I disagree about Obama caring about coalition soldiers and/or Afghans. However, there are reports from the Middle East that politicians in Arab countries figure Obama is a bit spineless and that if they want a counter-weight to the Iranians, the Jews in Israel appear to have the right sized balls. The notion of Iran with nukes is changing their perspective about Israel, but it is being encouraged by a perceived weakness in Obama. Actually, it is somewhat surprising in that Obama has been much more aggressive in America's responses to Islam-inspired terrorism than Bush ever was. I guess the problem is that Obama doesn't appear as nuts as Bush (or Reagan) which gets interpreted as weakness.
This isn't really a data center story, but it does involve computers. We were installing a metal forming line in a factory in Birmingham, Ala. I had the software controlled flying die and another engineer had the strictly hardware controlled flying cuttoff. The metal came off a huge coil though a loop into a feed to stop and through another loop to the flying die and then the flying cuttoff to chop it to the correct length. The loops act like queues allowing the material to come or exit continuously while either being took out or fed in stages. The feed to stop stamped some holes the steel, the flying cutoff stamps some other holes after the roll-former and then the flying cuttoff did its thing. The flying cuttoff die had a ball screw connected to a motor via a coupling. The coupling was filled with about 5/8 inch ball bearings, about 30 of these.
We power up the line, the feed to stop is stamping, the flying die takes off and catches the line and the die comes under the press which chomps down and the holes are made. The point on the line where the cutoff is to be made comes up before the flying cuttoff...which promptly takes off like a bat out of hell, fails to cut off, runs into the forward stops...wham, wham, wham...the motor trips out. We scratch out heads thinking. The hardware engineer insists on trying it again with the rest of us assuming since nothing has changed, it will do the same thing again. I'm sitting on top of the control box about 6 feet up to see the whole line. Line starts up, feed to stop does its thing, flying die does its thing. The point on the line where the cutoff is to be made comes up before the flying cuttoff...which promptly takes off like a bat out of hell, fails to cut off, runs into the forward stops...wham, wham, blam...ball bearings flying everywhere. I hit the deck not wanting to die that particular day or lose my eyesight.
For what it's worth, another anecdotal event, I was burgled a few years ago in Maryland. The cops came, then the next day they sent a detective. They dusted for prints, took notes on what was stolen, etc. 4 months later, they had caught the culprits.
BTW, I very much doubt you have been "From Texas, to Tennessee, to Oklahoma, to South Carolina, to California and Arizona and New Mexico" and witnessed uselessness from officers.
That and apparently during those early lusty Soviet times, there was a grand vision to power the USSR and Moscow in particular with peat. Peat is in bogs. To burn it you have to get the water out. So they drained the bogs. Fast forward to the latter Soviet times when natural gas was discovered (no, I'm not talking about Politburo speeches) and a half century of Communist WTF 5 year projects caught up with them. So they dropped the peat idea and started cooking with gas. That was all nice and tidy but no one wanted to go back and rewater the bogs. Now, a bit of global warming, a bit of La Nina, a bit of nasty drought...add some lightning, dumb Russians tossing their cigarette butts in the bogs, etc. and we have the spectacle of Putin pushing a button on a fire plane to drop a giant raindrop of water to show his solidarity with the proles.
The only reason the bogs didn't attempt to kill the Russians before was the amount of rainfall they normally receive which put out the bog fires they normally have. That works fine until you have a drought, and even more Russian screwups like you mentioned.
Yes and no. It is about the egg, but the egg affects public support. Some seem to think that Obama was a pacifist before he became President and expected him to act like one. Well, he was. However, when the threat was explained to him, he sort of changed his mind. Now, what does he know now that his supporters don't? What would make a certified weenie on Defense act as Obama has acted? The cynical will claim he was corrupted. That's not obvious from his character or his background. He seems to genuinely believe what-ever line he's pushing at the time. He appears simply to have changed his mind. I'm guessing he didn't do it willingly. The easiest course for him was to declare victory and leave both Iraq and WTFisstan, he is leaving Iraq pretty much on Bush's timetable. That way, he could concentrate on the economy and his domestic agenda. He's not doing that probably for the simple reason that as soon as bin Laden gets his nuclear weapon which it appears the majority of Pakistanis wish he had, then pick your favorite American city to go Foom. Then watch the economy go Foom.
