The US might avoid the worst of it.... if it can prevent Iran from tossing a nuke at it and the EMP sends life back to 1901. The major European powers were supposed to put a lid on the problem - it didn't work out that way.
Actual death camps tend to not leave any survivors. They fill up, kill everybody, and are filled up again to repeat. At least 75% survived the badly run, cruel camps that the British Army ran in the Boer War.
The farms of Boers and Africans were destroyed and the Boer inhabitants of the countryside were rounded up and held in concentration camps.
The plight of the Boer women and children in these camps became an international outrage - more than 20,000 died in the carelessly run, unhygienic camps.
The commandos continued their attacks, many of them deep into the Cape Colony, General Jan Smuts leading his forces to within 80km (50 miles) of Cape Town.
But Kitchener's drastic and brutal methods slowly paid off. The Boers had unsuccessfully sued for peace in March 1901; finally, they accepted the loss of their independence by the Peace of Vereeniging.
While certain Afrikaners are calling for an apology from the Queen, Sussex University lecturer Dr Saul Dubow, an expert in modern South African history, told BBC News Online that their demands were "specious".
He said: "Overall, the British were the aggressors, but the primary blame for the deaths in the concentration camps has much more to do with incompetence and lack of medical care than a deliberate attempt to kill.
That is the difference - death camps are intended to kill the occupants, all of them. (Put the citizens of a town on a train, move them to the death camp, kill them. Put the citizens of another town on the train, move them to the camp, kill them. Repeat.) Concentration camps are meant to hold. That doesn't mean that the circumstances of the concentration camp won't result in many deaths due to privation, cruelty, incompetence, and even calculation. The camps were internationally condemned, and rightly so. But nobody should confuse the British concentration camps in South Africa that 75% survived with the extermination / death camps of the Germans in Poland and other places that killed nearly everyone that entered them to the tune of hundreds of thousands of people each.
The extermination camp Belzec was established in May 1942 and continued to function until August 1943. 600,000 Jews fell victim to the merciless efficiency of the gas chambers at Belzec.
Sobibor also began its terrible business of mass murder in May 1942. The killings continued through October 1943, when an uprising among the prisoners put and end to the activities of the camp. 250,000 lost their lives in Sobibor’s gas chambers.
The extermination camp Treblinka was working from July 1942 to November 1943. In August 1943 an uprising destroyed many of the facilities. 900,000 Jews lost their lives in the terribly efficient extermination camp at Treblinka.
MEMs devices, in contrast to nanoscale devices, are having a huge real world impact today and have been for some time. Nanomaterials are having an impact. Nanodevices... it looks to me like lots of laboratory work, lots of interesting projects, some fantastic demonstrations, but not much being manufactured or shipping as product.
As for the single atom transistor - interesting demonstration that is necessary for the development of future devices, but not even close to being manufacturable on any real scale.
Massive nano-scale manufacturing is much closer to reality than you seem to assume. Look into it. No spoon on hand for me to spoonfeed right now, sorry.
Did you read how they did it?
The scientists placed the single phosphorus atom using a device known as a scanning tunneling microscope. They used it to essentially scrape trenches and a small cavity on a surface of silicon covered with a layer of hydrogen atoms. Phosphine gas was then used to deposit a phosphorus atom at a precise location, which was then encased in further layers of silicon atoms.
Does that seem like a scalable process to you? Here is what the article says:
While offering astounding precision for research, these microscopes are not currently applicable as manufacturing tools to make chips that contain billions or even trillions of transistors. Moreover, the devices now operate at very low temperatures.
They made them with a method not applicable for manufacturing, and, as a bonus, they are cryo-cooled. They are still at the level of demonstrating / playing / investigating.
I think your spoon would prove pretty empty..... or maybe there is no spoon.
That's what I said... that we've been able to build these things for ten years.
Yes, and this is what you didn't say: and today we are still pretty much at the level of demonstrating / playing / investigating.
Did you lose interest after getting to the end of what you wrote?
Did you read how they did it?
The scientists placed the single phosphorus atom using a device known as a scanning tunneling microscope. They used it to essentially scrape trenches and a small cavity on a surface of silicon covered with a layer of hydrogen atoms. Phosphine gas was then used to deposit a phosphorus atom at a precise location, which was then encased in further layers of silicon atoms.
Does that seem like a scalable process to you? Here is what the article says:
While offering astounding precision for research, these microscopes are not currently applicable as manufacturing tools to make chips that contain billions or even trillions of transistors. Moreover, the devices now operate at very low temperatures.
