> if NASA could do it within a decade in the 1960s, why can't they do it within a decade now?
They probably could, but why should they?
What pressing reason is there to divert a large portion of NASA's money and manpower to rushing out a lunar vehicle? What would be gained by doing it in 9 years instead of 13? What terrible thing will happen because of that extra 4 years? Why is doing it faster important for anything other than appeasing complainers? There might be a good reason, but nobody's presented it yet.
This isn't a question of "why can't NASA do this"---it's a question of "why would NASA want to do this?"
Remember how space exploration works: "faster, better, cheaper - choose two."
(Right now, it's slated to be cheaper ---0.8% of one year's GDP vs. 8-13%---and better; if you want to swap out "cheaper" for "faster", you'll need to convince someone why it's worth the money. If you want to swap out "better" for "faster", well, just build a really, really big slingshot...)
>>> Kill them and their small children, and eight others join the fight...
>
> Generally, once you've killed the entire family, those who'd attack
> in revenge have been killed off.
Obviously not - look at Iraq. Moreover, you're taking this analogy way too literally, and in doing so totally missing the point.
The point is simply this: you will not kill your way out of this problem.
> I'm sure numerous contract insurers will pop up, and I'm sure that good
> arbitration companies will also offer these policies at low rates.
And if I control---either by money or by force---all of these companies? And use that influence (and my money and power) to strangle competing companies before they get off the ground?
You seem to believe that the free market is immune to abuses. Are you not familiar with the Robber Baron era?
> we're the equivalent of a professional boxer, playing by the rules
> of boxing while we're fighting a street fighter. We're handicapping ourselves.
No - we're the equivalent of a police officer, obeying the law while fighting a gang of street thugs.
Sure, it handicaps us, but it's a very, very bad idea to have police act "outside the law"---you get terrible corruption and abuses like the LA Rampart division.
It's worse than that, though---if we, as police, kill a street thug, but kill his little sister at the same time, his two brothers will join the gang to fight against us. And if we kill them and their elderly parents, four others will join to fight us. Kill them and their small children, and eight others join the fight...
Trying to kill our way out of the problem didn't work in Ireland, didn't work in Gaza, and didn't work in Vietnam; why is there any reason to believe it would work here?
> we would win, because terrorist rely on their allies (the communities they operate from)
Would you call Venice, Florida a "terrorist ally"? That's the community Mohamed Atta operated from while learning to pilot the plane he hijacked.
Often, the community a terrorist "operates from" is completely neutral, or even our ally, and they just plain don't know about the terrorists in their midst. Witness the London bombings and the Madrid bombings, in addition to 9/11.
> In fact, this polarization has greatly decreased the effectiveness of terrorism since 9/11.
> Not even the strongest efforts of terrorists can ever put a dent in the sheer mass and momentum of a civilized country.
They can't dent it, but they can apparently shift it.
Many have noted that Bush appeared a changed man after the terrorist attacks in New York. A man determined to stamp out terrorism. A man determined to do what he believed was right.
A man determined to let nothing---not even the cherished laws and traditions of his own country---stand in his way.
Honestly, I believe it's probably the case that Bush really, truly believes he's doing the right thing. And that he's dangerously wrong. And that the checks and balances in the US system were put in place for much this reason, to prevent a small group from doing too much damage. And that his team is masterful at getting the public support necessary to circumvent those safeguards.
Obviously, the terrorists did not create the US as it is today, but they catalyzed that change. By changing the beliefs of a few influential people, and giving those people a ready excuse for all their excesses, they've enabled a terrible decline in the US.
I suppose I'm not assigning blame to the hijackers for the resulting erosion of America; I'm just expressing incredulity that we would allow such terrible things to be done under cover of a group that's less dangerous than a bathtub or a bed. (3000 vs. 3400 or 3200 deaths in the US over the last 10 years)
> The 'problem' is that creating an actual nuke is incedibly difficult.
True, but beside the point. You might notice that I said "radiological materials" rather than "nuclear weapons", yes?
While it wouldn't have the destructive effect of a nuke, an altitude-dispersed dirty bomb could spread enough radioactive material to seriously disrupt the workings of a major city, as well as causing expensive and damaging health effects ranging from radiation sickness to cancer down the line.