Well, if you are talking about closing JFCOM, it is the Virginia Democrat senators which are crying the most visibly. In fact, I've not heard one Republican complain. And Gates isn't proposing cutting Defense, he's proposing the individual services realign their internal structures to save money, the savings are to be kept by each individual service and subsequently spent on the direct defense mission of those services rather than the bureaucratic support. It should have been done long ago. However, there's a fairly good chance the Democrats in Congress, once they get the tally of money that has been redirected, will attempt to cut the Defense budget.
Let's not kid ourselves that cutting Defense will balance the budget. The project deficit for this year is $1.4 Trillion, the entire Defense budget is a bit south of $700 Billion. So dropping the U.S.'s pants and encouraging Al Qaeda to stick it in won't solve the entitlements problem which is the real driver of budget deficits. And the Democrats will bitterly complain (see Warner and Webb of Virginia crying about how JFCOM is central to the Defense of this Great Nation...blah, blah, blah) when defense cuts hit their states. Hell, previous administrations couldn't even change the F-18 program after it got started due to Edward Kennedy claiming that Mass. and the F-18 were central to the Defense of this Great Nation...blah, blah, blah).
Just look at the proportion of the federal budget that goes towards entitlements and what it is expected to balloon to. It's 2/3s of the budget. So if you wish to blame someone, blame the American people. They are the ones who see no problem cutting themselves a bit of the federal dole.
And the result of your prescriptions would be worse than the curse you wish to banish. It takes a lot of time to get to the forefront of any of the complicated issues confronting the U.S. Financial regulation is one. Your Part one would simply hand more power over the unelected bureaucracy and it would be tapped by every single term congress-critter. Also, who in their right mind would bother with a 2 year stint...yep, nutjobs, single-issue whackos. And there would be no learning for critters, no institutional memory. Nothing would ever get passed because the senators would still be writing fairly complicated bills with arcane language to counter the lawsuits they know will come from our over-legalled society. And appointment by governors solves nothing, they'd be accepting kickbacks to select the "right" senators.
Part two solves nothing and probably dooms any committee to only attempting short range solutions because that is all they can see....presuming you can even get the right people to serve. And how will these people get to serve? You want to vote on every committee every 2 years? Which committees should there be? Who chooses this?
Part three is simply too stupid for words. Just the tax code alone will swamp any review not to mention environmental laws, etc. There simply isn't enough time or people to accomplish this.
Android isn't making any money for Google...yet. Google expects to be selling ads for Android in the future and that's where they expect to profit. Apple is selling the phone + software and also hopes to make money on the ads in the future. But Apple isn't a media company by nature; they have hopes to morph into one, but one centered on devices. If the situation with Google-vs-Apple were analogous to MS-vs-Apple, Google would be selling the OS. It is anyone's guess how the dream of selling ads is going to play out on phones.
Personally, I do not want a phone that is pushing ads at me. Phones appear to me to be more personal computing devices. The more ads appear there, the less it appealing (I believe) the platform becomes. It might be that ads on phones is a total bust. If it is, Google will have to fall back on services and software.
I see, so the U.S. forced Japan into Manchuria in the early 30's and demanded the Rape of Nanking? You do recall why the U.S. had those embargoes, right? This was the mid-century equivalent to sanctions that seems all the rage at the U.N. in lieu of doing anything productive. The Spanish-American war didn't whet American appetite for anything except salsa and bananas, which were the U.S.'s backyard.
Yep, WWII would have been different with a weak U.S. Hitler's or Stalin's minions would still be running Europe without the Jews, and those lovely Japanese and their deep respect for Chinese and whales would still be showing them the depths of their respect. Ever read about the Rape of Nanking? Yep, the world would be different.
"forcibly-United States of America" And don't you ever forget it was the North that had to clean up the South from the sin of slavery. Sherman didn't go far enough.
