That artillery wouldn't last very long if a shooting war broke out. We know where a lot of it is and the remainder would reveal itself as soon as they fired the first volley.
(Gonna loose my funny mod point for this but)
I'm not sure you are aware of the situation on the DMZ.
They've basically had 50 years to fortify it with hidden and underground emplacements.
And what we do know of has more than we have anti-missile barrages and laser interception technology.
We would have to deploy several carrier tasks forces and get half our air force in the air to get every single one of them.
And it only takes one canister of chemical to air burst of nerve gas to take out tens of thousands of people.
There is a few Darkhorse comics that touch on this and actually I was wondering if they predate aliens.
Basically, humans get stranded on a planet full of Xenomorphs and at the last moment when they are surrounded by a sea of Aliens, one of the pilots show up with this gun that basically vaporizes all of of the Xenomorphs.
They try to thank the pilot but being the emotionless being that it is, it just floated by to the ship without saying a word.
Isn't it a too damn big territory to defend - explore - colonize? Without talking about the astronomical (ha ha) amount of human (E.T.) resources it would take to launch such an enterprise!
The same could be said about the new world and the European kingdoms.
You just need independent governors, viceroys, and a strong (space) navy.
By redefining intelligence to have nothing to do with what anybody means by intelligence, he can then claim that other systems exhibit more intelligence.
Intelligence and survival are not mutually inclusive nor are the mutually exclusive.
However, intelligence does help with survival...
The easiest way I think we can define intelligence is: "The ability to recognize patterns, predict the future occurrence of said pattern with cause and effect, and come to a logical conclusion on how to react to the pattern in the future."
First you must recognize the pattern. Then you must understand why the pattern happened. And lastly you must understand how to manipulate the pattern in the future.
Think of it like this...
You are cave man hunting for food. You see your cave mate eat a mushroom. Your cave mate dies. You assume that the mushroom must have killed him. You see another mushroom just like the one your cave mate ate. You choose not to eat it.
Now failure of intelligence does not always result in death so you might have a single failure in the 3 steps or you skip over the understanding part and still survive.
Or maybe you aren't worried about survival and have some curiosity related to it.
And Lech Walesa and Charlie Wilson had a hell of a lot more to do with when the inevitable fall of the Soviet Union actually took place than Reagan ever did. Read your history.
The Soviets could have most likely survived the loss in Afghanistan but revolutions in Eastern Europe most likely pushed things over the edge.
Yeah, some people might get hurt in the process, but if we continue going like we currently are, we are hurting future generations. People are already getting hurt, we shouldn't be passing that crap on to our children.
I've consistently said the same thing: Don't cut taxes, cut spending. Just as consistently, my thoughts have been shot down.
I don't know...
Cutting spending in a deflationary crisis might be an economically bad idea for local jobs and results in the whole deflationary death cycle.
The state should sell municipal bonds if it short on money and citizens take advantage of federally tax free bond income by giving the state loans out of their own pocket.
That way people with extra money to spend can finance the state and get some money back in the process.
When the economy recovers as well as tax revenue, then they can pay back the loans.
That might be true, but there seems to be something about the culture which seems to raise terrorists very easily compared to other cultures. Is it because the culture prohibits all contact with members of other sex except in marriage, resulting in testosterone fueled violence or is it the strict adherence to some questionable material in the holy book? I don't know, but all I know is, the tendency and problem does exist and you can't brush it under the carpet with inane platitudes like the one in your sig.
I thought it had something to do with extreme poverty, corrupt governments, and lack of education that created such a mindset.
Yes, some of the 9/11 bombers were well to do and educated but their support base over all would be less inclined for such activities is they weren't rotting in hellholes.
Wind and solar power are great. But we need a large-scale power plant to satisfy the base load, and wind and solar aren't going to do that any time soon.
See that is the problem. Centralized systems. The reason why computer technology and the internet has gone exponential is because of its distributed nature and lack of central control.
Now I'd be fine with a miniature nuclear reactor in my basement but I'm sure Uncle Sam would not approve.
If I wanted to be able to produce my own power and get off the grid, then that leaves with wind or solar. I'll go with solar simply because of less moving parts.
Now if everyone did this on on top of every house there would no longer be a need for centralized systems in which allows for greater flexibility of the system.
Arguably if we did go nuclear the incentive for distributed systems and micro-generation would go under. I'd rather since more independent systems in which we become more self reliant.
I know you are somewhat trolling, but the more I read/. the more it seems that everyone on here is rejecting technology than embracing it.
There is a fear of digital distribution and cloud networks overall (even though I would support systems without DRM and ways to backup and encrypt own data).
I think there is this pervasive fear that the world is leaving the tech geeks behind and none of them want to play along with where the world is going.
