It seems to me that much of what you are saying with regard to Dell being primarily a manufacturing company, thus basing their decision on total cost (as opposed to market perceptions) is largely true. Assuming that it is, this seems to lead to the interesting question of what is the most efficient manufacturing company building AMD systems? What other "AMD inside" firms are most likely to use the "Dell strategy" to improve their productivity and eventually put pressure on their nearest competitors in terms of cost? It would seem that until such a firm emerges, Dell will face no serious pressure to sell AMD processors.
It is not personally important to me one way or the other now. I use two Dell machines but will most likely buy a new Opteron for my next desktop purchase). However, as a consumer I generally tend to benefit when competition is alive and well in the market place, so although I am typically looking for the best product at the best price, I don't like to always buy from the same company, even if they have a good product because in the long run I benefit more by spreading my purchases among a variety of vendors. As consumers we must be wary when we conclude that the lower prices from near monopolistic (very large) vendors will always be the best. Although it may be true now, it may be that in the future they will never be as low as what they might have been had competition remained in the market place.
Laws of thermodynamics and entropic considerations ultimately dictate that organized (non-random) systems will eventually decay toward randomness.
However, the question with regard to rate is of the utmost importance in self-replicating systems. Bacteria in a sense do not die, in that they clone themselves (albeit with sometimes intermittant reproduction through genetic exchange with other bacteria) and hence in a sense are immortal (they make identical copies of themselves which persist more or less indefinitely).
Studies of the aging process (ie genes controling catabolism relative to anabolism) in eucaryotic organisms suggest that genetic systems have evolved genes that actually shorten life span. Hence, the question arises as to why, since one might initially assume that being able to live forever (like bacteria) would seem a more effective reproductive strategy.
It turns out that there appears to be selection for genes that produce shorter life spans in situations in which the presence of such genes increases the probability of survival of the offspring, even if their activity/presence takes place at the expense of the parent. It would seem that perpuation of self-replicating systems necessarily requires the need to take some risks to overcome the reality of dynamic environments. Ones current genetic makeup although nearly optimal (or more apply sufficiently near optimal) in the current environment may not be so in a future environment. Hence, a slightly different genetic makeup in ones offspring may be selected for in some future environment. Since prediction of exactly what the future environment might be is to some degree uncertain, most sexual organisms are capable of having more than one offspring, thereby increasing variety and hence the probability that at least some will be nearly optimally suited to survive.
Keep in mind, however, this is only an evolutionary strategy. While only those gene combinations that are successfull in reproducing will persist in subsequent generations, there is no guarantee that a particular gene combination will survive.
As for your arguments regarding "genes not grading anything in levels of mportance or having a perspective", this is really little more than a matter of semantics. The adult phenotype is nothing more than the product of its genes acting in an environment during its ontogeny. While it might seem to we are something more than our genes, at a molecular level there is nothing about us that is not the direct result of metabolic processes that occur (or occurred) as the direct result of the collective response/relative control of our genes to our environment. However, when you consider the shear number of different variatnts of tens of thousands of human genes and the incredible diversity of their responses to slightly different kinds of environments, the complexity is truely something to marvel at; so much so that it is hardly worth worrying about whether or not "something" (like some kind on mystical spiritual essesence or soul or other such unecessary nonsense) is missing.
When you consider all the other possibilities of problems facing life on planet earth, the probability galactic gama ray bursts being a serious problem is far closer to zero than things like global warming, mass habitat destruction, pollution, importune volcanic erruptions, tsunamis, nuclear war, etc.
As for you loosing your own life to such a cause, as opposed to some other (old age, cancer, heart disease, HIV, being killed in an accident, earthquake, hurricane, starvation, being mugged by a politician,...) this ought to be one of the least of your worries.
I hate to say it, because I really feel that space science along with ALL other sciences are getting the short shrift with regard to funding by our society (or all others for that matter), but there seems to be an underlying desperation among some in the space science community to attempt to justify the relevance of their science by somehow attempting to link it to the importance of detecting of really bad things that COULD POSSIBLY happen should the universe go awry. While scare tactics work in politics, military and religious matters, this is hardly the way to build longterm rational support for science. Besides, there is a far higher probability of BAD things that are almost certain to happen given current trends in human behavior. We need to spend more "scientific and emotional capital" focusing on these.
The debate over whether a killer asteroid killed the dinosaurs is still largely unsettled, notwithstanding the small industry that has emerged producing all the niffty graphic animations that now pass for popular science. The controversy stems from the fossil record (mostly in China) providing evidence that the "causal event(s?)" was not as instantaneous as once believed. When you consider that the Orodovician occurred MUCH further back in time than the end of the Cretaceous, when fossil evidence is even less clear in part because the relative fequency of hard-bodied vs soft-bodied organisms is much less well understood, its far too early to start jumping to conclusions.
Given the state of dispair in the astrophysical community with the Bush budgets and the very near zero profile or interest or understanding our political leadership shows toward science of any kind, I can understand why such a letter would be published in a scientific journal. Nonetheless, a few pencil/computer calculations hardly make for convincing or even interesting earth history.
If scientists are now going to bring out cosmological causes to explain every mass extinction, we might as well also start invoking the hand of god as a potential cause for all historical events and let Newton roll over in his grave (and take his science with him). Besides, even if it were true, there would be absolutely nothing mankind's technology is likely to come up with in the next 1000 (100,0000,000?) years that could do any thing about such a catastrophe.
I would argue that at this stage of human history, it is far more critical that we motivate cosmological (and other) research on issues that are directly relevant to understanding higher probability events that are much much much much more likely to have significant relevance to the "near-term" future of humanity, such as global warming, loss of coral reefs and forests, effects of pollution, lack of cheap non-polluting energy resources, limits to human intelligence, etc. Frankly put, humanity is running out of time on a far shorter time scale than is probably relevant to cosmological purturbations of the universe of the kind discussed in the letter. To direct significant resources toward study of such probably infrequent perturbations would IN NEARLY ALL PROBABILITY result in our succumbing to other more immediate problems long before the "BIG ONE HITS". So if you are not also busying worrying about ghosts (after all science can never entirely rule out the possibility that the big green ugly people-pestering ones are not the source of all our problems), you might instead worry more
A point of the original article and known from various studies in neuroscience is that "memory" and "mental activity" can not be fully distinguished from the "architecture" of the nerves themselves. Neurons are connected via synapses on dendrites and connections are being formed and reshaped (new topologies of interconnectness. Thus, as differential activity ensues, differential connectedness and synapse development occurs concomitantly. Some neuronal paths will be selected for, while others will be selected against. Hence, "memories" may be stored as "architecture" as well as by the multiple biochemical pathways modulating the formation and "strength" of different "circuits" that ultimately "add" or "multiply" the effect of the firing patterns on the genetic machinery in the nucleus of the neuron, which are critical to the maintenance of longterm memory. It may be a fundamental mistake to assume that "memories" are individual molecules, even though many molecules ultimately are ultimately involved in their existence.
The article is interesting in that the neuron may in some respects by acting like an antenna, whose cellular/genetic machinery and morphology (architecture of dendrites and synapse topology) are designed to adaptively differentially "tune" for different action potential input/output logic via differential signal strength from relative importance of different connections, different dendrite size, and different numbers of synapses.
Perhaps this may suggest that the path to wisdom is to be found by becoming a much better "listener". Attention to subtle nuance may be far more important than our current political culture admits.
