> Your overly simplistic argument of A vs. B. vs. C ignores important details of code optimization - as I tried to point out in my original post.
Clearer now...or not?
It was already clear to me, but it seems you are entirely missing the point of my post here.
First of all, optimizing is a property of the compiler, not of the language, if you have a fortran compiler that optimizes a lot better then the C++ compiler, it is very likely to produce better code, no news there really.
What you are talking about is a limitation in the compilers you use.
Is it easier to optimize fortran well? I bet it is for quite a few cases, but I also bet that there is quite a bit of things you cannot do efficiently or at all in fortran without taking some big detour, so it all depends on the situation if that actually helps you or not.
Bottomline, both are compiled and assembled into some form of machine/bytecode. When you take soemthign that is implementable directly in both languages and have an equally well optimizing compiler, both will result in virtually equivalent machine/bytecode.
> (Another point is that one could certainly write a C++ compiler in Java - would that mean that C++ couldn't possibly be faster than Java?)
WHen you compile to the same target as the java compiler? nope. Given ideal implementations of both compilers, the result would be equally fast.
So language design? not really. compiler implementation is where the difference comes from, and that only in specific cases.
> Looking & behaving like a native OS app is great, especially for consumer applications. However that really isn't a priority in the enterprise (where Java is strongest). It's a "nice to have" not a "must have". Just take a look at SAP or pretty much any enterprise portal project.
Uh no. having the same look and feel as any other app are very important for applications you use every now and then, and almost irrelevant for an app that you use almost all the time.
It is not such a problem to learn to use a different way of interacting if you are gouing to use it most of the time anyway.
To use somethign every now and then that works entirely different from the stuff you use often however takes quite some efford each time you use it.
If it is worth to put in the efford depends, but for many peopel the choice is simple: If 2 things do what they need to an acceptable level, they will take the one that they are most comfortable with, and that will without exception be the one that looks and feels the most familiar.
You may not liek that, thats fine. Please use what you think best for your situation, but at least try to understand what motivates the average user in their choices if you try to argue about that.
> That how MS has managed to dupe the average non-techical user into using the insecure, cobbled togather mess that windows is. Put the garbage in a pretty package, heavily market it and just to help ensure success, use illegial monopoly practices to take away choice
Maybe you'd care to reread my post, or are you suggesting that this applies to KDE, Gnome, Aqua and a whole host of other user environments that try to give a consistant look and feel?
Again, just try to get it into your head that people like their computer to look and work in a consistent way, NO MATTER THE OS.
> This is an old hobby horse of mine. I'm not a big fan of mandatary licensing fees, and the point made by parent (among others) is a good illustration of why.
please explain how it did that...
> I think the future of TV will involve less and less advertising and licensing fees. Instead, big content producers like the BBC will sell their archives on a pay-per-view basis. Yes, I know they are planning to offer them for free, but if they have any sense they'll bag the license fees and attach a small, reasonable price to each download.
Sounds good all... except for that reality seems to suggest something different.. TV uses more and more advertising and less and less license fees.
If there is anythign that consumers hate, it is payign over and over for thigns they already payed for, and if they can get a 'flat fee' solution that is somewhat reasonable in price, they'll almost always take it over a per-view/per-byte/per-minute/per-whatever solution, you just have to look around to get that confirmed.
> Everyone agrees that the BBC makes great shows, so why shouldn't we cough up a quid or two when we download from their archives? This alone would let them finance future programming in spades, and a direct link between consumption and payment is a much better business model than wooly license fees linked to TV ownership.
Since evryone agrees (well, does everyone? I know many peopel do tho), why not just accept that in fact the current system with license fees does in fact work well?
> The same bl**dy way the other channels manage. ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5? None of my Licence Fee goes to them, and IMHO, most of the shows are better...
If the shows are better or not is debatable, but I simply refuse to watch channels that believe they have to throw comemrcials at me every 15 minutes (or every 20 when you are really lucky). If that is how the BBC should be funded as well, then you can count me out.
> You certainly sound like a Windows XP user or something.
Smae issue applies when using Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris/Irix/AIX/HP-U X or any other OS..
> Java has its own original look and feel that is difficult for Windows buffs to accept. If you are clever you will focus on how it works not how it looks.