Its like trying to keep running a BBS when the rest of the world has moved on to the internet.
It was cool back in the day, but you can't simply hold onto some technologies forever. Just because YOU want the world to stay still does not mean that it will.
You are going to have to find a way to deal around it like you always have.
Am I the only one with an employer that has the attitude "If I can't see you working, you aren't working"?
I've worked for several companies that support people who work from home.
These people are usually sales reps or regional managers who by the nature of the job don't have a single place of work. Of course these people are generally results driven so if they don't make sales or their region falls apart then its fairly obvious.
But there are a lot of businesses who don't need a manager breathing down your neck all the time to get work done.
Nice to look at and pretend, but for some parts of society it'll never happen. Some of us will always end up going into an office, being out on patrol, or dealing with the public when all hell breaks loose.
Actually, I suspect the people who read slashdot are actually being marginalized by technology. Most nerd/geeks types like technology but they also don't like change and leaving the house. We tend to be territorial and collect lots of things that require a place to live (you know starwars toys, anime collection, server farms).
But there is a subset of society which doesn't mind living out of a hotel room.
I wouldn't call these the movers and shakers, but in all major companies these people basically live out of the hotel room with their blackberry and laptop going from one convention, sales deal, meeting to the next.
Its quite more common than you think and these people have just as much of a grasp on technology as you do because a lot of them now have grown up with the internet as a household item.
Still can't take away my server farm from my cold dead hands though...
If you're "using tools such as Facebook, Skype, and Twitter" in coffee shops for your job, then I'm afraid I've got news for you - dicking around on your Mac for attention does not actually constitute working.
Unless you happen to be a spammer using the local wifi to spam people's facebook accounts.
Of course its not much as your dicking around as you're just a dick.
Plus, of course, the boats with the missiles are either underwater (and therefore the "group of people" can't reach it to take it over), or tied up alongside a subtender full of sailors and marines, in a port full of sailors and marines, all of whom have a very bad attitude about the notion of stealing a boomer.
An acquaintance of mine has an old story about how he decked out a superior officer and got away with it back in the 90's.
He was assigned to duty of guarding subs in port and the officer shows up to board without clearance identification.
And although he was legitimately supposed to be on the sub, he said he couldn't let the officer in unless he had the identification. The guard explained in the proper talk that he was not allowed to let anyone pass without clearance and was authorized to use deadly force.The officer tried to pull rank and during a heated exchange step by because he was late for one reason or another and the guard puts his hand on his shoulder to emphasize he wasn't going to let him go by.
And he says something along the lines "Get your hands off me punk!" and takes a swing. Of course the acquaintance has an assault rifle and buts him right in the face knocking him cold.
Latter he was called to his superior...
And he asked by his superior commander why he didn't shoot the officer for violating security protocol trying to board on a nuclear armed sub.
In some places, the two options for high-speed Internet access aren't cable and DSL but instead satellite and 3G, and these usually have monthly usage caps between 5 GB and 8 GB.
That's more of a problem with the ISP than the model of software distribution.
Some people are known to move to a location with more friendly ISPs if it is that high on their list of priorities.
At every step, I could think of applications for greater storage - "oh, more OS space is needed", "wow, music would be nice", "movies... obviously", "make an incremental restore point at any point in time"... ok, now what???
And you know what... The Exchange Administrators still only give 50mb for your mailbox 10 years later.;)
Seriously, what is up with that... My home computer has more hard drive space than many business servers combined.
Exactly. A video interface just isn't (in general) a sensible UI when you are walking around and interacting with the world. I think an audio user interface is what is needed -- but there's little consumer interest at the moment.
Now if they could make it so you could wear bluetooth glasses that you can see through that don't make you look like a dork plenty of people would buy it.
You can read more about augmented reality on the iphone here:
Slashdot Mirror
That artillery wouldn't last very long if a shooting war broke out. We know where a lot of it is and the remainder would reveal itself as soon as they fired the first volley.
(Gonna loose my funny mod point for this but)
I'm not sure you are aware of the situation on the DMZ.
They've basically had 50 years to fortify it with hidden and underground emplacements.
And what we do know of has more than we have anti-missile barrages and laser interception technology.
We would have to deploy several carrier tasks forces and get half our air force in the air to get every single one of them.
And it only takes one canister of chemical to air burst of nerve gas to take out tens of thousands of people.
Is that something you want to risk?
It's very dangerous to rebrand because of how much you lose vs how much you gain.
Unless your name happened to be Packard Bell.
I want the story of the ship the Nostromo found.
There is a few Darkhorse comics that touch on this and actually I was wondering if they predate aliens.
Basically, humans get stranded on a planet full of Xenomorphs and at the last moment when they are surrounded by a sea of Aliens, one of the pilots show up with this gun that basically vaporizes all of of the Xenomorphs.