Ah, good! They made them with a method not applicable for manufacturing, and, as a bonus, they are cryo-cooled. Lovely. They are still at the level of demonstrating / playing / investigating.
Ten years from now, who's to say we won't be able to mass produce them?
It is a pretty big jump from building a single demonstration / proof of concept device and connecting it and integrating it into a design that works reliably at speed. IBM seems to be getting some interesting results with a single atom DRAM, but that is still way closer to a laboratory curiosity than an option for shipping silicon.
But that is just the Fab side of things. To actually design and build chips with this sort of technology is almost certainly going to require some serious upgrades to EDA tools.
The list of countries I can go to that are neither 3rd world shit holes, police states, or both is becoming vanishingly small.
Do you think you would help us out with a list of the actual tyrannies you see in action - with a few stipulations?
Terrorism is involves actual violence, such as murder or mass murder, or assisting those who commit violence. It does not consist of voting for the political parties out of power, demonstrations and rallies, writing op-eds, books, plays or poems against government policy or actions.
Guantanamo Bay has never held even 1,000 people ever as prisoners.
Pretty much all of the fights about Habeas Corpus have to do with prisoners held as enemy combatants under the law of war. The US held hundreds of thousands of German prisoners in WW2 and they didn't have any right to Habeas Corpus either. The rules of war are different from the rules under criminal or civil law.
The US only water boarded a total of three people, the most recent of which was almost 9 years ago. To the best of my knowledge it still water boards US pilots as part of their Escape and Evasion training.
Al-Awlaki was killed by a drone for joining Al Qaeda, assisting in planning attacks, and recruiting for them - not for legal dissent. There is no general right for Americans to take up arms against the US government to overthrow it by force of arms, or to otherwise engage in mass murder, or assist those who do. As a matter of war, there was no charge, conviction, or sentence needed under criminal law. He was treated no differently that other American renegades in other wars. He was treated no differently than the large numbers of men shot down en masse, as represented here by the Federal government in a previous conflict.
There is no right to private communications between terrorists who are planning to commit actual violence and their headquarters.
Walking through a metal detector, or a pat down before boarding a plane is not the same thing as not being allowed to travel.
As you can see below the line (-----), there are a constant series of ongoing arrests and convictions for plotted terrorist attacks.
Or perhaps you are worried about the tax code not being progressive enough, but that doesn't hold up either.
So now, what are all these tyrannies that you speak of? Did President Bush round up the Clinton voters? Did President Obama round up the Bush voters? Do people still worship or not worship in the belief of their choice? Do people still pick the school they will attend, or the profession they wish to pursue? Does the government mandate where people will live? Does the press no longer publish what it wants? Does the United States have a President-For-Live yet?
I'm willing to concede that government regulation continues to grow more burdensom - but that is not tyranny.
If the budget problem isn't address, that could lead to a real long term problem though.
Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization
Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrori
Major General Smedley Butler, United States Marine Corp, was an extraordinarily brave and devoted Marine who served the United States in an exceptional manner while in uniform, earning two Congressional Medals of Honor - the highest American medal for bravery on the battlefield. Out of uniform and in the realm of politics, however, citizen Butler involved himself in leftist fringe politics. I would be inclined to follow Major General Butler anywhere on the battlefield, but nowhere near a voting booth. In this regard he is like Chomsky, a man of exceptional virtual in his field, but a political crank (popular though he may be) and genocidedenier.
. . . . Back in the 1930s, the U.S. Communist Party recruited a former Marine Corps general, Smedley Butler, to give speeches on the eve of World War II denouncing military preparedness as a capitalist racket. The idea was that by persuading an individual man of valor to propound shameful views, those views would somehow become less shameful. It didn’t work then. I doubt it will work now. - Wesley Who?
If there is no threat, why do we keep seeing arrests and convictions like this?
Federal agents arrest Amine El Khalifi; he allegedly planned to bomb Capitol Federal authorities on Friday arrested a 29-year-old Moroccan man in an alleged plot to carry out a suicide bombing at the U.S. Capitol, the latest in a series of terrorism-related arrests resulting from undercover sting operations.