And you JAVA peopel should get it into your head that applications need to fit in with the environment they are runnign on. Why the hell should that oen application look out of place?
And before you repeat what you said about looking at how it works instead of looks, you may want to take into account that the UI also dictates how a user operates a program, and as a result, how the user abnd program work together. Ensuring it fits in with the environment the user is using will make it a lot easier for the user to work with it, so it works better. Conclusion, even if you ignore the graphical aspect, it not workign the same as the rest of the UI is still a problem.
How often do you have to hear 'it looks uggly' before you realize that it is maybe not a valid technical issue in your world, but is somethign that matters to people? It would eb a really really really good idea to go try understand the issue.
> If a Fortran compiler were written in C++, would that still mean generated executables couldn't be faster than C++ at numeric code? No.
Could? yes, but only if your fortram implementation is substantially better then your c++ implementation. If you use an equally decent compiler for both, then there should be no difference, esp. for the specific example you give (because numeric operations, while easier to express in fortran maybe, are not very difficult to translate and compile.
The point of the grandparent post is the following (strippign names of languages so you 'whatever language of choice' zealots don't take offense:
You use A to implement B THen you use both A and B to implement C, and compare the outcome.
Now, because B is impemented in A, there is nothign B could do with C that A can't do with C. There may however be things that A can do with C while B can't do them.
The simple conclusion is that B will not be able to provide a better implementation of C then A for the simnple reason that A can produce B if thats what is needed to achieve the desired result.
This all becomes more interesting when you can implement A in B and B in A.
Bottomline, when the fortan compiler is implemented in C++, then there is no way for it to generae code that won't be possible to produce with the C++ compiler itself.
> Like another reply, there is a difference. I can speak VERY basic German for right now (been in country for, um...3 months now. I spoke it fluently as a kid, but its gone now. I actually speak more Dutch than I do German due to being stationed there for 2 years. I can understand German if I think about it, but usually the blank look while I think about what they're saying just frustrates the Germans.
Heh.. I do speak some German as well, enough for things like shopping etc.. but it seems not enough for actually being able to find me some work there... not that that is anywhere easy in Berlin anyway;)
Heh.. out of personal interest, how do you get around there without speakign the language? My girlfriend lives in Berlin, and since I speak some German, I can get around... I was initially just amazed at how few peopel would understand and speak English there (being Dutch myself, and beign used to most people speakign at least some English here)
I am familiar with the teachings of Buddha, and have spent quite some time in places where it is the predominant religion (China, Japan, Thailand).
What you and I can appreciate in it (I am not a Buddhist btw, but interested in many forms of religion) is the same thing that makes it difficult for many people, and results in a zillion variations that do try to answer where we came from, usually based on whatever the local traditions were before Buddhism found its way to a place.
Religion has traditionally given guidence and purpose in life by explaining things that were beyond reason and by telling what is good and what is bad.
Buddhism instead gives you a personal responsibility and teaches you the tools to find what is good and what is bad, that seems to be 'too much bother' for a lot of people.
Or realist. This has nothing to do with pacifism, but with the simple wisdom that prevention is better then a cure. That doesn't preclude using a cure when you did not manage to prevent.
> It's the freaking Olympics! No wonder it's declining in popularity if the Olympics Authorities are so clearly manipulating the Olympics in a for-profit environment like this; the Olympics are supposed to be more of a public institution than a privatized highly restricted event.
Which is how it was untill things got so out of hand financially that there was a simple choice between commercializing it or not having it happen at all.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your sentiment, but who is going to pay the bill?
> You certainly won't. They have no incentive for it. "Greater Arabia" is split into haves and have-nots according to which countries have oil wealth, and which are completely poor. Those with oil will never agree to join with non-oil areas, because then they'd need to share.
Oh so true, but not so relevant to the man on the street since common people there see very little of the wealth it can bring.
The thing is that while it is not easy to forsee now how such a thing could be solved, it is far less of a structural problem for unity then for exampel Europe has with its much stronger national awareness among populations in the different countries. Once the oil runs out, that part of the problem is simply gone.
I think you are lookign at a slightly different 'scale' here. Humanity lives its mortal life on earth as it is as a still lasting result of the mistake of the first 2 humans.
