The issue is not the threat to any particular country, but rather the change in policy. From a strict policy of only using nukes against other nuclear capable nations, to a policy of specifically targetting certain countries, and leaving an option there, "in case of [insert reason]" then nuke.
It's sad change, rather than building bridges they (probably should say 'we') are blowing them up.
I agree completly that radicals need to be stopped before they can do any _more_ damage. The main problem here is the method. History (and common sense) has proved time and time again that you don't change peoples attitudes by killing their brothers and sisters. (See current situation in Israel for quick example) you need to find the roots of the problems and do something there. In otherwords stop whatever it is that makes so many non-westeners's teach their children that America is evil.
I believe it is almost a fact that much of the current problems stemming from the middle east were born from the cold war. America went all out to secure every oil resource and thus starve the Russians, and in the process landed ten's of thousands of troops on someone else's land. With permission yes, too simling cheering crouds no.
Unfortunatly it usually takes huge disasters to learn from mistakes, even more unfortunate is that September 11 in many ways apparently _WASNT_ a big enough disaster.
Maybe it will take a terrorist with a nuke for some people to relise you cant fight guns with simply bigger guns.:(
Of course you cant ever have everyone like you, heck you would be mad to want that! But there is a big line between dislike and want-to-kill.
It wasn't some abstract idea, it was real. Very real. There IS call to use nukes in more than simply a situation following a ballistic nuke attack on the USA or its allies. It WOULD be appropriate and utterly defensible to use nukes against a country that hit us with chemical or biologicals. Any such country foreits it right to exist.
I think what he was reffering too is that like many people would have believed is that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the threat of Thermo Nuclear War was very low, low enough to not worry. It's certianly not something that worried me..
Not at least until now.
The situation you talk about (or trained for) is the classic nuclear contingency, as a last resort nuke them all. So basically all bets are off, we're all going to die so fuck it.
A small nuke dropped on an isolated desert nation, is a f&*cken big deal! No matter where you're from.:(
Since when has the US categorically stated that they wouldnt use nukes as a first strike? I dont believe they have ever made that claim in the past, and now they have categorically stated that they WOULD use nukes in certain _undefined_ circumstances..
Muslim's hate Americans. So to stop that lets nuke a few hundred thousand of them to set an example, and put them back in the stone ago at the same time. Problem solved.
I pitty you. (sorry this is not meant to be a flame, just drawing light to what you implied)
Luckily I was too young during most of Reagan's presidency, but I remember reading not so long ago how at one point NATO was performing a huge military exercise in Northern Europe, I believe it was the biggest Exercise since WWII, anyway predictably the USSR went on high alert, their equivelent of DefCon 2. When Reagan was told of this, he was quoted as saying something like "How could they believe _I_ would attack??"
Ignorance combined with arrogance, it will be the death of us all..:(
After doing a lot of reading over the last year on Cold War policies, politics and so on, one thing that has dawned on me is quite a scary thought. Throughout history America has always been the just protector of people, but is this the case? Your point there is an excelent example, the USSR renounced the first strike, but they NEEDED to maintain their Neuclear arsonal to contain the US! Now this goes aganist eveything that has been forced down my neck throughout my life, like im sure it has been with every other westerner.
Another example is the first START treaty negotiations (in the 80's), apparantly despite making excelent progress the whole thing amounted to nothing, because of one issue, missile defence. Had Regan denounced plans for StarWars, it's likely there would be less than 5000 ICBM's currently between the two countries!
It makes me sad to think what I now believe, that is that the US is the agressor. Not in the class of say, Nazi Germany or even Stalin's Russia. But in its own class.. Througout history America has been divided by the isolationalists, rightwingers and the rest. Some things dont change easily.
For the first time in my life it makes me worried about our worlds future.:(
Heh, i remember my first year CS books. We had two fat books to buy and one little one, I bough just one of the fat ones, ('Pascal' pfft!) and I still have it in my box in original plastic wrap.:)
Ancient Egyptians did not preserve _all_ their dead. Otherwise there would be hundreds of thousands of mummies! Only the rich and powerfull had such privelige, and you can be assured the 'grunt' working on building a pyramid were not rich, the word is expendable.