This might also go a long way towards explaining why different species have such different brains, yet brains whose underlying organization is so similar.
Maybe the appellate court will in its wisdom outlaw the posting of prices on the internet so that it doesn't lead to unwanted competition. That way they can do what a million communists could never do. Prevent capitalism in order to preserve it.
IMHO, if the plaintiffs are worried about such a horrible thing as allowing their competitors to see their prices and who then use that information to out compete them with lower prices, the plaintiffs deserve only one thing: to go bankrupt.
If they are unable to compete on price then they should deny the defendants their advantage and not post their prices on the internet. Or failing that indicate what additional benefits the buyer gets for the extra money they must pay to do business with them.
If the plaintiffs actually win appeal on this basis, capitalism as we have known it is dead. Following such logic to other situations (one competitor using the other's higher prices to advantage), it can only lead to a system in which buyers will only be allowed to see the price of any product, until after they have bought it. Comparison shopping will for all intents and purposes have been adjudicated out of existence. For some reason I find it difficult to imagine a situation in which a competitor uses the public statement of pricing information as beyond "reasonable expectations" of an ordinary consumers. Most ordinary consumers usually comparison shop and when they do, they take price into account.
Only in America where political hacks are appointed as judges precisely because they are political hacks, could one expect an email page posted for public consumption be ruled a confidential document.
Then again, since that is how are political campaigns now work. Why not spread it to all "purchases". True capitalism is just about dead in America already anyway. It is evolving into fascism, a far more stable system. Ironic that Kurt Godel the famous logician predicted this decades ago.
This should help them in their campaign with regard to total cost of ownership of their systems versus Linux!
Its part of the new media blitz. Its all the rage these days. Get ignorant suckers to believe they are getting something great, when its only to charge them more for something that doesn't work well or at all in the first place.
Science is funded by a tiny fraction of the results of human activity. Even though its effect can be tremendous, it can not alter the laws of physics and biology. One must also keep in mind that science usually works at cross purposes. For example some scientists are working hard to discover ways to keep stains from attaching to clothing, carpets, and other surfaces. This is very good science and has produced some tremendously successful products. Likewise, for nuclear power, smelting, etc. However, when these ideas are implemented in a commercial environment it turns out (read latest Science), that the chemistry of these compounds is result in substantial pollution from various breakdown products and effect Arctic ecology (the Arctic Sea is a largely closed sink for the numerous rivers that drain into it from both Eurasia and North America. Hence, such biproducts accumulate in the tissues of organims, with the greatest accumulation in the top predators (=man) as a result of the laws of bioaccumulation.
For science to overcome such inherent cross purposes and to be of net positive help it would take enormous sums of money to tackle ongoing problems, money in amounts that no one has, much less be willing to spend. For example scientists have quite a few pretty good ideas about how to keep carbon dioxide from rising to the point we overheat the planet to the point those resources we need to survive disappear. The cost of implementation of such ideas (say creating a huge carbon sink forest) is so large that no one could afford to pay for it. Of course this would assume the present administration would be even rational enough to consider expanding the parks system several hundreds of thousands of times to sequester enough carbon to bring the current production of carbon dioxide into balance. Presently, our own government is eager to drill in the remaining wildlife refuges to extract more carbon to burn, more public lands to mine, and more timber to cut down in the name of "saving the forests" because its budget is in deficit and it otherwise has no money to give to campaign contributors to sustain itself.
Colonization of the moon or other planets would only continue to create more environmental problems on earth as it would require vast sums to be spent on activity that directly negatively effects the environment of earth (remember most of you living in the western US are already drinking water that is substantially polluted by byproducts of rocket propellant). Such hazards are typically minimized, until the evidence to the contrary becomes so overwhelming we eventually stop creating them. Note, however, we seldom mitigate the effects, which means the half-life of the byproducts largely dictate when the problem will be fully "solved". But even with solid science in hand, typically it takes years to overcome skillful PR campaigns and public ignorance. Just how warm will it have to get before the US changes its policy on global warming? Will it be soon enough to prevent the inertia of natural systems from finishing us off?
In principle one can use differential equations to determine when we will reach critical thresholds given current trends. Current scientific debate centers on what exact constitute the thresholds, how do we measure current trends, and what are the relative rates of effects that may mitigate these trends (if any).
Remember, global warming is only one of the environmental problems we face, if we are to avoid extinction. Biodiversity loss and invasion by non-indiginous are as equally intractable, if not more critical, as they more immediately impact the supports systems upon which humans depend. On both of these fronts current science is virtually powerless to resist the onslaught of the thoughtless and the greedy, who are multiplying quickly and whose environmental footprint, ironically enhanced through science, is growing even larger.
This astronaut is just one more well-meaning but wrong advocate of
While this may be true for some kinds of research it is definitely not for others. In biology one typically needs to have a correct identification before the biology of a given species can be investigated. Identification is closely tied to the names given by various authors, but is not identical with it.
If you do taxonomy, uncorrected OCR would be of little value, as a single letter difference is sufficient to treat the scientific names of organisms as different. One needs to know the precise spelling used as well as the context in which it is used to understand the concept of species the author had in mind (or sometimes the identification of the organism in question, depending on the complexity of the taxonomy).
Presently, if you look for all that is known about a species on google, you will often get a lot of records that relate to that species. However, you may also get records that either relate to another species whose name is a homonym or one that has been misidentified (incorrect name applied). You will not get all the records of the species for which an incorrect spelling of the name has been applied or which was treated under another name, which while technically a correct identification is a junior/senior synonym of the species you searched for.
Uncritical use of taxonomic names resulting from uncorrected OCR in a research context has the potential to create considerable taxonomic confusion. In a world that is rapidly loosing biodiversity and saving what remains rests largely on the correct identification of those organisms being studied, this is not an insignificant matter. IMHO it actually represents one of the greatest challenges facing mankind, particularly if you consider that we are often at the top of the food chain and we really know very little about the myriads of organisms that make up the ecology upon which we depend for survival but which most of us simply take for granted. Such ignorance will not serve us well in a future (or present) in which our enviornment has been (is being) severely degraded.
Hence, the recommendation that the uncorrected OCR be tied to the original image file from which it was produced is critical.
a limited ability to stay focused on any particular issue and discuss it credibly at any length before one of its members gets the whole flock diverted onto a thread totally unrelated to the original post.
Is it really true that a slashdotter is just someone with an extremely limited attention span?
Anyway, I love the Dutch. Pieter Bleeker, the greatest ichthyologist ever was Dutch. I would love them more, but I went to Holland and got talked into buying a thousand dollars worth of tulips, which I dutifully planted, only to watch the squirrels in my yard dig up and eat every bulb I planted. I didn't see a single flower.
Its easy for the legislature to fight the bureaucrats if they want to. There are several choices: 1) withhold their budgets until the right folks are fired or 2) decrease their budget by a factor (slightly larger than 1) times the amount of the M$ contract. The logic being if they have that kind of money to waste, they don't need that large of a budget in the first place. Then they can spend the difference on science. Scientists will in general find good things to do with money that would otherwise be wasted.
The hard part is resisting the bribery and other enticements.
You are joking right? Murphy was an optimist.
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Offshoring IT
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Your argument that investing abroad is relatively unsafe seems rather peculiar to me given current sociological, financial, and political trends.
