That's only the beginning of it. Can the DMCA be stretched far enough? Some other devices have been ruled to be OK, even if they COULD be used to circumvent copyright protection. Other devices (such as compilers or camcorders) seem to be obviously out of the scope of the DMCA. So, where is the line drawn this time? Should the presence of a modchip be enough to indict someone, like it is with "drug paraphernalia", or should actual breaches of copyright protection take place before modchips even come into consideration (perhaps as an added count)? What stance is the court going to take? This is new stuff, and it's worth speculating on it. On a side note, the way things are going in the US right now sickens me no end. DMCA? Disgusting. What next? Rules on whether&/what people are allowed to sing while showering?
Somebody mod this up, please. TFA says that modchips are illegal. How is it that it has come to be so? Has it, or is it just the old "let's stretch the law a bit and see if we can get people to break it"?
There's a theory that says mouth-breathers DO tend to be less intelligent (on average). The ide a is that if it's not a bad habit, it's some sort of obstruction of the upper airways. If said obstruction has been present since birth (or appeared in very early childhood), there's a good chance that the kid wasn't getting enough air (toddlers generally don't breathe through the mouth), leading to, well, retarded development, of the kind you see with, say, underfed kids (not malnourished, mind you, just kids that don't get enough milk for some reason). By the time the poor kids learn to breathe through the mouth to compensate, the damage's done already.
The calculation is idiotic anyway. Most modern exercise bikes are "magnetic" (i.e. already have a dynamo inside and put some of the energy you generate to work against your very motion) already. One such can be had for under 400 USD.
Welcome to the police state, I guess, where doing anything except breathing requires governmental permission Maybe you were fishing for just such a comment but... You should realize that in many states of the USA, the government permission to continue breathing DOES NOT, in fact extend to all citizens. Does the term "capital punishment" ring a bell?
You don't have acceleration at all. 900 fps is what the system manages to squeeze out of the proc. Play an mp3 and watch that figure drop. You have driver trouble.
Noam Chomsky will be overjoyed if this thing proves to be a success - because if it does, it will provide no less than a working black-box model of the very firmware in question:).
Now you're nit-picking. Of course there are duds (not as many as you'd expect, as there are actually two ways to detonate such a shell). So what? This gets used in warzones, remember? People are much more likely to get killed from all those lead bullets flying around than by CIWS duds falling on their heads.
Oh, btw... these shells aren't used to protect civilians - they're just more suited to the task at hand - if the irakis suddenly started using missiles instead of mortar shells, you can bet the US military would switch to tungsten/DU sabot rounds again in no time.
Erm. No, not really. The land-based system uses the high explosive tracer shells previously used on the Vulcan gun. Not many (or big) fragments to deal with and certainly no heavy sabots falling out of the sky:).
They did that too. Amazingly enough, it works with only minor modifications. Only trouble is that it has limited value - the LPWS (aka Phalanx CIWS block 2B on a truck) has a small-ish magazine (2000 rounds) and fires 200-300 rounds at any one target. The engagement time is pretty long (see, classify, shoot, watch for impacts, confirm kill, rinse, repeat). The hit/kill ratio is at or around 90% for any one gun/target. Bottom line, you can maybe shoot down 9 out of the first 10 mortar shells, if they come at you staggered enough. The next salvo (most probably coming from an entirely different place) is going to find you with your pants around your ankles.
The laser system, well... there are many advantages. You can tell very quickly when it's ok to stop shooting (basically, if the target's been brightly lit for $nanoseconds, you stop shooting), you don't have to wait for bullets to crawl to where the target is probably going, there's no windage to adjust for (there is air turbulence, but that can be adjusted for in real time, not for the next bullet being fired) plus I'd imagine there's not much danger of running out of "ammo".
That being said, I'd love to see what happens if one of these babies ever gets captured by the irakis.
OH NOES! Twice the bandwidth needed! ZOMG! WTFBBQ! Pwnt! The argument is easily defused, imho, by the simple observation that building and manning the infrastructure needed will actually create jobs, as well as provide new growth opportunity for all sorts of businesses - the new, neutral, high-bandwidth Internet could even become something like the highway and hydro projects undertaken as part of the New Deal - a way to energize the whole of the economy by targeted investments in infrastructure.
Wish I had mod points. Bottom line, tha way we interact with computers is so 1960ish it's not even funny. Gimme voice commands and dictation via laringophone and maybe a stylus to point and drag with and I'll be happy. Dare I say "haptic interface"? Nah, let's save that for the 22nd century.
