"Of course, if it's the cable companies they'll probably be working on trying to block streaming video."
And I wish them much friggin' luck with that. It would be the start of a tunneling arms race which they would probably lose, in the case of clever people who really wanted to evade those filters. Security researcher Dan Kaminsky demonstrated tunneling video over DNS in 2004. See: http://www.doxpara.com/slides/BH_EU_05-Kaminsky.pd f
This sort of thing will rapidly improve if cable companies provide a reason. I doubt it will come to this, though, for the reasons stated above by Godeke.
Nor is what you call "our natural gift of stereotype" going away. It's pattern recognition. It's something that brains tend to be very good at, for reasons that are probably deeply rooted in evolution by natural selection. Being able to distinguish predators from prey, etc., extremely rapidly are probably survival traits.:)
We all do it to some degree everyday, in more modern contexts, such as identifying aggressive or impaired drivers very rapidly. Overcoming it takes a higher level of mental effort. The loads on our signal processing systems are higher today than they've ever been, as we've much more news, etc., that's subconsciously evaluated. Things that we've always tagged as 'irrelevant to my daily life' in the past (as many regard religion) are not always going to get that full higher-brain reevaluation.
I agree that this can have some bad effects. I've not always been on my guard against the threats that organized supernaturalism may pose. The pattern-recognition meatware has now been updated.
"you should be striving (like me) to over ride your instinct to sterotype."
I've now pattern-recognized you as someone who deems it more important to advertise what you regard as your highly-evolved sense of morality than to address actually address an argument. Apparently I've now seen enough of that on/. that it's deeply coded.:)
Which makes you about the last person on earth I'd accept a suggestion from, regarding what I should be striving for. I'm sure you have many admirable qualities, but frankly, I've no desire to be "like you" in this regard.
Well, one reason Christians as a whole are accumulating some blame might be that there are so many One True Christian Religions. To those of us who don't believe in the supernatural in the first place, keeping them all sorted is a lot of overhead. We're supposed to somehow know that Church Foo believes in evolution, while Church Bar believes in creationism, and remain current about the various splinter groups, arguments about the meanings of passages in the Bible, etc.
I'd venture to guess that the number of Christians who are familiar with all the
various Budhist sects isn't large. Some will be deeply knowledgable, out of intellectual curiosity, but there's simply no real driver for it.
The ID in schools issue might then be seen as yet more generic supernaturalist weirdness, and people might then react against the entire indecipherable mess. There's probably no avoiding getting caught by some of the backlash.
If you're referring to numbered vulnerabilities, the vulnerability announcements are usually coordinated with the major distros, and released after patched vendor kernels are available.
If you use vanilla kernels from kernel.org, you're either going to have to try a snapshot (which carries additional risk) or wait for at least the next release candidate (which probably happens on longer timelines than you'll want).
Of course, you may get lucky, and find that the US-CERT, etc., announcement references a Web page containing code by whoever found the vulnerability. But most often, these only illustrate the problem. You'd have to write and test the patch yourself.
I don't know of any Web site that maintains a history of vulnerabilities against many distros, and all the various vendor kernels and/or patchbands which fix them. I'd love to find such a site, but doubt that it exists.
It's just corporate IT speak for 'users'. Not sure how it got so far into government (maybe the IT and/or biz edu system?), but it's everywhere. Look at government sites that provide datasets related to climate, GIS, etc., and everything is a 'product'.
When I worked at one or another of the semiconductor manufacturers, we had to attend various training courses to learn that everyone was a customer. The only difference was internal or external. This is the same sort of corp-think.
It's sad that sounding corporate and acquainted with the latest management fad, and/or using the latest buzzword(s) is now regarded as cool. So many people trying to sound like the latest and greatest suit!