Denver: Man Arrested for Providing Material Support to a Designated Foreign Terrorist Organization
Jamshid Muhtorov was arrested by members of the FBI’s Denver and Chicago Joint Terrorism Task Forces on a charge of providing and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic Jihad Union, a Pakistan-based designated foreign terrorist organization. Full Story
Baltimore: Man Pleads Guilty to Attempted Use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction in Plot to Attack Armed Forces Recruiting Center
U.S. citizen Antonio Martinez, aka Muhammad Hussain, pled guilty to attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction against federal property in connection with a scheme to attack an armed forces recruiting station in Catonsville, Maryland. Full Story
Washington Field: Man Pleads Guilty to Shootings at Pentagon, Other Military Buildings
I found the article you pointed to at the Conceptual Guerilla to be an interesting piece at a site devoted to cutting edge progressive thought and politics. I think I've found a companion piece of similar gravitas over at The People's Cube.
Of course no web article is going to cover material like this in any real depth. Anyone wishing to explore related themes may want to consider some of the following books by prominent African American economist Thomas Sowell:
Maybe we should stop pissing off people by trying to take over their countries?
When people buy a six pack of beer, it isn't to simply open the can - it is to drink the beer. The Islamist don't simply want the West/US out of any random location, or to stop "trying to take over their countries" (opening the can) - that is at most an intermediate step in reaching their goal. Their actual goal ("drinking the beer) is to turn the entire world Islamic and restore the Islamic Caliphate government that combines church and state. Read Bin Laden's letter to America - his first real demand is mass conversion to Islam, and after that he demands the US throw out the Constitution and implement Islamic Sharia law. They are not responding to invasion, they are on the offense attempting to overthrow the existing world order and impose their own.
Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos’ efforts earlier this year to remove HAMAS from the European Union’s terrorist list, have done little to change HAMAS’ agenda. It is not only Palestine that children in the West Bank and Gaza are asked to liberate; now they are asked to liberate Seville. The HAMAS children’s magazine, Al-Fateh, in a recent issue, (No. 66), tells the children about the city called Asbilia (Seville) and calls on them to free it, together with the whole country, from the infidels and to reinstate Muslim rule. . . . more . .
What liquid agent is a terrorist going to use to blow up a plane? Napalm? Or just set the plane on fire?
While I hail these suggested improvements, the fact remains that these piecemeal changes are a smokescreen to the larger issue of the legality and effectiveness of our current airport security scheme.
The searches are completely legal if unpopular. TSA finds an average of about 4 guns per day on/with people trying to board planes nationwide, and many other weapons as well. People known to have associations with various terrorist groups travel on airliners, but they don't try to hijack them.
In regards to the previously mentioned Ohio law, it was passed last year in part of a "defense of 'traditional' marriage" legislative package intended to keep homosexuals from wedding.
Ohio passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage being between a man and a woman in 2004 - eight years ago. No statutory law would have greater power to define or limit marriage than the state constitution.
Furthermore, guardians are court appointed and have to make regular reports to the court about the status of the ward and their property. What judge wouldn't consider it a direct conflict of interest for a guardian to marry a ward? Do you think the judge would find the guardian swearing that he really loves his ward and isn't at all doing it to get at the minor's property to be in any way serious or believable and not at all unethical? If teachers can't date students that are technically adults, what makes you think a guardian could date and marry a ward who is a legal minor given the higher duty of a guardian?
The court may appoint, after hearing and investigation, a guardian for a minor or for an adult who is found to be incompetent to take proper care of himself or his property. A guardian, with court supervision, is responsible for making personal and/or financial decisions for the ward. Court supervision is accomplished, in part, through the filing of reports and accountings by the guardian. Both a minor and an adult ward have a number of rights and protections to insure against an unnecessary or ineffective guardianship, including, for the adult ward, the right to be represented by an attorney.
The term 'irony' doesn't even begin to describe the situation there.
I think the term "pure BS" most likely describes what you wrote. Any lie will do to further the cause of "gay marriage", I guess.
And yes, "gay marriage" will have wide spread impact, including school curriculums taught to students about expected behaviors and attitudes, and will bring increasing conflicts between established constitutional rights and those stemming from a newly manufactured right to gay marriage. Think of all the peace and agreement that Roe v. Wade brought to American society, and double it.
Lesbian Divorce Shocker: Same-sex marriages between women are considerably more likely to end in divorce than either same-sex male marriages or heterosexual marriages, according to a study of Norway and Sweden:
We found that divorce risks are higher in same-sex partnerships than in opposite-sex marriages, and that unions of lesbians are considerably less stable, or more dynamic, than unions of gay men. In Norway as well as in Sweden, the divorce risk in female partnerships is practically double that of the risk in partnerships of men.
The rhetorical and legal machinery that is being used to punch down society's laws and customs will leave a big enough hole that much more mischief will follow. Polygamists are already filing lawsuits using the same legal theories used to support gay marriage, and support for the normalization of pedophilia is entering the stage that homosexuality was in 50 years ago. These battles will only get worse.