"Disassociation and lifelong disfunction", you say? I'd say that someone who could think back to having killed people or being raped, or torturing, or being tortured and could remember it with nary a shudder is pretty fucked up. The prosecutor in the Nurnberg case said that what all defendants had in common was a lack of empathy, no? Those people had memories of pushing other people into ovens and felt NOTHING about it. Oh, the intellectual lessons, such as "crush England first" they had taken to heart allright - just not the moral ones, such as "pushing people into ovens is a big no-no and will make you want to kill yourself".
The "lesson" to be taken away from doing or experiencing painful things is "never again". If you make the pain disappear, things like My Lai, Lidice, Nanking or Karubamba (notice how I care about ethnic diversity) will become daily occurrences.
Don'tcha be dissin' them SA3's now, boy. For all we know, that incident with the "stealth" bird could've been due to a Pechora-2/2M prototype. Of course, it's much more comfortable for americans to assume it was a lucky pot-shot that downed the F-117 than to admit that they haven't been able to make a stealth plane worth a damn...
You may be wrong. They'll only look ugly to us if:
A. they're in the strange zone (greys)- but humanoid aliens aren't very likely. B. they look like some phobia of ours (BEMs) - much more likely, but still a remote possibility. It's far more likely that they will look like nothing we've ever seen and evoke mixed emotions ranging from horror to curiosity to fetishism.
People (and other animals) are designed to compete hardest with their immediate neighbors (who after all lay claim to the exact same resource pool). Some alien methane-breathing race from OutaNowhere, Spiral Arm 2, might just register as "mostly harmless" on our species' collective radar.
I wonder, though... I understand you're an employee. Would you happen to know how much the contractors do? It happens with many companies (large and small) at some point - they start outsourcing stuff until all that's left is the bureaucracy, with all the real work being outsourced.
You're suggesting that Microsoft is going to release an operating system that can't run non-MS-approved programs. No. I'm suggsting there will be a new M$ OS which will sandbox legacy apps and only allow M$-signed new apps take advantage of, say, the protected media path. Duh.
Ok. Sorry about my tone. The point I was trying to make is that mass unemployment would result from a sudden drying-out of Chinese imports. That's never a good thing in my book.
One could decelerate and glide to an unpowered landing ('a la space shuttle) after ramjet burn-off. A non-issue. And as for the nozzle, you could have a variable-geometry one.
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Exactly how are modchips illegal, again?
That's only the beginning of it. Can the DMCA be stretched far enough? Some other devices have been ruled to be OK, even if they COULD be used to circumvent copyright protection. Other devices (such as compilers or camcorders) seem to be obviously out of the scope of the DMCA. So, where is the line drawn this time? Should the presence of a modchip be enough to indict someone, like it is with "drug paraphernalia", or should actual breaches of copyright protection take place before modchips even come into consideration (perhaps as an added count)? What stance is the court going to take? This is new stuff, and it's worth speculating on it.
On a side note, the way things are going in the US right now sickens me no end. DMCA? Disgusting. What next? Rules on whether&/what people are allowed to sing while showering?
Somebody mod this up, please. TFA says that modchips are illegal. How is it that it has come to be so? Has it, or is it just the old "let's stretch the law a bit and see if we can get people to break it"?
In addition to which, most computers infected with this thing probably end up in the hands of the FBI anyway. I tend to agree with your conclusion.
There's a theory that says mouth-breathers DO tend to be less intelligent (on average). The ide a is that if it's not a bad habit, it's some sort of obstruction of the upper airways. If said obstruction has been present since birth (or appeared in very early childhood), there's a good chance that the kid wasn't getting enough air (toddlers generally don't breathe through the mouth), leading to, well, retarded development, of the kind you see with, say, underfed kids (not malnourished, mind you, just kids that don't get enough milk for some reason). By the time the poor kids learn to breathe through the mouth to compensate, the damage's done already.
The calculation is idiotic anyway. Most modern exercise bikes are "magnetic" (i.e. already have a dynamo inside and put some of the energy you generate to work against your very motion) already. One such can be had for under 400 USD.
This is not trolling. Random iFanbois should not be given mod points to abuse.
You don't have acceleration at all. 900 fps is what the system manages to squeeze out of the proc. Play an mp3 and watch that figure drop. You have driver trouble.
Noam Chomsky will be overjoyed if this thing proves to be a success - because if it does, it will provide no less than a working black-box model of the very firmware in question :).
Now you're nit-picking. Of course there are duds (not as many as you'd expect, as there are actually two ways to detonate such a shell). So what? This gets used in warzones, remember? People are much more likely to get killed from all those lead bullets flying around than by CIWS duds falling on their heads.
Oh, btw... these shells aren't used to protect civilians - they're just more suited to the task at hand - if the irakis suddenly started using missiles instead of mortar shells, you can bet the US military would switch to tungsten/DU sabot rounds again in no time.