My favorite buzz phrases are 'going forward', which swept the friggin' planet in about three months, and 'due diligence', which has long been popular, typically with those that don't know that 'due diligence' is only half the story. The other half is 'due care', and both are necessary to meet 'standard of care' requirements. And 'due x' comes from corporate governance requirements. Yet normal employees, not just execs, are just all over it, using it in wildly incorrect contexts.
They should only be seeing the term(s) in relation to why management is launching a project (if then), as *only* execs have legal 'due x' responsibilities. Instead, from some new-hire slacker, you get things like, "I'm reading/. looking for new security news. It's just due diligence."
Again, it's a sad friggin' world when so many people are using the suits (who will outsource their jobs to low-wage country du jour in a heartbeat) as their role models.
I've a feeling that the reason major graphics card vendors don't supply their 'latest and greatest' to the OSS software community is that a storm of patent issues would arise overnight.
I don't like the idea of binary-only *anything* in the Linux kernel. OK, in a business environment, it may be expedient. For the long-term health of Linux, it's a risk. It's also a risk to anyone that deploys it in a business environment, though the vast majority don't recognize that.
As to reasonable expectations from vendors, I expect that they'll adapt to the market if they want to participate in it. Certainly many vendors have. I see no reason to believe that trend will reverse itself as OSS continues to become more popular in rather large markets.
Binary compatability not an issue? I'd have to take exception to that. For instance, while I'm not a huge fan of the LSB because of test quality, and some other issues, please note that binary compatability is supposed to be maintained across point releases. Breaking it is one of the defining aspects of a major release.
"The LSB project team is proud to announce LSB Version 3.0. The specification is available for download at [WWW] http://refspecs.freestandards.org/lsb.shtml. As this is a major release, indicated by a change in the first component of the version number, there is no guarantee of binary compatibility with previous versions. The set of interfaces, the details and symbol versions, and layout of certain data structures may have changed between this release and the previous one. Thus, applications conforming to previous versions of the LSB will require recompilation and/or relinking (see also Compabitility section below)."
Clearly, binary compatability can affect developers, packagers, system admins, etc.
IMHO, the top of the thread wasn't flamebait, or a troll. He was correct about the vulnerability, though as I said above, this may have been due to a problem with MS SMB, which was then reverse engineered into Samba. That reverse engineering effort is *hard*. It's not too suprising that something could slip through.
Also, Samba has had a few buffer overflows, etc. It's not like OSS is immune to this sort of thing. There just tends to be less of it, and the fixes tend to be both quicker and of higher quality, for widely deployed packages, at any rate.
The MS bashing does get tiresome, even to a Unix-lover such as myself. It's just so damn *easy* that it occasionally gets to be repetitive and boring. And I do wish he'd taken the trouble to look up the reference--the burden was definitely on him.
Note that this is a remote root access by an anonymous user, as Samba is commonly deployed. It was indeed serious.
This vulnerability may have been the result of a vulnerability in Microsoft's SMB protocol itself, which also unpatched for about the same length of time. I can't recall at the moment, and I don't have backups of my notes from the time right at hand. It was a late night, I'm still sucking coffee, and feeling lazy.
(2) Strictly speaking, that would depend on your threat model, wouldn't it? That said, I would regard the vulnerability in CSRSS as typically being far more dangerous.
Elmartinos, thanks for the post, (which needs a +5, moderators) and above all the link to http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/. It's easily one of the best blogs I've seen. It's gotten a bookmark and been added to aKregator.
You have to love the poll for favorite Bushism: 1 'Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.' 2 'I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.' 3 'They misunderestimated me.' 4 'Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?'
Ah well, this is getting way off-topic, and I have to go look at a server.
"You are assuming that we will know who is responsible for the wmd attack." No, I am not. But I certainly think it's possible.
"Do you really trust Pakistan or North Korea or Iran to control all of its weapons." No, I don't.
"The day may come when a bomb is smuggled into this country or maybe set off on our coastline and we will not have a clue as to who is responsible." But the day may also come when we're attacked, and we *do* know who did it. And yes, I do worry that we'll have another Shrub-like creature in office if it should ever happen.