There is a big difference between modern day construction accidents where paid workers die for whatever reason, compared to the deaths of hundreds and thousands of SLAVES who mostly did the hard and dangerous work back in 5000BC.
If you can't see the difference, then there is no point argueing.
Re:Is it, or is it not, easy?
on
Wireless Mania
·
· Score: 1
There is an abundance of information available out there, but its just finding it that can be a pain. I too less than two months ago knew jack about wifi, but now after _alot_ of reading, i can say i know what im talking about!
Probably one of the best starting points of info i found was NoCatFAQ, otherwise goto just about any Community wireless project and have a look at their info links.
Furthermore O'Reiley has a great book; "Building Community Wireless Networks", that has a lot of info about pretty much everything you want to know to get started! (in dead tree format too!!:])
That's such a great idea, but in working with the sydney wireless people i have come to the conclusion that linking say Sydney to Melbourne would be one hell of a task! (Possibly one hell of an achievement) Considering a top usable link distance of 30-40km (under ideal conditions) just count how many AP's would be needed between Syd and Melb! (1200km!)
Re:There goes my brainstorm...
on
Wireless Mania
·
· Score: 1
Go search for 'Community wireless', and you will find that such 'clubs' exist in virtually every major city around the world!
Of course the free / community nature combined with the relative immaturity of the technology means they are all in various stages of usefullness..
Don't rely on them too much tho! Both can be _easily_ bypassed. I believe its arguable weather that is a deterrant or not as well, I'd assume many casual stumblers would be up for the challenge of getting into a "secured" 802.11 network! It may stop a few people but it is NO security.
The only security you have is keep the AP outside of your network (behind firewall), then use IPSEC / tunneling. The only way to be sure.
Why do you think it would be so hard for any sufficiently advanced civilization to understand something like a CD?
Of course it all depends on who the archaeologist's are, if they were some post-apocaliptic decendants of us, say from our perspective they would be around middle-ages level or so, then sure it could take them a few hundred years to decifer them, given no frame of reference. But they would eventually figure that the pattern of microscopic pits on one side must represent something.
The same goes for a technologically advanced race, even with absolutly no reference, they would quickly notice the small pits and from there be able to extract the raw data. If a few different CD's were compared you would very easily decifer the data format, and begin to interpret it.
The assumptions you make based on such basic information are ridiculous, such as can we now make a pyramid or how many people can make a car. Think firstly for example, when the pyramids were built each took upto (and over) 50 years to be built, most costing thousands or tens of thousands of human lives in the process. Can we do that? Hell no! (we're not barbarians! anymore)
You mentioned the Mayan calander, sure good for them, the Chinees had/HAVE something almost as good. But who invented the Atomic clock?
Im shocked beyond words at most of your claims, it really feels pointless to even argue them! I guess i too was sucked in by such a clever troll!
You seem to assume that the only research in this field is in looking for habitable worlds. You can safely assume that there are many other scientists around the world looking for all manner of strange things. Just like there are thousands of kooks looking for faces on Mars!
The fact is that up until 7 years ago or so, it was _believed_ that there were NO other planets. (Due simply to the lack of proof) Now it's a huge task of reconsidering everything we thought we knew about planets and in particular their formation. This is the important result here, not hey this planet is close to the habitable zone, _maybe_ one of its moon's looks like Canada! The observation of so many different worlds has taught us a more than thousands of years of though on possibilities like what you mentioned.
It's called science, and it's the only way we would discover any other sort of life or anything, be they gas dwelling, fusion dwelling, water dwelling!
Keep laughing there, because you obviously dont get it.
The reason they are a hardware company is because the hardware sells the software, and the software sells the hardware.
Sounds stupid but its extremly simple, without their own completly controlled hardware base, they would be directly competing with MS, of MS's own turf, see BeOS for examples of this.