Erm. No, not really. The land-based system uses the high explosive tracer shells previously used on the Vulcan gun. Not many (or big) fragments to deal with and certainly no heavy sabots falling out of the sky :).
They did that too. Amazingly enough, it works with only minor modifications. Only trouble is that it has limited value - the LPWS (aka Phalanx CIWS block 2B on a truck) has a small-ish magazine (2000 rounds) and fires 200-300 rounds at any one target. The engagement time is pretty long (see, classify, shoot, watch for impacts, confirm kill, rinse, repeat). The hit/kill ratio is at or around 90% for any one gun/target. Bottom line, you can maybe shoot down 9 out of the first 10 mortar shells, if they come at you staggered enough. The next salvo (most probably coming from an entirely different place) is going to find you with your pants around your ankles.
The laser system, well... there are many advantages. You can tell very quickly when it's ok to stop shooting (basically, if the target's been brightly lit for $nanoseconds, you stop shooting), you don't have to wait for bullets to crawl to where the target is probably going, there's no windage to adjust for (there is air turbulence, but that can be adjusted for in real time, not for the next bullet being fired) plus I'd imagine there's not much danger of running out of "ammo".
That being said, I'd love to see what happens if one of these babies ever gets captured by the irakis.
OH NOES! Twice the bandwidth needed! ZOMG! WTFBBQ! Pwnt!
The argument is easily defused, imho, by the simple observation that building and manning the infrastructure needed will actually create jobs, as well as provide new growth opportunity for all sorts of businesses - the new, neutral, high-bandwidth Internet could even become something like the highway and hydro projects undertaken as part of the New Deal - a way to energize the whole of the economy by targeted investments in infrastructure.
Wish I had mod points. Bottom line, tha way we interact with computers is so 1960ish it's not even funny.
Gimme voice commands and dictation via laringophone and maybe a stylus to point and drag with and I'll be happy.
Dare I say "haptic interface"? Nah, let's save that for the 22nd century.
"Disassociation and lifelong disfunction", you say? I'd say that someone who could think back to having killed people or being raped, or torturing, or being tortured and could remember it with nary a shudder is pretty fucked up. The prosecutor in the Nurnberg case said that what all defendants had in common was a lack of empathy, no? Those people had memories of pushing other people into ovens and felt NOTHING about it. Oh, the intellectual lessons, such as "crush England first" they had taken to heart allright - just not the moral ones, such as "pushing people into ovens is a big no-no and will make you want to kill yourself".
The "lesson" to be taken away from doing or experiencing painful things is "never again". If you make the pain disappear, things like My Lai, Lidice, Nanking or Karubamba (notice how I care about ethnic diversity) will become daily occurrences.
There. I Godwined your argument for you.
How slightly? Are you sure the power is enough to melt glass windows? 'Cause I sure ain't.
Goes to show just how much you know about nukes and EMP.
"either way a primitive tool brought it down"
Don'tcha be dissin' them SA3's now, boy. For all we know, that incident with the "stealth" bird could've been due to a Pechora-2/2M prototype. Of course, it's much more comfortable for americans to assume it was a lucky pot-shot that downed the F-117 than to admit that they haven't been able to make a stealth plane worth a damn...
You may be wrong. They'll only look ugly to us if:
A. they're in the strange zone (greys)- but humanoid aliens aren't very likely.
B. they look like some phobia of ours (BEMs) - much more likely, but still a remote possibility.
It's far more likely that they will look like nothing we've ever seen and evoke mixed emotions ranging from horror to curiosity to fetishism.
People (and other animals) are designed to compete hardest with their immediate neighbors (who after all lay claim to the exact same resource pool). Some alien methane-breathing race from OutaNowhere, Spiral Arm 2, might just register as "mostly harmless" on our species' collective radar.
So it's all just one lean, mean Sales Machine, eh? Amazing what inertia will do.
Could've just went out and spelled it, no? :)
I wonder, though... I understand you're an employee. Would you happen to know how much the contractors do? It happens with many companies (large and small) at some point - they start outsourcing stuff until all that's left is the bureaucracy, with all the real work being outsourced.
You're suggesting that Microsoft is going to release an operating system that can't run non-MS-approved programs.
No. I'm suggsting there will be a new M$ OS which will sandbox legacy apps and only allow M$-signed new apps take advantage of, say, the protected media path. Duh.
Ok. Sorry about my tone. The point I was trying to make is that mass unemployment would result from a sudden drying-out of Chinese imports. That's never a good thing in my book.
One could decelerate and glide to an unpowered landing ('a la space shuttle) after ramjet burn-off. A non-issue. And as for the nozzle, you could have a variable-geometry one.