A single dirty bomb wouldn't be such a big deal (although it would cripple parts of the city until decontamination could take place, and potentially damage the health of thousands), but simultaneous dirty bombs over 10 major cities in the US would be a pretty serious economic and psychological shock, even discounting the human toll from later radiation-caused illnesses.
While IMHO the odds of the US getting nuked aren't all that high at the moment, I worry there is a very real danger of the US suffering a radiological (dirty bomb) attack if it starts blatantly abusing its power in the "nuke Syria, the WMDs must be there!!!" sense some people are bandying about.
> NK has no delivery system capable of hitting the US
Have they no suitcases?
Are they unable to covertly contact terrorist organizations?
Have they no legitimate-seeming cargo containers?
A missle is a rather unlikely way for a nuke to strike the US, so forgive me if I find it uncomforting that nutball nuclear powers have poor missile capability. Kinda like I'd hardly feel better to note that a grizzly bear charging me did not, in fact, have the opposable thumbs required to hold a gun---that isn't why it's dangerous.
> The president of the US now has to power to utter the name of any US
> citizen in anger and have that person disappear forever. That's all
> it takes people, one word from the president.
Nonsense! That's not at all true!
"Enemy combatant" is two words!
(Other than that, yeah, you're pretty much spot-on. 9/11 didn't just kill people---it killed an ideal, and terribly wounded a once-great nation. Just not mortally, I hope.)
You do realize that targetting all Muslims for the sins of a tiny minority of Muslims is (a) evil, (b) not the correct answer to "What Would Jesus Do?", and (c) just about the best way to guarantee a massive and long-lasting surge of terrorism against the USA, don't you?
Unless your goal is to "blow shit up" rather than to "keep America safe", in which case your approach would indeed work. Either way, you're an idiot.
> Fact is, we cannot make peace with these Islamic radicals. Either they drop
> their weapons and live a peacefull life, or we hunt them down in their neighborhood.
Funny - that's not the conclusion people who've actually studied suicide terrorism have come to. From The American Conservative:
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.
RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
According to someone who's studied the problem, the "other methods" include such things as removing our troops from unfriendly foreign soil and our military backing from autocratic foreign regimes. Basically, stop stomping around in other people's backyards and maybe they'll stop telling us to leave.
Will it work? I dunno. But even the CIAsays our current approach is failing, and is making the threat of terrorism worse:
The insurgency in Iraq is creating a new type of Islamic militant who could go on to destabilise other countries, a leaked CIA report says.
The classified document says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to co-ordinated attacks.
It says these skills may make them more dangerous than fighters from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s.
> at least Reagan got this point right: make them _think_ you're crazy enough to use the bomb
Are you sure you want to out-crazy fundamentalist suicide bombers?
Mutually Assured Destruction only works if both sides are afraid of death. We ain't got that here. Instead, we've got (a) something to scare the bejeezus out of governments we already have influence over, (b) something to scare the bejeezus out of us, and (c) something that no doubt makes a spectacular talking point when trying to convince people the USA is evil and dangerous.
Whether or not you believe pre-emptive nuking is wrong, it seems pretty clear that in our current situation, even threatening it (much less actually doing it!) is just plain stupid.
> Because, you know, none of these countries have ever supported terrorism
> or sought nuclear weapons before Gulf War II....
Of course they have---they've probably done both. Which is precisely why we don't want to back them into a corner where they feel like they have no choice but to run hell-bent for leather for a nuke. They're about the last countries we'd like to see have one, but by our actions (compare responses to Iraq and North Korea) we're telling them that they need nukes, pronto.
I'd rather not tell them that.
Of course, I'd also rather not nuke them. Any bets on how long it would take after nuking one of these countries before radiological materials "accidentally" fell into the hands of terrorists for use against the US?
> Why should I work if Uncle Sam will send me a free check each month?
Because living on welfare blows?
The people I've known who were living on welfare for a while were typically very keen on getting a new job ASAP, for reasons of pride as well as simply needing more money to live on.
