This mirrors what koiransukiaa posted in reply to you and is also off topic but I feel compelled to reply. You link to an article on a website http://www.allpar.com/news/index.php/2009/01/chrysler-has-fewest-recalls-among-big-six-automakers/ in order to back up your claim that Chrysler has great quality because it has the least amount of recalls. I went to the site, and it is very enlightening. It is not a statistical study spread out over a long period of time. It is the number of recalls by manufacturer in the last year, 2008. That is not a very good foundation for an argument using numbers. Also, if you read the article carefully (which is not hard, it is only about as long as this post) you will see that while Chrysler had 360,000 in the year 2008, making it the best of the auto manufacturers listed in terms of total recalls (not recalls as a percentage of how many vehicles sold or vehicles being driven mind you) it also states that Chrysler had 2.2 million in 2007, making it 5th in 2007. Please review your sources more carefully, and learn how to read deeper before making blanket statements. Oh wait, this is Slashdot.
Another thought just hit me Boats, how are you able to read this and reply? Do you have someone else reading out loud to you and typing your answer? I kid. On my ship I had respect for Engineers and BM's because you and us were the only ones that seemed to be working all the time.
Puddle jumper. It is standard practice for a small boy. When we launch the birds and call flight quarters, the airdales do all the important stuff, but there is about 10-15 if I remember correctly people from ships crew that support it. They are the fire team, do a walkdown of the flight deck, are the refueling team, and mostly just sit around on standby. It was composed of seaman/bm's (undesignated seamen went away so when I left it was a senior BM or two and BMSN's) engineers and Supply. Why supply? Because they don't do shit else on the ship.
Three Cores for the MAC kings under the sky
Seven for the Windows-lords in their halls of stone
Nine for Linux users doomed to die virgins
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of MS where the Shadows lie.
One Core to rule them all, One Core to find them,
One Core to bring them all and in the darkness bind them (with restrictive licensing)
In the Land of MS where the Shadows lie.
And has been around for a long time. All of the physical Yogas and the less martial of the martial art style exercises have as their aim a better union of the mind with the body, which includes a greater sensitivity to what the body is experiencing, so that you can make the changes necessary to avoid oncoming diseases or sickness (change in diet, extra rest, stimulation of a particular system of the body). Just because some raghead or little chinaman knows about this (and its not new knowledge, or even secret knowledge) seems to automatically mean its of no value to western society, and we need to come up with some external solution. If it ain't broke, dont fix it. And don't make it even easier for western society (mostly Americans) to live their lives in a horribly unhealthy physical state and with the assurance that there is a drug available or a medical procedure to solve something that should not have progressed to a problem in the first place.
I've never been on a sub, as a surface and sub communities do not mingle very much, so I can not say one way or the other if the navy "optimum manning" (crew downsizing) initiative has made its way to the sub community or not. Maybe a recent/current sub-sailor can comment. But it sure has fucked the surface community from what Ive seen. My ship didnt have enough undesignated seaman/boatswain's mates to do flight quarters and man the boat deck at the same time anymore. It was do one, or the other, or do both simultaneously with fewer people than it was decided a long time ago is in the acceptable realms of Navy safety (which is pretty damn safe, the Navy goes overboard (no pun intended) on safety, which is a good thing.) Or grab people from ratings that dont normally do this kind of stuff, who have already been downsized anyways.
I was on a small ship, a DDG (Guided Missle Destroyer) for 3 years and I can provide some information. I am by no means on expert as my rating (job designation) had little to do with piloting the ship. The US has 2 main types of subs, boomers and attack subs. Nobody knows where a boomer goes after it leaves port and dives, not even the captain of the sub until after he has read his classified mission instructions. Once they are gone, they are gone for 3 months. They can transit around the planet or kick it a few hundred miles off of their homeport. Attack submarines, like the one involved in this incident, have a different function. The Navy sends them to a region where we think there are foreign subs playing hide, and they try to find them. They also lurk where foreign unfriendly neighbors congregate, to remind foreign unfriendly neighbors that they are vulnerable. Their locations are not usually as classified. The Amphibious ship should have known that an attack sub was in the area. The sub also should have know of all the ships that may have been in the straits of Hormuz while it was there. A ship the size of the Amphib is going to steer like a cow, so I think the sub should bear the greater burden on avoiding that collision. I dont know about amphibs, but I know DDGs have a way to hide the sounds of their engineering equipment and propellers, Sonar techs told me that a ship running with this on sounds indistinguishable from a storm at sea, unless the ship turns.
My ship never transited the straits of Hormuz, but I do know it is a scary transit. Exact procedures that US Navy ships have to follow are probably classified.
