In my opinion, any intellectual that says the U.S. risks the rest of the world acting in unity against it isn't an intellectual worthy of the title. Secondly, if the rest of world unites against the USA, I don't think the nuclear arsenal stops anything. After all, the rest of the world has nuclear weapons too. If it really came to that, it'd be Mutually Assured Destruction all over again.
Fortunately, the majority of people using open source software are neither anti-corporate socialists nor freedom-oriented libertarians. We use open-source software because it works better than closed source software and its open nature ensures that we'll be able to keep it working in the absence of corporate support. I don't how any of your ideological straw men affects that one way or the other.
The US's nuclear arsenal is the reason why they can run around the world, invading any country they like, funding terrorism for decades without anyone being able to do anything about it.
Erm, no. The reason the US can invade any country it likes is because it has the conventional military power (e.g. ships, planes, tanks and troops) to project force anywhere in the world. Nuclear weapons have very little to do with it. Its more do with the fact that the US spends more than most other nations combined on its military.
Stealth doesn't make an aircraft invisible to radar, it only makes the aircraft harder to detect by absorbing and deflecting the radio waves sent from the radar set. The reasoning is, by the time the radar does pick up the aircraft, it would be too late to launch missiles. Of course, a laser changes that, since light travels so much more quickly than a physical missile, and at the same time the stealth coatings on planes make them more receptive to the laser's energy.
A laser/missile combination would place aircraft manufacturers in a double bind - make the plane laser resistant, and you make it vulnerable to missiles (since you give up stealth). Make the plane missile resistant (by making it stealthy) and its vulnerable to lasers.
Yeah, but if you make your plane shiny and reflective, you make it a lot easier to target with other weapons, like missiles.
Re:Sometimes no methodology can help
on
Becoming Agile
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· Score: 1
What do you do if the spec sheet is clear and right today, but thanks to outside events becomes wrong tomorrow?
Well, again, that's what you have software development methods for. Part of having such methods is having a way of dealing with changes, and assessing risks of change.
If you methodology or other "way of doing things" prevents a nimble response to changing circumstances, it can drag you down.
Well, that's true, but usually having a methodology is better than not having a methodolgy, for the sole reason methodology makes you think about the high-level organisation of the software.
Re:Evolutionary Prototyping
on
Becoming Agile
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· Score: 1
This approach is horrible for things that have to work perfectly the first time (e.g. rockets to Mars), but for web development seems to be a decent approach.
Doesn't NASA use a fair amount of prototyping when they're designing new rocket systems? I mean, there's nothing like building a small scale version to see a preview of what you've got to deal with when building the full scale system.
As far as answering the phone goes, it helps to give out your cell phone number to prospects, so that, when they call, you can step out of the room as if you were discussing a private issue with a friend or a family member.
But what do you do if the spec. sheet is wrong? What do you do if the spec. sheet is unclear? How about if you can't meet the requirements given by the time specified? Methodology answers all those questions.
As long as we're trading unsubstantiated anecdotes, let me say that my experience with Karmic Koala has been perfectly smooth. I have it running natively on one machine and inside a VirtualBox VM on another, and in both instances both the install process and the system as a whole have worked very satisfyingly.
Note that the parent poster never said that the drones are going to leave their base and attack targets on their own. He or she is worried about the effect the increasing capabilities of drones will have on their human controllers. Certainly, it'll be much easier to order an attack on a target if you don't have human pilots in the planes and you don't have human soldiers doing the target designation on the ground.
Erm, not really. The Allies gained air superiority over the Axis at the end of 1942, when the P-51 Mustang was introduced. However, despite the confident predictions of generals who claimed that the USA and Britain could quickly bomb Germany into submission, it still took nearly another 4 years of bloody ground fighting before Europe was conquered. After the war, when German records were examined, it was found that even the large scale aerial bombing had a minimal impact on the production capacity of Germany. This lesson was reconfirmed in Vietnam, when extensive bombing of Cambodia and Vietnam failed to dent traffic on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
The US military has known since World War 2 that militaries cannot be defeated by aerial bombing alone. Even the most die-hard Air Force pilot will not claim that air superiority is sufficient for overall military victory. Necessary, yes. Sufficient, no.
Not to mention the fact that little children have enough strength and manual dexterity to open "safety bottles" more quickly than adults in most instances. These bottles present a dangerous illusion of safety.
Well, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently about where it was during March of 1999. Yet people are still investing "for the long term" in the stock market. You tell me how long people put up with money losing investments.
Actually, the school may not be paying the professors either. At my university, at least, professors are rated by how much research grant money they're able to bring in. The top professors actually bring in more grant money than they make in a year, meaning they pay their own salary, and then some.