(That being said, there certainly are cases where the system provides a disincentive to work, such as when you've lost a well-paying job and your UI benefits are higher than the pay you'd earn from many new jobs, or when you have a health problem and can't afford to lose the health insurance that comes with welfare. Those are real problems, but "why should I work?" is not, at least in my experience, and it's nonsense to keep repeating it.)
>>> slow the sub down to 0 mph (or 0 knots, for that matter).
>
> Could you give that in kph?
Strangely enough, 0 knots is 0i kph.
I would expect this to be pretty common knowledge, though, since it was the premise behind the movie Speed 2---"don't slow the boat down or we all become imaginary!" Much like he spent months intensively learning kung fu for The Matrix, Keanu Reeves spent months intensively learning math for this movie. I hear by the end he could count to 21...
> Academic coding is about producing beautiful programs
I can only assume your experience with academic coding is fairly limited, then---any serious programming projects in academia are generally ugly, containing large parts that are hacked desperately together in the last few nights before the deadline.
Questions of maintainability, dependability, and even bugginess are often not merely secondary, but entirely ignored---getting it done now is often the over-riding concern. If anything, I would expect academic coders (at least those with research experience) to have to be trained out of this "make it work" approach.
> I'm still no coding grand-master and probably wont be for another
> ten years. When somebody says that they can learn a language in an
> afternoon it doesn't make me think they're lying, it just makes it
> blatantly obvious how ignorant they are of intricacies of writing code.
Most code ain't all that intricate.
A sharp kid with a CS degree couldn't learn all the clever details of C# in a week, but he could certainly learn enough of it to write functional, workman-like programs. He won't be a "coding grand-master", but, frankly, most coding projects don't require one. He won't be able to exploit all the features of the language, but he should be able to write mostly-language-independent parts of the intended functionality, and gradually move into more and more areas where the language has specific tools or constructs that should or must be used.
Really, most imperative languages (C/Pascal/Fortran/Java/Perl/...) are pretty much the same, with a little bit of syntactic difference, at least in my programming-for-money experience with them - the only trouble I had moving from one to the other was learning the syntax. The algorithms are all basically the same, and all that's required is to figure out how to express that algorithm in the given language.
> I think that having a CS degree is no real advantage over
> having a physics, chemistry or maths degree.
I can't help but wonder if that kind of attitude lumbered MapQuest with an O(n^3) algorithm early in their development, when an O(nlgn) algorithm is easy, and an O(n) algorithm is possible. (Yes, my officemate worked there; his was the nlgn version.)
It's certainly true that "computer science" and "software engineering" aren't the same thing, and much of the former is very rarely useful to someone with a job doing the latter.
It's also true that a great deal of programming isn't all that complicated, and the vast pool of theory of computer science is pretty much irrelevant.
It's again true that most programmers don't really need to be computer scientists---expressing pre-designed algorithms and requirements in C# requires mostly skill in C#, not computational theory.
It's not true, though, that a CS degree is no more useful for programmers than any other degree. Admittedly, if you just want a programming job, a CS degree is really kinda overkill in many cases---anyone who knows how to program and has proved they can work (i.e., a degree or experience) would probably be sufficient. Design, architecting, and tricky algorithms, though---physics and math don't touch those at all, and somebody in the company needs to be able to do them.
If you want that person to be you, then maybe you want a CS degree.
> If I really fear neighbors with open cesspools, loud music, or 60' tall
> pink flamingos on their lawns, I can prevent it by living on 100 acres away from nutcases.
And if you can't afford 100 acres?
If your system only works for the rich, it's not a very useful system.
> Before I enter into an agreement with you, I'll want a contract. We'd
> agree on an arbitration system and a neutral mediator. Why is government needed?
Enforcement.
If we enter into a contract, agree on Bob the Arbitrator, and then I break the contract and tell you and Bob to go screw yourselves, what do you do?
What do you do if I'm a huge company, and effectively beyond the reach of your local volunteer police force? Or just willing to shoot you all and cover everything up? (Something that has been happening with some regularity to Amazonian tribes in remote, relatively lawless regions.)
Somebody is always the biggest, toughest group around, able to enforce their will by sheer power. Isn't it better if that (inevitable) ruler is one who needs to show at least the pretense of working for the good of the people, rather than it being an out-right dictatorship?