In that sense, humanity is still being punished for that mistake, but can be resqued from it individually depending on their performance in their mortal life.
It starts out with punishment, but you can be freed from it.
Just a small sidenote, thop there live soem Arabs in Iran undoubtedly, the large part of the population there is not of Arab origin.
Anyway...
Arab unity is a rather interesting one. There is a longing for a united Arabia among many common people in the Arab world, and opposition against it is more comming from tose in charge of the current countries there (for example, Both Syria and Iraq did strive for a united Arabia, but were competitors since both felt that they should be in charge)
Most countries there are at best some 85 or so years old, and have lived under a single ruler for longer then Europe managed since Roman days (even if it was Ottoman and not an Arab rule)
At any rate, while you may not find Arab unity in a political sense, or in the sense of actual coutnries joinign up, at least not in the forseeable future, you will find a lot of it among the people in the streets there. Their problem is as always leadership (they seem to be extremely good at ending up with extremely bad and corrupt leaders)
Nice bit of wisdom that is not very usabel outside the scope of strategy games really.
The best defense is preventing an attack alltogether instead of having to deal with it. For this you seldom need offensive weapons really.
All your reasoning results in is an arms race (regardless of scale), which is not a solution to anything other then the financial balance of arms producers.
> Not nuclear energy, literally nuclear bombs. Put a big shock absorber on the back of the space ship, drop a small nuke behind it (I dunno, 5 kilotons?) and detonate. Buckle up first, and hold onto the Jesus handle. Any other engines worth doing have serious theoretical problems at the moment. I've heard trip times of 100 years (to the various ~4 ly stars) for such a probe, and that's with technology we can build today. Of course, it also means stuff 600,000 of these nukes into orbit, so it's not without it's problems.
Ok, I see our definitions differ here, where you see a nuke as a nuclear explosive device, I see it as such a device applied as a bomb (a bomb has some more components then the explosive device and in for example the trigger mechanism there will be quite a difference between a bomb and a device used for propulsion).
I'd read what you explain as a form of nuclear energy, eventho the technology and the devices used are very similar to what is used for nuclear bombs. Using explosions to get energy from some form of fuel is nothing unusual, your average car engine uses it quite happily eventho there are good non explosive ways to get the energy from that same type of fuel also.
At any rate, it is of course a potentially usefull side effect of research into nuclear weapons.
> But before you dismiss this entirely, think about how many orders of magnitude we'd be skipping... the next best available tech makes it a 10,000 year journey. If only it were a 50 year round trip, I'd almost want to do it... imagine it being able to see broadcast back from a another star system, in your own lifetime.
I don't dismiss it, rather, I see how it might be valid, so I guess we actually agree eh?:)
Hence I also said that I see no problem with bio weapons research (or the technology for that matter) and mentioned the idea of a genetic 'bomb' to combat the theoretical situation, which is somethign that uses a technology that can also directly be used for biological weapons. The problem I see is using such technology to build weapons that are used to cause or threaten with mass destruction or elimibnation of population.
> Not nuclear energy, literally nuclear bombs. Put a big shock absorber on the back of the space ship, drop a small nuke behind it (I dunno, 5 kilotons?) and detonate. Buckle up first, and hold onto the Jesus handle. Any other engines worth doing have serious theoretical problems at the moment. I've heard trip times of 100 years (to the various ~4 ly stars) for such a probe, and that's with technology we can build today. Of course, it also means stuff 600,000 of these nukes into orbit, so it's not without it's problems.
Ok, I see our definitions differ here, I'd reard what you explain as a form of nuclear energy, eventho the technology and possibly the devices used are identical to nuclear bombs.
> But before you dismiss this entirely, think about how many orders of magnitude we'd be skipping... the next best available tech makes it a 10,000 year journey. If only it were a 50 year round trip, I'd almost want to do it... imagine it being able to see broadcast back from a another star system, in your own lifetime.
I don't dismiss it, rather, I see how it might be valid.
It is however the same as what makes the difference between a hunting weapon and a weapon used for fighting, its application, not the technology itself.
Hence I also said that I see no problem with bio weapons research (or the technology for that matter) but I do see a problem actually applying the technology for the use in weapons.