Roads suffer from a free-rider problem. Even if we don't use them, we still benefit from them, since the people who bring us our goods and services use them. If this positive externality was not internalized by government intervention, the free flow of goods, services, capital and labor would be greatly hampered.
For example, I don't use I-5 out in California, but I'm happy to pay for it (via federal taxes) because I know that it helps me get oranges year-round.
While you do have a point in stating that others' cultures are far older than the United States', it is true that US culture has spread across the world very rapidly when compared with other cultures. Its not the spread of the US culture that's alarming, its the speed of the spread.
Besides, if age were the only determinant of influence, we'd all be speaking Mandarin/Cantonese or Hindi.
The big advantage in favor of buses in my opinion is their "backwards compatibility". A new bus line doesn't destroy the road for other vehicles. A trolley/streetcar line reduces the vehicle capacity of the road it travels along. Now, some consider that a good thing, since it forces people to use mass transit rather than drive. My concern is that, if driving is sufficiently difficult suburban dwellers (like me) will choose to stop going downtown rather than put up with the inconvenience of massively crowded streets.
Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong but I look at it as saying the use of trolleys attracts economic development like the parable of the broken window, by breaking a window glass you're creating work for the glass maker. However in reality breaking the glass only diverts money when it can be used for a better purpose. Instead of the kid getting the shoes he needs the money is now spent on glass.
That's not exactly true. The economic development argument states that the presence of a streetcar line increases foot traffic in that area, which tends to increase the customer base for local businesses. Its a small scale version of the argument that justifies the presence of highways. By making transportation easier (via infrastructure improvements) the government allows commerce to flow more quickly and cheaply, increasing economic activity by reducing transaction costs.
Well, this still has the issue of having to build (electricity) lines over the entire route. Here, you can localize the charging to only the bus stops, which reduces the infrastructure costs of getting the system going.
What I think it'd do instead is be like a hybrid that has the ability to recharge at every bus stop.
That's exactly the sort of thing this system does. Each stop has a set of overhead lines that allow the bus to recharge its capacitors enough to get to the next stop.
But then again, what provides the electricity? If it's more fossil fuels, then it's not being green; it's cutting diesel costs.
From the summary: "Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet [to charge an ultracapacitor], it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel."
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In my opinion, any intellectual that says the U.S. risks the rest of the world acting in unity against it isn't an intellectual worthy of the title. Secondly, if the rest of world unites against the USA, I don't think the nuclear arsenal stops anything. After all, the rest of the world has nuclear weapons too. If it really came to that, it'd be Mutually Assured Destruction all over again.
Fortunately, the majority of people using open source software are neither anti-corporate socialists nor freedom-oriented libertarians. We use open-source software because it works better than closed source software and its open nature ensures that we'll be able to keep it working in the absence of corporate support. I don't how any of your ideological straw men affects that one way or the other.
The US's nuclear arsenal is the reason why they can run around the world, invading any country they like, funding terrorism for decades without anyone being able to do anything about it.
Erm, no. The reason the US can invade any country it likes is because it has the conventional military power (e.g. ships, planes, tanks and troops) to project force anywhere in the world. Nuclear weapons have very little to do with it. Its more do with the fact that the US spends more than most other nations combined on its military.
Stealth doesn't make an aircraft invisible to radar, it only makes the aircraft harder to detect by absorbing and deflecting the radio waves sent from the radar set. The reasoning is, by the time the radar does pick up the aircraft, it would be too late to launch missiles. Of course, a laser changes that, since light travels so much more quickly than a physical missile, and at the same time the stealth coatings on planes make them more receptive to the laser's energy.
A laser/missile combination would place aircraft manufacturers in a double bind - make the plane laser resistant, and you make it vulnerable to missiles (since you give up stealth). Make the plane missile resistant (by making it stealthy) and its vulnerable to lasers.
Because the laser is good against things that are stealthy, e.g. things that are coated in materials designed to absorb E.M. radiation.
Yeah, but if you make your plane shiny and reflective, you make it a lot easier to target with other weapons, like missiles.
What do you do if the spec sheet is clear and right today, but thanks to outside events becomes wrong tomorrow?
Well, again, that's what you have software development methods for. Part of having such methods is having a way of dealing with changes, and assessing risks of change.
If you methodology or other "way of doing things" prevents a nimble response to changing circumstances, it can drag you down.
Well, that's true, but usually having a methodology is better than not having a methodolgy, for the sole reason methodology makes you think about the high-level organisation of the software.
This approach is horrible for things that have to work perfectly the first time (e.g. rockets to Mars), but for web development seems to be a decent approach.
Doesn't NASA use a fair amount of prototyping when they're designing new rocket systems? I mean, there's nothing like building a small scale version to see a preview of what you've got to deal with when building the full scale system.