> I'm much more of a (here come more enemies) McCain type. I see him as one of the very few honest
> polititians around. I don't go with him on 100% of the issues, but honesty makes up for a hell of alot.
It does indeed.
A friend of mine was a big Bush fan for several years---we had some animated discussions about the wisdom and legality of the invasion of Iraq---but the whole WMD fiasco made him very disillusioned. His approach had been to trust the government when it claimed to have iron-clad evidence that it was not showing us; when that turned out to be false, he lost all faith in them and has been virulently anti-Bush ever since. Were a politician to demonstrate that he was honest, he'd have an awful lot of people like my friend supporting him, or at least treating him with significant respect.
Frankly, though, this Bush fixation on loyalty is so far out of hand as to be damaging the country (see FEMA's head---loyalty is no substitute for being able to do your job). I'd rather see a group of people who were a little less concerned about helping each other and a little more concerned about helping the citizens they work for.
(And a group that's capable of recognizing and learning from its mistakes, and a group that engages in constructive discussion rather than partisan hackery, and... And pigs flying in on pixie-wings - *sigh*...)
Tell that to a kid who grows up in a ghetto with shit schools and a poisonous culture surrounding him.
Tell that to a young man who is stopped and beaten by police for driving his own new car, just because it looks so new they think he stole it.
Tell that to a young man who sees the majority of his peers cycle through prison, and who sees them get more respect for it than he does for his university degree.
Tell that to a man who is stopped by the same sherrif at the same place every day as he drives into work, for months.
Tell that to a man whose business consultant flat-out tells him "hire a white man to represent your company".
Just don't tell that to the friend of mine all these things have happened to---he still has enough of his roots in him to kick your ass for being an idiot.
And, yes, all those (save one) happened in the North. Some people truly do have fewer opportunities than you do, and it's ignorant and cruel to berate them as if that's all their fault.
(Mind you, it's even worse to convince them they're victims being held down by The Man. When you have responsibility for something, you can change it. The desire to play the victim is strangling the life out of some parts of the US, and even seems to be infecting the broader culture. What the hell happened to taking responsibility?)
> Care to explaine away the fact that as the gun laws have tightened
> in England violent crime went UP?
Care to explain the notion of "correlation vs. causation"?
There's no indication Britain's violent crime wave is a result of its gun laws. Certainly, Canada is not suffering a similar surge in violent crime, despite having quite restrictive firearm (especially handgun) laws. Perhaps some other factor is at play?
> Can you show that banning guns accomplishes anything other then promise criminals saftey?
It removes the ability of suicidal individuals to use an extremely effective means of suicide. Since suicide is by far the leading cause of firearm death in countries like Canada with low firearm violence, banning guns in such countries lowers the number of suicides by virtue of making any attempt at suicide less likely to succeed. (Certainly, some of those people would keep trying until they succeeded, but many would not, and would go on to be healthy and productive members of society.)
> Tell you what if guns are so bad how did socitiy surivie for generations
> with all the fireaarms hung over the door?
Guns were too expensive for most people to own? Death from disease killed people far more frequently than guns do, even in the US? People were more responsible back in the day?
I don't know. Neither do you, though, and we both should admit it.
> Fact in the "Gun Free" slaughter dome in NO they have found 40 people so
> far beaten and stabbed to death includeing a 7year old.
And you think the criminals who did that would have been less murderous if they'd been allowed to bring guns in?
Unlikely.
Also unlikely that you're right about what happened in the Superdome, considering that many of the horror stories appear to be nothing but rumour.
> Use your brains for once.
Yes, please do.
Note that I'm not saying guns are not valuable tools for self-defense in the hands of citizens. I'm just saying that you're spouting nonsense, and making pro-gun people look like fools by association. Big difference.
> there are people on both sides that are actually *boggle* reasonable.
Always good to remember, for both sides.
I'm honestly curious, though - what's your view of the current administration? I've heard the last two elections have been very bleak for old-style conservatives, and that many of them dislike the neo-cons as much as they dislike capital-L Liberals. (I certainly know the current administration is pretty bad at the parts of traditional conservatism *I* support...)
> That's funny, because I seem to remember notable publications like the
> New York Times criticizing the earlier form of his budget
So? Since when did the NYT have any control over the budget of the federal government?
