Consolidating the agencies is certainly "more efficient." My question is if what we want is efficiency.
In the old days the FBI, CIA and DIA were all competing for the love of the President. This meant there were 3 different solutions to every problem. A lot of redundancy, and a lot of waste.
Now they all answer to one boss and they better toe the line. They have jobs to protect. That means for any problem, there will be one solution. Thats great and efficient, as long as the one solution keeping the terrorists from setting off a nuke in the US is the right solution.
Perhaps all the information is there, but its been compressed by a time telescope to the point it is now a black hole. Since the information is within the event horizon, you cannot see it.
Not a huge issue. 1) Anything in a war zone covered in mirrors is just yelling out "Someone please shoot me!"
2) If we begin to have a significant number of targets decked out in mirrors we mount a 30mm cannon alongside the laser and fire a single round 2 or 3 seconds before any laser shot (depending on the range). Shatter the mirrors and were back to where we started.
While I cant disagree with any particular point in the article, these are the SAME arguments that keep being used by old people (and I consider myself one of them, because I had the same thoughts when I first heard of Google Wave) about any new form of communication.
To many people change data: wikis Beign overwhelmed by information: email and internet search Losing the time to self edit: email and IM To complicated: All of the above
Hell, I bet many of these came up with the invention of the telephone.
Oh! Thank you so freakin' much! Now I am going to have that song stuck in my head all damn day!
Im tempted to counter attack with the Wiggles "Fruit Salad" song, but it seems th new administration is serious about cracking down on those who use torture.
There is a difference between believing how a body SHOULD act, and how a body CAN act.
What Obama is saying is that the Bush administration behaved badly in abusing a right that it SHOULD have.
Im not saying that I agree with it, Im just saying that Im not certain there will never be a situation where the President shouldnt be able to do this.
I, for one, would like to thank CWmike for giving me a link to a site that immediately begins playing loud music. I LOVE that and, more importantly, my co workers love it to.
Sorry, but issues of draining energy out of the wind or robbing the ground of solar energy are bogus. Im not saying that there is no impact, but any impact there may be is negligable next to the same impact derived from any city you care to name. Buildings block the wind FAR more than a windmill could and pavement changes the way the land absorbs energy as much as solar panals do and is far more pervasive than any solar plan I have seen.
Stick to arguments about making the solar panels. There is substance there.
Indeed, if we take the (sadly American) argument that we cannot take any risks and we can only deploy technology where we are sure it is justified
Excuse me? Do you pay ANY attention to American news over the last 10 years? Let me tell you about this little thing we call "Undermining democracy". You see, we like to find a new computer driven voting machine, any one will do, buy a whole lot of them and try them out on a large scale during important national elections. Did I mention that we prefer to not keep any sort of verifiable record?
Now this risk adverse country of which you speak would be a country that would buy a couple of them and try them out during local elections and slowly expand from there.
I dont think we are talking about the same America. Who is the American president where you are?
My brother was in the military and was on some post (forget which) a few years ago. On their way out for field exercises they would drive by a heavily secure compound (multiple runs of fencing with concertina wire, a solid wall further in, guard dogs, the whole bit) and they were told it was some sort of special forces facility. My brother took two pictures of the compound with a disposable camera. He saved the camera and got the pictures developed when he was back home on leave. Those two pictures were completely whited out, the rest of the pictures came out fine.
I dont know what or how, but they have something. Who knows, maybe it only works on film cameras for some reason and wouldnt work on digital?
Many of the "Greenies" have been switching their stance on nuclear power over the past decade because they are realizing that the threat from nuclear power is nothing compared to the reality of global warming.
Look around. Their are many plans for nuclear power plants on the books now and the protests are NOTHING compared with what they were in the 70's and 80's. Oh sure, there are some who wont come around, but thats always the case.
Nuclear power is going to grow significantly, and most of the greenies are in full support.
Is there a reason beyond general pessimisim that this is causing so much greif?