People just think blanketly that you always have to balance your budget but it just doesn't work that way on the scale and scope of a government our size.
So, governments are "too big to fail"? Why don't you take a look at Greece and see how that sort of thinking is working out?
Economists will tell you that a balance budget when you are trying to grow the economy is a bad idea.
Economists will also tell you that pushing your debt higher and higher, past 100% of GDP and beyond, is a bad idea, especially when the problems driving the debt will only keep getting worst for 50 years. "To infinity and beyond!" might be a great tag line for a toy spaceman, not so much for an earth-bound government sinking in debt. (Social security, medicare, medicade + debt payments + an aging population bulge + growing longevity will ultimately crush the US unless something changes. Adding in the growing price of Obamacare will bring the problem forward in time.)
Now that's not to say that things aren't out of whack. You just need to prioritize things.
You should have warned him not to lean too close to his screen or he could potentially be sucked in and crushed by the immense gravitational forces known in exist in certain configurations of punctuation
Most Slashdotters are aware of the risk and that is why we so often see the more cautious ones omitting any meaningful punctuation
With any luck the LHC will continue past its triumph in explaining the observed asymmetry between grammar and punctuation Nazis to helping us understand the Higgs and the asymmetry in matter and antimatter
...the war in South Ossetia, which, may I remind, was started by a Georgian attack on the area of responsibility of Russian UN peacekeeping force, and specifically on said peacekeeping force (10 people KIA from hostile fire - artillery and tanks shelled peacekeepers' barracks).
Well......
On Thursday of last week, South Ossetian separatists, supported by Moscow, escalated their machine gun and mortar fire attacks against neighboring Georgian villages. This past Thursday and Friday, Georgia attacked the separatist capital Tskhinvali with artillery to suppress fire. Tskhinvali suffered severe damage, thus providing the pretext for Moscow's long-planned invasion of Georgia.
As Russia responded with overwhelming force, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flew from the Beijing Olympics to Vladikavkaz, taking control of the military operations. Putin sidelined his successor, Dmitry Medvedev, thereby leaving no doubt as to who is in charge. The 58th Russian Army of the North Caucasus Military District rolled into South Ossetia, reinforced by the 76th Airborne "Pskov" Division. Cossacks from the neighboring Russian territories moved in to combat the Georgians as well.
Russia is engaged in a classic combined arms operation. The Black Sea Fleet is blockading Georgia from the sea and likely preparing a landing, while Russian ballistic missiles and its air force are attacking Georgian military bases and cities. At the time of this writing, it looks as if Russian troops will not stop at the South Ossetian-Georgian border but may press their advantage further. -- The Russian-Georgian War: A Challenge for the U.S. and the World
The war has fundamentally transformed the realities on the ground in and around the conflict zones. Russia’s military intervention in support of South Ossetians and its peacekeeping forces has transformed its role from a mediator into a party of the conflict. Furthermore, Russia’s recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent states and its decision to veto the extension of the UN and OSCE missions operating in these conflict zones have led to a collapse of the peace process. This has led to the emergence of a dangerous security vacuum. A new security system has emerged on the ground with the establishment of Russian military bases and border guard units in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia sees this as evidence of Russian occupation of its territories which are still recognised as part of Georgia by the absolute majority of the UN member states. Moreover, the presence of unarmed EU monitors on the Georgian side of the administrative border line with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, has not been effective in helping to resolve humanitarian problems associated with the war nor to prevent or minimise the violent incidents within the conflict zone. The Geneva discussions co-chaired by the EU, OSCE and UN offer the only platform for political dialogue between representatives from Russia, Georgia, US, as well as experts from Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in regard to post-war challenges. - Analysis of the Russian-Georgian war
I think it would require a fair amount of cheek to imply that Georgia constituted an actual threat to Russia. On the other hand, Russia almost managed to repeat the Soviet "success" of Finland in the war with Georgia.
Shouldn't the vast global environmentalist "AGW" conspiracy have prevented these scientists from publishing their results? Isn't climate science controlled by a crowd that ensures their future prosperity by preventing dissenting opinions? How could this be?!
They are probably still stunned by the release of the Climategate 2.0 emails.
Last week, 5,000 files of private email correspondence among several of the world's top climate scientists were anonymously leaked onto the Internet. Like the first "climategate" leak of 2009, the latest release shows top scientists in the field fudging data, conspiring to bully and silence opponents, and displaying far less certainty about the reliability of anthropogenic global warming theory in private than they ever admit in public.