What is irrational is Ballmer believing Win 7 tablets will sell given the astounding track record MS has in the area. Ballmer had the same attitude towards Google. The attitude is "let someone else do the intelligent work of figuring out a market, then attempt to steal it from them". Hence the attitude that MS can win only by someone else losing; this comes out as the Other Guys are selling more than he'd like them to. The analogy stands, Ballmer is typical Business School Product that understands nothing about what makes a market tick, I doubt he can tell the difference between selling MS-ware and selling Pepsi.
I don't know about that. Ballmer, in response to questions about the iPad, said that Apple was selling more than he'd like them to. Now what kind of perverted Business School Product thinks like that...probably all of them. Presumably if Apple wasn't selling any, he'd be uninterested in the segment. This goes a long way in explaining what is wrong about MS.
Yep, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that if only the Saudi Arabian people voted in their own government, that government would turn out to be an enlightened democracy full of minority rights and respect for other religions. Instead, it would be a theocracy and probably worse than Iran's. The only non-gov. organization in that country which could count on the people's support would be the mullahs skulking in their mosques. Their notion of government is Fascist, just like Iran, with the added force of Islam to keep any one with an independent opinion in line. Their first edict after taking power would be to arm Hamas to the teeth in preparation for the next Israel-Islamic war. And they'd do it as soon as they can because they feel they are in competition with the Shi'ites in Iran and their dogs, Hezbollah, to be the leaders of the next "Final Solution" to their Jewish problem. However, the Jews here are a mere football to be used in conflict between the Sunni's and Shi'ites for the soul of Islam.
Wow, you mean the world is not fair? And you say we need to explain this to you? I don't know if that is possible.
Nuclear + reprocessing = much less to protect. And there was a European study reported in TheRegister awhile back, if you were to cover most of the Sahara with photo, you might be able to light up Europe..for now. So could you please get started, then we'll see about covering the U.S. south with photo.
"These incidents illustrate that the Afghan authorities, far from being ready to take over counter-terrorism operations, are in fact indifferent, incompetent, and insidious." How would you know that? Is this a representative sample of life in Afghanistan?
"one time one simply lost contact and went rogue, " This was reported, at least I've read about it several months ago.
"it's hard to say why a real plane wouldn't make more sense." Time over target. F16s suck a lot of fuel.
I don't think anecdotal evidence like these reports is going to place anything in context. It's like listening to the police radio in any major city, it would give you the impression the whole city is a civil war zone. These reports are reports of fuck ups, Wikileaks claims to have more. How would we know what they've been holding back? How do we know anything about Wikileaks. Me thinks we need a meta-Wikiteaks to leak info on Wikileaks so we can ascertain their truthiness.
"if only i had full root on the machine, and a terminal to hack around in." You forget one thing, viruses, worms, and all sorts of scum that inhabit the desktop work that isn't hiding fearfully behind a firewall. All it would take is for one virus to get onto the iPad to destroy the little ecosystem Apple is building....and they are supposed to do this so people like you can feel, what, exactly? If you want to go hack, get a real machine.
To go back further, it was called "cracking". "Hacking" was reserved for taking a program and modifying it or merely writing a program, there was no malfeasance implied.
Technically speaking, evolution doesn't propose that man descended from apes (except Business School Product). Rather, it proposes that man and ape had common ancestors.
Yep, especially those 9/11 suiciders. Islam had nothing to do with it. They were educated and this led them to lose all hope and have nothing to live for, so they, y'now, just decided to take these planes and....
Yeah, yer right. I definitely recall prior to 9/11 the secret plans and conspiracies hatched in the U.S. over Afghanistan. The Pentagon stayed up long nights plotting to invade it to...to...now why were they doing that again?