Accidents do happen, regularly. A ship running into another ship is a huge huge accident for the Navy however. I've got a hunch that a few years from now the navy will have conducted a study that says accidents in this time period were caused due to the undermanning of navy vessels, an initiative that started about 2 years ago (basicly the navy started downsizing the crews of ships just like corporations, naval-ese for this is "optimum manning"). Its one thing to have less workers at a company or a company branch, but it is devastating to have less people on a ship, because a ship has a complete turnover of "employees" every 5 years. A sailor spends from 2 to 5 years max on a ship before being rotated to sea duty or a different ship. If there are not enough crewmembers to conduct training and look over things, as well as to do all of the jobs required to keep a warship operating, standards suffer, accidents increase, and the officers and others who came up with the shortsighted plans in the first place retire happily before the long term effects show their ugly face.
I don't know why you should, but I checked it out for a month last month to see how it is doing. Here's a summary report:
Good - Population decent, travel is now easy thanks to a portal system and rentable flying mounts for lowbies (they last for 5-10 minutes). There is a starter zone that is nice, and it takes you to lvel 10 with decent gear.
Bad - Computers and graphics cards are now at the point where settings can be turned up and the graphics of the game can be appreciated. My jaw dropped when I flew up on my mount and was able to see across the whole continent in detail. HOWEVER there is something in the client code that causes stutter all the time, if I do a 180 degree turn there is stutter. That is unacceptable.
Ugly - This game is for hardcore players. Overall I was enjoying my experience. Combat is very tactical. There is a plethora of skills/powers available to all classes which gives awesome flexibility in how to approch encounters. I started to mess with crafting to make better gear, and then many hours later, and after consulting all sorts of instructional guides and messing around alot, I sort of understood it. After many more hours of making things (maybe 10-20) I looked at my crafting level (still low) and realized this game wsa to hardcore for me.
Here is a partial explanation on why all the agencies. I am not an expert but I have an account on Slashdot.
CIA - Limited to overseas espionage and intelligence. Does not have the capability to conduct a large scale military operation. Can do NOTHING* against U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, and can do nothing* against legal foreign nationals on U.S. soil.
FBI - Can enforce US Federal Law (which is different than state law, the FBI can do nothing to someone that breaks a state law unless it is also a federal law). Cannot operate outside of U.S. soil.
NSA - Responsible for cryptology and cryptography. Both with coming up with new secure ways to encrypt U.S. communications, and finding ways to compromise foreign countries' communications. Assists other agencies but is basicly independent.
NCSC - Not sure, part of the Department of Homeland Security, so it was probably created just because, along with the DOH.
SS? DIA? NRA?????
The military organizations are there to do the things that constitute an act of war against a foreign state. No regular US citizen is authorized to do so in the name of the US government. The CIA spies (on other countries, not on the US*), and spying could be considered an act of war I suppose, but every large nation-state does it to some extent and it seems like there is a defacto agreement to tolerate it, to an extent.
Would it be more efficient to combine these into larger units? Yes and no. Sometimes organizations work better when they are responsible for smaller tasks and handing off their work to other organizations to finish up, like an assembly line. It helps keep them focused, and assuming the communication channels are good between organizations it can be an effective way to do things. Other times its better to have an entire project from top to bottom done under one roof. I don't know enough about the organizations listed to come up with a definitively better way to structure them. The structure is the way it is now for a reason, and it may have been good reasons or it may have been bad reasons that led to it. Someone could probably write a book about this topic (and probably has already, many times over.)
*This is how it works in theory anyway. The former president and his advisor's or whoever decided the constitution of the United States has exceptions, and our congresspeople did not fight him on it like they should, and our citizens did not raise an uproar to our congresspeople like they should have, and in the end we deserve what we get, with a system like ours.
What exploits in the real economy? This exploit was only possible because in a computer game the wealth generated was pretending to correspond to something real, but in actuality was just numbers in a centrally-controled system that can be incremented and decremented out of thin air.
</irony>
In the real world, wealth is generated out of nothing on a regular basis. This is called the fractional reserve system of banking. In the United States it is set up like this. A person or people start a bank. Lets say they have $1 million to put into it. By the rules of the United States Fractional reserve system, they are legally allowed to lend $9 million dollars out to borrowers. In the U.S the ratio is set at 9:1, different countries using the Fractional Reserve system have different rates. $1 million just became $9 million. Now most of the time paper currency is not given out, it becomes a number in a book or computer. If all the borrowers want cash instead of virtual credit in a book or computer, the bank will be able to get $9 million dollars worth of paper currency from the Federal Reserve, to avoid panics and things. This is the exploit in the real economy. If people were better educated and spent less time occupying themselves with entertainment and more time considering the world around them, then I don't know what. Let's give it a try and see what happens.
the best hackers are still freelancers. Is hacking going to become an act of war in the future?