BeOS is a good example in that Apple bullied them out of the PowerPC market, sending them to their eventual death in the Intel world. Reason being, Apple doesnt want to compete directly with anyone. Why would they when they _own_ the platform?
I see as you say your coming from the amatuer radio world, but 150Watts at 2.4Ghz is a heck of a lot as I understand it!:) The legal limit in the free unlicenced 2.4Ghz spectrum is 4Watts yes four.
With the computer in the attic, there is a far better way of doing it, although slightly more expensive. Use an access point (such as LinksysWAP11 / SMC2655W) with power over ethernet, place the AP in a weather proof box, with just the CAT5 connection to it, screw that to your antenna mast (or base if it) and your set. See 1km 802.11b in Egypt for some nice pictures of it.
For cost I guess if your just doing ptp links it is going to cost more, but not that much really, at least here in Australia excluding the cable savings, PoE adaptor, etc, an AP such as the Linksys or SMC can cost less than $450, (mine was $420 cost price) a standard Wireless PCI card will cost at least $300.
This i find quite disturbing, it was mentioned in the Register article too.
Come to think of it I wouldnt be supprised if with some of the patches from windows update MS had quitely inserted some 'bugs' to counter various commonly pirated cd keys..
Hmm, they are fighting a loosing battle though, and in the process giving another large group of uses even more reason to think MS software sucks! Im sure in many cases people who arn't willing to pay for MS software would be happy at least _trying_ linux!
I'm completly against the/. croud here, I believe despite the commercialism etc just like you say the Olympics are great! At no other competitions are so many countries in the same place competing for so much.
The only thing that really gets me with the commercialism is the way the whole Olympic idea can be hijacked to deliver some nationalist message by one country!:( A perfect example is Munich in 1938 (or so?), and some might say SaltLake city in 2002 amoung many others..
Ergh, sorry sometimes its hard not to flamebait!:(
I only ever have bought the MX line of cards, not for the price point but for one feature alone, TwinView, now renamed to iView or something. Frankly the only game I find worth playing (that uses 3d) is Counterstrike, so my number one use is the TV out dual view mode. Unfortunatly this feature was only on the MX cards (up till now) the reason why at home in my pc i have an MX400 while sitting in the 'junk' box is a GF2DDR that i was given!:)
Quote: "I don't mean to nitpick, but Tom's used to be a very reliable source- and a great read."
I hate to toll but nothing agrivates me more than people nitpicking about spelling or punctuation. Especially when such Redundant, uninteresting and defintaly not insightfull remarks are modded up to 5!
Ahh well, where are them damned mod points when you need them!:)
There was an excelent ariticle at Scientific American on exactly that, with nice diagrams etc..
It is a slightly depressing for those star trek style optimists like me.:) But of course there is an infinate number of possibilities in the Universe! Have a look at Possible Solutions to get you thinking more..
There are so many considerations though, for instance Not all habitable zones equal. but one that really peaked my interest is an article about how our moon in many made our world. (sorry cant find the link) Basically the theorised formation of our moon, ie big planetoid crashing into proto-earth, ejecting large portion of earths crust into orbit with remains of other planetoid. Basically creating the plate-tectonic's we have on earth, which i might add do not exist on any other planet/moon observered.
Meaning that the plate tectonics are extremly rare, if you'll note a big factor in the creating on mountains, continents, etc is the continual movement of the plates. Getting to the point, if we didnt have a moon (and the results of its formation) and we still had water, then Earth would be a completly water world! Because without the continual movement, creation of continents / mountains etc, water would erode any land mass's in time.
I find that so interesting (even if it's all theoretical) as it's just another very rare factor that contributed to us being here. Rather than us being whales or some such.:)
So just maybe for the optimists (like me) most worlds out there which are habitable dont have inteligence because a huge portion of them are just water with no land. Then comes the argument of why would inteligence such as ours evolve on such a world?