The buck stops where the control rests; bringing in irrelevant parties---whether they're the NYT or Santa Claus---doesn't change who is responsible for cutting New Orleans levee funding.
Slashdot Mirror
They probably could, but why should they?
What pressing reason is there to divert a large portion of NASA's money and manpower to rushing out a lunar vehicle? What would be gained by doing it in 9 years instead of 13? What terrible thing will happen because of that extra 4 years? Why is doing it faster important for anything other than appeasing complainers? There might be a good reason, but nobody's presented it yet.
This isn't a question of "why can't NASA do this"---it's a question of "why would NASA want to do this?"
Remember how space exploration works: "faster, better, cheaper - choose two."
(Right now, it's slated to be cheaper ---0.8% of one year's GDP vs. 8-13%---and better; if you want to swap out "cheaper" for "faster", you'll need to convince someone why it's worth the money. If you want to swap out "better" for "faster", well, just build a really, really big slingshot...)
>
> Generally, once you've killed the entire family, those who'd attack
> in revenge have been killed off.
Obviously not - look at Iraq. Moreover, you're taking this analogy way too literally, and in doing so totally missing the point.
The point is simply this: you will not kill your way out of this problem.
Didn't work in Ireland.
Didn't work in Gaza.
Didn't work in Vietnam.
Won't work here.
Clear enough?
> arbitration companies will also offer these policies at low rates.
And if I control---either by money or by force---all of these companies? And use that influence (and my money and power) to strangle competing companies before they get off the ground?
You seem to believe that the free market is immune to abuses. Are you not familiar with the Robber Baron era?
> of boxing while we're fighting a street fighter. We're handicapping ourselves.
No - we're the equivalent of a police officer, obeying the law while fighting a gang of street thugs.
Sure, it handicaps us, but it's a very, very bad idea to have police act "outside the law"---you get terrible corruption and abuses like the LA Rampart division.
It's worse than that, though---if we, as police, kill a street thug, but kill his little sister at the same time, his two brothers will join the gang to fight against us. And if we kill them and their elderly parents, four others will join to fight us. Kill them and their small children, and eight others join the fight...
Trying to kill our way out of the problem didn't work in Ireland, didn't work in Gaza, and didn't work in Vietnam; why is there any reason to believe it would work here?
Would you call Venice, Florida a "terrorist ally"? That's the community Mohamed Atta operated from while learning to pilot the plane he hijacked.
Often, the community a terrorist "operates from" is completely neutral, or even our ally, and they just plain don't know about the terrorists in their midst. Witness the London bombings and the Madrid bombings, in addition to 9/11.
> In fact, this polarization has greatly decreased the effectiveness of terrorism since 9/11.
You got a cite for that "fact"?
They can't dent it, but they can apparently shift it.
Many have noted that Bush appeared a changed man after the terrorist attacks in New York. A man determined to stamp out terrorism. A man determined to do what he believed was right.
A man determined to let nothing---not even the cherished laws and traditions of his own country---stand in his way.
Honestly, I believe it's probably the case that Bush really, truly believes he's doing the right thing. And that he's dangerously wrong. And that the checks and balances in the US system were put in place for much this reason, to prevent a small group from doing too much damage. And that his team is masterful at getting the public support necessary to circumvent those safeguards.
Obviously, the terrorists did not create the US as it is today, but they catalyzed that change. By changing the beliefs of a few influential people, and giving those people a ready excuse for all their excesses, they've enabled a terrible decline in the US.
I suppose I'm not assigning blame to the hijackers for the resulting erosion of America; I'm just expressing incredulity that we would allow such terrible things to be done under cover of a group that's less dangerous than a bathtub or a bed. (3000 vs. 3400 or 3200 deaths in the US over the last 10 years)
True, but beside the point. You might notice that I said "radiological materials" rather than "nuclear weapons", yes?
While it wouldn't have the destructive effect of a nuke, an altitude-dispersed dirty bomb could spread enough radioactive material to seriously disrupt the workings of a major city, as well as causing expensive and damaging health effects ranging from radiation sickness to cancer down the line.
