Mass production? Who used silica crystals in mass-production quantities in 1916 and for what? Your alternate history timeline interests me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Also, crystal silicon was first obtained in 1854.
Ah, but we do need software patents to keep the world of closed source going. Everyone's hiding their source because they are trampling on each-other's patents all the time and so need that there be no legal way to ascertain that fact. When there's no incentive to do that anymore, closed source and selling software in a box on a shelf go the way of the dodo and the buggy-whip industry, respectively. Microsoft (and its whole developer ecology) is predicated on selling software in a box.
Well, you have your answer right there in your question. Didn't debug or test before releasing, code maintenance is left to whoever inherits it, there's almost no documentation and there are no comments in code. A Real Programmer through and through, if you ask me.
Lemme guess... Intel video (i915, most likely). Yup. Doesn't work. It's a known kernel bug and the Ubuntu guys either decided it didn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things (shiny new kernel, woo!) or didn't know about it. So... malicious or incompetent, take your pick. I did find it riling that no-one is doing anything about it - it seems for the kernel video card driver devs, if it can do VESA, it's shippable.
In Soviet America, it only takes one neighbor with a grudge for YOU to get shipped to Gitmo: "I saw him talk with that crazy A-rab cornershop owner a bit TOO often - honest, officer, there's something pretty damn suspicious about couchslug if you ask me, not to mention he borrowed fertilizer from me last month and "forgot" to give it back - ammonia fertilizer! Who knows what they're up to? And him always with that holier-than-thou attitude - as if he's compensating for something... shoulda seen it coming, really".
How far up your family tree have you looked before spouting this nonsense? I know you're white and christian-denominational, but are you really, really sure that none of your grand(times X) parents were arabs (and/or islamic by creed)?
Another thing: have you given to charity? How sure are you none of your aid money went to... uh I don't know... Afghanistan?
I am regularly amazed at how voice-recognition wonks complain about ambient noise and do their damnedest to solve the problem with software when there's perfectly adequate hardware for the job. Sorry for the link, this is specialist equipment and I couldn't find a Wikipedia entry - perhaps I should write one.
The British were murderous bastards who proposed an open-cycle engine. There needs be no radioactive release (unless a rocket crashes that is) with a dual-cycle one or with a nuclear lightbulb...
Or you can not use the pacifier at all, thus neatly sidestepping the issue of "kid trained for months/years to be suckling all the time needs to be un-trained now" issue. Quinine (or similar) works wonders wrt finger-sucking, btw.
You're right, it's boolean, not binary. It's a statement of fact and can be either True or False for a given set of circumstances. In this case it's false.
And what they're thinking is, plainly put, bollocks, because there is no "bottom" to this market. This is not steel we're talking about, but highly complex machines. In fact, as "now-tech" machines grow cheaper, the only way to escape commodification is to race into the future and produce better/cheaper ones to sell at the same price point. What Sony is lamenting is the end of the age of not needing to innovate, the age when just adding more memory or a slightly faster (in terms of clock cycles) processor was enough to sell a new machine. Sony is an old behemoth of a company clinging to an obsolete business model where you set a standard, achieve lock-in and monopoly/oligopoly, then sit on your ass for a couple decades while the money flows in by the heap. There is no room in the computer industry for that anymore. Good riddance.
If resources needed by humans are not scarce/valuable, the Powers have no compelling reason to wipe us out - we might get kept on as pets, and we might wish we'd have been genocided.
Because the scriptwriters forgot to tell the director and the props people that the files weren't supposed to have pics on them like a normal police file should. Also, it was the _lack of_ pupil dilation (lack of emotional response) that gave them away.
It is a simple reputation system, suffering from all the flaws of other such systems. Its main advantage is that top management can more clearly identify the various political cliques and cabals and act accordingly to maintain their own power.
Unless there is a deep shortage of common sense and basic tactics knowledge in the US military, the list and relative priorities (in terms of value/accessibility) of both force and civilian targets should be on every commander's mind, at every level of command. I doubt very much that is not the case, what with "force protection" being drilled as an absolute priority into the heads of all would-be officers from day one.
Bzzt. Straw man. You are right in saying that the NPT is not coercive. International laws (such as they are) say that if the Nigerian gov't decides they want nukes, they can just bow out of the NPT and go their own way - in theory.
However, many states were, in fact, told to get their grubby paws off nuke tech by nuclear-armed countries - Israel in particular likes to deliver such messages in the form of air strike packages but other forms of coercion have also been used, such as the (continuing) embargo against NK.
Why so? You'll be left with some irregularities (maybe) in your crystals, but with a half-life of four billion years or so on U238 (aka DU, which is what you'd use to make cool crystal armor out of), I doubt they'd be so frequent as to spoil your party.
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Mass production? Who used silica crystals in mass-production quantities in 1916 and for what? Your alternate history timeline interests me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Also, crystal silicon was first obtained in 1854.
Ah, but we do need software patents to keep the world of closed source going. Everyone's hiding their source because they are trampling on each-other's patents all the time and so need that there be no legal way to ascertain that fact. When there's no incentive to do that anymore, closed source and selling software in a box on a shelf go the way of the dodo and the buggy-whip industry, respectively. Microsoft (and its whole developer ecology) is predicated on selling software in a box.