Reading the announcement it looks to me more like "Weve gotten everything we want from this part of the beta, the next changes will take a while to impliment and we are not a charity who is going to suply the beta testers with a free game for the next 6 weeks for no purpose."
Re:If someone patents something stupid, do we care
on
IBM Patents Checking a Box
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
And while we are ripping on Lotus Notes...
Why in the name of God would they take the F5 key (the key every other application known to man uses to refresh) and assign to to "Logout"?!?!??!!?
WTF?
Ive been using Lotus (against my will) for 3 years now, and still a few times a month I hit F5 because I just KNOW that I should have that email response by now.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAN!!!!! No, I dont normally invoke the name of God 2 times in an email (Well, I guess thats 3 now). Its just a sign of the wrath Lotus brings out in me.
We are talking about science journalisim here. The assumption being that people are not going to go out and read the latest 500 page thesis on Deionizing Ameno based Triptides. Therefore a journalist (hence the whole "Journalisim" thing) is being asked to summarize this and reduce it down so it will fit on pages 53 and 54 between the adds for a new sport drink and a the latest Ford Hybrid.
So while the Thesis may state that this process will allow people to live for 5000 years IF we can strip the polycarbonite layer from our spleen, the Journal article may very well not cover that and simple run with the headline "Humans can now live for 5000 years" because the author of the article doesnt understand the obvious compelxities involved.
This isnt about implying that the masses wont understand. This is about reducing the data to what will fit given the time/size restrictions of all media outlets.
There are 2 things going on here: We have environemntalists who are pushing for cleaner cars. This can be met by gas powered cars that maybe are no more efficient, but run cleaner.
Then you have people trying to reduce our reliance on gas. A car that runs on gas and not only does not produce polution, but by some magical process removes existing polution from the air would would not be seen as an improvement from this light.
I suspect this law is driven by the folks who want to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. To that group, releasing cars which run cleaner would hurt the movement to get cars that use less gas.
Maybe I am missing something, but its my understanding that this is the whole point of quantum teleportation. You entangle two photons, move them a distance apart and when you change the state of one, the state of the other is instantly changed as well.
I think that ruling things out because of theories is probably a bad idea. I know its hard to believe, but physicists have learned things since 1982 so it is possible that Zurek and Dieks "No Cloning THEOREM" turned out to be wrong. Hence the whole "Break-through" thing.
First of all, the Army did not take us to Iraq. The President did. The tours were extended to meet the presidents requirements, not at the whim of the Army.
I have lost good friends in Iraq, some of whom thought the war was stupid but felt obligations to the Army and to their fellow soldiers so they went as a matter of duty. So when I hear someone dismiss soldier concerns with "well, they volunteered" I take it personally.
I never said that I am against soldiers blogging, only that there are very real concerns with some ligitimately sensitive information getting out. I think the intent of the new policy (although it looks unclearly written) is that any soldier who blogs need to have a training session for military blogging and they will then be held accountable if they release information against the policies. Unfortunatley the policy looks so vaugly written that that its going to get much stricter interpretation by some commanders.
Wow. That shows a total lack of understanding of people and how things work.
If your neighbor hears that your spouse was killed before you do, you are going to be PISSED. Its no different from the Police not releasing the names of victims until the families have been notified.
Are you a slave? No? So you volunteered to work for your company? Great. Then you need to work on of your sons next birthday. Dont give me any grief. You volunteered for this job and there are plenty of people who have to work during family events. Sure, it happens. That doesnt mean that you should be defending that behavior.
What other jobs consider "extended periods of travel" to mean an unspecified length of time between 12 and 24 months? Where you dont have the option to say "This isnt worth the cost to my family, I quit"
Soldiers volunteered for the job, yes. What the F*** does that havae to do with any god damned thing? You think that means nothing that happens to them or their families matters?
Im so damned mad I better just hit submit or Ill rant for another hour.
I left service 3 years ago, so I cant speak to whats going on today, but there was a lot of discussion about this even back then.