It already is potentiallay an act of war. Countries (and by that I mean official government entities, not random groups of people that hack for fun and profit and are concentrated in a single government) do not overtly mess with other countries computer networks. Covertly (meaning unprovable/untraceable or requiring some diplomatic smoothing over if caught), yes.
If that's the case, the freelancers are going to send us all back to the dark ages.
It could happen, sure.
They won't stand for cyber-terrorism by the world's armies.
Because every individual with hacking skills subscribes to one set of morals, in every country and culture of the world. Right.
I mean really, a person can download a prolific artist's entire discography from a torrent site (and often times get a better product than they could pay for some where else, i.e. more complete, higher quality rips, obscure and bootleg recordings, etc) with a single click. This can be 500 or 1000 songs. Ok dumb (but partly true) example trying to put a nicer face on music piracy. But I feel it is higher than 95% just because it is relatively easy. I mean I could almost teach my mom how to do it.
Science begins with some rules before any observation is made. It is very useful to me to see science as a reality/experience filter. It divides reality/experience into two simple categories. The first category is is this reality/experience physically observable (that is with some sort of physical device?) Is it measureable in some meaningful way? Can it be repeated/reproduced? Will another scientist be able to independently recreate this, and get the same observations and same measurments? If the answer is yes, then this thing/reality/experience IS scientific. The opposite of this is this thing/reality/experience IS NOT scientific. Amazing insights and connections and knowledge can be achieved by looking at things scientifically and applying the scientific method. The proof is undeniable. However, "science" can say only one thing about other stuff, and that is that other stuff is UN-scientific. It appears to me that in the process of learning science, most people do not learn that distinction and learn to equate sciene with some concept of truth. Science can say nothing about absolute truth. Science can only make meaningful statements (meaning being relative here) about things that are sciencetific. Again, science can only say that things that are unscientific are just that. Now to place a value on unscientific things relative to scientific things is also meaningless to me. To say scientific things are more valuable than unscientific things to SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS can be said, but parse the sentence and see how much it does not say. Anyway that is my current point of view on science and nonscience.
1. WoW user interface. It was perfect. When I first played WoW I thought the interface was just right, not overwhelming but complex enough to do everything I wanted my character to do reasonably easy. Then I learned I could customize the interface in-game to add more toolbars, get more buttons, I learned more keyboard shortcuts, I thought it was perfect. THEN I learned about custom made interface addons. Holy Christ you can do so much in Wow to enhance the interface by effectively managaing greater and greater levels of complexity that I think it hit perfection. Then I quit because WoW is a full time soul-sucking drainer of life force, and I already have a wife for that. I haven't played much of other MMOs but I think one of WoW's reasons for its astronomical success is its perfect interface, as far as catering to many levels of interface whores. Maybe someone can reply with other games that got it right.
2. Google Chrome. WTF. I wanted to change the settings so video media is played by Media Player Classic instead of by WMP, and in a seperate window. I like simplicity where simplicity is warranted, but not in a web browser. "Basics", "Minor Tweaks", "Under the Hood". It seems like Google dumbed this down for retarded people, or my mom. Maybe I am missing something, but browser design is sorta defacto standardized as far as changing options and things go. Google Chrome is a no go (like a Chevy Nova) for me at this time. FWIW I use primarily use Opera and that makes me a freak if you go by usage numbers.
"Politics is like trying to screw a cat in the ass" -Charles Bukowski
I know, like the whole time I was watching it I was like wtf? this isnt at all like the graphic nov@#(&$# Wait. I have not seen it. It has not been released. It may not be released now.
When did Hollywood come up with its own ideas in the past? They were just ripping off fresher ideas (with notable exceptions of course, but the exceptions didn't come from Hollywood, it came from certain individual filmmakers/writers/directors working for Hollywood)
Hypothetical question. If some artsy filmmaker made a low budget Watchmen movie that was really low budget, Im talking about uses visual symbolism instead of special effects, less than half a million budget, etc etc, that was absolutely in keeping with the spirit and meaning of the source work would you go watch it? Would you watch it over a Hollywooded version that was visually cool?
Its far more likely just mostly isolated young (and/or misguided older) hackers on all sides, having a go at hacking/annoying the opposing sides. Not much different from kids throwing stones at the other side, just the 21st century version of it.
I wish. You should probably wish too. Organizations are involved in this at this point, not just bored kids with nothing more challenging to do. When I say organizations, I mean corporations, organized crime, and the biggest of them all, nation-states.
When was the last time you had a "Big Mac" that was actually big? When I was 6 the Big Mac seemed huge. Then I got older. Did it shrink in the last 20 years or did it just seem big because I wasn't?