Possibly, except last we heard it was the Chinese who are already making deals in Afghanistan to develop their mineral wealth. So much for your theory of the U.S. going in to give Haliburton another contract.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree about Obama caring about coalition soldiers and/or Afghans. However, there are reports from the Middle East that politicians in Arab countries figure Obama is a bit spineless and that if they want a counter-weight to the Iranians, the Jews in Israel appear to have the right sized balls. The notion of Iran with nukes is changing their perspective about Israel, but it is being encouraged by a perceived weakness in Obama. Actually, it is somewhat surprising in that Obama has been much more aggressive in America's responses to Islam-inspired terrorism than Bush ever was. I guess the problem is that Obama doesn't appear as nuts as Bush (or Reagan) which gets interpreted as weakness.
This isn't really a data center story, but it does involve computers. We were installing a metal forming line in a factory in Birmingham, Ala. I had the software controlled flying die and another engineer had the strictly hardware controlled flying cuttoff. The metal came off a huge coil though a loop into a feed to stop and through another loop to the flying die and then the flying cuttoff to chop it to the correct length. The loops act like queues allowing the material to come or exit continuously while either being took out or fed in stages. The feed to stop stamped some holes the steel, the flying cutoff stamps some other holes after the roll-former and then the flying cuttoff did its thing. The flying cuttoff die had a ball screw connected to a motor via a coupling. The coupling was filled with about 5/8 inch ball bearings, about 30 of these.
We power up the line, the feed to stop is stamping, the flying die takes off and catches the line and the die comes under the press which chomps down and the holes are made. The point on the line where the cutoff is to be made comes up before the flying cuttoff...which promptly takes off like a bat out of hell, fails to cut off, runs into the forward stops...wham, wham, wham...the motor trips out. We scratch out heads thinking. The hardware engineer insists on trying it again with the rest of us assuming since nothing has changed, it will do the same thing again. I'm sitting on top of the control box about 6 feet up to see the whole line. Line starts up, feed to stop does its thing, flying die does its thing. The point on the line where the cutoff is to be made comes up before the flying cuttoff...which promptly takes off like a bat out of hell, fails to cut off, runs into the forward stops...wham, wham, blam...ball bearings flying everywhere. I hit the deck not wanting to die that particular day or lose my eyesight.
For what it's worth, another anecdotal event, I was burgled a few years ago in Maryland. The cops came, then the next day they sent a detective. They dusted for prints, took notes on what was stolen, etc. 4 months later, they had caught the culprits.
BTW, I very much doubt you have been "From Texas, to Tennessee, to Oklahoma, to South Carolina, to California and Arizona and New Mexico" and witnessed uselessness from officers.
That and apparently during those early lusty Soviet times, there was a grand vision to power the USSR and Moscow in particular with peat. Peat is in bogs. To burn it you have to get the water out. So they drained the bogs. Fast forward to the latter Soviet times when natural gas was discovered (no, I'm not talking about Politburo speeches) and a half century of Communist WTF 5 year projects caught up with them. So they dropped the peat idea and started cooking with gas. That was all nice and tidy but no one wanted to go back and rewater the bogs. Now, a bit of global warming, a bit of La Nina, a bit of nasty drought...add some lightning, dumb Russians tossing their cigarette butts in the bogs, etc. and we have the spectacle of Putin pushing a button on a fire plane to drop a giant raindrop of water to show his solidarity with the proles.
The only reason the bogs didn't attempt to kill the Russians before was the amount of rainfall they normally receive which put out the bog fires they normally have. That works fine until you have a drought, and even more Russian screwups like you mentioned.
Yes and no. It is about the egg, but the egg affects public support. Some seem to think that Obama was a pacifist before he became President and expected him to act like one. Well, he was. However, when the threat was explained to him, he sort of changed his mind. Now, what does he know now that his supporters don't? What would make a certified weenie on Defense act as Obama has acted? The cynical will claim he was corrupted. That's not obvious from his character or his background. He seems to genuinely believe what-ever line he's pushing at the time. He appears simply to have changed his mind. I'm guessing he didn't do it willingly. The easiest course for him was to declare victory and leave both Iraq and WTFisstan, he is leaving Iraq pretty much on Bush's timetable. That way, he could concentrate on the economy and his domestic agenda. He's not doing that probably for the simple reason that as soon as bin Laden gets his nuclear weapon which it appears the majority of Pakistanis wish he had, then pick your favorite American city to go Foom. Then watch the economy go Foom.