It was actually as much about casualty reporting as it was about OpSec. Families were hearing that their loved one had been killed in a blog before the military could tell them.
In other cases a wife would find out her husband had been killed when a neighbor came by with their condolences.
Its also about the rumor mill on more "mundane" things: Soldier Bob tells his wife that his Sergeant is having an affair with another female soldier. The Soldier Bobs wife tells the Sergeants wife. The rumor may not be true, but a marriage is going to have a hard time surviving that when they are thousands of miles appart for 12 to 24 months.
We shouldnt judge just from these few lines. There may be a context here we are missing. Kids cope with things in weird ways. He may have serious issues with the teacher. Putting that, the events at VT and a "write whatever you want, dont judge, dont edit" assignment together in the kids head may have led the kid on a much longer rant where all of these things came out.
Yes, this warrants a meeting with the administration, the kid and his parents, but an arrest and automatic expulsion? I wont judge until I see more of the essay.
Back in the 80's my friends and I had plans for taking over our high school, complete with getting guns from the local Wilsons Sports. But this was around the time of "Red Dawn" when we thought we would be fighting the Communist Hordes. But if anyone had seen what we had planned with todays mentality we would all have been locked up. Society would have created the very misfits they were trying to protect against. Instead we all grew out of it.
If you lock up all of the teenagers who have a moment of acting out in an irrational and inappropraite way there will be no one left to teach.
I just don't find this surprising. Darwinism defines how our genes change in order to help us survive our environment.
At some point the human gene set allowed us to change our environment to help us survive. This would logically mean that our genes would have less impetus to change. The Chimps genes have not had that sheltered environment so have been forced to continue adapting.
Slashdot Mirror
I cant mod you any higher, so let me simply say: Well said, Sir.
Consolidating the agencies is certainly "more efficient." My question is if what we want is efficiency.
In the old days the FBI, CIA and DIA were all competing for the love of the President. This meant there were 3 different solutions to every problem. A lot of redundancy, and a lot of waste.
Now they all answer to one boss and they better toe the line. They have jobs to protect. That means for any problem, there will be one solution. Thats great and efficient, as long as the one solution keeping the terrorists from setting off a nuke in the US is the right solution.
So you would rather have it behave exactly like a real book?
As soon as you loan it to a friend, it will be wiped from your eBook reader?
Really?
Perhaps all the information is there, but its been compressed by a time telescope to the point it is now a black hole. Since the information is within the event horizon, you cannot see it.
Go ahead. Disprove it.
Not a huge issue.
1) Anything in a war zone covered in mirrors is just yelling out "Someone please shoot me!"
2) If we begin to have a significant number of targets decked out in mirrors we mount a 30mm cannon alongside the laser and fire a single round 2 or 3 seconds before any laser shot (depending on the range). Shatter the mirrors and were back to where we started.
Fedex Flight 80, McDD MD-11 crashed TWICE??!?!
Now THOSE are some long odds!
While I cant disagree with any particular point in the article, these are the SAME arguments that keep being used by old people (and I consider myself one of them, because I had the same thoughts when I first heard of Google Wave) about any new form of communication.
To many people change data: wikis
Beign overwhelmed by information: email and internet search
Losing the time to self edit: email and IM
To complicated: All of the above
Hell, I bet many of these came up with the invention of the telephone.
Oh! Thank you so freakin' much!
Now I am going to have that song stuck in my head all damn day!
Im tempted to counter attack with the Wiggles "Fruit Salad" song, but it seems th new administration is serious about cracking down on those who use torture.
Given the specific mention of military hummers, which are most certainly NOT hybrids or electic, it must have some benefit for non-hybrids.
Au contraire
hybrid HMMWV research right here:
http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2008-01-0775
There is a difference between believing how a body SHOULD act, and how a body CAN act.
What Obama is saying is that the Bush administration behaved badly in abusing a right that it SHOULD have.
Im not saying that I agree with it, Im just saying that Im not certain there will never be a situation where the President shouldnt be able to do this.