I don't know if you have are or have been in the military, but things have changed, at least in the Navy. Sexual harassment is a bad thing that is dealt with really harshly nowadays, and does not happen to often. A much much more significant problem is consensual sexual relationships between people that are in positions that preclude that kind of intimacy (horny people fscking basically.) The reason for this is that Navy leaders take orders and directives and initiatives pretty seriously, from my experience. And of course there are obligatory exceptions that someone could bring up, don't waste a post on it though. The gist of this comment is that a directed focused change has been forced on the military and it has changed things. Sailors still go boozing and whoring though. The CS field obviously cannot effect a change like this from a top down approach like the military, and having been in IT before, yeah there are alot of creepy socially retarded computer genius males out there. And some creepy computer genius females too. I think the real problem is that we should realize that thinking in extremely logical paradigms and modes all the time to be able to solve problems on computers affects the mind in a peculiar way.
Physically conquering and invading a foreign nation is a vastly expensive venture, horrendously expensive. There are other ways to get what a country wants from another country without the use of physical force. First there is the threat and possibility of physical force, and the United States has that in spades. Our miliatary is huge. And powerful. Look it up for details. A single Nimitz Class Aircraft Carrier (the current model) with a full Air Wing has more destructive power than the entire US Navy Fleet of World War 2. And the US has half of the worlds aircraft carriers (11.) Right now they are largely tied down to the Gulf area, supporting the war on Iraq and also being around Iran.
The U.S. has a pretty firm grip on the entire South American continent. It gained it in the 60's 70's and 80's, not through overt warfare, but through *making sure* US friendly leaders rose to power, more specifically, business friendly leaders, and suppressing those persons that were not friendly to US business or other interests. This was done even when the leaders were democratically elected, a friendly tyrant (that is to say friendly to the US, a tyrant to their people) is better than a unagreeable benevolent leader (one that puts their countries interests first.) Look also into Saudi Arabian democracy for more info (spoiler: there is no such thing, but Saudi Arabia is a great ally to the US, because they see eye to eye on business, meaning power aggregation.)
Look at that one Country in South America that the US has problems with right now. Look into the history, and then examine the treatment of the media of that country and their leade (US media that is).
It is a naive notion to think that a country with so much power and wealth would not try to gain more power and wealth. That is the historical trend of all empires. And someday the country either collapses from the inside or becomes spread out too thin and gets picked apart one overspread piece at a time. Or hell, economically collapses because their monetary policy is structured like a Ponzi scheme.
Also, the US does not intercede morally unless there is an advantage to be had. For example, genocide in Africa does not need US intervention, as the immediate benefits of intervention pale in comparison to the long term benefits of a fucked up continent with many untapped natural resources, that can be had had for cheap some day since there is no major government presence that has a firm grip on a country, and local warlords can be bought out for less in comparison for rights to exploit wanted resource. Etc, etc, etc.
I do not think the US is intrinsically evil. If it however being not so secretly ran by individuals and organization that are taking advantage of it to further their own individual and organizational goals. Corruption. I feel bad for people that are able to run for president or vice president for one of the two major political parties. In my view ANYONE with that kind of influence has sold their soul 20 times over, as a necessity of obtaining high public office. If somehow they have not, then I would expect their political career to end one way or another pretty soon.
Jeez, this is so off topic I forgot what the topic was. If you want references for any of the claims I made, do yourself a favor and do your own research. Don't believe anything I say, and to get the maximum benefit disprove me (or see that I am partly right) on your own efforts, and then maybe (re)start the process of thinking for oneself again in the US, Lord knows we could use it.
The info would likely only be accessible on the Governments JWICS network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JWICS , which is pretty darned secure (or whatever network the government has that the public does not know about). You gotta remember that the cryptography that is publicly available is approved by the NSA, and that the better cryptography is kept by them for their own super secrect stuff. Also, to access a terminal connected to the JWICS network, one would need a Top Secret/SCI clearance, and those terminals are probably in locked rooms, with physical security and other security measures, which means the only ones that would be able to exploint this info are spies that are in deep. Which is possible of course, but if they are in that deep they would have access to this information in other ways, just not easily on one website.
But sadly, we still know jack shit about how the brain works
Most of us know jack about the algorithms that allow us to catch a baseball in flight, yet we can still do it. Furthermore, a person from 10000 BC with no math at all by today's standards could do it just as well as we can.
Apples and orangatuns. The algorithm to catch a ball does not need to be known to catch a ball, what needs to be known is 'how to catch a ball' (whatever "knowing" is). However, to program a computer to simulate thought accurately, an accurate algorithm for thought (or the biological underpinnings of neural activity) IS implicitly required, as algorithms are the way the computer works.
Also, we are studying the brain in all its complexity by using a tool, our brain. I think it is impossible for any one brain to fathom how a brain works completely, just as it is impossible to build an accurate model of the entire universe, as it would be at least as big as the entire universe, and therefore would not fit (in the universe). Maybe with the assistance of computers or other tools an understanding could be achieved, but not by man's natural computer alone.