Well, if you are talking about closing JFCOM, it is the Virginia Democrat senators which are crying the most visibly. In fact, I've not heard one Republican complain. And Gates isn't proposing cutting Defense, he's proposing the individual services realign their internal structures to save money, the savings are to be kept by each individual service and subsequently spent on the direct defense mission of those services rather than the bureaucratic support. It should have been done long ago. However, there's a fairly good chance the Democrats in Congress, once they get the tally of money that has been redirected, will attempt to cut the Defense budget.
Let's not kid ourselves that cutting Defense will balance the budget. The project deficit for this year is $1.4 Trillion, the entire Defense budget is a bit south of $700 Billion. So dropping the U.S.'s pants and encouraging Al Qaeda to stick it in won't solve the entitlements problem which is the real driver of budget deficits. And the Democrats will bitterly complain (see Warner and Webb of Virginia crying about how JFCOM is central to the Defense of this Great Nation...blah, blah, blah) when defense cuts hit their states. Hell, previous administrations couldn't even change the F-18 program after it got started due to Edward Kennedy claiming that Mass. and the F-18 were central to the Defense of this Great Nation...blah, blah, blah).
Errr...you really don't have a lot to keep you busy, do you?
Just look at the proportion of the federal budget that goes towards entitlements and what it is expected to balloon to. It's 2/3s of the budget. So if you wish to blame someone, blame the American people. They are the ones who see no problem cutting themselves a bit of the federal dole.
And the result of your prescriptions would be worse than the curse you wish to banish. It takes a lot of time to get to the forefront of any of the complicated issues confronting the U.S. Financial regulation is one. Your Part one would simply hand more power over the unelected bureaucracy and it would be tapped by every single term congress-critter. Also, who in their right mind would bother with a 2 year stint...yep, nutjobs, single-issue whackos. And there would be no learning for critters, no institutional memory. Nothing would ever get passed because the senators would still be writing fairly complicated bills with arcane language to counter the lawsuits they know will come from our over-legalled society. And appointment by governors solves nothing, they'd be accepting kickbacks to select the "right" senators.
Part two solves nothing and probably dooms any committee to only attempting short range solutions because that is all they can see....presuming you can even get the right people to serve. And how will these people get to serve? You want to vote on every committee every 2 years? Which committees should there be? Who chooses this?
Part three is simply too stupid for words. Just the tax code alone will swamp any review not to mention environmental laws, etc. There simply isn't enough time or people to accomplish this.
It is important to develop sense of proportion.
Android isn't making any money for Google...yet. Google expects to be selling ads for Android in the future and that's where they expect to profit. Apple is selling the phone + software and also hopes to make money on the ads in the future. But Apple isn't a media company by nature; they have hopes to morph into one, but one centered on devices. If the situation with Google-vs-Apple were analogous to MS-vs-Apple, Google would be selling the OS. It is anyone's guess how the dream of selling ads is going to play out on phones.
Personally, I do not want a phone that is pushing ads at me. Phones appear to me to be more personal computing devices. The more ads appear there, the less it appealing (I believe) the platform becomes. It might be that ads on phones is a total bust. If it is, Google will have to fall back on services and software.
I see, so the U.S. forced Japan into Manchuria in the early 30's and demanded the Rape of Nanking? You do recall why the U.S. had those embargoes, right? This was the mid-century equivalent to sanctions that seems all the rage at the U.N. in lieu of doing anything productive. The Spanish-American war didn't whet American appetite for anything except salsa and bananas, which were the U.S.'s backyard.
Yep, WWII would have been different with a weak U.S. Hitler's or Stalin's minions would still be running Europe without the Jews, and those lovely Japanese and their deep respect for Chinese and whales would still be showing them the depths of their respect. Ever read about the Rape of Nanking? Yep, the world would be different.
Could I please have some of what you are smoking?
"forcibly-United States of America" And don't you ever forget it was the North that had to clean up the South from the sin of slavery. Sherman didn't go far enough.