Well, you have your answer right there in your question. Didn't debug or test before releasing, code maintenance is left to whoever inherits it, there's almost no documentation and there are no comments in code. A Real Programmer through and through, if you ask me.
Lemme guess... Intel video (i915, most likely). Yup. Doesn't work. It's a known kernel bug and the Ubuntu guys either decided it didn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things (shiny new kernel, woo!) or didn't know about it. So... malicious or incompetent, take your pick. I did find it riling that no-one is doing anything about it - it seems for the kernel video card driver devs, if it can do VESA, it's shippable.
We probably willget "batteries" a gazillion times more efficient. Such a superconducting loop can store huge amounts of juice - forever, for free.
In Soviet America, it only takes one neighbor with a grudge for YOU to get shipped to Gitmo: "I saw him talk with that crazy A-rab cornershop owner a bit TOO often - honest, officer, there's something pretty damn suspicious about couchslug if you ask me, not to mention he borrowed fertilizer from me last month and "forgot" to give it back - ammonia fertilizer! Who knows what they're up to? And him always with that holier-than-thou attitude - as if he's compensating for something... shoulda seen it coming, really".
How far up your family tree have you looked before spouting this nonsense? I know you're white and christian-denominational, but are you really, really sure that none of your grand(times X) parents were arabs (and/or islamic by creed)?
Another thing: have you given to charity? How sure are you none of your aid money went to... uh I don't know... Afghanistan?
I am regularly amazed at how voice-recognition wonks complain about ambient noise and do their damnedest to solve the problem with software when there's perfectly adequate hardware for the job. Sorry for the link, this is specialist equipment and I couldn't find a Wikipedia entry - perhaps I should write one.
The needs of the many are no excuse for shoddy engineering.
The British were murderous bastards who proposed an open-cycle engine. There needs be no radioactive release (unless a rocket crashes that is) with a dual-cycle one or with a nuclear lightbulb...
Or you can not use the pacifier at all, thus neatly sidestepping the issue of "kid trained for months/years to be suckling all the time needs to be un-trained now" issue. Quinine (or similar) works wonders wrt finger-sucking, btw.
Lose the fsckin pacifier :D. But seriously, they do more harm than good.
You're right, it's boolean, not binary. It's a statement of fact and can be either True or False for a given set of circumstances. In this case it's false.
I was thinking more along the lines of "deforming faster than expected because of centrifugal force, thus causing 'local' gravitational anomalies"
And what they're thinking is, plainly put, bollocks, because there is no "bottom" to this market. This is not steel we're talking about, but highly complex machines. In fact, as "now-tech" machines grow cheaper, the only way to escape commodification is to race into the future and produce better/cheaper ones to sell at the same price point. What Sony is lamenting is the end of the age of not needing to innovate, the age when just adding more memory or a slightly faster (in terms of clock cycles) processor was enough to sell a new machine.
Sony is an old behemoth of a company clinging to an obsolete business model where you set a standard, achieve lock-in and monopoly/oligopoly, then sit on your ass for a couple decades while the money flows in by the heap. There is no room in the computer industry for that anymore. Good riddance.
If resources needed by humans are not scarce/valuable, the Powers have no compelling reason to wipe us out - we might get kept on as pets, and we might wish we'd have been genocided.
Yes, but that effect is already known. Maybe something massive fell into the Sun.
Maybe what they're measuring is the amount by which the Earth got fatter around the waist since they last looked?
Because the scriptwriters forgot to tell the director and the props people that the files weren't supposed to have pics on them like a normal police file should. Also, it was the _lack of_ pupil dilation (lack of emotional response) that gave them away.
It is a simple reputation system, suffering from all the flaws of other such systems. Its main advantage is that top management can more clearly identify the various political cliques and cabals and act accordingly to maintain their own power.
Unless there is a deep shortage of common sense and basic tactics knowledge in the US military, the list and relative priorities (in terms of value/accessibility) of both force and civilian targets should be on every commander's mind, at every level of command. I doubt very much that is not the case, what with "force protection" being drilled as an absolute priority into the heads of all would-be officers from day one.
Bzzt. Straw man. You are right in saying that the NPT is not coercive. International laws (such as they are) say that if the Nigerian gov't decides they want nukes, they can just bow out of the NPT and go their own way - in theory.
However, many states were, in fact, told to get their grubby paws off nuke tech by nuclear-armed countries - Israel in particular likes to deliver such messages in the form of air strike packages but other forms of coercion have also been used, such as the (continuing) embargo against NK.
Tents schments. You could hoist a flag/banner just about anywhere in the world and get electricity from the flutter.
Why so? You'll be left with some irregularities (maybe) in your crystals, but with a half-life of four billion years or so on U238 (aka DU, which is what you'd use to make cool crystal armor out of), I doubt they'd be so frequent as to spoil your party.
Err... hate to nitpick, but uranium is plentiful.
Someone mod this guy up.