Slashdot Mirror
This mirrors what koiransukiaa posted in reply to you and is also off topic but I feel compelled to reply. You link to an article on a website http://www.allpar.com/news/index.php/2009/01/chrysler-has-fewest-recalls-among-big-six-automakers/ in order to back up your claim that Chrysler has great quality because it has the least amount of recalls. I went to the site, and it is very enlightening. It is not a statistical study spread out over a long period of time. It is the number of recalls by manufacturer in the last year, 2008. That is not a very good foundation for an argument using numbers. Also, if you read the article carefully (which is not hard, it is only about as long as this post) you will see that while Chrysler had 360,000 in the year 2008, making it the best of the auto manufacturers listed in terms of total recalls (not recalls as a percentage of how many vehicles sold or vehicles being driven mind you) it also states that Chrysler had 2.2 million in 2007, making it 5th in 2007. Please review your sources more carefully, and learn how to read deeper before making blanket statements. Oh wait, this is Slashdot.
Another thought just hit me Boats, how are you able to read this and reply? Do you have someone else reading out loud to you and typing your answer? I kid. On my ship I had respect for Engineers and BM's because you and us were the only ones that seemed to be working all the time.
Puddle jumper. It is standard practice for a small boy. When we launch the birds and call flight quarters, the airdales do all the important stuff, but there is about 10-15 if I remember correctly people from ships crew that support it. They are the fire team, do a walkdown of the flight deck, are the refueling team, and mostly just sit around on standby. It was composed of seaman/bm's (undesignated seamen went away so when I left it was a senior BM or two and BMSN's) engineers and Supply. Why supply? Because they don't do shit else on the ship.
Three Cores for the MAC kings under the sky
Seven for the Windows-lords in their halls of stone
Nine for Linux users doomed to die virgins
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of MS where the Shadows lie.
One Core to rule them all, One Core to find them,
One Core to bring them all and in the darkness bind them (with restrictive licensing)
In the Land of MS where the Shadows lie.
And has been around for a long time. All of the physical Yogas and the less martial of the martial art style exercises have as their aim a better union of the mind with the body, which includes a greater sensitivity to what the body is experiencing, so that you can make the changes necessary to avoid oncoming diseases or sickness (change in diet, extra rest, stimulation of a particular system of the body). Just because some raghead or little chinaman knows about this (and its not new knowledge, or even secret knowledge) seems to automatically mean its of no value to western society, and we need to come up with some external solution. If it ain't broke, dont fix it. And don't make it even easier for western society (mostly Americans) to live their lives in a horribly unhealthy physical state and with the assurance that there is a drug available or a medical procedure to solve something that should not have progressed to a problem in the first place.
And designed it to be an ultra-thin portable aphrodisiac.........
I've never been on a sub, as a surface and sub communities do not mingle very much, so I can not say one way or the other if the navy "optimum manning" (crew downsizing) initiative has made its way to the sub community or not. Maybe a recent/current sub-sailor can comment. But it sure has fucked the surface community from what Ive seen. My ship didnt have enough undesignated seaman/boatswain's mates to do flight quarters and man the boat deck at the same time anymore. It was do one, or the other, or do both simultaneously with fewer people than it was decided a long time ago is in the acceptable realms of Navy safety (which is pretty damn safe, the Navy goes overboard (no pun intended) on safety, which is a good thing.) Or grab people from ratings that dont normally do this kind of stuff, who have already been downsized anyways.
I was on a small ship, a DDG (Guided Missle Destroyer) for 3 years and I can provide some information. I am by no means on expert as my rating (job designation) had little to do with piloting the ship. The US has 2 main types of subs, boomers and attack subs. Nobody knows where a boomer goes after it leaves port and dives, not even the captain of the sub until after he has read his classified mission instructions. Once they are gone, they are gone for 3 months. They can transit around the planet or kick it a few hundred miles off of their homeport. Attack submarines, like the one involved in this incident, have a different function. The Navy sends them to a region where we think there are foreign subs playing hide, and they try to find them. They also lurk where foreign unfriendly neighbors congregate, to remind foreign unfriendly neighbors that they are vulnerable. Their locations are not usually as classified. The Amphibious ship should have known that an attack sub was in the area. The sub also should have know of all the ships that may have been in the straits of Hormuz while it was there. A ship the size of the Amphib is going to steer like a cow, so I think the sub should bear the greater burden on avoiding that collision. I dont know about amphibs, but I know DDGs have a way to hide the sounds of their engineering equipment and propellers, Sonar techs told me that a ship running with this on sounds indistinguishable from a storm at sea, unless the ship turns.
My ship never transited the straits of Hormuz, but I do know it is a scary transit. Exact procedures that US Navy ships have to follow are probably classified.