A single dirty bomb wouldn't be such a big deal (although it would cripple parts of the city until decontamination could take place, and potentially damage the health of thousands), but simultaneous dirty bombs over 10 major cities in the US would be a pretty serious economic and psychological shock, even discounting the human toll from later radiation-caused illnesses.
While IMHO the odds of the US getting nuked aren't all that high at the moment, I worry there is a very real danger of the US suffering a radiological (dirty bomb) attack if it starts blatantly abusing its power in the "nuke Syria, the WMDs must be there!!!" sense some people are bandying about.
Then why do people fight back against a bully?
We don't think they're "fighting back"; they do. Until we work that difference out, I suspect you can expect to see continuing violence.
Have they no suitcases?
Are they unable to covertly contact terrorist organizations?
Have they no legitimate-seeming cargo containers?
A missle is a rather unlikely way for a nuke to strike the US, so forgive me if I find it uncomforting that nutball nuclear powers have poor missile capability. Kinda like I'd hardly feel better to note that a grizzly bear charging me did not, in fact, have the opposable thumbs required to hold a gun---that isn't why it's dangerous.
> citizen in anger and have that person disappear forever. That's all
> it takes people, one word from the president.
Nonsense! That's not at all true!
"Enemy combatant" is two words!
(Other than that, yeah, you're pretty much spot-on. 9/11 didn't just kill people---it killed an ideal, and terribly wounded a once-great nation. Just not mortally, I hope.)
Unless your goal is to "blow shit up" rather than to "keep America safe", in which case your approach would indeed work. Either way, you're an idiot.
> their weapons and live a peacefull life, or we hunt them down in their neighborhood.
Funny - that's not the conclusion people who've actually studied suicide terrorism have come to. From The American Conservative:
RP: The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.
TAC: That would seem to run contrary to a view that one heard during the American election campaign, put forth by people who favor Bush's policy. That is, we need to fight the terrorists over there, so we don't have to fight them here.
RP: Since suicide terrorism is mainly a response to foreign occupation and not Islamic fundamentalism, the use of heavy military force to transform Muslim societies over there, if you would, is only likely to increase the number of suicide terrorists coming at us.
According to someone who's studied the problem, the "other methods" include such things as removing our troops from unfriendly foreign soil and our military backing from autocratic foreign regimes. Basically, stop stomping around in other people's backyards and maybe they'll stop telling us to leave.
Will it work? I dunno. But even the CIA says our current approach is failing, and is making the threat of terrorism worse:
The insurgency in Iraq is creating a new type of Islamic militant who could go on to destabilise other countries, a leaked CIA report says.
The classified document says Iraqi and foreign fighters are developing a broad range of skills, from car bombings and assassinations to co-ordinated attacks.
It says these skills may make them more dangerous than fighters from Afghanistan in the 1980s and 1990s.
Are you sure you want to out-crazy fundamentalist suicide bombers?
Mutually Assured Destruction only works if both sides are afraid of death. We ain't got that here. Instead, we've got (a) something to scare the bejeezus out of governments we already have influence over, (b) something to scare the bejeezus out of us, and (c) something that no doubt makes a spectacular talking point when trying to convince people the USA is evil and dangerous.
Whether or not you believe pre-emptive nuking is wrong, it seems pretty clear that in our current situation, even threatening it (much less actually doing it!) is just plain stupid.
> or sought nuclear weapons before Gulf War II....
Of course they have---they've probably done both. Which is precisely why we don't want to back them into a corner where they feel like they have no choice but to run hell-bent for leather for a nuke. They're about the last countries we'd like to see have one, but by our actions (compare responses to Iraq and North Korea) we're telling them that they need nukes, pronto.
I'd rather not tell them that.
Of course, I'd also rather not nuke them. Any bets on how long it would take after nuking one of these countries before radiological materials "accidentally" fell into the hands of terrorists for use against the US?
Whipping out our nukes is a wildly unsafe idea.
Because living on welfare blows?
The people I've known who were living on welfare for a while were typically very keen on getting a new job ASAP, for reasons of pride as well as simply needing more money to live on.