> #1 The Tau Cetans arrived, and contrary to current hippy theory, they're mean sons of bitches. Neither you nor I feel like being slaves for GribblegribbleDak, and so it might be convenient to have some weapons more advanced than thrown rocks.
I already said that I do see why weapons can be usefull in specific cases, so why trying to make that point? Besides, you will not have a clue whatsoever about how bio weps are going to work on Tau Cetans or what not.
> #2 Some mutant form of fungus, bacteria, or virus emerges into the world (and you're allowed to take a potshot here... it might very well be an escaped bioweapon). A cure is unlikely, and the infection spreads too rapidly to be contained via traditional quarantine methods. Assuming that it's still within a fairly small geographic area, and those people will die anyway (or already dead), it might be nice to be able to sterilize the outbreak. Despite bad Kevin Spacey movies, nukes are the only option for that.
Ugh no, not actually creating bio weapons will do a lot for preventing this scenario, and besides, bnot makign them does not mean that you shouldn't research them in case you get to deal with them anyway. A genetic 'bomb' aimed at such an organism is way more effective then using nukes. You may nto realize it, but nukes are NEVER EVER local in effect. You can steilize a small geographical area with them (or actually, void it from all life) but the effect of that will nto be limited to that small area. There is this nasty bit of radioactive material being spread by the atmosphere and such..
> #3 We want to build a probe capable of meaningful interstellar flight. I doubt that it will be manned, so I'm thinking something more like Voyager. Right now, the only non-science fiction drive would be nuclear. It's an engineering problem, maybe a logistical problem, not a theoretical one.
Nuclear energy != nuclear weapons. Two different applications of the same basic technology.
While I agree with most of your post, I felt I had to comment on one thing:
> Guns - meant for personal defense or defense of a nation against attack, mainly used to kill people.
Guns were made to kill, either for hunting or for offense. That also makes them usefull for defense, but that was not why they were invented. I suggest reading up on EUropean history between 1200 and 1600 to see in which environment they came to exist.
That doesn't remove the usability of guns btw, hunting is a very legitimate use of guns, which does include the killign aspect in a very legitimate way. Suggestign that guns were primarely invented for personal defense however is a false argument mostly used by gun fanatics.
> If your goal is to spread panic and fear throughout the enemy's civilian population as well as tie up their medical resources, biologicals are hard to beat.
If your goal is to blast them off the planet, nukes are very usefull... that doesn't mean that nukes are generally usefull or desired or such. They serve no purpose other then destruction and thread of destruction. Come back when you can point us at positive contributions of either biological or nuclear weapons (threatening peoiple is not positive, constructive or anything like that, eventho I do agree it is at times usefull)
Anonymous P2P networks serve purposes that are generally considered good, such as protecting freedom of speech (regardless of your country and government)
I don't think your comparison is a good one really.
A better one would be to compare it with knifes, and ban all knifes since they are made for cuttign things, and that allows peopel to kill eachother, which they undoubtedly will do with at times usign a knife (and thereby disregarding all other uses)
> Laserdiscs are basically raw digitized NTSC video so there is obviously a conversion process required before hand.
Laserdisk video is analog, they may (in the last incarnatiomn of the format) contain digital audio. Also, the format was pioneered by Phillips and Magnavox, and while the format has never been very popular in Europe, seeing how Phillips is a Dutch company, I am pretty sure that the first disks around were actually pal disks, at any rate, pal/ntsc/secam are all possible.
It is of course no problem to 'emulate' a movie Laserdisk and player by means of an mpeg-2 file and player (or any other format you desire) if what you mean is providing a functional equivalent based on the same content. The pre-processing required includes a frame by frame capture of the analog video and then compressing it in your format of choise. From there the step to emulating the functionality of an interactive player + disk is not that big, tho I never saw it in practise. Happen to have a link regarding emulating a pc connected interactive player + disk by any chance?
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> Your overly simplistic argument of A vs. B. vs. C ignores important details of code optimization - as I tried to point out in my original post.
Clearer now...or not?
It was already clear to me, but it seems you are entirely missing the point of my post here.
First of all, optimizing is a property of the compiler, not of the language, if you have a fortran compiler that optimizes a lot better then the C++ compiler, it is very likely to produce better code, no news there really.