What is irrational is Ballmer believing Win 7 tablets will sell given the astounding track record MS has in the area. Ballmer had the same attitude towards Google. The attitude is "let someone else do the intelligent work of figuring out a market, then attempt to steal it from them". Hence the attitude that MS can win only by someone else losing; this comes out as the Other Guys are selling more than he'd like them to. The analogy stands, Ballmer is typical Business School Product that understands nothing about what makes a market tick, I doubt he can tell the difference between selling MS-ware and selling Pepsi.
Nah, upper management piddles. It's just they are high enough up there and management gravity does the rest.
I don't know about that. Ballmer, in response to questions about the iPad, said that Apple was selling more than he'd like them to. Now what kind of perverted Business School Product thinks like that...probably all of them. Presumably if Apple wasn't selling any, he'd be uninterested in the segment. This goes a long way in explaining what is wrong about MS.
Yep, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking that if only the Saudi Arabian people voted in their own government, that government would turn out to be an enlightened democracy full of minority rights and respect for other religions. Instead, it would be a theocracy and probably worse than Iran's. The only non-gov. organization in that country which could count on the people's support would be the mullahs skulking in their mosques. Their notion of government is Fascist, just like Iran, with the added force of Islam to keep any one with an independent opinion in line. Their first edict after taking power would be to arm Hamas to the teeth in preparation for the next Israel-Islamic war. And they'd do it as soon as they can because they feel they are in competition with the Shi'ites in Iran and their dogs, Hezbollah, to be the leaders of the next "Final Solution" to their Jewish problem. However, the Jews here are a mere football to be used in conflict between the Sunni's and Shi'ites for the soul of Islam.
Wow, you mean the world is not fair? And you say we need to explain this to you? I don't know if that is possible.
Nuclear + reprocessing = much less to protect. And there was a European study reported in TheRegister awhile back, if you were to cover most of the Sahara with photo, you might be able to light up Europe..for now. So could you please get started, then we'll see about covering the U.S. south with photo.
"These incidents illustrate that the Afghan authorities, far from being ready to take over counter-terrorism operations, are in fact indifferent, incompetent, and insidious." How would you know that? Is this a representative sample of life in Afghanistan?
"one time one simply lost contact and went rogue, " This was reported, at least I've read about it several months ago.
"it's hard to say why a real plane wouldn't make more sense." Time over target. F16s suck a lot of fuel.
I don't think anecdotal evidence like these reports is going to place anything in context. It's like listening to the police radio in any major city, it would give you the impression the whole city is a civil war zone. These reports are reports of fuck ups, Wikileaks claims to have more. How would we know what they've been holding back? How do we know anything about Wikileaks. Me thinks we need a meta-Wikiteaks to leak info on Wikileaks so we can ascertain their truthiness.
"if only i had full root on the machine, and a terminal to hack around in." You forget one thing, viruses, worms, and all sorts of scum that inhabit the desktop work that isn't hiding fearfully behind a firewall. All it would take is for one virus to get onto the iPad to destroy the little ecosystem Apple is building....and they are supposed to do this so people like you can feel, what, exactly? If you want to go hack, get a real machine.
Yeah, that showed'em, you go, Girl!
To go back further, it was called "cracking". "Hacking" was reserved for taking a program and modifying it or merely writing a program, there was no malfeasance implied.
Technically speaking, evolution doesn't propose that man descended from apes (except Business School Product). Rather, it proposes that man and ape had common ancestors.
Yep, especially those 9/11 suiciders. Islam had nothing to do with it. They were educated and this led them to lose all hope and have nothing to live for, so they, y'now, just decided to take these planes and....
Yeah, yer right. I definitely recall prior to 9/11 the secret plans and conspiracies hatched in the U.S. over Afghanistan. The Pentagon stayed up long nights plotting to invade it to...to...now why were they doing that again?
Possibly, except last we heard it was the Chinese who are already making deals in Afghanistan to develop their mineral wealth. So much for your theory of the U.S. going in to give Haliburton another contract.