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The issue is not the threat to any particular country, but rather the change in policy. From a strict policy of only using nukes against other nuclear capable nations, to a policy of specifically targetting certain countries, and leaving an option there, "in case of [insert reason]" then nuke.
It's sad change, rather than building bridges they (probably should say 'we') are blowing them up.
I agree completly that radicals need to be stopped before they can do any _more_ damage. The main problem here is the method. History (and common sense) has proved time and time again that you don't change peoples attitudes by killing their brothers and sisters. (See current situation in Israel for quick example) you need to find the roots of the problems and do something there. In otherwords stop whatever it is that makes so many non-westeners's teach their children that America is evil.
:(
I believe it is almost a fact that much of the current problems stemming from the middle east were born from the cold war. America went all out to secure every oil resource and thus starve the Russians, and in the process landed ten's of thousands of troops on someone else's land. With permission yes, too simling cheering crouds no.
Unfortunatly it usually takes huge disasters to learn from mistakes, even more unfortunate is that September 11 in many ways apparently _WASNT_ a big enough disaster.
Maybe it will take a terrorist with a nuke for some people to relise you cant fight guns with simply bigger guns.
Of course you cant ever have everyone like you, heck you would be mad to want that! But there is a big line between dislike and want-to-kill.
It wasn't some abstract idea, it was real. Very real. There IS call to use nukes in more than simply a situation following a ballistic nuke attack on the USA or its allies. It WOULD be appropriate and utterly defensible to use nukes against a country that hit us with chemical or biologicals. Any such country foreits it right to exist.
:(
I think what he was reffering too is that like many people would have believed is that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the threat of Thermo Nuclear War was very low, low enough to not worry. It's certianly not something that worried me.. Not at least until now. The situation you talk about (or trained for) is the classic nuclear contingency, as a last resort nuke them all. So basically all bets are off, we're all going to die so fuck it. A small nuke dropped on an isolated desert nation, is a f&*cken big deal! No matter where you're from.
It's far too easy to say that a small nuclear weapon would be okay, but thats because _you're_ dropping it on the _other_ side of the planet.
In other words, you don't have to live there afterwards.
Since when has the US categorically stated that they wouldnt use nukes as a first strike? I dont believe they have ever made that claim in the past, and now they have categorically stated that they WOULD use nukes in certain _undefined_ circumstances..
So allow me to sum up your viewpoint.
Muslim's hate Americans. So to stop that lets nuke a few hundred thousand of them to set an example, and put them back in the stone ago at the same time. Problem solved.
I pitty you. (sorry this is not meant to be a flame, just drawing light to what you implied)
Luckily I was too young during most of Reagan's presidency, but I remember reading not so long ago how at one point NATO was performing a huge military exercise in Northern Europe, I believe it was the biggest Exercise since WWII, anyway predictably the USSR went on high alert, their equivelent of DefCon 2. When Reagan was told of this, he was quoted as saying something like "How could they believe _I_ would attack??"
:(
Ignorance combined with arrogance, it will be the death of us all..
After doing a lot of reading over the last year on Cold War policies, politics and so on, one thing that has dawned on me is quite a scary thought. Throughout history America has always been the just protector of people, but is this the case? Your point there is an excelent example, the USSR renounced the first strike, but they NEEDED to maintain their Neuclear arsonal to contain the US! Now this goes aganist eveything that has been forced down my neck throughout my life, like im sure it has been with every other westerner.
:(
Another example is the first START treaty negotiations (in the 80's), apparantly despite making excelent progress the whole thing amounted to nothing, because of one issue, missile defence. Had Regan denounced plans for StarWars, it's likely there would be less than 5000 ICBM's currently between the two countries!
It makes me sad to think what I now believe, that is that the US is the agressor. Not in the class of say, Nazi Germany or even Stalin's Russia. But in its own class.. Througout history America has been divided by the isolationalists, rightwingers and the rest. Some things dont change easily.
For the first time in my life it makes me worried about our worlds future.