What you are talking about is a limitation in the compilers you use.
Is it easier to optimize fortran well? I bet it is for quite a few cases, but I also bet that there is quite a bit of things you cannot do efficiently or at all in fortran without taking some big detour, so it all depends on the situation if that actually helps you or not.
Bottomline, both are compiled and assembled into some form of machine/bytecode. When you take soemthign that is implementable directly in both languages and have an equally well optimizing compiler, both will result in virtually equivalent machine/bytecode.
> (Another point is that one could certainly write a C++ compiler in Java - would that mean that C++ couldn't possibly be faster than Java?)
WHen you compile to the same target as the java compiler? nope. Given ideal implementations of both compilers, the result would be equally fast.
So language design? not really. compiler implementation is where the difference comes from, and that only in specific cases.
> UIManager.setLookAndFeel(UIManager.getSystemLookAn dFeelClassName());
And that actually works? If so.. I suggest you go inform all those JAVA developers out there who can't seem to manage.
> Looking & behaving like a native OS app is great, especially for consumer applications. However that really isn't a priority in the enterprise (where Java is strongest). It's a "nice to have" not a "must have". Just take a look at SAP or pretty much any enterprise portal project.
Uh no. having the same look and feel as any other app are very important for applications you use every now and then, and almost irrelevant for an app that you use almost all the time.
It is not such a problem to learn to use a different way of interacting if you are gouing to use it most of the time anyway.
To use somethign every now and then that works entirely different from the stuff you use often however takes quite some efford each time you use it.
If it is worth to put in the efford depends, but for many peopel the choice is simple: If 2 things do what they need to an acceptable level, they will take the one that they are most comfortable with, and that will without exception be the one that looks and feels the most familiar.
You may not liek that, thats fine. Please use what you think best for your situation, but at least try to understand what motivates the average user in their choices if you try to argue about that.
> That how MS has managed to dupe the average non-techical user into using the insecure, cobbled togather mess that windows is. Put the garbage in a pretty package, heavily market it and just to help ensure success, use illegial monopoly practices to take away choice
Maybe you'd care to reread my post, or are you suggesting that this applies to KDE, Gnome, Aqua and a whole host of other user environments that try to give a consistant look and feel?
Again, just try to get it into your head that people like their computer to look and work in a consistent way, NO MATTER THE OS.
> This is an old hobby horse of mine. I'm not a big fan of mandatary licensing fees, and the point made by parent (among others) is a good illustration of why.
.
please explain how it did that...
> I think the future of TV will involve less and less advertising and licensing fees. Instead, big content producers like the BBC will sell their archives on a pay-per-view basis. Yes, I know they are planning to offer them for free, but if they have any sense they'll bag the license fees and attach a small, reasonable price to each download.
Sounds good all... except for that reality seems to suggest something different..
TV uses more and more advertising and less and less license fees.
If there is anythign that consumers hate, it is payign over and over for thigns they already payed for, and if they can get a 'flat fee' solution that is somewhat reasonable in price, they'll almost always take it over a per-view/per-byte/per-minute/per-whatever solution, you just have to look around to get that confirmed
> Everyone agrees that the BBC makes great shows, so why shouldn't we cough up a quid or two when we download from their archives? This alone would let them finance future programming in spades, and a direct link between consumption and payment is a much better business model than wooly license fees linked to TV ownership.
Since evryone agrees (well, does everyone? I know many peopel do tho), why not just accept that in fact the current system with license fees does in fact work well?
Don't fix it if it ain't broken.
> The same bl**dy way the other channels manage. ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5? None of my Licence Fee goes to them, and IMHO, most of the shows are better...
If the shows are better or not is debatable, but I simply refuse to watch channels that believe they have to throw comemrcials at me every 15 minutes (or every 20 when you are really lucky). If that is how the BBC should be funded as well, then you can count me out.
> You certainly sound like a Windows XP user or something.
U X or any other OS..
Smae issue applies when using Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/NetBSD/Solaris/Irix/AIX/HP-
> Java has its own original look and feel that is difficult for Windows buffs to accept. If you are clever you will focus on how it works not how it looks.