The scientists include men like Michael Mann of Penn State University and Phil Jones of the University of East Anglia, both of whose reports inform what President Obama has called "the gold standard" of international climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). . . .
Consider an email written by Mr. Mann in August 2007. "I have been talking w/ folks in the states about finding an investigative journalist to investigate and expose McIntyre, and his thus far unexplored connections with fossil fuel interests. Perhaps the same needs to be done w/ this Keenan guy." Doug Keenan is a skeptic and gadfly of the climate-change establishment. Steve McIntyre is the tenacious Canadian ex-mining engineer whose dogged research helped expose flaws in Mr. Mann's "hockey stick" graph of global temperatures.
One can understand Mr. Mann's irritation. His hockey stick, which purported to demonstrate the link between man-made carbon emissions and catastrophic global warming, was the central pillar of the IPCC's 2001 Third Assessment Report, and it brought him near-legendary status in his community. Naturally he wanted to put Mr. McIntyre in his place.
The sensible way to do so is to prove Mr. McIntyre wrong using facts and evidence and improved data. Instead the email reveals Mr. Mann casting about for a way to smear him. If the case for man-made global warming is really as strong as the so-called consensus claims it is, why do the climategate emails show scientists attempting to stamp out dissenting points of view? Why must they manipulate data, such as Mr. Jones's infamous effort (revealed in the first batch of climategate emails) to "hide the decline," deliberately concealing an inconvenient divergence, post-1960, between real-world, observed temperature data and scientists' preferred proxies derived from analyzing tree rings?
This is the real significance of the climategate emails. They show that major scientists who inform the IPCC can't be trusted to stick to the science and avoid political activism. This, in turn, has very worrying implications for the major international policy decisions adopted on the basis of their research.
Some great films are indeed effectively trapped on VHS. In some cases they are never transferred to DVD/Blu-Ray, in other cases the quality of the transfer is pitiful compared to the VHS. In others, they are only available for a limited number of regions.
American University found that less than one-half of 1 percent of registered voters in Maryland, Indiana, and Mississippi lacked a government-issued ID. A 2006 survey of more than 36,000 voters found that only 23 people in the entire sample would be unable to vote because of an ID requirement. . . . .
The weakness of the case against voter ID has been much in evidence in courtrooms. The Indiana and Georgia voter-ID laws were upheld by state and federal courts. In the Georgia case, the federal court pointed out that after two years of litigation, none of the plaintiffs, including the NAACP, could produce a single otherwise eligible voter who did not have a photo ID or could not easily obtain one. That failure was “particularly acute,” the court wrote, “in light of the Plaintiffs’ contention that a large number of Georgia voters lack acceptable photo ID.” Similarly, in the Indiana case, the federal court noted that “despite apocalyptic assertions of wholesale voter disenfranchisement, Plaintiffs have produced not a single piece of evidence of any identifiable registered voter who would be prevented from voting.”
The Georgia court said that the claim that voter ID is the same as a poll tax “represents a dramatic overstatement.” Imposing tangential burdens “does not transform a regulation into a poll tax” and “the cost of time and transportation” to obtain a free ID “cannot plausibly qualify as a prohibited poll tax because those same ‘costs’ also result from voter registration and in-person voting requirements, which one would not reasonably construe as a poll tax.” All of the states implementing voter ID have provided free IDs for anyone who does not already have one. As Rhode Island state senator Harold Metts said, “In this day and age, very few adults lack one of the forms of identification that will be accepted, and the rare person who does can get a free voter-ID card.”
Slashdot Mirror
True. But it's only in the Republican party where the stupid people win primaries.
Oh come now Basil, this hardly seems sporting....
Alvin Greene Wins South Carolina Primary
- - - - -
The Left Hates Conservatives
For the Left, There Are No Sacred Texts
If There Is No God
WHAT ARE WE DOING TO OUR WORLD??
Labour wanted mass immigration to make UK more multicultural, says former adviser
Most UK Muslims will vote Labour
British Muslims recruited to fight for 'al-Qaeda' in Somalia
Hate preacher: One day we will stone adulterers
Sharia: a law unto itself?
'Record rise' in UK anti-Semitism
Assimilation’s Failure, Terrorism’s Rise
U.K. Cuts to Military Will Curb Influence
Iran cuts oil exports to UK and France
Much of Europe is in deep trouble.
