It certainly is a start, but it fails to address the root problem. The US, along with everyone else, ignores the UN because they can. The UN, while an organization with lofty, laudable goals and asperations, lacks the infrastructure and means to achieve those goals.
The real solution is to give the UN the means to actually enforce its mandates and impose its will on nations. And let's be honest, foreign policy is exactly that: imposing one nation's will on another. As it stands now, the UN must rely on the good will of its member nations to provide the means of enforcement, ie military forces.
And there is the solution. When it comes to the game of nations, force is the only thing that matters, be it military, economic or social. The UN has social force, but that is such a weak force that it hardly matters. And as it is not an actual territory, it is very difficult for it to have any real economic power. That leaves military force as the only viable option. The UN needs its own independant military. Then it will cease to be a national social club and will become the powerful arbitrator it was intended to be.
Of course, the idea of a UN military is about as likely SCO successfully proving that it owns Linux. But there you have it.
Ok, the way I understood the article was that you had to own foo.bar.pro before you could get foo.pro. This is operating under the assumption that the type of professional is "bar" and the user is "foo", hence foo.bar.pro. bar.pro is owned by the registrar and can't be bought by an individual, as it is the "class" of profession.
'Course, I could be totally of track. Most of what the ICANN does is so confusing and nonsensical that I'm surprised they even understand it (and I've yet to see proof that they do, so that's open to debate).
Not only that, but such a failure of a bill would cause an immediate state of non-confidence to be declared, forcing a new federal election.
And generally pissing off everyone.
That's because the original Transformers was really just a 22 minute advertisement for a cool toy line. There was only just enough actual plot to keep things moving. And it wasn't always that coherent. The CGI ones, while also being about the marketing, actually did have a strong plot in their own right.
Then you've obviously never seen what you need to know to get an A+ cert. I used to fix the computers that the A+ students broke when I worked at the lab in school. Believe me, A+ by itself doesn't mean much. My computer savy nine year old cousin could get certified.
Nice to see that your bosses are doing it properly. Falsifying timesheets is, as was pointed out elsewhere, illegal, at least in N. America.
I would suspect that it's probably a case where the managers ass is in the fire if he goes over budget, and he doesn't have the balls to stand up an say "No Bloody way, we need more time". So instead he makes them falsefy their time logs. And while that's bad, if the programmers didn't keep track of their actual time (either in the official log or another one), there isn't much that can be done.
Ok, now that I said that, I have to ask: which worldwide company?;)
A Thomahawk cruise missile costs about $100,000 a pop. A 5 pound iron rod costs what? $2?
As well, a ship can only hold a limited number of cruise missiles (usually less than 30), and for the most part, they are vertcal launch, which limits reloading to "in port only". Whereas a railgun mounting ship could easily carry hundreds of rounds, reload them at sea and fire them at rates of up to 10+/minute.
And I read an article in PopSci a couple months ago that stated that they were considering making the projectiles guided(which increases cost, but still it's a lot cheaper than cruise missiles).
The Geneva Conventions are the first thing thrown out. Even better, thrown at one's enemy, because it's a big stack of paper and has sharp corners.
Other than that, it's just a flowery set of words made up by a bunch of politicians during peacetime. When you're a soldier on the sharp end, they mean positively jack.
That said, I do beleive in the principles laid down in the conventions, and think that they should be followed by all parties involved. The problem is, they aren't. And if one side gains an advantage by ignoring them, I can see why the other would do the same. Abu-Garad(sp?) prison in Iraq is a case in point. The "insurgents" in Iraq certainly don't follow the conventions. They torture and kill POWs, hide in medical and religious buildings etc. And it gives them an advantage. So in response, the US used some unsavory interogation techniques on it's own prisoners. Should it have happened? No. But I can understand why it did. As it was said before, "Fuck the rest of them". That's the way war is.
Getting into orbit isn't all that hard. It's getting into the orbit you want and then staying alive on the way down that's the hard part.