The U.S. has the highest rate of murder and deaths due to gun violence than any other industrialized country. Northern Ireland gave us a run for our money for many years, but of late the worst of their political troubles seem behind them and they are falling from challenging us on this point? Regrettably, Iraq seems to be the new nation attempting to challenge our lead in this unfortunate statistic, although the statistics are skewed since we are responsible for many of these deaths (about 100,000 by some estimates; about 10,000 - 20,000, if you prefer to believe only in official Pentagon accounts).
Health care costs are rising as US longevity is leveling off (or falling in some regions of the US; infant deaths are on the rise again throughout the US, evidently in part due to the limited availability of vaccines). With the passage of new rebooblican efforts to better support the drug and insurance industries, we can expect even more Americans to be priced out of the market for health care (now rising at about 7.5%/yr) or be kept out those few courts of justice for which political appointees haven't already made the notion of justice quaint or new "tort reform" laws written by industry lobbies are designed to guarantee. In any event, your chance of dying for lack of affordable medical care is increasing (unless of course you are a politician and then you can borrow other people's money and let them pay for it). Virtually the rest of the industrialized world has state supported health care, so their competitive advantage will only increase relative to ours.
Our current account deficit continues to increase even with the drop of our currency, so in its wisdom our new rebooblican congress has found it necessary over the last year to increase the US debt ceiling 3 times to keep their charge card in working order (one would have thought that borrowing more money in the last 4 years than all other previous administrations put together have in the history of the country would have caused the rebooblican leadership to pause, lest it make the notion of "conservatism" seem more like a mask at a costume ball than a policial ideology, but no matter one will never see an embarrassed rebooblican). In any event, this should guarantee that our currency will continue to weaken at a faster rate. Current US fiscal and monetary policy really only now consist increasing the amount congress and the white (wash?) house can borrow to finance its debt. The fed continues only to create money just a little faster than we send it abroad to make our interest payments in a frantic effort to avoid the inevitable financial panic that will come when the currency falls so much that inflation will rise rapidly requiring the Fed to raise interest rates precipitously relative to real economic growth. Don't worry this probably won't happen until the 3rd quarter of 2005 and it won't start in the US markets first.
The value of the dollar is dropping and consequently, any dollar denominated asset invested in the US is likely to be relative looser, at least over the next 5 years (no one in DC is predicting a surplus before then, are you?). Even today, the White House suggested they were going to put the extra money needed for "solving" the social security crisis on the rebooblican charge card (you know, they charge, you and future generations pay). Add this to those extra tax breaks for wealthy campaign contributors (that really don't start to kick in until this tax year) and you can be pretty sure our currency is headed for the cliff. You are better off putting rupees under your mattress rather than dollars for a good rate of return. Those buying our debt are already beginning to clamber for something more tangible than worthless paper backed up only by debt they largely already own.
The good news is that as the dollar drops, it is more likely that foreigners will b
Re: One learns something useful everyday. Thanks.
on
Preview of KDE 3.4
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· Score: 1
Great, I guess I just didn't give it enough time to search through large directories to see the results appear.
Is there any way to control the size of the previews? They are so small on my system that I can hardly see them.
Does the new version support viewing graphic files as thumbnails in the new version?
Presently, one must run a photo or image viewer program to get a view of image files. When you have directories full of images, it is really helpful to be able to see a thumbnail view rather than having to open each file individually. Having the option to select "thumbnail" view directly in the KDE (ie in View - Details the ability to check "thumbnail" support/options that would permit all the images in an entire directory to be viewed as thumbnails. Of course, this would need to include support for the variety of image files available, as in Gimp.
I agree. I too love it, but... If not this version, perhaps the next, the KDE team really needs to focus on running the whole thing through a profiler and speed up the bottlenecks.
More internal support for.mpg and other multimedia file viewing directly from Konqueror would also be a plus. The thing hangs on more and more webpage content these days. I hope this is remedied in the new version.
My sister-in-law also teaches special education for children with low IQ's (50). The NCLB Act requires her to fill paper work each day that takes her about one-hour and a half (she has about 30 kids in her class). She is also mandated to give them standardized test, which of course they fail.
None of these kids can read at the 3rd grade level and likely never will. As with regards to intellect they will always be left behind, regardless of all the posturing by politicians. There is no expectation these children will ever improve their test scores, yet the taxpayers are penalized by spending money on such nonsense.
This is why I have been investing in child testing companies. They are making a fortune. This is what the No Child Left Behind Act is really all about anyway (of yes, of course these vendors know they are expected to provide a kickback if they expect to get their contracts renewed). Its all part of the game.
If you haven't figured this out, well you've just been left behind.
As currently written the law will make it a felony to willfully avoid a commercial by either "fast-forwarding" or "using other means to avoid recognizing intellectual content". Hence, a bathroom break during a commercial can be taken as evidence that you have violated the law.
Don't worry, as punishment is no more than 5 years in prison and a fine of not more than $500,000.
To insure compliance there are a number of new regulations providing tax breaks in the most recent budget bill for companies which choose to install television cameras into their video products. This will allow companies to monitor whether or not customers are watching the commercials or not. New internal regulations require any company observing non-compliant behavior must by law report the transgression to law enforcement authorities.
Again, don't worry. Sources following the story suggest that insiders close to the legislation are saying there will be an opportunity to avoid prosecution, so long as an appropriate political contribution is made.
Don't mean to be rude, but why does little stuff like corporate patent law even matter when we now live in a society where the House Majority Leader can remain in his position even when indicted?
You are joking aren't you, or is this just another attempt to look away from the larger issue that such disputes are now just arbitrated in favor of the highest bidder or are just to be debated into sterility on TV or the internet in a way that diffuses any focused collective effort at intellect? Let's not think, as otherwise we might find out its too late! Great motto, I'll be home with the pretzels eagerly awaiting the rapture.
Can anyone name a successful dialog turning back the Darwinian tide?
Don't you just love how this is all turning out.
Do hope you recover soon.
Remember to pray for those who don't pray for DeLay. After all they are just aiding and abetting aren't they, and to aid and abet a crime is a sin, no? May god have mercy on their souls.
You seem to imply that the notion of "indicator species" is scientifically vacuous and that it is really, in essence, political smoke.
Not only are you wrong, but earth history is already showing that this point of view is both tragically wrong and ultimately dangerous.
There are a great many species that for a variety of reasons respond with greater sensitivity to environmental changes and trends than do others. In the vast majority of cases such species are species now at risk. You might not think this a big deal, but keep in mind that you're every breath and every scrap of food you eat ultimately depends on the healthy well-being of little organisms, the vast majority of which will never win a popularity contest, and whose very existence will likely never even be recognized by the average scientifically illiterate human (the vast majority by far). Ignore this at your peril and definitely at the peril of your children and grandchildren should you have any.
The sad truth is that given the way we evolve via natural selection, it will take a lot of natural selection to show you just how wrong you are. Be assured, however, such natural selection will take place and you will be shown to be wrong. You don't have to believe me, just go out and count frogs and see for yourself.
After reading this comment why do I get this feeling that the writer hardly understands what science is. It is not just a bunch of folks getting together to write about their "finding" nor "sucessfully" showing a point of view.
Science is about the testing and repudiation of ideas, given certain (hopefully supportable/logical) premises. Science is about disproof more than it is about "proof". The notion of expectation can only be couched in the context of the logical consequences of the assumptions made and their "verification" or "falsification" based upon the results of observations (hopefully measurements that can be repeatedly and precisely made) used to "test" these expectations. Science is a way of knowing it is not a particular true or false finding per se. Good and bad are really irrelevant adjectives to ascribe to science, except in as much as they relate (or not) to the tests made given the assumptions made.