And you JAVA peopel should get it into your head that applications need to fit in with the environment they are runnign on. Why the hell should that oen application look out of place?
And before you repeat what you said about looking at how it works instead of looks, you may want to take into account that the UI also dictates how a user operates a program, and as a result, how the user abnd program work together. Ensuring it fits in with the environment the user is using will make it a lot easier for the user to work with it, so it works better. Conclusion, even if you ignore the graphical aspect, it not workign the same as the rest of the UI is still a problem.
How often do you have to hear 'it looks uggly' before you realize that it is maybe not a valid technical issue in your world, but is somethign that matters to people? It would eb a really really really good idea to go try understand the issue.
> If a Fortran compiler were written in C++, would that still mean generated executables couldn't be faster than C++ at numeric code? No.
Could? yes, but only if your fortram implementation is substantially better then your c++ implementation. If you use an equally decent compiler for both, then there should be no difference, esp. for the specific example you give (because numeric operations, while easier to express in fortran maybe, are not very difficult to translate and compile.
The point of the grandparent post is the following (strippign names of languages so you 'whatever language of choice' zealots don't take offense:
You use A to implement B
THen you use both A and B to implement C, and compare the outcome.
Now, because B is impemented in A, there is nothign B could do with C that A can't do with C.
There may however be things that A can do with C while B can't do them.
The simple conclusion is that B will not be able to provide a better implementation of C then A for the simnple reason that A can produce B if thats what is needed to achieve the desired result.
This all becomes more interesting when you can implement A in B and B in A.
Bottomline, when the fortan compiler is implemented in C++, then there is no way for it to generae code that won't be possible to produce with the C++ compiler itself.
> Like another reply, there is a difference. I can speak VERY basic German for right now (been in country for, um...3 months now. I spoke it fluently as a kid, but its gone now. I actually speak more Dutch than I do German due to being stationed there for 2 years. I can understand German if I think about it, but usually the blank look while I think about what they're saying just frustrates the Germans.
;)
Heh.. I do speak some German as well, enough for things like shopping etc.. but it seems not enough for actually being able to find me some work there... not that that is anywhere easy in Berlin anyway
Heh.. out of personal interest, how do you get around there without speakign the language?
My girlfriend lives in Berlin, and since I speak some German, I can get around... I was initially just amazed at how few peopel would understand and speak English there (being Dutch myself, and beign used to most people speakign at least some English here)
I am familiar with the teachings of Buddha, and have spent quite some time in places where it is the predominant religion (China, Japan, Thailand).
What you and I can appreciate in it (I am not a Buddhist btw, but interested in many forms of religion) is the same thing that makes it difficult for many people, and results in a zillion variations that do try to answer where we came from, usually based on whatever the local traditions were before Buddhism found its way to a place.
Religion has traditionally given guidence and purpose in life by explaining things that were beyond reason and by telling what is good and what is bad.
Buddhism instead gives you a personal responsibility and teaches you the tools to find what is good and what is bad, that seems to be 'too much bother' for a lot of people.
> HIPPIE!!!!
Or realist. This has nothing to do with pacifism, but with the simple wisdom that prevention is better then a cure. That doesn't preclude using a cure when you did not manage to prevent.
> Isn't usually the other way around?
Just wondering, what makes you think that?
> It's the freaking Olympics! No wonder it's declining in popularity if the Olympics Authorities are so clearly manipulating the Olympics in a for-profit environment like this; the Olympics are supposed to be more of a public institution than a privatized highly restricted event.
Which is how it was untill things got so out of hand financially that there was a simple choice between commercializing it or not having it happen at all.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with your sentiment, but who is going to pay the bill?
> You certainly won't. They have no incentive for it. "Greater Arabia" is split into haves and have-nots according to which countries have oil wealth, and which are completely poor. Those with oil will never agree to join with non-oil areas, because then they'd need to share.
Oh so true, but not so relevant to the man on the street since common people there see very little of the wealth it can bring.
The thing is that while it is not easy to forsee now how such a thing could be solved, it is far less of a structural problem for unity then for exampel Europe has with its much stronger national awareness among populations in the different countries. Once the oil runs out, that part of the problem is simply gone.