The biggest problem with the shuttle (besides the beauracratic bloat in NASA) is that it's over 30 years old. The plans were officially laid down in 1971. And from the reports I've been able to find, that design was supposed to be replaced after 20 years. But instead, because of all the politicking that went on, construction was delayed, and totally unrealistic demands were made, such as a Zero % casualty rate, a laudable, but practical impossibility, as has unfortunately been proven (In comparison, the accepted casualty rate among test pilots, which is quite a bit safer, is still ~3%). As a result, the shuttle didn't even fly for the first half of it's projected life. And all the while, the cost just kept rising.
And when it came time to replace it with a more technologically advanced design, politics again interfered and the project was canceled. "We've already sunk so much $$ into the shuttle, and now you want us to spend more money to replace it? I don't think so."
And so it went. The shuttle's service life was extended way beyond where it should have been(kinda like Mir's), pretty well all of NASA's research into a replacement has been canned, along with most of the funding for the ISS, and we [i]still[/i] don't have a cost effective method of putting people and large payloads into orbit.
So now it's 2004, and what do we have?
A space station that will never be finished because NASA had to scrap the construction of critical components. A fleet of ancient manned launch craft that are stuck on the ground and may never fly again with no replacement of any kind. And no method of launching the size of payloads required for getting back to the moon, let alone Mars.
The way I see it, if Rutan can get his craft up and back safely, and the ESA can get their ship (which even if it uses technology from the late 90s is 30 years more advanced than the shuttle) operational, then power to them. The United States has lost it's dominance on manned spaceflight, and I don't know if the gov't is will to spend the dough to get it back.
And I'll be keeping my eye on China. They've got the same rocket tech the US had at the end of the 60's, and the will and money to use it. My money says they reach the moon by 2012.
Slashdot Mirror
It certainly is a start, but it fails to address the root problem. The US, along with everyone else, ignores the UN because they can. The UN, while an organization with lofty, laudable goals and asperations, lacks the infrastructure and means to achieve those goals.
The real solution is to give the UN the means to actually enforce its mandates and impose its will on nations. And let's be honest, foreign policy is exactly that: imposing one nation's will on another. As it stands now, the UN must rely on the good will of its member nations to provide the means of enforcement, ie military forces.
And there is the solution. When it comes to the game of nations, force is the only thing that matters, be it military, economic or social. The UN has social force, but that is such a weak force that it hardly matters. And as it is not an actual territory, it is very difficult for it to have any real economic power. That leaves military force as the only viable option. The UN needs its own independant military. Then it will cease to be a national social club and will become the powerful arbitrator it was intended to be.
Of course, the idea of a UN military is about as likely SCO successfully proving that it owns Linux. But there you have it.
Ok, the way I understood the article was that you had to own foo.bar.pro before you could get foo.pro. This is operating under the assumption that the type of professional is "bar" and the user is "foo", hence foo.bar.pro. bar.pro is owned by the registrar and can't be bought by an individual, as it is the "class" of profession.
'Course, I could be totally of track. Most of what the ICANN does is so confusing and nonsensical that I'm surprised they even understand it (and I've yet to see proof that they do, so that's open to debate).
Not only that, but such a failure of a bill would cause an immediate state of non-confidence to be declared, forcing a new federal election. And generally pissing off everyone.
I've set up a number of systems with SP2 in the last 5 months, and I've had no problems with software. Just follow these easy steps:
1. Install Windows XP SP22. Turn off Windows Firewall
3. Disable Security Centre monitoring
4. Turn of automatic install of Windows updates
If you turn off all of the added "features" of SP2, I find it works just fine :)
That's because the original Transformers was really just a 22 minute advertisement for a cool toy line. There was only just enough actual plot to keep things moving. And it wasn't always that coherent. The CGI ones, while also being about the marketing, actually did have a strong plot in their own right.
Of course, that's just my opinion.
Then you've obviously never seen what you need to know to get an A+ cert. I used to fix the computers that the A+ students broke when I worked at the lab in school. Believe me, A+ by itself doesn't mean much. My computer savy nine year old cousin could get certified.