For example, scientists don't give creationism any credence and take Darwinism not as a theory in the sense of a hypothesis (as generally thought by the lay community) but as a scientific theory (one that has passed the most stringent testing and can be regarded as much a fact as the idea of a brightly shining sun in the center of our solar system). No mater where or how you look you will always find evidence of the correctness of such "facts" and never find ANY observations that contradict them. Creationists could disprove Darwin's central thesis by finding ONLY ONE observation that does not comport his hypothesis. Scientists don't take creationism since 1) no creationist has ever found such a fact and 2) those notions such as that "God was responsible for it all" could just as well apply to the chair they are sitting on, or a wall-clock, or an underwater yodeler since in no case could provide any objective (consistently measureable) evidence to the contrary.
The world of science is analogous to the mathematician's notion of a counter example. All you need is one to show that an idea is untenable (not logically consistent with the initial assumptions/axioms made.
These ideas are quite independent of grant money or points of view or debates such as "how many fairies can dance on the head of a pin". It must be understood that science can only answer a limited (but very, very large) number of questions. It can answer only questions that are scientifically posed. Is their a god does not fall into this category, since there is no means of establishing an independent perspective that would permit a falsifiable hypothesis to be contrcuted (ie one that has the potential of being proved false). Such questions are irrelevant to science. Others such as "is the earth getting warmer and if it is, is human activity making it hotter? are very much scientific questions. It will not be decided by "points of view" or "talking points" or "balancing the pros or cons" or "debates by experts", "by the guys who get the grants", even though to the layman much of science is viewed in this way. Rather it is a winnowing out of explanations that are not plausible given known evidence (measurements repeatedly taken). It is thus the cogency and consistency of ideas logically considered that allows us to establish scientific truth.
The wonderful thing is that like mathematics, its really only about clear thinking and every one can have a go at it (although obviously natural selection did not leave us all equally endowed). Scientific discovery is not about finding facts per say, it is about a way of knowing what to think of these "facts".
Presumably, for us to shoot down another country's platform would be an act of war. War planners, thus would want a "failsafe" design for such a defensive system so that it could be sure to clean out all platforms in the "earth shadow" as well. The point being that to be sure its an effective deterrent to any space-based platform zapper, one would only need to a) place a few sufficiently large weapons in orbit or b) add many more small ones, c) or both and and b.
Actually, I was attempting to be absurd with respect to the mega-tonnage, but only to demonstrate that once we start down this road, we shouldn't be surprised at the potential responses others might make. We should also keep in mind that responses such as putting a few warheads in orbit would be a lot less costly or technically difficult to employ than a system required to shoot them down.
A great number of scientists are already on record opposing work on space based interceptors because it would be extremely difficult to actually explode the target. The tests conducted to date, still remain highly contrived.
This reminds me a lot of the mobile MX system that was going to be build early in the Carter administration. It was "the raging fad" of defense contractors. That was until it dawned on a few folks whose grey matter was still working, that their was a significant danger of having nuclear warheads traveling around the country on the highways and on railroads all day and night, perhaps even greater than war time of the nuclear weapons themselves.
Presumably, "defensive" warheads could be attached to a variety of orbiting platforms that could perform other work as well, ie. global weather monitoring, land use monitoring, space science/photography ect. As you correctly point out they could be a lot smaller. The point being that they could still serve as an effective deterrent against space-based zappers. In any event the development of such weapons by the US would only serve as an incentive for other countries to park more platforms above the US in geosynchronous orbit.
Of course, this doesn't even consider the problem that nations who know they can't defeat us and will be be destroyed by our nuclear weapons, might not simply in the end consider the suicide bomber strategy and simply build a very large, very dirty bomb that will so fill the atmosphere with Sr 90 and Pu that nothing would survive no matter where it was detonated. No space-based weapons system would be able to counter-act or intercept such a weapon.
But isn't this is really only about letting out some contract work among friends anyway? Don't expect to be reading soon about the "plan" for dealing with any of the consequences of such (no bid?) contracts. Besides, what's the difference if there isn't enough money to go around for other priorities? Besides, we wouldn't be leaving ANY children behind.
Remember in the new scheme of things in the second term, yours is not to question why, yours is but to pay and die.
It is ironic that the US should attempt this as we have more orbiting platforms than any other nation.
Of course, the least expensive and rapid option to deter such a program is for other nations to place very large (say 3000-1000 mgt warheads) in space that will explode on impact from any incoming projectile. That way all US space-based weaponry will become obsolete the moment it is used. The fact that these might go off due to random impacts from meteors, would simply be the cost of doing business, but then the PR advantage would be immense. They would be able to blame us for forcing them to defend themselves.
The irony of the Chinese defence will be that we will pay for it for them by buying at WalMart.
Oh well, I guess we might as well get used to the progress a second Bush term is about to provide us. Glad I loaded up on Boeing stock before the election as at least I'll be able to party during the upcoming wiennie roast.
The idea is for governmnet projects an plans in Iraq to be as ineffecient as possible so that more contracts can be granted and political cronies can get rich. Guess you haven't heard about the Haliburton saga. That way a portion of the profit can be used to buy more electronic voting machines. Come on, get with the program.
Yours is not to question why, yours is but to pay and die!
More simple-minded bullshit put out by sponsored "independent thinktanks". These figures don't include the tax kickbacks to corporations nor do these include detailed itemization of what taxpayers get for their money. This is hardly surprising, since this is the kind of information these subsidized "independent" thinkers use to pull the wool over the eyes of the unsavy and keep them thinking they are getting a bargain.
You might expect Sweden's taxes to be high as they have fully socialized medicine (ie when they go to the hospital they don't pay as they have already paid when they gave to the tax man). To make these figures more comparable one needs to add to US taxes the average medical premiums paid by US workers (or subtract dollar equivalent in such premiums from Swedish tax rates). Please don't argue that US medicine is superior, since Swedish life expectancy is significantly higher than that in the US. Similar issues apply when comparing states, since many states such as California and New York have much stricter laws controling what various state/federal programs provide for services, such as health care.
To gain some insight here follow the advertisement trail and investigate the income sources of the law school board members.
Largely the issue of taxes is a smoke-screen, since these figures rarely include the benefits corporations and certain wealthy individuals receive in a give state. Without taking such issues into account in a multivariate context, you are simply comparing apples and oranges. I guess its fun, but hardly rigorous thinking.
Its now completely absurd to talk about the Bush Administration and intelligence in the same sentence. The two obviously don't go together.
The new "global test" bullshit is more of the same. Disinformation and outright lying about what Kerry said. I'm amazed that with all the lying they have already done, they won't think that folks will have noticed the previous sentence out of Kerry's mouth, the one immediately before the one they quote out of context. These guys are really falling into some kind of perverted pattern of compulsive prevarication.
No wonder I laughed so hard when Karl Rove said of Bush's performance in the debate "You have to put this into context. Things don't happen in a vacuum".
But, Mr. Rove, what are Americans to think if the president keeps forcing them to conclude that the vacuum you are talking about is right between the president's ears?