As far as answering the phone goes, it helps to give out your cell phone number to prospects, so that, when they call, you can step out of the room as if you were discussing a private issue with a friend or a family member.
But what do you do if the spec. sheet is wrong? What do you do if the spec. sheet is unclear? How about if you can't meet the requirements given by the time specified? Methodology answers all those questions.
As long as we're trading unsubstantiated anecdotes, let me say that my experience with Karmic Koala has been perfectly smooth. I have it running natively on one machine and inside a VirtualBox VM on another, and in both instances both the install process and the system as a whole have worked very satisfyingly.
Note that the parent poster never said that the drones are going to leave their base and attack targets on their own. He or she is worried about the effect the increasing capabilities of drones will have on their human controllers. Certainly, it'll be much easier to order an attack on a target if you don't have human pilots in the planes and you don't have human soldiers doing the target designation on the ground.
When used in WWII, the war ended quickly.
Erm, not really. The Allies gained air superiority over the Axis at the end of 1942, when the P-51 Mustang was introduced. However, despite the confident predictions of generals who claimed that the USA and Britain could quickly bomb Germany into submission, it still took nearly another 4 years of bloody ground fighting before Europe was conquered. After the war, when German records were examined, it was found that even the large scale aerial bombing had a minimal impact on the production capacity of Germany. This lesson was reconfirmed in Vietnam, when extensive bombing of Cambodia and Vietnam failed to dent traffic on the Ho Chi Minh trail.
The US military has known since World War 2 that militaries cannot be defeated by aerial bombing alone. Even the most die-hard Air Force pilot will not claim that air superiority is sufficient for overall military victory. Necessary, yes. Sufficient, no.
To be fair, though, the adviser's name was David Nutt. I'm not sure about you, but I sure don't take advice from nuts.
Not to mention the fact that little children have enough strength and manual dexterity to open "safety bottles" more quickly than adults in most instances. These bottles present a dangerous illusion of safety.
Well, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is currently about where it was during March of 1999. Yet people are still investing "for the long term" in the stock market. You tell me how long people put up with money losing investments.
Given that the largest shareholders are mutual funds and hedge funds, they got their money from the rest of us.
Actually, the school may not be paying the professors either. At my university, at least, professors are rated by how much research grant money they're able to bring in. The top professors actually bring in more grant money than they make in a year, meaning they pay their own salary, and then some.
Roads suffer from a free-rider problem. Even if we don't use them, we still benefit from them, since the people who bring us our goods and services use them. If this positive externality was not internalized by government intervention, the free flow of goods, services, capital and labor would be greatly hampered.
For example, I don't use I-5 out in California, but I'm happy to pay for it (via federal taxes) because I know that it helps me get oranges year-round.
Finland isn't part of the EU.
While you do have a point in stating that others' cultures are far older than the United States', it is true that US culture has spread across the world very rapidly when compared with other cultures. Its not the spread of the US culture that's alarming, its the speed of the spread.
Besides, if age were the only determinant of influence, we'd all be speaking Mandarin/Cantonese or Hindi.
The big advantage in favor of buses in my opinion is their "backwards compatibility". A new bus line doesn't destroy the road for other vehicles. A trolley/streetcar line reduces the vehicle capacity of the road it travels along. Now, some consider that a good thing, since it forces people to use mass transit rather than drive. My concern is that, if driving is sufficiently difficult suburban dwellers (like me) will choose to stop going downtown rather than put up with the inconvenience of massively crowded streets.
Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong but I look at it as saying the use of trolleys attracts economic development like the parable of the broken window, by breaking a window glass you're creating work for the glass maker. However in reality breaking the glass only diverts money when it can be used for a better purpose. Instead of the kid getting the shoes he needs the money is now spent on glass.
That's not exactly true. The economic development argument states that the presence of a streetcar line increases foot traffic in that area, which tends to increase the customer base for local businesses. Its a small scale version of the argument that justifies the presence of highways. By making transportation easier (via infrastructure improvements) the government allows commerce to flow more quickly and cheaply, increasing economic activity by reducing transaction costs.
Well, this still has the issue of having to build (electricity) lines over the entire route. Here, you can localize the charging to only the bus stops, which reduces the infrastructure costs of getting the system going.
What I think it'd do instead is be like a hybrid that has the ability to recharge at every bus stop.
That's exactly the sort of thing this system does. Each stop has a set of overhead lines that allow the bus to recharge its capacitors enough to get to the next stop.
But then again, what provides the electricity? If it's more fossil fuels, then it's not being green; it's cutting diesel costs.
From the summary: "Even if you use the dirtiest coal plant on the planet [to charge an ultracapacitor], it generates a third of the carbon dioxide of diesel."