Nice to see that your bosses are doing it properly. Falsifying timesheets is, as was pointed out elsewhere, illegal, at least in N. America.
I would suspect that it's probably a case where the managers ass is in the fire if he goes over budget, and he doesn't have the balls to stand up an say "No Bloody way, we need more time". So instead he makes them falsefy their time logs. And while that's bad, if the programmers didn't keep track of their actual time (either in the official log or another one), there isn't much that can be done.
Ok, now that I said that, I have to ask: which worldwide company? ;)
Primary reason: $$$$
A Thomahawk cruise missile costs about $100,000 a pop. A 5 pound iron rod costs what? $2?
As well, a ship can only hold a limited number of cruise missiles (usually less than 30), and for the most part, they are vertcal launch, which limits reloading to "in port only". Whereas a railgun mounting ship could easily carry hundreds of rounds, reload them at sea and fire them at rates of up to 10+/minute.
And I read an article in PopSci a couple months ago that stated that they were considering making the projectiles guided(which increases cost, but still it's a lot cheaper than cruise missiles).
The Geneva Conventions are the first thing thrown out. Even better, thrown at one's enemy, because it's a big stack of paper and has sharp corners.
Other than that, it's just a flowery set of words made up by a bunch of politicians during peacetime. When you're a soldier on the sharp end, they mean positively jack.
That said, I do beleive in the principles laid down in the conventions, and think that they should be followed by all parties involved. The problem is, they aren't. And if one side gains an advantage by ignoring them, I can see why the other would do the same. Abu-Garad(sp?) prison in Iraq is a case in point. The "insurgents" in Iraq certainly don't follow the conventions. They torture and kill POWs, hide in medical and religious buildings etc. And it gives them an advantage. So in response, the US used some unsavory interogation techniques on it's own prisoners. Should it have happened? No. But I can understand why it did. As it was said before, "Fuck the rest of them". That's the way war is.
Appologies for the lack of paragraphs. First time posting, and apparently I need to add the paragraph tags.
My bad....
Getting into orbit isn't all that hard. It's getting into the orbit you want and then staying alive on the way down that's the hard part. The biggest problem with the shuttle (besides the beauracratic bloat in NASA) is that it's over 30 years old. The plans were officially laid down in 1971. And from the reports I've been able to find, that design was supposed to be replaced after 20 years. But instead, because of all the politicking that went on, construction was delayed, and totally unrealistic demands were made, such as a Zero % casualty rate, a laudable, but practical impossibility, as has unfortunately been proven (In comparison, the accepted casualty rate among test pilots, which is quite a bit safer, is still ~3%). As a result, the shuttle didn't even fly for the first half of it's projected life. And all the while, the cost just kept rising. And when it came time to replace it with a more technologically advanced design, politics again interfered and the project was canceled. "We've already sunk so much $$ into the shuttle, and now you want us to spend more money to replace it? I don't think so." And so it went. The shuttle's service life was extended way beyond where it should have been(kinda like Mir's), pretty well all of NASA's research into a replacement has been canned, along with most of the funding for the ISS, and we [i]still[/i] don't have a cost effective method of putting people and large payloads into orbit. So now it's 2004, and what do we have? A space station that will never be finished because NASA had to scrap the construction of critical components. A fleet of ancient manned launch craft that are stuck on the ground and may never fly again with no replacement of any kind. And no method of launching the size of payloads required for getting back to the moon, let alone Mars. The way I see it, if Rutan can get his craft up and back safely, and the ESA can get their ship (which even if it uses technology from the late 90s is 30 years more advanced than the shuttle) operational, then power to them. The United States has lost it's dominance on manned spaceflight, and I don't know if the gov't is will to spend the dough to get it back. And I'll be keeping my eye on China. They've got the same rocket tech the US had at the end of the 60's, and the will and money to use it. My money says they reach the moon by 2012.