Next time I suggest you make the letters on the idiot cards bigger and don't use words with more than 5 letters. "Its hard work", you know and all your spin is making the president dizzy.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me that much of what you are saying with regard to Dell being primarily a manufacturing company, thus basing their decision on total cost (as opposed to market perceptions) is largely true. Assuming that it is, this seems to lead to the interesting question of what is the most efficient manufacturing company building AMD systems? What other "AMD inside" firms are most likely to use the "Dell strategy" to improve their productivity and eventually put pressure on their nearest competitors in terms of cost? It would seem that until such a firm emerges, Dell will face no serious pressure to sell AMD processors.
It is not personally important to me one way or the other now. I use two Dell machines but will most likely buy a new Opteron for my next desktop purchase). However, as a consumer I generally tend to benefit when competition is alive and well in the market place, so although I am typically looking for the best product at the best price, I don't like to always buy from the same company, even if they have a good product because in the long run I benefit more by spreading my purchases among a variety of vendors. As consumers we must be wary when we conclude that the lower prices from near monopolistic (very large) vendors will always be the best. Although it may be true now, it may be that in the future they will never be as low as what they might have been had competition remained in the market place.
Laws of thermodynamics and entropic considerations ultimately dictate that organized (non-random) systems will eventually decay toward randomness.
However, the question with regard to rate is of the utmost importance in self-replicating systems. Bacteria in a sense do not die, in that they clone themselves (albeit with sometimes intermittant reproduction through genetic exchange with other bacteria) and hence in a sense are immortal (they make identical copies of themselves which persist more or less indefinitely).
Studies of the aging process (ie genes controling catabolism relative to anabolism) in eucaryotic organisms suggest that genetic systems have evolved genes that actually shorten life span. Hence, the question arises as to why, since one might initially assume that being able to live forever (like bacteria) would seem a more effective reproductive strategy.
It turns out that there appears to be selection for genes that produce shorter life spans in situations in which the presence of such genes increases the probability of survival of the offspring, even if their activity/presence takes place at the expense of the parent. It would seem that perpuation of self-replicating systems necessarily requires the need to take some risks to overcome the reality of dynamic environments. Ones current genetic makeup although nearly optimal (or more apply sufficiently near optimal) in the current environment may not be so in a future environment. Hence, a slightly different genetic makeup in ones offspring may be selected for in some future environment. Since prediction of exactly what the future environment might be is to some degree uncertain, most sexual organisms are capable of having more than one offspring, thereby increasing variety and hence the probability that at least some will be nearly optimally suited to survive.
Keep in mind, however, this is only an evolutionary strategy. While only those gene combinations that are successfull in reproducing will persist in subsequent generations, there is no guarantee that a particular gene combination will survive.
As for your arguments regarding "genes not grading anything in levels of mportance or having a perspective", this is really little more than a matter of semantics. The adult phenotype is nothing more than the product of its genes acting in an environment during its ontogeny. While it might seem to we are something more than our genes, at a molecular level there is nothing about us that is not the direct result of metabolic processes that occur (or occurred) as the direct result of the collective response/relative control of our genes to our environment. However, when you consider the shear number of different variatnts of tens of thousands of human genes and the incredible diversity of their responses to slightly different kinds of environments, the complexity is truely something to marvel at; so much so that it is hardly worth worrying about whether or not "something" (like some kind on mystical spiritual essesence or soul or other such unecessary nonsense) is missing.
When you consider all the other possibilities of problems facing life on planet earth, the probability galactic gama ray bursts being a serious problem is far closer to zero than things like global warming, mass habitat destruction, pollution, importune volcanic erruptions, tsunamis, nuclear war, etc.
...) this ought to be one of the least of your worries.
As for you loosing your own life to such a cause, as opposed to some other (old age, cancer, heart disease, HIV, being killed in an accident, earthquake, hurricane, starvation, being mugged by a politician,
I hate to say it, because I really feel that space science along with ALL other sciences are getting the short shrift with regard to funding by our society (or all others for that matter), but there seems to be an underlying desperation among some in the space science community to attempt to justify the relevance of their science by somehow attempting to link it to the importance of detecting of really bad things that COULD POSSIBLY happen should the universe go awry. While scare tactics work in politics, military and religious matters, this is hardly the way to build longterm rational support for science. Besides, there is a far higher probability of BAD things that are almost certain to happen given current trends in human behavior. We need to spend more "scientific and emotional capital" focusing on these.
The debate over whether a killer asteroid killed the dinosaurs is still largely unsettled, notwithstanding the small industry that has emerged producing all the niffty graphic animations that now pass for popular science. The controversy stems from the fossil record (mostly in China) providing evidence that the "causal event(s?)" was not as instantaneous as once believed. When you consider that the Orodovician occurred MUCH further back in time than the end of the Cretaceous, when fossil evidence is even less clear in part because the relative fequency of hard-bodied vs soft-bodied organisms is much less well understood, its far too early to start jumping to conclusions.
Given the state of dispair in the astrophysical community with the Bush budgets and the very near zero profile or interest or understanding our political leadership shows toward science of any kind, I can understand why such a letter would be published in a scientific journal. Nonetheless, a few pencil/computer calculations hardly make for convincing or even interesting earth history.
If scientists are now going to bring out cosmological causes to explain every mass extinction, we might as well also start invoking the hand of god as a potential cause for all historical events and let Newton roll over in his grave (and take his science with him). Besides, even if it were true, there would be absolutely nothing mankind's technology is likely to come up with in the next 1000 (100,0000,000?) years that could do any thing about such a catastrophe.
I would argue that at this stage of human history, it is far more critical that we motivate cosmological (and other) research on issues that are directly relevant to understanding higher probability events that are much much much much more likely to have significant relevance to the "near-term" future of humanity, such as global warming, loss of coral reefs and forests, effects of pollution, lack of cheap non-polluting energy resources, limits to human intelligence, etc. Frankly put, humanity is running out of time on a far shorter time scale than is probably relevant to cosmological purturbations of the universe of the kind discussed in the letter. To direct significant resources toward study of such probably infrequent perturbations would IN NEARLY ALL PROBABILITY result in our succumbing to other more immediate problems long before the "BIG ONE HITS". So if you are not also busying worrying about ghosts (after all science can never entirely rule out the possibility that the big green ugly people-pestering ones are not the source of all our problems), you might instead worry more
Given their attempt to make the internet private I will use no products or services from this firm (unless they pay me lots of money to do so).
A point of the original article and known from
various studies in neuroscience is that "memory" and "mental activity" can not be fully distinguished from the "architecture" of the nerves themselves. Neurons are connected via synapses on dendrites and connections are being formed and reshaped (new topologies of interconnectness. Thus, as differential activity ensues, differential connectedness and synapse development occurs concomitantly. Some neuronal paths will be selected for, while others will be selected against. Hence, "memories" may be stored as "architecture" as well as by the multiple biochemical pathways modulating the formation and "strength" of different "circuits" that ultimately "add" or "multiply" the effect of the firing patterns on the genetic machinery in the nucleus of the neuron, which are critical to the maintenance of longterm memory. It may be a fundamental mistake to assume that "memories" are individual molecules, even though many molecules ultimately are ultimately involved in their existence.
The article is interesting in that the neuron may in some respects by acting like an antenna, whose cellular/genetic machinery and morphology (architecture of dendrites and synapse topology) are designed to adaptively differentially "tune" for different action potential input/output logic via differential signal strength from relative importance of different connections, different dendrite size, and different numbers of synapses.