I, for one, would like to thank CWmike for giving me a link to a site that immediately begins playing loud music. I LOVE that and, more importantly, my co workers love it to.
Thank you.
Sorry, but issues of draining energy out of the wind or robbing the ground of solar energy are bogus.
Im not saying that there is no impact, but any impact there may be is negligable next to the same impact derived from any city you care to name. Buildings block the wind FAR more than a windmill could and pavement changes the way the land absorbs energy as much as solar panals do and is far more pervasive than any solar plan I have seen.
Stick to arguments about making the solar panels. There is substance there.
Indeed, if we take the (sadly American) argument that we cannot take any risks and we can only deploy technology where we are sure it is justified
Excuse me? Do you pay ANY attention to American news over the last 10 years?
Let me tell you about this little thing we call "Undermining democracy".
You see, we like to find a new computer driven voting machine, any one will do, buy a whole lot of them and try them out on a large scale during important national elections. Did I mention that we prefer to not keep any sort of verifiable record?
Now this risk adverse country of which you speak would be a country that would buy a couple of them and try them out during local elections and slowly expand from there.
I dont think we are talking about the same America. Who is the American president where you are?
My brother was in the military and was on some post (forget which) a few years ago. On their way out for field exercises they would drive by a heavily secure compound (multiple runs of fencing with concertina wire, a solid wall further in, guard dogs, the whole bit) and they were told it was some sort of special forces facility.
My brother took two pictures of the compound with a disposable camera. He saved the camera and got the pictures developed when he was back home on leave. Those two pictures were completely whited out, the rest of the pictures came out fine.
I dont know what or how, but they have something.
Who knows, maybe it only works on film cameras for some reason and wouldnt work on digital?
Apparently you havent been paying attention...
Many of the "Greenies" have been switching their stance on nuclear power over the past decade because they are realizing that the threat from nuclear power is nothing compared to the reality of global warming.
Look around. Their are many plans for nuclear power plants on the books now and the protests are NOTHING compared with what they were in the 70's and 80's. Oh sure, there are some who wont come around, but thats always the case.
Nuclear power is going to grow significantly, and most of the greenies are in full support.
Is there a reason beyond general pessimisim that this is causing so much greif?
Reading the announcement it looks to me more like "Weve gotten everything we want from this part of the beta, the next changes will take a while to impliment and we are not a charity who is going to suply the beta testers with a free game for the next 6 weeks for no purpose."
And while we are ripping on Lotus Notes...
Why in the name of God would they take the F5 key (the key every other application known to man uses to refresh) and assign to to "Logout"?!?!??!!?
WTF?
Ive been using Lotus (against my will) for 3 years now, and still a few times a month I hit F5 because I just KNOW that I should have that email response by now.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD MAN!!!!!
No, I dont normally invoke the name of God 2 times in an email (Well, I guess thats 3 now). Its just a sign of the wrath Lotus brings out in me.
Dear Mr. Must-Put-Derogatory-Label-On-Everyone
We are talking about science journalisim here. The assumption being that people are not going to go out and read the latest 500 page thesis on Deionizing Ameno based Triptides. Therefore a journalist (hence the whole "Journalisim" thing) is being asked to summarize this and reduce it down so it will fit on pages 53 and 54 between the adds for a new sport drink and a the latest Ford Hybrid.
So while the Thesis may state that this process will allow people to live for 5000 years IF we can strip the polycarbonite layer from our spleen, the Journal article may very well not cover that and simple run with the headline "Humans can now live for 5000 years" because the author of the article doesnt understand the obvious compelxities involved.
This isnt about implying that the masses wont understand. This is about reducing the data to what will fit given the time/size restrictions of all media outlets.
Im betting there is more to it than that.
There are 2 things going on here:
We have environemntalists who are pushing for cleaner cars. This can be met by gas powered cars that maybe are no more efficient, but run cleaner.