I think you are lookign at a slightly different 'scale' here. Humanity lives its mortal life on earth as it is as a still lasting result of the mistake of the first 2 humans.
In that sense, humanity is still being punished for that mistake, but can be resqued from it individually depending on their performance in their mortal life.
It starts out with punishment, but you can be freed from it.
Just a small sidenote, thop there live soem Arabs in Iran undoubtedly, the large part of the population there is not of Arab origin.
Anyway...
Arab unity is a rather interesting one. There is a longing for a united Arabia among many common people in the Arab world, and opposition against it is more comming from tose in charge of the current countries there (for example, Both Syria and Iraq did strive for a united Arabia, but were competitors since both felt that they should be in charge)
Most countries there are at best some 85 or so years old, and have lived under a single ruler for longer then Europe managed since Roman days (even if it was Ottoman and not an Arab rule)
At any rate, while you may not find Arab unity in a political sense, or in the sense of actual coutnries joinign up, at least not in the forseeable future, you will find a lot of it among the people in the streets there. Their problem is as always leadership (they seem to be extremely good at ending up with extremely bad and corrupt leaders)
> The best defense is a good offense.
Nice bit of wisdom that is not very usabel outside the scope of strategy games really.
The best defense is preventing an attack alltogether instead of having to deal with it. For this you seldom need offensive weapons really.
All your reasoning results in is an arms race (regardless of scale), which is not a solution to anything other then the financial balance of arms producers.
hrm. gotta love SLashdot timing out while posting and then going for a db update (???) ah well.. duplicate post, please ignore ;P
> Not nuclear energy, literally nuclear bombs. Put a big shock absorber on the back of the space ship, drop a small nuke behind it (I dunno, 5 kilotons?) and detonate. Buckle up first, and hold onto the Jesus handle. Any other engines worth doing have serious theoretical problems at the moment. I've heard trip times of 100 years (to the various ~4 ly stars) for such a probe, and that's with technology we can build today. Of course, it also means stuff 600,000 of these nukes into orbit, so it's not without it's problems.
:)
Ok, I see our definitions differ here, where you see a nuke as a nuclear explosive device, I see it as such a device applied as a bomb (a bomb has some more components then the explosive device and in for example the trigger mechanism there will be quite a difference between a bomb and a device used for propulsion).
I'd read what you explain as a form of nuclear energy, eventho the technology and the devices used are very similar to what is used for nuclear bombs. Using explosions to get energy from some form of fuel is nothing unusual, your average car engine uses it quite happily eventho there are good non explosive ways to get the energy from that same type of fuel also.
At any rate, it is of course a potentially usefull side effect of research into nuclear weapons.
> But before you dismiss this entirely, think about how many orders of magnitude we'd be skipping... the next best available tech makes it a 10,000 year journey. If only it were a 50 year round trip, I'd almost want to do it... imagine it being able to see broadcast back from a another star system, in your own lifetime.
I don't dismiss it, rather, I see how it might be valid, so I guess we actually agree eh?
Hence I also said that I see no problem with bio weapons research (or the technology for that matter) and mentioned the idea of a genetic 'bomb' to combat the theoretical situation, which is somethign that uses a technology that can also directly be used for biological weapons. The problem I see is using such technology to build weapons that are used to cause or threaten with mass destruction or elimibnation of population.
It is the application, not the technology.
> Not nuclear energy, literally nuclear bombs. Put a big shock absorber on the back of the space ship, drop a small nuke behind it (I dunno, 5 kilotons?) and detonate. Buckle up first, and hold onto the Jesus handle. Any other engines worth doing have serious theoretical problems at the moment. I've heard trip times of 100 years (to the various ~4 ly stars) for such a probe, and that's with technology we can build today. Of course, it also means stuff 600,000 of these nukes into orbit, so it's not without it's problems.
Ok, I see our definitions differ here, I'd reard what you explain as a form of nuclear energy, eventho the technology and possibly the devices used are identical to nuclear bombs.
> But before you dismiss this entirely, think about how many orders of magnitude we'd be skipping... the next best available tech makes it a 10,000 year journey. If only it were a 50 year round trip, I'd almost want to do it... imagine it being able to see broadcast back from a another star system, in your own lifetime.
I don't dismiss it, rather, I see how it might be valid.