Perhaps this may suggest that the path to wisdom is to be found by becoming a much better "listener". Attention to subtle nuance may be far more important than our current political culture admits.
This might also go a long way towards explaining why different species have such different brains, yet brains whose underlying organization is so similar.
Maybe the appellate court will in its wisdom outlaw the posting of prices on the internet so that it doesn't lead to unwanted competition.
That way they can do what a million communists could never do. Prevent capitalism in order to preserve it.
IMHO, if the plaintiffs are worried about such a horrible thing as allowing their competitors to see their prices and who then use that information to out compete them with lower prices, the plaintiffs deserve only one thing: to go bankrupt.
If they are unable to compete on price then they should deny the defendants their advantage and not post their prices on the internet. Or failing that indicate what additional benefits the buyer gets for the extra money they must pay to do business with them.
If the plaintiffs actually win appeal on this basis, capitalism as we have known it is dead. Following such logic to other situations (one competitor using the other's higher prices to advantage), it can only lead to a system in which buyers will only be allowed to see the price of any product, until after they have bought it. Comparison shopping will for all intents and purposes have been adjudicated out of existence. For some reason I find it difficult to imagine a situation in which a competitor uses the public statement of pricing information as beyond "reasonable expectations" of an ordinary consumers. Most ordinary consumers usually comparison shop and when they do, they take price into account.
Only in America where political hacks are appointed as judges precisely because they are political hacks, could one expect an email page posted for public consumption be ruled a confidential document.
Then again, since that is how are political campaigns now work. Why not spread it to all "purchases". True capitalism is just about dead in America already anyway. It is evolving into fascism, a far more stable system. Ironic that Kurt Godel the famous logician predicted this decades ago.
This should help them in their campaign with regard to total cost of ownership of their systems versus Linux!
Its part of the new media blitz. Its all the rage these days. Get ignorant suckers to believe they are getting something great, when its only to charge them more for something that doesn't work well or at all in the first place.
Science will never be prepared for the worst.
Science is funded by a tiny fraction of the results of human activity. Even though its effect can be tremendous, it can not alter the laws of physics and biology. One must also keep in mind that science usually works at cross purposes. For example some scientists are working hard to discover ways to keep stains from attaching to clothing, carpets, and other surfaces. This is very good science and has produced some tremendously successful products. Likewise, for nuclear power, smelting, etc. However, when these ideas are implemented in a commercial environment it turns out (read latest Science), that the chemistry of these compounds is result in substantial pollution from various breakdown products and effect Arctic ecology (the Arctic Sea is a largely closed sink for the numerous rivers that drain into it from both Eurasia and North America. Hence, such biproducts accumulate in the tissues of organims, with the greatest accumulation in the top predators (=man) as a result of the laws of bioaccumulation.
For science to overcome such inherent cross purposes and to be of net positive help it would take enormous sums of money to tackle ongoing problems, money in amounts that no one has, much less be willing to spend. For example scientists have quite a few pretty good ideas about how to keep carbon dioxide from rising to the point we overheat the planet to the point those resources we need to survive disappear. The cost of implementation of such ideas (say creating a huge carbon sink forest) is so large that no one could afford to pay for it. Of course this would assume the present administration would be even rational enough to consider expanding the parks system several hundreds of thousands of times to sequester enough carbon to bring the current production of carbon dioxide into balance. Presently, our own government is eager to drill in the remaining wildlife refuges to extract more carbon to burn, more public lands to mine, and more timber to cut down in the name of "saving the forests" because its budget is in deficit and it otherwise has no money to give to campaign contributors to sustain itself.
Colonization of the moon or other planets would only continue to create more environmental problems on earth as it would require vast sums to be spent on activity that directly negatively effects the environment of earth (remember most of you living in the western US are already drinking water that is substantially polluted by byproducts of rocket propellant). Such hazards are typically minimized, until the evidence to the contrary becomes so overwhelming we eventually stop creating them. Note, however, we seldom mitigate the effects, which means the half-life of the byproducts largely dictate when the problem will be fully "solved". But even with solid science in hand, typically it takes years to overcome skillful PR campaigns and public ignorance. Just how warm will it have to get before the US changes its policy on global warming? Will it be soon enough to prevent the inertia of natural systems from finishing us off?
In principle one can use differential equations to determine when we will reach critical thresholds given current trends. Current scientific debate centers on what exact constitute the thresholds, how do we measure current trends, and what are the relative rates of effects that may mitigate these trends (if any).
Remember, global warming is only one of the environmental problems we face, if we are to avoid extinction. Biodiversity loss and invasion by non-indiginous are as equally intractable, if not more critical, as they more immediately impact the supports systems upon which humans depend. On both of these fronts current science is virtually powerless to resist the onslaught of the thoughtless and the greedy, who are multiplying quickly and whose environmental footprint, ironically enhanced through science, is growing even larger.
This astronaut is just one more well-meaning but wrong advocate of
While this may be true for some kinds of research it is definitely not for others. In biology one typically needs to have a correct identification before the biology of a given species can be investigated. Identification is closely tied to the names given by various authors, but is not identical with it.
If you do taxonomy, uncorrected OCR would be of little value, as a single letter difference is sufficient to treat the scientific names of organisms as different. One needs to know the precise spelling used as well as the context in which it is used to understand the concept of species the author had in mind (or sometimes the identification of the organism in question, depending on the complexity of the taxonomy).
Presently, if you look for all that is known about a species on google, you will often get a lot of records that relate to that species. However, you may also get records that either relate to another species whose name is a homonym or one that has been misidentified (incorrect name applied). You will not get all the records of the species for which an incorrect spelling of the name has been applied or which was treated under another name, which while technically a correct identification is a junior/senior synonym of the species you searched for.
Uncritical use of taxonomic names resulting from uncorrected OCR in a research context has the potential to create considerable taxonomic confusion. In a world that is rapidly loosing biodiversity and saving what remains rests largely on the correct identification of those organisms being studied, this is not an insignificant matter. IMHO it actually represents one of the greatest challenges facing mankind, particularly if you consider that we are often at the top of the food chain and we really know very little about the myriads of organisms that make up the ecology upon which we depend for survival but which most of us simply take for granted. Such ignorance will not serve us well in a future (or present) in which our enviornment has been (is being) severely degraded.
Hence, the recommendation that the uncorrected OCR be tied to the original image file from which it was produced is critical.
a limited ability to stay focused on any particular issue and discuss it credibly at any length before one of its members gets the whole flock diverted onto a thread totally unrelated to the original post.
Is it really true that a slashdotter is just someone with an extremely limited attention span?
Anyway, I love the Dutch. Pieter Bleeker, the greatest ichthyologist ever was Dutch. I would love them more, but I went to Holland and got talked into buying a thousand dollars worth of tulips, which I dutifully planted, only to watch the squirrels in my yard dig up and eat every bulb I planted. I didn't see a single flower.
Its easy for the legislature to fight the bureaucrats if they want to. There are several choices: 1) withhold their budgets until the right folks are fired or 2) decrease their budget by a factor (slightly larger than 1) times the amount of the M$ contract. The logic being if they have that kind of money to waste, they don't need that large of a budget in the first place. Then they can spend the difference on science. Scientists will in general find good things to do with money that would otherwise be wasted.
The hard part is resisting the bribery and other enticements.
Your argument that investing abroad is relatively unsafe seems rather peculiar to me given current sociological, financial, and political trends.