Accidents do happen, regularly. A ship running into another ship is a huge huge accident for the Navy however. I've got a hunch that a few years from now the navy will have conducted a study that says accidents in this time period were caused due to the undermanning of navy vessels, an initiative that started about 2 years ago (basicly the navy started downsizing the crews of ships just like corporations, naval-ese for this is "optimum manning"). Its one thing to have less workers at a company or a company branch, but it is devastating to have less people on a ship, because a ship has a complete turnover of "employees" every 5 years. A sailor spends from 2 to 5 years max on a ship before being rotated to sea duty or a different ship. If there are not enough crewmembers to conduct training and look over things, as well as to do all of the jobs required to keep a warship operating, standards suffer, accidents increase, and the officers and others who came up with the shortsighted plans in the first place retire happily before the long term effects show their ugly face.
My rantful 2 cents.
Tell me again why I should play this game?
I don't know why you should, but I checked it out for a month last month to see how it is doing. Here's a summary report:
Good - Population decent, travel is now easy thanks to a portal system and rentable flying mounts for lowbies (they last for 5-10 minutes). There is a starter zone that is nice, and it takes you to lvel 10 with decent gear.
Bad - Computers and graphics cards are now at the point where settings can be turned up and the graphics of the game can be appreciated. My jaw dropped when I flew up on my mount and was able to see across the whole continent in detail. HOWEVER there is something in the client code that causes stutter all the time, if I do a 180 degree turn there is stutter. That is unacceptable.
Ugly - This game is for hardcore players. Overall I was enjoying my experience. Combat is very tactical. There is a plethora of skills/powers available to all classes which gives awesome flexibility in how to approch encounters. I started to mess with crafting to make better gear, and then many hours later, and after consulting all sorts of instructional guides and messing around alot, I sort of understood it. After many more hours of making things (maybe 10-20) I looked at my crafting level (still low) and realized this game wsa to hardcore for me.
Here is a partial explanation on why all the agencies. I am not an expert but I have an account on Slashdot.
CIA - Limited to overseas espionage and intelligence. Does not have the capability to conduct a large scale military operation. Can do NOTHING* against U.S. citizens anywhere in the world, and can do nothing* against legal foreign nationals on U.S. soil.
FBI - Can enforce US Federal Law (which is different than state law, the FBI can do nothing to someone that breaks a state law unless it is also a federal law). Cannot operate outside of U.S. soil.
NSA - Responsible for cryptology and cryptography. Both with coming up with new secure ways to encrypt U.S. communications, and finding ways to compromise foreign countries' communications. Assists other agencies but is basicly independent.
NCSC - Not sure, part of the Department of Homeland Security, so it was probably created just because, along with the DOH.
SS? DIA? NRA?????
The military organizations are there to do the things that constitute an act of war against a foreign state. No regular US citizen is authorized to do so in the name of the US government. The CIA spies (on other countries, not on the US*), and spying could be considered an act of war I suppose, but every large nation-state does it to some extent and it seems like there is a defacto agreement to tolerate it, to an extent.
Would it be more efficient to combine these into larger units? Yes and no. Sometimes organizations work better when they are responsible for smaller tasks and handing off their work to other organizations to finish up, like an assembly line. It helps keep them focused, and assuming the communication channels are good between organizations it can be an effective way to do things. Other times its better to have an entire project from top to bottom done under one roof. I don't know enough about the organizations listed to come up with a definitively better way to structure them. The structure is the way it is now for a reason, and it may have been good reasons or it may have been bad reasons that led to it. Someone could probably write a book about this topic (and probably has already, many times over.)
*This is how it works in theory anyway. The former president and his advisor's or whoever decided the constitution of the United States has exceptions, and our congresspeople did not fight him on it like they should, and our citizens did not raise an uproar to our congresspeople like they should have, and in the end we deserve what we get, with a system like ours.
its not a fixed point. The hose pulls the boat thing along behind it, at a pretty decent speed judging by the video.
What exploits in the real economy? This exploit was only possible because in a computer game the wealth generated was pretending to correspond to something real, but in actuality was just numbers in a centrally-controled system that can be incremented and decremented out of thin air.
</irony>
In the real world, wealth is generated out of nothing on a regular basis. This is called the fractional reserve system of banking. In the United States it is set up like this. A person or people start a bank. Lets say they have $1 million to put into it. By the rules of the United States Fractional reserve system, they are legally allowed to lend $9 million dollars out to borrowers. In the U.S the ratio is set at 9:1, different countries using the Fractional Reserve system have different rates. $1 million just became $9 million. Now most of the time paper currency is not given out, it becomes a number in a book or computer. If all the borrowers want cash instead of virtual credit in a book or computer, the bank will be able to get $9 million dollars worth of paper currency from the Federal Reserve, to avoid panics and things. This is the exploit in the real economy. If people were better educated and spent less time occupying themselves with entertainment and more time considering the world around them, then I don't know what. Let's give it a try and see what happens.
the best hackers are still freelancers. Is hacking going to become an act of war in the future?