Heh, i remember my first year CS books. We had two fat books to buy and one little one, I bough just one of the fat ones, ('Pascal' pfft!) and I still have it in my box in original plastic wrap. :)
Ancient Egyptians did not preserve _all_ their dead. Otherwise there would be hundreds of thousands of mummies! Only the rich and powerfull had such privelige, and you can be assured the 'grunt' working on building a pyramid were not rich, the word is expendable.
There is a big difference between modern day construction accidents where paid workers die for whatever reason, compared to the deaths of hundreds and thousands of SLAVES who mostly did the hard and dangerous work back in 5000BC.
If you can't see the difference, then there is no point argueing.
There is an abundance of information available out there, but its just finding it that can be a pain. I too less than two months ago knew jack about wifi, but now after _alot_ of reading, i can say i know what im talking about!
:])
Probably one of the best starting points of info i found was NoCatFAQ, otherwise goto just about any Community wireless project and have a look at their info links.
Furthermore O'Reiley has a great book; "Building Community Wireless Networks", that has a lot of info about pretty much everything you want to know to get started! (in dead tree format too!!
That's such a great idea, but in working with the sydney wireless people i have come to the conclusion that linking say Sydney to Melbourne would be one hell of a task! (Possibly one hell of an achievement) Considering a top usable link distance of 30-40km (under ideal conditions) just count how many AP's would be needed between Syd and Melb! (1200km!)
Go search for 'Community wireless', and you will find that such 'clubs' exist in virtually every major city around the world!
Of course the free / community nature combined with the relative immaturity of the technology means they are all in various stages of usefullness..
Don't rely on them too much tho! Both can be _easily_ bypassed. I believe its arguable weather that is a deterrant or not as well, I'd assume many casual stumblers would be up for the challenge of getting into a "secured" 802.11 network! It may stop a few people but it is NO security.
The only security you have is keep the AP outside of your network (behind firewall), then use IPSEC / tunneling. The only way to be sure.
Why do you think it would be so hard for any sufficiently advanced civilization to understand something like a CD?
Of course it all depends on who the archaeologist's are, if they were some post-apocaliptic decendants of us, say from our perspective they would be around middle-ages level or so, then sure it could take them a few hundred years to decifer them, given no frame of reference. But they would eventually figure that the pattern of microscopic pits on one side must represent something.
The same goes for a technologically advanced race, even with absolutly no reference, they would quickly notice the small pits and from there be able to extract the raw data. If a few different CD's were compared you would very easily decifer the data format, and begin to interpret it.
The assumptions you make based on such basic information are ridiculous, such as can we now make a pyramid or how many people can make a car. Think firstly for example, when the pyramids were built each took upto (and over) 50 years to be built, most costing thousands or tens of thousands of human lives in the process. Can we do that? Hell no! (we're not barbarians! anymore)
You mentioned the Mayan calander, sure good for them, the Chinees had/HAVE something almost as good. But who invented the Atomic clock?
Im shocked beyond words at most of your claims, it really feels pointless to even argue them! I guess i too was sucked in by such a clever troll!
You seem to assume that the only research in this field is in looking for habitable worlds. You can safely assume that there are many other scientists around the world looking for all manner of strange things. Just like there are thousands of kooks looking for faces on Mars!
The fact is that up until 7 years ago or so, it was _believed_ that there were NO other planets. (Due simply to the lack of proof) Now it's a huge task of reconsidering everything we thought we knew about planets and in particular their formation. This is the important result here, not hey this planet is close to the habitable zone, _maybe_ one of its moon's looks like Canada! The observation of so many different worlds has taught us a more than thousands of years of though on possibilities like what you mentioned.
It's called science, and it's the only way we would discover any other sort of life or anything, be they gas dwelling, fusion dwelling, water dwelling!
Keep laughing there, because you obviously dont get it.
The reason they are a hardware company is because the hardware sells the software, and the software sells the hardware.
Sounds stupid but its extremly simple, without their own completly controlled hardware base, they would be directly competing with MS, of MS's own turf, see BeOS for examples of this.