The U.S. has the highest rate of murder and deaths due to gun violence than any other industrialized country. Northern Ireland gave us a run for our money for many years, but of late the worst of their political troubles seem behind them and they are falling from challenging us on this point? Regrettably, Iraq seems to be the new nation attempting to challenge our lead in this unfortunate statistic, although the statistics are skewed since we are responsible for many of these deaths (about 100,000 by some estimates; about 10,000 - 20,000, if you prefer to believe only in official Pentagon accounts).
Health care costs are rising as US longevity is leveling off (or falling in some regions of the US; infant deaths are on the rise again throughout the US, evidently in part due to the limited availability of vaccines). With the passage of new rebooblican efforts to better support the drug and insurance industries, we can expect even more Americans to be priced out of the market for health care (now rising at about 7.5%/yr) or be kept out those few courts of justice for which political appointees haven't already made the notion of justice quaint or new "tort reform" laws written by industry lobbies are designed to guarantee. In any event, your chance of dying for lack of affordable medical care is increasing (unless of course you are a politician and then you can borrow other people's money and let them pay for it). Virtually the rest of the industrialized world has state supported health care, so their competitive advantage will only increase relative to ours.
Our current account deficit continues to increase even with the drop of our currency, so in its wisdom our new rebooblican congress has found it necessary over the last year to increase the US debt ceiling 3 times to keep their charge card in working order (one would have thought that borrowing more money in the last 4 years than all other previous administrations put together have in the history of the country would have caused the rebooblican leadership to pause, lest it make the notion of "conservatism" seem more like a mask at a costume ball than a policial ideology, but no matter one will never see an embarrassed rebooblican). In any event, this should guarantee that our currency will continue to weaken at a faster rate. Current US fiscal and monetary policy really only now consist increasing the amount congress and the white (wash?) house can borrow to finance its debt. The fed continues only to create money just a little faster than we send it abroad to make our interest payments in a frantic effort to avoid the inevitable financial panic that will come when the currency falls so much that inflation will rise rapidly requiring the Fed to raise interest rates precipitously relative to real economic growth. Don't worry this probably won't happen until the 3rd quarter of 2005 and it won't start in the US markets first.
The value of the dollar is dropping and consequently, any dollar denominated asset invested in the US is likely to be relative looser, at least over the next 5 years (no one in DC is predicting a surplus before then, are you?). Even today, the White House suggested they were going to put the extra money needed for "solving" the social security crisis on the rebooblican charge card (you know, they charge, you and future generations pay). Add this to those extra tax breaks for wealthy campaign contributors (that really don't start to kick in until this tax year) and you can be pretty sure our currency is headed for the cliff. You are better off putting rupees under your mattress rather than dollars for a good rate of return. Those buying our debt are already beginning to clamber for something more tangible than worthless paper backed up only by debt they largely already own.
The good news is that as the dollar drops, it is more likely that foreigners will b
Great, I guess I just didn't give it enough time
to search through large directories to see the results appear.
Is there any way to control the size of the previews? They are so small on my system that I can hardly see them.
Does the new version support viewing graphic files as thumbnails in the new version?
Presently, one must run a photo or image viewer program to get a view of image files. When you have directories full of images, it is really helpful to be able to see a thumbnail view rather than having to open each file individually. Having the option to select "thumbnail" view directly in the KDE (ie in View - Details the ability to check "thumbnail" support/options that would permit all the images in an entire directory to be viewed as thumbnails. Of course, this would need to include support for the variety of image files available, as in Gimp.
I agree. I too love it, but ... If not this version, perhaps the next, the KDE team really needs to focus on running the whole thing through a profiler and speed up the bottlenecks.
.mpg and other multimedia file viewing directly from Konqueror would also be a plus. The thing hangs on more and more webpage content these days. I hope this is remedied in the new version.
More internal support for
My sister-in-law also teaches special education for children with low IQ's (50). The NCLB Act requires her to fill paper work each day that takes her about one-hour and a half (she has about 30 kids in her class). She is also mandated to give them standardized test, which of course they fail.
None of these kids can read at the 3rd grade level and likely never will. As with regards to intellect they will always be left behind, regardless of all the posturing by politicians.
There is no expectation these children will ever improve their test scores, yet the taxpayers are penalized by spending money on such nonsense.
This is why I have been investing in child testing companies. They are making a fortune. This is what the No Child Left Behind Act is really all about anyway (of yes, of course these vendors know they are expected to provide a kickback if they expect to get their contracts renewed). Its all part of the game.
If you haven't figured this out, well you've just been left behind.
As currently written the law will make it a felony to willfully avoid a commercial by either "fast-forwarding" or "using other means to avoid recognizing intellectual content". Hence, a bathroom break during a commercial can be taken as evidence that you have violated the law.
Don't worry, as punishment is no more than 5 years in prison and a fine of not more than $500,000.
To insure compliance there are a number of new regulations providing tax breaks in the most recent budget bill for companies which choose to install television cameras into their video products. This will allow companies to monitor whether or not customers are watching the commercials or not. New internal regulations require any company observing non-compliant behavior must by law report the transgression to law enforcement authorities.
Again, don't worry. Sources following the story suggest that insiders close to the legislation are saying there will be an opportunity to avoid prosecution, so long as an appropriate political contribution is made.
Don't mean to be rude, but why does little stuff like corporate patent law even matter when we now live in a society where the House Majority Leader can remain in his position even when indicted?
You are joking aren't you, or is this just another attempt to look away from the larger issue that such disputes are now just arbitrated in favor of the highest bidder or are just to be debated into sterility on TV or the internet in a way that diffuses any focused collective effort at intellect? Let's not think, as otherwise we might find out its too late! Great motto, I'll be home with the pretzels eagerly awaiting the rapture.
Can anyone name a successful dialog turning back the Darwinian tide?
Don't you just love how this is all turning out.
Do hope you recover soon.
Remember to pray for those who don't pray for DeLay. After all they are just aiding and abetting aren't they, and to aid and abet a crime is a sin, no? May god have mercy on their souls.
You seem to imply that the notion of "indicator
species" is scientifically vacuous and that it
is really, in essence, political smoke.
Not only are you wrong, but earth history is already showing that this point of view is both tragically wrong and ultimately dangerous.
There are a great many species that for a variety of reasons respond with greater sensitivity to environmental changes and trends than do others. In the vast majority of cases such species are species now at risk. You might not think this a big deal, but keep in mind that you're every breath and every scrap of food you eat ultimately depends on the healthy well-being of little organisms, the vast majority of which will never win a popularity contest, and whose very existence will likely never even be recognized by the average scientifically illiterate human (the vast majority by far). Ignore this at your peril and definitely at the peril of your children and grandchildren should you have any.
The sad truth is that given the way we evolve via natural selection, it will take a lot of natural selection to show you just how wrong you are. Be assured, however, such natural selection will take place and you will be shown to be wrong. You don't have to believe me, just go out and count frogs and see for yourself.
After reading this comment why do I get this feeling that the writer hardly understands what science is. It is not just a bunch of folks getting together to write about their "finding" nor "sucessfully" showing a point of view.
Science is about the testing and repudiation of ideas, given certain (hopefully supportable/logical) premises. Science is about disproof more than it is about "proof". The notion of expectation can only be couched in the context of the logical consequences of the assumptions made and their "verification" or "falsification" based upon the results of observations (hopefully measurements that can be repeatedly and precisely made) used to "test" these expectations. Science is a way of knowing it is not a particular true or false finding per se. Good and bad are really irrelevant adjectives to ascribe to science, except in as much as they relate (or not) to the tests made given the assumptions made.