They try to thank the pilot but being the emotionless being that it is, it just floated by to the ship without saying a word.
How about a garbage collector appreciation day?
That's on October 10th.
Scientific observation would say there are less than 2.
How many species of life have we found on earth with scientific observation?
When was the last new species we have found on earth with scientific observation?
Isn't it a too damn big territory to defend - explore - colonize? Without talking about the astronomical (ha ha) amount of human (E.T.) resources it would take to launch such an enterprise!
The same could be said about the new world and the European kingdoms.
You just need independent governors, viceroys, and a strong (space) navy.
Maybe there are more, but the rest are afraid of running into an advanced civilization who'll treat them as cattle
That never stopped European explorers from trying to visit China who at the time were way more advanced then them.
All it takes is one curious race to explore every planet in the Galaxy.
Of course all it takes in one zealot conceited race to colonize them.
By redefining intelligence to have nothing to do with what anybody means by intelligence, he can then claim that other systems exhibit more intelligence.
Intelligence and survival are not mutually inclusive nor are the mutually exclusive.
However, intelligence does help with survival...
The easiest way I think we can define intelligence is: "The ability to recognize patterns, predict the future occurrence of said pattern with cause and effect, and come to a logical conclusion on how to react to the pattern in the future."
First you must recognize the pattern.
Then you must understand why the pattern happened.
And lastly you must understand how to manipulate the pattern in the future.
Think of it like this...
You are cave man hunting for food.
You see your cave mate eat a mushroom.
Your cave mate dies.
You assume that the mushroom must have killed him.
You see another mushroom just like the one your cave mate ate.
You choose not to eat it.
Now failure of intelligence does not always result in death so you might have a single failure in the 3 steps or you skip over the understanding part and still survive.
Or maybe you aren't worried about survival and have some curiosity related to it.
And Lech Walesa and Charlie Wilson had a hell of a lot more to do with when the inevitable fall of the Soviet Union actually took place than Reagan ever did. Read your history.
The Soviets could have most likely survived the loss in Afghanistan but revolutions in Eastern Europe most likely pushed things over the edge.
Yeah, some people might get hurt in the process, but if we continue going like we currently are, we are hurting future generations. People are already getting hurt, we shouldn't be passing that crap on to our children.
John Maynard Keyes would like to have a word with you.
I've consistently said the same thing: Don't cut taxes, cut spending. Just as consistently, my thoughts have been shot down.
I don't know...
Cutting spending in a deflationary crisis might be an economically bad idea for local jobs and results in the whole deflationary death cycle.
The state should sell municipal bonds if it short on money and citizens take advantage of federally tax free bond income by giving the state loans out of their own pocket.
That way people with extra money to spend can finance the state and get some money back in the process.
When the economy recovers as well as tax revenue, then they can pay back the loans.
Well in theory...
That might be true, but there seems to be something about the culture which seems to raise terrorists very easily compared to other cultures. Is it because the culture prohibits all contact with members of other sex except in marriage, resulting in testosterone fueled violence or is it the strict adherence to some questionable material in the holy book? I don't know, but all I know is, the tendency and problem does exist and you can't brush it under the carpet with inane platitudes like the one in your sig.
I thought it had something to do with extreme poverty, corrupt governments, and lack of education that created such a mindset.
Yes, some of the 9/11 bombers were well to do and educated but their support base over all would be less inclined for such activities is they weren't rotting in hellholes.
Wind and solar power are great. But we need a large-scale power plant to satisfy the base load, and wind and solar aren't going to do that any time soon.
See that is the problem. Centralized systems. The reason why computer technology and the internet has gone exponential is because of its distributed nature and lack of central control.
Now I'd be fine with a miniature nuclear reactor in my basement but I'm sure Uncle Sam would not approve.
If I wanted to be able to produce my own power and get off the grid, then that leaves with wind or solar. I'll go with solar simply because of less moving parts.
Now if everyone did this on on top of every house there would no longer be a need for centralized systems in which allows for greater flexibility of the system.
Arguably if we did go nuclear the incentive for distributed systems and micro-generation would go under. I'd rather since more independent systems in which we become more self reliant.
There's a danger when one guy has complete control of the project.
Can't you just take his code and fork it?
People complaining about him leaving are only doing so because they can't maintain the code themselves after his departure.
There is nothing stopping anyone else who has to source from picking up where he left off.
What's a CD?
A Certificate of Deposit
You can get them at your local bank.
Technology != panacea. Often it creates as many problems (if not more) than it solves.
Well here is the problem...
For every computer nerd who speaks out against a bad technology idea, there are 10 who are going to smile and go along with it for the PHB's money.