The US might avoid the worst of it.... if it can prevent Iran from tossing a nuke at it and the EMP sends life back to 1901. The major European powers were supposed to put a lid on the problem - it didn't work out that way.
Yes, because the UK is famous for its death camps. Oh ... wait ... no it isn't.
Actually, we invented them during the Boar war
Actual death camps tend to not leave any survivors. They fill up, kill everybody, and are filled up again to repeat. At least 75% survived the badly run, cruel camps that the British Army ran in the Boer War.
Africa Imperialism in the dock - the Boer War
That is the difference - death camps are intended to kill the occupants, all of them. (Put the citizens of a town on a train, move them to the death camp, kill them. Put the citizens of another town on the train, move them to the camp, kill them. Repeat.) Concentration camps are meant to hold. That doesn't mean that the circumstances of the concentration camp won't result in many deaths due to privation, cruelty, incompetence, and even calculation. The camps were internationally condemned, and rightly so. But nobody should confuse the British concentration camps in South Africa that 75% survived with the extermination / death camps of the Germans in Poland and other places that killed nearly everyone that entered them to the tune of hundreds of thousands of people each.
Extermination camps
Canadian Boer War veterans look back
MEMs devices, in contrast to nanoscale devices, are having a huge real world impact today and have been for some time. Nanomaterials are having an impact. Nanodevices... it looks to me like lots of laboratory work, lots of interesting projects, some fantastic demonstrations, but not much being manufactured or shipping as product.
As for the single atom transistor - interesting demonstration that is necessary for the development of future devices, but not even close to being manufacturable on any real scale.
Spot on.
You aren't into nanotech, are you?
Massive nano-scale manufacturing is much closer to reality than you seem to assume. Look into it. No spoon on hand for me to spoonfeed right now, sorry.
Did you read how they did it?
Does that seem like a scalable process to you? Here is what the article says:
They made them with a method not applicable for manufacturing, and, as a bonus, they are cryo-cooled. They are still at the level of demonstrating / playing / investigating.
I think your spoon would prove pretty empty..... or maybe there is no spoon.
That's what I said... that we've been able to build these things for ten years.
Yes, and this is what you didn't say: and today we are still pretty much at the level of demonstrating / playing / investigating.
Did you lose interest after getting to the end of what you wrote?
Did you read how they did it?
Does that seem like a scalable process to you? Here is what the article says:
Ah, good! They made them with a method not applicable for manufacturing, and, as a bonus, they are cryo-cooled. Lovely. They are still at the level of demonstrating / playing / investigating.
Today, we can place the atom with high precision, in silicon, so that the devices can be made reliably.
Cornell demonstrated a single atom transistor nearly 10 years ago, and today we are still pretty much at the level of demonstrating / playing / investigating.
Ten years from now, who's to say we won't be able to mass produce them?
It is a pretty big jump from building a single demonstration / proof of concept device and connecting it and integrating it into a design that works reliably at speed. IBM seems to be getting some interesting results with a single atom DRAM, but that is still way closer to a laboratory curiosity than an option for shipping silicon.
But that is just the Fab side of things. To actually design and build chips with this sort of technology is almost certainly going to require some serious upgrades to EDA tools.
Good luck trying to mass manufacture those.
The list of countries I can go to that are neither 3rd world shit holes, police states, or both is becoming vanishingly small.
Do you think you would help us out with a list of the actual tyrannies you see in action - with a few stipulations?
Terrorism is involves actual violence, such as murder or mass murder, or assisting those who commit violence. It does not consist of voting for the political parties out of power, demonstrations and rallies, writing op-eds, books, plays or poems against government policy or actions.
Guantanamo Bay has never held even 1,000 people ever as prisoners.
Pretty much all of the fights about Habeas Corpus have to do with prisoners held as enemy combatants under the law of war. The US held hundreds of thousands of German prisoners in WW2 and they didn't have any right to Habeas Corpus either. The rules of war are different from the rules under criminal or civil law.
The US only water boarded a total of three people, the most recent of which was almost 9 years ago. To the best of my knowledge it still water boards US pilots as part of their Escape and Evasion training.
Al-Awlaki was killed by a drone for joining Al Qaeda, assisting in planning attacks, and recruiting for them - not for legal dissent. There is no general right for Americans to take up arms against the US government to overthrow it by force of arms, or to otherwise engage in mass murder, or assist those who do. As a matter of war, there was no charge, conviction, or sentence needed under criminal law. He was treated no differently that other American renegades in other wars. He was treated no differently than the large numbers of men shot down en masse, as represented here by the Federal government in a previous conflict.
