local level, because if you aren't either a Democrat or a Republican, you don't get the media time and the campaign donations and the political support that it takes to win major elections.
This is blatantly off-topic and I'll happily accept the modding down this is going to get, but if third parties in the US would run candidates who didn't turn themselves Smurf blue from drinking too much colloidal silver or allow racist tripe to be published in newsletters under their own name for almost 10 years, they would do better at the polls and perhaps even win some races.