BeOS is a good example in that Apple bullied them out of the PowerPC market, sending them to their eventual death in the Intel world. Reason being, Apple doesnt want to compete directly with anyone. Why would they when they _own_ the platform?
I see as you say your coming from the amatuer radio world, but 150Watts at 2.4Ghz is a heck of a lot as I understand it! :) The legal limit in the free unlicenced 2.4Ghz spectrum is 4Watts yes four.
With the computer in the attic, there is a far better way of doing it, although slightly more expensive. Use an access point (such as LinksysWAP11 / SMC2655W) with power over ethernet, place the AP in a weather proof box, with just the CAT5 connection to it, screw that to your antenna mast (or base if it) and your set. See 1km 802.11b in Egypt for some nice pictures of it.
For cost I guess if your just doing ptp links it is going to cost more, but not that much really, at least here in Australia excluding the cable savings, PoE adaptor, etc, an AP such as the Linksys or SMC can cost less than $450, (mine was $420 cost price) a standard Wireless PCI card will cost at least $300.
This i find quite disturbing, it was mentioned in the Register article too.
Come to think of it I wouldnt be supprised if with some of the patches from windows update MS had quitely inserted some 'bugs' to counter various commonly pirated cd keys..
Hmm, they are fighting a loosing battle though, and in the process giving another large group of uses even more reason to think MS software sucks! Im sure in many cases people who arn't willing to pay for MS software would be happy at least _trying_ linux!
I'm completly against the /. croud here, I believe despite the commercialism etc just like you say the Olympics are great! At no other competitions are so many countries in the same place competing for so much.
:( A perfect example is Munich in 1938 (or so?), and some might say SaltLake city in 2002 amoung many others..
:(
The only thing that really gets me with the commercialism is the way the whole Olympic idea can be hijacked to deliver some nationalist message by one country!
Ergh, sorry sometimes its hard not to flamebait!
I only ever have bought the MX line of cards, not for the price point but for one feature alone, TwinView, now renamed to iView or something. Frankly the only game I find worth playing (that uses 3d) is Counterstrike, so my number one use is the TV out dual view mode. Unfortunatly this feature was only on the MX cards (up till now) the reason why at home in my pc i have an MX400 while sitting in the 'junk' box is a GF2DDR that i was given! :)
See subject.
:)
Quote: "I don't mean to nitpick, but Tom's used to be a very reliable source- and a great read."
I hate to toll but nothing agrivates me more than people nitpicking about spelling or punctuation. Especially when such Redundant, uninteresting and defintaly not insightfull remarks are modded up to 5!
Ahh well, where are them damned mod points when you need them!
There was an excelent ariticle at Scientific American on exactly that, with nice diagrams etc.. :) But of course there is an infinate number of possibilities in the Universe! Have a look at Possible Solutions to get you thinking more..
:)
It is a slightly depressing for those star trek style optimists like me.
There are so many considerations though, for instance Not all habitable zones equal. but one that really peaked my interest is an article about how our moon in many made our world. (sorry cant find the link) Basically the theorised formation of our moon, ie big planetoid crashing into proto-earth, ejecting large portion of earths crust into orbit with remains of other planetoid. Basically creating the plate-tectonic's we have on earth, which i might add do not exist on any other planet/moon observered.
Meaning that the plate tectonics are extremly rare, if you'll note a big factor in the creating on mountains, continents, etc is the continual movement of the plates. Getting to the point, if we didnt have a moon (and the results of its formation) and we still had water, then Earth would be a completly water world! Because without the continual movement, creation of continents / mountains etc, water would erode any land mass's in time.
I find that so interesting (even if it's all theoretical) as it's just another very rare factor that contributed to us being here. Rather than us being whales or some such.
So just maybe for the optimists (like me) most worlds out there which are habitable dont have inteligence because a huge portion of them are just water with no land. Then comes the argument of why would inteligence such as ours evolve on such a world?