There is no right to private communications between terrorists who are planning to commit actual violence and their headquarters.
Walking through a metal detector, or a pat down before boarding a plane is not the same thing as not being allowed to travel.
As you can see below the line (-----), there are a constant series of ongoing arrests and convictions for plotted terrorist attacks.
Or perhaps you are worried about the tax code not being progressive enough, but that doesn't hold up either.
So now, what are all these tyrannies that you speak of? Did President Bush round up the Clinton voters? Did President Obama round up the Bush voters? Do people still worship or not worship in the belief of their choice? Do people still pick the school they will attend, or the profession they wish to pursue? Does the government mandate where people will live? Does the press no longer publish what it wants? Does the United States have a President-For-Live yet?
I'm willing to concede that government regulation continues to grow more burdensom - but that is not tyranny.
If the budget problem isn't address, that could lead to a real long term problem though.
Geithner: Why, no, our new budget does nothing to address America’s long-term fiscal crisis
---------------
FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012
Major General Smedley Butler, United States Marine Corp, was an extraordinarily brave and devoted Marine who served the United States in an exceptional manner while in uniform, earning two Congressional Medals of Honor - the highest American medal for bravery on the battlefield. Out of uniform and in the realm of politics, however, citizen Butler involved himself in leftist fringe politics. I would be inclined to follow Major General Butler anywhere on the battlefield, but nowhere near a voting booth. In this regard he is like Chomsky, a man of exceptional virtual in his field, but a political crank (popular though he may be) and genocide denier.
War is sometimes chosen for you by your enemies, not by some secret cabal in government or industry. Other nations and groups have their own plans, such as forcing Islamic conversion and Sharia law to replace the US Constitution on the US independent of anything the US does.
If the so called Military-Industrial complex is so powerful, why has the long term trend since World War 2 been towards decreased spending as a percentage of the economy?
Defense Spending as Percentage of GDP Well Below Historical Average
If there is no threat, why do we keep seeing arrests and convictions like this?
FBI’s Top Ten News Stories for the Week Ending January 27, 2012
I found the article you pointed to at the Conceptual Guerilla to be an interesting piece at a site devoted to cutting edge progressive thought and politics. I think I've found a companion piece of similar gravitas over at The People's Cube.
Of course no web article is going to cover material like this in any real depth. Anyone wishing to explore related themes may want to consider some of the following books by prominent African American economist Thomas Sowell:
Marxism: Philosophy and economics
Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
Affirmative Action around the World: An Empirical Study
Race and Culture: A World View
Intellectuals and Society
Basic Economics 4th Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy
Economic Facts and Fallacies: Second Edition
The Housing Boom and Bust, Revised Edition
Black Rednecks and White Liberals
Dismantling America: And Other Controversial Essays by Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell will never have the following of a Chomsky, but then he doesn't have Chomsky's genocide denier problem. (Cambodian genocide)
Politics vs. Economics - Short-term decisions have long-term effects
Evil-Man Economics
The Science Behind 3-1-1
Even more popular than security theater is civil rights theater.
Maybe we should stop pissing off people by trying to take over their countries?
When people buy a six pack of beer, it isn't to simply open the can - it is to drink the beer. The Islamist don't simply want the West/US out of any random location, or to stop "trying to take over their countries" (opening the can) - that is at most an intermediate step in reaching their goal. Their actual goal ("drinking the beer) is to turn the entire world Islamic and restore the Islamic Caliphate government that combines church and state. Read Bin Laden's letter to America - his first real demand is mass conversion to Islam, and after that he demands the US throw out the Constitution and implement Islamic Sharia law. They are not responding to invasion, they are on the offense attempting to overthrow the existing world order and impose their own.
HAMAS Targets Spain
What liquid agent is a terrorist going to use to blow up a plane? Napalm? Or just set the plane on fire?
The Science Behind 3-1-1
While I hail these suggested improvements, the fact remains that these piecemeal changes are a smokescreen to the larger issue of the legality and effectiveness of our current airport security scheme.
The searches are completely legal if unpopular. TSA finds an average of about 4 guns per day on/with people trying to board planes nationwide, and many other weapons as well. People known to have associations with various terrorist groups travel on airliners, but they don't try to hijack them.
Please leave my society. As long as you are living in it, your children are as much my responsibility as yours.
Not in American society, no. Not even close.
In regards to the previously mentioned Ohio law, it was passed last year in part of a "defense of 'traditional' marriage" legislative package intended to keep homosexuals from wedding.