Those NSA data collection and DRM schemes aren't building themeselves. People like you and me are giving up their morals and are helping build them.
I personally do not think cloud computer or digital distribution is the problem with these systems but rather the DRM and privacy concerns that do.
Simply rejecting digital distribution all together is not the answer.
nerds complaining about the world they created.
I know you are somewhat trolling, but the more I read /. the more it seems that everyone on here is rejecting technology than embracing it.
There is a fear of digital distribution and cloud networks overall (even though I would support systems without DRM and ways to backup and encrypt own data).
I think there is this pervasive fear that the world is leaving the tech geeks behind and none of them want to play along with where the world is going.
Its like trying to keep running a BBS when the rest of the world has moved on to the internet.
It was cool back in the day, but you can't simply hold onto some technologies forever. Just because YOU want the world to stay still does not mean that it will.
You are going to have to find a way to deal around it like you always have.
Am I the only one with an employer that has the attitude "If I can't see you working, you aren't working"?
I've worked for several companies that support people who work from home.
These people are usually sales reps or regional managers who by the nature of the job don't have a single place of work. Of course these people are generally results driven so if they don't make sales or their region falls apart then its fairly obvious.
But there are a lot of businesses who don't need a manager breathing down your neck all the time to get work done.
Nice to look at and pretend, but for some parts of society it'll never happen. Some of us will always end up going into an office, being out on patrol, or dealing with the public when all hell breaks loose.
Actually, I suspect the people who read slashdot are actually being marginalized by technology. Most nerd/geeks types like technology but they also don't like change and leaving the house. We tend to be territorial and collect lots of things that require a place to live (you know starwars toys, anime collection, server farms).
But there is a subset of society which doesn't mind living out of a hotel room.
I wouldn't call these the movers and shakers, but in all major companies these people basically live out of the hotel room with their blackberry and laptop going from one convention, sales deal, meeting to the next.
Its quite more common than you think and these people have just as much of a grasp on technology as you do because a lot of them now have grown up with the internet as a household item.
Still can't take away my server farm from my cold dead hands though...
If you're "using tools such as Facebook, Skype, and Twitter" in coffee shops for your job, then I'm afraid I've got news for you - dicking around on your Mac for attention does not actually constitute working.
Unless you happen to be a spammer using the local wifi to spam people's facebook accounts.
Of course its not much as your dicking around as you're just a dick.
Plus, of course, the boats with the missiles are either underwater (and therefore the "group of people" can't reach it to take it over), or tied up alongside a subtender full of sailors and marines, in a port full of sailors and marines, all of whom have a very bad attitude about the notion of stealing a boomer.
An acquaintance of mine has an old story about how he decked out a superior officer and got away with it back in the 90's.
He was assigned to duty of guarding subs in port and the officer shows up to board without clearance identification.
And although he was legitimately supposed to be on the sub, he said he couldn't let the officer in unless he had the identification. The guard explained in the proper talk that he was not allowed to let anyone pass without clearance and was authorized to use deadly force.The officer tried to pull rank and during a heated exchange step by because he was late for one reason or another and the guard puts his hand on his shoulder to emphasize he wasn't going to let him go by.
And he says something along the lines "Get your hands off me punk!" and takes a swing. Of course the acquaintance has an assault rifle and buts him right in the face knocking him cold.
Latter he was called to his superior...
And he asked by his superior commander why he didn't shoot the officer for violating security protocol trying to board on a nuclear armed sub.
In some places, the two options for high-speed Internet access aren't cable and DSL but instead satellite and 3G, and these usually have monthly usage caps between 5 GB and 8 GB.
That's more of a problem with the ISP than the model of software distribution.
Some people are known to move to a location with more friendly ISPs if it is that high on their list of priorities.
At every step, I could think of applications for greater storage - "oh, more OS space is needed", "wow, music would be nice", "movies... obviously", "make an incremental restore point at any point in time"... ok, now what???
And you know what... The Exchange Administrators still only give 50mb for your mailbox 10 years later. ;)
Seriously, what is up with that... My home computer has more hard drive space than many business servers combined.
Exactly. A video interface just isn't (in general) a sensible UI when you are walking around and interacting with the world. I think an audio user interface is what is needed -- but there's little consumer interest at the moment.
There seems to be a lot of interest in this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH6r2tIaRXU
Now if they could make it so you could wear bluetooth glasses that you can see through that don't make you look like a dork plenty of people would buy it.
You can read more about augmented reality on the iphone here:
http://www.tuaw.com/2009/07/25/augmented-reality-apps-on-hold-until-3-1/
This is just pointless narcissism. There's no demand for this sort of thing currently.
I dunno. I could really use a wearable hud for my iPhone.
Sometimes I always feel rather awkward having people read my conversations especially taken out of context.