(That being said, there certainly are cases where the system provides a disincentive to work, such as when you've lost a well-paying job and your UI benefits are higher than the pay you'd earn from many new jobs, or when you have a health problem and can't afford to lose the health insurance that comes with welfare. Those are real problems, but "why should I work?" is not, at least in my experience, and it's nonsense to keep repeating it.)
>
> Could you give that in kph?
Strangely enough, 0 knots is 0i kph.
I would expect this to be pretty common knowledge, though, since it was the premise behind the movie Speed 2---"don't slow the boat down or we all become imaginary!" Much like he spent months intensively learning kung fu for The Matrix, Keanu Reeves spent months intensively learning math for this movie. I hear by the end he could count to 21...
I can only assume your experience with academic coding is fairly limited, then---any serious programming projects in academia are generally ugly, containing large parts that are hacked desperately together in the last few nights before the deadline.
Questions of maintainability, dependability, and even bugginess are often not merely secondary, but entirely ignored---getting it done now is often the over-riding concern. If anything, I would expect academic coders (at least those with research experience) to have to be trained out of this "make it work" approach.
> I'm still no coding grand-master and probably wont be for another
> ten years. When somebody says that they can learn a language in an
> afternoon it doesn't make me think they're lying, it just makes it
> blatantly obvious how ignorant they are of intricacies of writing code.
Most code ain't all that intricate.
A sharp kid with a CS degree couldn't learn all the clever details of C# in a week, but he could certainly learn enough of it to write functional, workman-like programs. He won't be a "coding grand-master", but, frankly, most coding projects don't require one. He won't be able to exploit all the features of the language, but he should be able to write mostly-language-independent parts of the intended functionality, and gradually move into more and more areas where the language has specific tools or constructs that should or must be used.
Really, most imperative languages (C/Pascal/Fortran/Java/Perl/...) are pretty much the same, with a little bit of syntactic difference, at least in my programming-for-money experience with them - the only trouble I had moving from one to the other was learning the syntax. The algorithms are all basically the same, and all that's required is to figure out how to express that algorithm in the given language.
> I think that having a CS degree is no real advantage over
> having a physics, chemistry or maths degree.
I can't help but wonder if that kind of attitude lumbered MapQuest with an O(n^3) algorithm early in their development, when an O(nlgn) algorithm is easy, and an O(n) algorithm is possible. (Yes, my officemate worked there; his was the nlgn version.)
It's certainly true that "computer science" and "software engineering" aren't the same thing, and much of the former is very rarely useful to someone with a job doing the latter.
It's also true that a great deal of programming isn't all that complicated, and the vast pool of theory of computer science is pretty much irrelevant.
It's again true that most programmers don't really need to be computer scientists---expressing pre-designed algorithms and requirements in C# requires mostly skill in C#, not computational theory.
It's not true, though, that a CS degree is no more useful for programmers than any other degree. Admittedly, if you just want a programming job, a CS degree is really kinda overkill in many cases---anyone who knows how to program and has proved they can work (i.e., a degree or experience) would probably be sufficient. Design, architecting, and tricky algorithms, though---physics and math don't touch those at all, and somebody in the company needs to be able to do them.
If you want that person to be you, then maybe you want a CS degree.
> pink flamingos on their lawns, I can prevent it by living on 100 acres away from nutcases.
And if you can't afford 100 acres?
If your system only works for the rich, it's not a very useful system.
> Before I enter into an agreement with you, I'll want a contract. We'd
> agree on an arbitration system and a neutral mediator. Why is government needed?
Enforcement.
If we enter into a contract, agree on Bob the Arbitrator, and then I break the contract and tell you and Bob to go screw yourselves, what do you do?
What do you do if I'm a huge company, and effectively beyond the reach of your local volunteer police force? Or just willing to shoot you all and cover everything up? (Something that has been happening with some regularity to Amazonian tribes in remote, relatively lawless regions.)
Somebody is always the biggest, toughest group around, able to enforce their will by sheer power. Isn't it better if that (inevitable) ruler is one who needs to show at least the pretense of working for the good of the people, rather than it being an out-right dictatorship?
> except sales tax
Uh, no. Quebec has levied its own income tax since 1954.
That gives it about as much money per capita as any other part of Canada, which is to say, enough to fund surprisingly decent schools.
> polititians around. I don't go with him on 100% of the issues, but honesty makes up for a hell of alot.