It is however the same as what makes the difference between a hunting weapon and a weapon used for fighting, its application, not the technology itself.
Hence I also said that I see no problem with bio weapons research (or the technology for that matter) but I do see a problem actually applying the technology for the use in weapons.
> #1 The Tau Cetans arrived, and contrary to current hippy theory, they're mean sons of bitches. Neither you nor I feel like being slaves for GribblegribbleDak, and so it might be convenient to have some weapons more advanced than thrown rocks.
I already said that I do see why weapons can be usefull in specific cases, so why trying to make that point? Besides, you will not have a clue whatsoever about how bio weps are going to work on Tau Cetans or what not.
> #2 Some mutant form of fungus, bacteria, or virus emerges into the world (and you're allowed to take a potshot here... it might very well be an escaped bioweapon). A cure is unlikely, and the infection spreads too rapidly to be contained via traditional quarantine methods. Assuming that it's still within a fairly small geographic area, and those people will die anyway (or already dead), it might be nice to be able to sterilize the outbreak. Despite bad Kevin Spacey movies, nukes are the only option for that.
Ugh no, not actually creating bio weapons will do a lot for preventing this scenario, and besides, bnot makign them does not mean that you shouldn't research them in case you get to deal with them anyway. A genetic 'bomb' aimed at such an organism is way more effective then using nukes. You may nto realize it, but nukes are NEVER EVER local in effect. You can steilize a small geographical area with them (or actually, void it from all life) but the effect of that will nto be limited to that small area. There is this nasty bit of radioactive material being spread by the atmosphere and such..
> #3 We want to build a probe capable of meaningful interstellar flight. I doubt that it will be manned, so I'm thinking something more like Voyager. Right now, the only non-science fiction drive would be nuclear. It's an engineering problem, maybe a logistical problem, not a theoretical one.
Nuclear energy != nuclear weapons. Two different applications of the same basic technology.
While I agree with most of your post, I felt I had to comment on one thing:
> Guns - meant for personal defense or defense of a nation against attack, mainly used to kill people.
Guns were made to kill, either for hunting or for offense. That also makes them usefull for defense, but that was not why they were invented. I suggest reading up on EUropean history between 1200 and 1600 to see in which environment they came to exist.
That doesn't remove the usability of guns btw, hunting is a very legitimate use of guns, which does include the killign aspect in a very legitimate way. Suggestign that guns were primarely invented for personal defense however is a false argument mostly used by gun fanatics.
> If your goal is to spread panic and fear throughout the enemy's civilian population as well as tie up their medical resources, biologicals are hard to beat.
If your goal is to blast them off the planet, nukes are very usefull... that doesn't mean that nukes are generally usefull or desired or such. They serve no purpose other then destruction and thread of destruction. Come back when you can point us at positive contributions of either biological or nuclear weapons (threatening peoiple is not positive, constructive or anything like that, eventho I do agree it is at times usefull)
Anonymous P2P networks serve purposes that are generally considered good, such as protecting freedom of speech (regardless of your country and government)
I don't think your comparison is a good one really.
A better one would be to compare it with knifes, and ban all knifes since they are made for cuttign things, and that allows peopel to kill eachother, which they undoubtedly will do with at times usign a knife (and thereby disregarding all other uses)
Oh, and on another note..
> Laserdiscs are basically raw digitized NTSC video so there is obviously a conversion process required before hand.
Laserdisk video is analog, they may (in the last incarnatiomn of the format) contain digital audio. Also, the format was pioneered by Phillips and Magnavox, and while the format has never been very popular in Europe, seeing how Phillips is a Dutch company, I am pretty sure that the first disks around were actually pal disks, at any rate, pal/ntsc/secam are all possible.
It is of course no problem to 'emulate' a movie Laserdisk and player by means of an mpeg-2 file and player (or any other format you desire) if what you mean is providing a functional equivalent based on the same content. The pre-processing required includes a frame by frame capture of the analog video and then compressing it in your format of choise. From there the step to emulating the functionality of an interactive player + disk is not that big, tho I never saw it in practise. Happen to have a link regarding emulating a pc connected interactive player + disk by any chance?
With regards to the Laserdisk format, take a peek here: History of the Laserdisk format