Ohio passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage being between a man and a woman in 2004 - eight years ago. No statutory law would have greater power to define or limit marriage than the state constitution.
Furthermore, guardians are court appointed and have to make regular reports to the court about the status of the ward and their property. What judge wouldn't consider it a direct conflict of interest for a guardian to marry a ward? Do you think the judge would find the guardian swearing that he really loves his ward and isn't at all doing it to get at the minor's property to be in any way serious or believable and not at all unethical? If teachers can't date students that are technically adults, what makes you think a guardian could date and marry a ward who is a legal minor given the higher duty of a guardian?
GUARDIANSHIPS
The term 'irony' doesn't even begin to describe the situation there.
I think the term "pure BS" most likely describes what you wrote. Any lie will do to further the cause of "gay marriage", I guess.
And yes, "gay marriage" will have wide spread impact, including school curriculums taught to students about expected behaviors and attitudes, and will bring increasing conflicts between established constitutional rights and those stemming from a newly manufactured right to gay marriage. Think of all the peace and agreement that Roe v. Wade brought to American society, and double it.
Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples
Lesbian Divorce Shocker
'Poster couple' for gay rights in California is divorcing
The rhetorical and legal machinery that is being used to punch down society's laws and customs will leave a big enough hole that much more mischief will follow. Polygamists are already filing lawsuits using the same legal theories used to support gay marriage, and support for the normalization of pedophilia is entering the stage that homosexuality was in 50 years ago. These battles will only get worse.
People just think blanketly that you always have to balance your budget but it just doesn't work that way on the scale and scope of a government our size.
So, governments are "too big to fail"? Why don't you take a look at Greece and see how that sort of thinking is working out?
Economists will tell you that a balance budget when you are trying to grow the economy is a bad idea.
Economists will also tell you that pushing your debt higher and higher, past 100% of GDP and beyond, is a bad idea, especially when the problems driving the debt will only keep getting worst for 50 years. "To infinity and beyond!" might be a great tag line for a toy spaceman, not so much for an earth-bound government sinking in debt. (Social security, medicare, medicade + debt payments + an aging population bulge + growing longevity will ultimately crush the US unless something changes. Adding in the growing price of Obamacare will bring the problem forward in time.)
Now that's not to say that things aren't out of whack. You just need to prioritize things.
Avoiding ruin might be a good place to start.
I have to wonder if this might be some sort of revenge attack due to the feud that has developed between Wikileaks and Cryptome?
You should have warned him not to lean too close to his screen or he could potentially be sucked in and crushed by the immense gravitational forces known in exist in certain configurations of punctuation
Most Slashdotters are aware of the risk and that is why we so often see the more cautious ones omitting any meaningful punctuation
With any luck the LHC will continue past its triumph in explaining the observed asymmetry between grammar and punctuation Nazis to helping us understand the Higgs and the asymmetry in matter and antimatter
The more you tighten your grip, $dictator, the more $locations will slip through your fingers. - $rebel_princess.
It just might take 50, 100, or 400 years. The German Reich - 12 years. Fascist Italy - 21 years. USSR - 74 years. North Korea - 60 years and counting.
...the war in South Ossetia, which, may I remind, was started by a Georgian attack on the area of responsibility of Russian UN peacekeeping force, and specifically on said peacekeeping force (10 people KIA from hostile fire - artillery and tanks shelled peacekeepers' barracks).
Well......
More: The Five-Day War
I think it would require a fair amount of cheek to imply that Georgia constituted an actual threat to Russia. On the other hand, Russia almost managed to repeat the Soviet "success" of Finland in the war with Georgia.
Shouldn't the vast global environmentalist "AGW" conspiracy have prevented these scientists from publishing their results? Isn't climate science controlled by a crowd that ensures their future prosperity by preventing dissenting opinions? How could this be?!
They are probably still stunned by the release of the Climategate 2.0 emails.
Climategate 2.0 - A new batch of leaked emails again shows some leading scientists trying to smear opponents. - NOVEMBER 28, 2011
Some great films are indeed effectively trapped on VHS. In some cases they are never transferred to DVD/Blu-Ray, in other cases the quality of the transfer is pitiful compared to the VHS. In others, they are only available for a limited number of regions.
One example: They Might Be Giants
(I was going to mention The Lighthorsemen , but there is allegedly a Blu-Ray that exists now - but is it truly available?)
Its not as much nonsense as you make it out to be. Look at the statistics for low income families and their ability to get proper identification.
Here are some interesting statistics:
Not a Race Card