It already is potentiallay an act of war. Countries (and by that I mean official government entities, not random groups of people that hack for fun and profit and are concentrated in a single government) do not overtly mess with other countries computer networks. Covertly (meaning unprovable/untraceable or requiring some diplomatic smoothing over if caught), yes.
If that's the case, the freelancers are going to send us all back to the dark ages.
It could happen, sure.
They won't stand for cyber-terrorism by the world's armies.
Because every individual with hacking skills subscribes to one set of morals, in every country and culture of the world. Right.
I mean really, a person can download a prolific artist's entire discography from a torrent site (and often times get a better product than they could pay for some where else, i.e. more complete, higher quality rips, obscure and bootleg recordings, etc) with a single click. This can be 500 or 1000 songs. Ok dumb (but partly true) example trying to put a nicer face on music piracy. But I feel it is higher than 95% just because it is relatively easy. I mean I could almost teach my mom how to do it.
Science begins with some rules before any observation is made. It is very useful to me to see science as a reality/experience filter. It divides reality/experience into two simple categories. The first category is is this reality/experience physically observable (that is with some sort of physical device?) Is it measureable in some meaningful way? Can it be repeated/reproduced? Will another scientist be able to independently recreate this, and get the same observations and same measurments? If the answer is yes, then this thing/reality/experience IS scientific. The opposite of this is this thing/reality/experience IS NOT scientific. Amazing insights and connections and knowledge can be achieved by looking at things scientifically and applying the scientific method. The proof is undeniable. However, "science" can say only one thing about other stuff, and that is that other stuff is UN-scientific. It appears to me that in the process of learning science, most people do not learn that distinction and learn to equate sciene with some concept of truth. Science can say nothing about absolute truth. Science can only make meaningful statements (meaning being relative here) about things that are sciencetific. Again, science can only say that things that are unscientific are just that. Now to place a value on unscientific things relative to scientific things is also meaningless to me. To say scientific things are more valuable than unscientific things to SCIENCE and SCIENTISTS can be said, but parse the sentence and see how much it does not say. Anyway that is my current point of view on science and nonscience.
Installed and then uninstalled after 3 missions. I didn't like the controls/gameplay, seemed sorta wild.
1. WoW user interface. It was perfect. When I first played WoW I thought the interface was just right, not overwhelming but complex enough to do everything I wanted my character to do reasonably easy. Then I learned I could customize the interface in-game to add more toolbars, get more buttons, I learned more keyboard shortcuts, I thought it was perfect. THEN I learned about custom made interface addons. Holy Christ you can do so much in Wow to enhance the interface by effectively managaing greater and greater levels of complexity that I think it hit perfection. Then I quit because WoW is a full time soul-sucking drainer of life force, and I already have a wife for that. I haven't played much of other MMOs but I think one of WoW's reasons for its astronomical success is its perfect interface, as far as catering to many levels of interface whores. Maybe someone can reply with other games that got it right.
2. Google Chrome. WTF. I wanted to change the settings so video media is played by Media Player Classic instead of by WMP, and in a seperate window. I like simplicity where simplicity is warranted, but not in a web browser. "Basics", "Minor Tweaks", "Under the Hood". It seems like Google dumbed this down for retarded people, or my mom. Maybe I am missing something, but browser design is sorta defacto standardized as far as changing options and things go. Google Chrome is a no go (like a Chevy Nova) for me at this time. FWIW I use primarily use Opera and that makes me a freak if you go by usage numbers.
"Politics is like trying to screw a cat in the ass" -Charles Bukowski
I know, like the whole time I was watching it I was like wtf? this isnt at all like the graphic nov@#(&$# Wait. I have not seen it. It has not been released. It may not be released now.
When did Hollywood come up with its own ideas in the past? They were just ripping off fresher ideas (with notable exceptions of course, but the exceptions didn't come from Hollywood, it came from certain individual filmmakers/writers/directors working for Hollywood)
Hypothetical question. If some artsy filmmaker made a low budget Watchmen movie that was really low budget, Im talking about uses visual symbolism instead of special effects, less than half a million budget, etc etc, that was absolutely in keeping with the spirit and meaning of the source work would you go watch it? Would you watch it over a Hollywooded version that was visually cool?
Its far more likely just mostly isolated young (and/or misguided older) hackers on all sides, having a go at hacking/annoying the opposing sides. Not much different from kids throwing stones at the other side, just the 21st century version of it.
I wish. You should probably wish too. Organizations are involved in this at this point, not just bored kids with nothing more challenging to do. When I say organizations, I mean corporations, organized crime, and the biggest of them all, nation-states.