Then you have people trying to reduce our reliance on gas. A car that runs on gas and not only does not produce polution, but by some magical process removes existing polution from the air would would not be seen as an improvement from this light.
I suspect this law is driven by the folks who want to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. To that group, releasing cars which run cleaner would hurt the movement to get cars that use less gas.
Maybe I am missing something, but its my understanding that this is the whole point of quantum teleportation. You entangle two photons, move them a distance apart and when you change the state of one, the state of the other is instantly changed as well.
I think that ruling things out because of theories is probably a bad idea.
I know its hard to believe, but physicists have learned things since 1982 so it is possible that Zurek and Dieks "No Cloning THEOREM" turned out to be wrong. Hence the whole "Break-through" thing.
First of all, the Army did not take us to Iraq. The President did.
The tours were extended to meet the presidents requirements, not at the whim of the Army.
I have lost good friends in Iraq, some of whom thought the war was stupid but felt obligations to the Army and to their fellow soldiers so they went as a matter of duty. So when I hear someone dismiss soldier concerns with "well, they volunteered" I take it personally.
I never said that I am against soldiers blogging, only that there are very real concerns with some ligitimately sensitive information getting out. I think the intent of the new policy (although it looks unclearly written) is that any soldier who blogs need to have a training session for military blogging and they will then be held accountable if they release information against the policies.
Unfortunatley the policy looks so vaugly written that that its going to get much stricter interpretation by some commanders.
Wow. That shows a total lack of understanding of people and how things work.
If your neighbor hears that your spouse was killed before you do, you are going to be PISSED. Its no different from the Police not releasing the names of victims until the families have been notified.
Are you a slave? No? So you volunteered to work for your company? Great. Then you need to work on of your sons next birthday. Dont give me any grief. You volunteered for this job and there are plenty of people who have to work during family events. Sure, it happens. That doesnt mean that you should be defending that behavior.
What other jobs consider "extended periods of travel" to mean an unspecified length of time between 12 and 24 months? Where you dont have the option to say "This isnt worth the cost to my family, I quit"
Soldiers volunteered for the job, yes. What the F*** does that havae to do with any god damned thing? You think that means nothing that happens to them or their families matters?
Im so damned mad I better just hit submit or Ill rant for another hour.
I left service 3 years ago, so I cant speak to whats going on today, but there was a lot of discussion about this even back then.
It was actually as much about casualty reporting as it was about OpSec. Families were hearing that their loved one had been killed in a blog before the military could tell them.
In other cases a wife would find out her husband had been killed when a neighbor came by with their condolences.
Its also about the rumor mill on more "mundane" things: Soldier Bob tells his wife that his Sergeant is having an affair with another female soldier. The Soldier Bobs wife tells the Sergeants wife. The rumor may not be true, but a marriage is going to have a hard time surviving that when they are thousands of miles appart for 12 to 24 months.
We shouldnt judge just from these few lines. There may be a context here we are missing.
Kids cope with things in weird ways. He may have serious issues with the teacher. Putting that, the events at VT and a "write whatever you want, dont judge, dont edit" assignment together in the kids head may have led the kid on a much longer rant where all of these things came out.
Yes, this warrants a meeting with the administration, the kid and his parents, but an arrest and automatic expulsion?
I wont judge until I see more of the essay.
Back in the 80's my friends and I had plans for taking over our high school, complete with getting guns from the local Wilsons Sports. But this was around the time of "Red Dawn" when we thought we would be fighting the Communist Hordes. But if anyone had seen what we had planned with todays mentality we would all have been locked up. Society would have created the very misfits they were trying to protect against. Instead we all grew out of it.
If you lock up all of the teenagers who have a moment of acting out in an irrational and inappropraite way there will be no one left to teach.
I just don't find this surprising.
Darwinism defines how our genes change in order to help us survive our environment.
At some point the human gene set allowed us to change our environment to help us survive. This would logically mean that our genes would have less impetus to change.
The Chimps genes have not had that sheltered environment so have been forced to continue adapting.
No big shocker here.