It does indeed.
A friend of mine was a big Bush fan for several years---we had some animated discussions about the wisdom and legality of the invasion of Iraq---but the whole WMD fiasco made him very disillusioned. His approach had been to trust the government when it claimed to have iron-clad evidence that it was not showing us; when that turned out to be false, he lost all faith in them and has been virulently anti-Bush ever since. Were a politician to demonstrate that he was honest, he'd have an awful lot of people like my friend supporting him, or at least treating him with significant respect.
Frankly, though, this Bush fixation on loyalty is so far out of hand as to be damaging the country (see FEMA's head---loyalty is no substitute for being able to do your job). I'd rather see a group of people who were a little less concerned about helping each other and a little more concerned about helping the citizens they work for.
(And a group that's capable of recognizing and learning from its mistakes, and a group that engages in constructive discussion rather than partisan hackery, and... And pigs flying in on pixie-wings - *sigh*...)
Because, as we learned early in the space program, Mars Needs Women...
Tell that to a kid who grows up in a ghetto with shit schools and a poisonous culture surrounding him.
Tell that to a young man who is stopped and beaten by police for driving his own new car, just because it looks so new they think he stole it.
Tell that to a young man who sees the majority of his peers cycle through prison, and who sees them get more respect for it than he does for his university degree.
Tell that to a man who is stopped by the same sherrif at the same place every day as he drives into work, for months.
Tell that to a man whose business consultant flat-out tells him "hire a white man to represent your company".
Just don't tell that to the friend of mine all these things have happened to---he still has enough of his roots in him to kick your ass for being an idiot.
And, yes, all those (save one) happened in the North. Some people truly do have fewer opportunities than you do, and it's ignorant and cruel to berate them as if that's all their fault.
(Mind you, it's even worse to convince them they're victims being held down by The Man. When you have responsibility for something, you can change it. The desire to play the victim is strangling the life out of some parts of the US, and even seems to be infecting the broader culture. What the hell happened to taking responsibility?)
> in England violent crime went UP?
Care to explain the notion of "correlation vs. causation"?
There's no indication Britain's violent crime wave is a result of its gun laws. Certainly, Canada is not suffering a similar surge in violent crime, despite having quite restrictive firearm (especially handgun) laws. Perhaps some other factor is at play?
> Can you show that banning guns accomplishes anything other then promise criminals saftey?
It removes the ability of suicidal individuals to use an extremely effective means of suicide. Since suicide is by far the leading cause of firearm death in countries like Canada with low firearm violence, banning guns in such countries lowers the number of suicides by virtue of making any attempt at suicide less likely to succeed. (Certainly, some of those people would keep trying until they succeeded, but many would not, and would go on to be healthy and productive members of society.)
> Tell you what if guns are so bad how did socitiy surivie for generations
> with all the fireaarms hung over the door?
Guns were too expensive for most people to own? Death from disease killed people far more frequently than guns do, even in the US? People were more responsible back in the day?
I don't know. Neither do you, though, and we both should admit it.
> Fact in the "Gun Free" slaughter dome in NO they have found 40 people so
> far beaten and stabbed to death includeing a 7year old.
And you think the criminals who did that would have been less murderous if they'd been allowed to bring guns in?
Unlikely.
Also unlikely that you're right about what happened in the Superdome, considering that many of the horror stories appear to be nothing but rumour.
> Use your brains for once.
Yes, please do.
Note that I'm not saying guns are not valuable tools for self-defense in the hands of citizens. I'm just saying that you're spouting nonsense, and making pro-gun people look like fools by association. Big difference.
Always good to remember, for both sides.
I'm honestly curious, though - what's your view of the current administration? I've heard the last two elections have been very bleak for old-style conservatives, and that many of them dislike the neo-cons as much as they dislike capital-L Liberals. (I certainly know the current administration is pretty bad at the parts of traditional conservatism *I* support...)
> New York Times criticizing the earlier form of his budget
So? Since when did the NYT have any control over the budget of the federal government?
The buck stops where the control rests; bringing in irrelevant parties---whether they're the NYT or Santa Claus---doesn't change who is responsible for cutting New Orleans levee funding.