But yeah, its not yet cyberwar.
When was the last time you had a "Big Mac" that was actually big? When I was 6 the Big Mac seemed huge. Then I got older. Did it shrink in the last 20 years or did it just seem big because I wasn't?
I don't know if you have are or have been in the military, but things have changed, at least in the Navy. Sexual harassment is a bad thing that is dealt with really harshly nowadays, and does not happen to often. A much much more significant problem is consensual sexual relationships between people that are in positions that preclude that kind of intimacy (horny people fscking basically.) The reason for this is that Navy leaders take orders and directives and initiatives pretty seriously, from my experience. And of course there are obligatory exceptions that someone could bring up, don't waste a post on it though. The gist of this comment is that a directed focused change has been forced on the military and it has changed things. Sailors still go boozing and whoring though. The CS field obviously cannot effect a change like this from a top down approach like the military, and having been in IT before, yeah there are alot of creepy socially retarded computer genius males out there. And some creepy computer genius females too. I think the real problem is that we should realize that thinking in extremely logical paradigms and modes all the time to be able to solve problems on computers affects the mind in a peculiar way.
The U.S. has a pretty firm grip on the entire South American continent. It gained it in the 60's 70's and 80's, not through overt warfare, but through *making sure* US friendly leaders rose to power, more specifically, business friendly leaders, and suppressing those persons that were not friendly to US business or other interests. This was done even when the leaders were democratically elected, a friendly tyrant (that is to say friendly to the US, a tyrant to their people) is better than a unagreeable benevolent leader (one that puts their countries interests first.) Look also into Saudi Arabian democracy for more info (spoiler: there is no such thing, but Saudi Arabia is a great ally to the US, because they see eye to eye on business, meaning power aggregation.)
Look at that one Country in South America that the US has problems with right now. Look into the history, and then examine the treatment of the media of that country and their leade (US media that is).
It is a naive notion to think that a country with so much power and wealth would not try to gain more power and wealth. That is the historical trend of all empires. And someday the country either collapses from the inside or becomes spread out too thin and gets picked apart one overspread piece at a time. Or hell, economically collapses because their monetary policy is structured like a Ponzi scheme.
Also, the US does not intercede morally unless there is an advantage to be had. For example, genocide in Africa does not need US intervention, as the immediate benefits of intervention pale in comparison to the long term benefits of a fucked up continent with many untapped natural resources, that can be had had for cheap some day since there is no major government presence that has a firm grip on a country, and local warlords can be bought out for less in comparison for rights to exploit wanted resource. Etc, etc, etc.
I do not think the US is intrinsically evil. If it however being not so secretly ran by individuals and organization that are taking advantage of it to further their own individual and organizational goals. Corruption. I feel bad for people that are able to run for president or vice president for one of the two major political parties. In my view ANYONE with that kind of influence has sold their soul 20 times over, as a necessity of obtaining high public office. If somehow they have not, then I would expect their political career to end one way or another pretty soon.
Jeez, this is so off topic I forgot what the topic was. If you want references for any of the claims I made, do yourself a favor and do your own research. Don't believe anything I say, and to get the maximum benefit disprove me (or see that I am partly right) on your own efforts, and then maybe (re)start the process of thinking for oneself again in the US, Lord knows we could use it.
The info would likely only be accessible on the Governments JWICS network http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JWICS , which is pretty darned secure (or whatever network the government has that the public does not know about). You gotta remember that the cryptography that is publicly available is approved by the NSA, and that the better cryptography is kept by them for their own super secrect stuff. Also, to access a terminal connected to the JWICS network, one would need a Top Secret/SCI clearance, and those terminals are probably in locked rooms, with physical security and other security measures, which means the only ones that would be able to exploint this info are spies that are in deep. Which is possible of course, but if they are in that deep they would have access to this information in other ways, just not easily on one website.
Most of us know jack about the algorithms that allow us to catch a baseball in flight, yet we can still do it. Furthermore, a person from 10000 BC with no math at all by today's standards could do it just as well as we can.
Apples and orangatuns. The algorithm to catch a ball does not need to be known to catch a ball, what needs to be known is 'how to catch a ball' (whatever "knowing" is). However, to program a computer to simulate thought accurately, an accurate algorithm for thought (or the biological underpinnings of neural activity) IS implicitly required, as algorithms are the way the computer works.
Also, we are studying the brain in all its complexity by using a tool, our brain. I think it is impossible for any one brain to fathom how a brain works completely, just as it is impossible to build an accurate model of the entire universe, as it would be at least as big as the entire universe, and therefore would not fit (in the universe). Maybe with the assistance of computers or other tools an understanding could be achieved, but not by man's natural computer alone.
It's funny the same website sells a vacuum cleaner for getting records dust free http://www.elpj.com/purchase/accessories.html