For example, scientists don't give creationism any credence and take Darwinism not as a theory in the sense of a hypothesis (as generally thought by the lay community) but as a scientific theory (one that has passed the most stringent testing and can be regarded as much a fact as the idea of a brightly shining sun in the center of our solar system). No mater where or how you look you will always find evidence of the correctness of such "facts" and never find ANY observations that contradict them. Creationists could disprove Darwin's central thesis by finding ONLY ONE observation that does not comport his hypothesis. Scientists don't take creationism since 1) no creationist has ever found such a fact and 2) those notions such as that "God was responsible for it all" could just as well apply to the chair they are sitting on, or a wall-clock, or an underwater yodeler since in no case could provide any objective (consistently measureable) evidence to the contrary.
The world of science is analogous to the mathematician's notion of a counter example. All you need is one to show that an idea is untenable (not logically consistent with the initial assumptions/axioms made.
These ideas are quite independent of grant money or points of view or debates such as "how many fairies can dance on the head of a pin". It must be understood that science can only answer a limited (but very, very large) number of questions. It can answer only questions that are scientifically posed. Is their a god does not fall into this category, since there is no means of establishing an independent perspective that would permit a falsifiable hypothesis to be contrcuted (ie one that has the potential of being proved false). Such questions are irrelevant to science. Others such as "is the earth getting warmer and if it is, is human activity making it hotter? are very much scientific questions. It will not be decided by "points of view" or "talking points" or "balancing the pros or cons" or "debates by experts", "by the guys who get the grants", even though to the layman much of science is viewed in this way. Rather it is a winnowing out of explanations that are not plausible given known evidence (measurements repeatedly taken). It is thus the cogency and consistency of ideas logically considered that allows us to establish scientific truth.
The wonderful thing is that like mathematics, its really only about clear thinking and every one can have a go at it (although obviously natural selection did not leave us all equally endowed). Scientific discovery is not about finding facts per say, it is about a way of knowing what to think of these "facts".
Presumably, for us to shoot down another country's platform would be an act of war. War planners, thus would want a "failsafe" design for such a defensive system so that it could be sure to clean out all platforms in the "earth shadow" as well. The point being that to be sure its an effective deterrent to any space-based platform zapper, one would only need to a) place a few sufficiently large weapons in orbit or b) add many more small ones, c) or both and and b.
Actually, I was attempting to be absurd with respect to the mega-tonnage, but only to demonstrate that once we start down this road, we shouldn't be surprised at the potential responses others might make. We should also keep in mind that responses such as putting a few warheads in orbit would be a lot less costly or technically difficult to employ than a system required to shoot them down.
A great number of scientists are already on record opposing work on space based interceptors because it would be extremely difficult to actually explode the target. The tests conducted to date, still remain highly contrived.
This reminds me a lot of the mobile MX system that was going to be build early in the Carter administration. It was "the raging fad" of defense contractors. That was until it dawned on a few folks whose grey matter was still working, that their was a significant danger of having nuclear warheads traveling around the country on the highways and on railroads all day and night, perhaps even greater than war time of the nuclear weapons themselves.
Presumably, "defensive" warheads could be attached to a variety of orbiting platforms that could perform other work as well, ie. global weather monitoring, land use monitoring, space science/photography ect. As you correctly point out they could be a lot smaller. The point being that they could still serve as an effective deterrent against space-based zappers. In any event the development of such weapons by the US would only serve as an incentive for other countries to park more platforms above the US in geosynchronous orbit.
Of course, this doesn't even consider the problem that nations who know they can't defeat us and will be be destroyed by our nuclear weapons, might not simply in the end consider the suicide bomber strategy and simply build a very large, very dirty bomb that will so fill the atmosphere with Sr 90 and Pu that nothing would survive no matter where it was detonated. No space-based weapons system would be able to counter-act or intercept such a weapon.
But isn't this is really only about letting out some contract work among friends anyway? Don't expect to be reading soon about the "plan" for dealing with any of the consequences of such (no bid?) contracts. Besides, what's the difference if there isn't enough money to go around for other priorities? Besides, we wouldn't be leaving ANY children behind.
Remember in the new scheme of things in the second term, yours is not to question why, yours is but to pay and die.
It is ironic that the US should attempt this as we have more orbiting platforms than any other nation.
Of course, the least expensive and rapid option to deter such a program is for other nations to place very large (say 3000-1000 mgt warheads) in space that will explode on impact from any incoming projectile. That way all US space-based weaponry will become obsolete the moment it is used. The fact that these might go off due to random impacts from meteors, would simply be the cost of doing business, but then the PR advantage would be immense. They would be able to blame us for forcing them to defend themselves.
The irony of the Chinese defence will be that we will pay for it for them by buying at WalMart.
Oh well, I guess we might as well get used to the progress a second Bush term is about to provide us. Glad I loaded up on Boeing stock before the election as at least I'll be able to party during the upcoming wiennie roast.
The idea is for governmnet projects an plans in Iraq to be as ineffecient as possible so that more contracts can be granted and political cronies can get rich. Guess you haven't heard about the Haliburton saga. That way a portion of the profit can be used to buy more electronic voting machines. Come on, get with the program.
Yours is not to question why, yours is but to pay and die!
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2004/09/re d_states_feed.html
More simple-minded bullshit put out by sponsored "independent thinktanks". These figures don't include the tax kickbacks to corporations nor do these include detailed itemization of what taxpayers get for their money. This is hardly surprising, since this is the kind of information these subsidized "independent" thinkers use to pull the wool over the eyes of the unsavy and keep them thinking they are getting a bargain.
You might expect Sweden's taxes to be high as they have fully socialized medicine (ie when they go to the hospital they don't pay as they have already paid when they gave to the tax man). To make these figures more comparable one needs to add to US taxes the average medical premiums paid by US workers (or subtract dollar equivalent in such premiums from Swedish tax rates). Please don't argue that US medicine is superior, since Swedish life expectancy is significantly higher than that in the US. Similar issues apply when comparing states, since many states such as California and New York have much stricter laws controling what various state/federal programs provide for services, such as health care.
To gain some insight here follow the advertisement trail and investigate the income sources of the law school board members.
Largely the issue of taxes is a smoke-screen, since these figures rarely include the benefits corporations and certain wealthy individuals receive in a give state. Without taking such issues into account in a multivariate context, you are simply comparing apples and oranges. I guess its fun, but hardly rigorous thinking.
Its now completely absurd to talk about the Bush Administration and intelligence in the same sentence. The two obviously don't go together.
The new "global test" bullshit is more of the same. Disinformation and outright lying about what Kerry said. I'm amazed that with all the lying they have already done, they won't think that folks will have noticed the previous sentence out of Kerry's mouth, the one immediately before the one they quote out of context. These guys are really falling into some kind of perverted pattern of compulsive prevarication.
No wonder I laughed so hard when Karl Rove said of Bush's performance in the debate "You have to put this into context. Things don't happen in a vacuum".
But, Mr. Rove, what are Americans to think if the president keeps forcing them to conclude that the vacuum you are talking about is right between the president's ears?
Next time I suggest you make the letters on the idiot cards bigger and don't use words with more than 5 letters. "Its hard work", you know and all your spin is making the president dizzy.