"The only way we can be safe is to rid the world of all these weapons and the ability to make them." It does not follow that this will make us safe. It may make us less safe. The theory and politics of deterrence have been argued for half a century. I doubt we'll resolve all of those issues on Slashdot just now. My take is that a lot of smart people, with a lot of information available to them, have thought deeply about this problem. They've apparently decided that nuclear deterrence is still viable.
I will never be in a postion to duplicate their effort, and make more than a gut call. So my gut call is to trust the people who've made it a major part of their life's work to understand the issues.
"We could still destroy the economy of any nation with conventional weapon alone." The country that attacks us may not have much of an economy to destroy. I can picture a nation with serious internal problems, fanatical leaders, and WMDs externalizing their problems, and attacking the US. I'm sure you can too.
Yeah, right. That's very sensitive of you, I'm sure.
We don't do chemical or biological warfare. All we have is nuclear weapons. So how do we respond, if and when some nutcase state hits us with a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack? Harsh language? Throw some nicely-folded proteins?
Personally, I prefer that we have some assurance that our nukes will work if we ever need them.
You can make any sort of argument you'd care to about our messed up foreign policy. I'd probably agree with quite a bit of it. But I still want our stockpiles to work if we ever need them.
It's a harsh world. Sensitivity and political correctness will only take you so far in dealing with it.
I don't know why Cowboy Neal linked to CNN, while quoting Sky and Telescope--a very good mag. Maybe he didn't want to slashdot them?
From the S&T site: "From now through mid-November, Mars is closer, brighter, and appears larger in a telescope than it will again until 2018! The so-called Red Planet (actually bright yellow-orange) is a real eye-catcher blazing high in the east by late evening, as it awaits your telescope. It's 20 arcseconds wide, larger than it almost ever appears. A full guide to this Mars apparition, including a surface-feature map, is in the September Sky & Telescope, page 67."
Most US libraries have S&T, if you don't subscribe. Peel yourself away from the monitor and go have a look.
See http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance/art icle_110_1.asp for this info and a neat shot of Mars taken through a 7" catadioptric telescope. Note that the photo was taken by a S&T editor--very probably an expert astrophotographer. Also, 7" cats of this type (Maksutov-Newtonian) do not grow on trees.
This close approach is mainly of interest to amateur astronomers. It's an opportunity to see and photograph detail that's completely invisible in unfavorable approaches.
Note that you don't need much in the way of dark skies to see Mars. It's bright, and dark skies are only vital when you're trying to see faint stars and anything nebulous. Comets, the Milky Way, etc. That said, dark skies do add to the beauty. Plus, if you can see that background of fainter stars, it's a chance to easily see the planets' relative motion over several nights.
Overall, a very cool naked-eye astronomy thing. So get your geek on, and have fun.
"I hate to get involved in a hot-button US article of faith like gun ownership"
Then don't. You're not an American. This is no concern of yours.
You're obviously not very knowledable about our society if you think there's any chance of getting guns out of the hands of criminals. It may not be comfortable, but there's a lot of truth in, "If you outlaw guns, only criminals will have guns."
Also, media uses of the term 'assalt weapon' are all over the map. From anything with a magazine capacity of more than a very few rounds, to anything with a folding stock--as if that has anything to do with it. They generally fail to consider such things as the presence of a bayonet lug, which has a *lot* to do with it. Somehow I doubt you were thinking of any real definition--just parroting media.
I could go on and on, but I suspect you're most interested in impressing everyone with your supposed intelligence and moral superiority. Why else post about something that's none of your business to begin with, and which you seem to have very little knowledge of?
There's only one more bit that I just can't pass up.
"...could you please name me one occasion from your personal experience where you were required to shoot someone?" I've never used my fire extinguisher. Should I bin that, too?
TFA referred to a commercial searchlight. I'm assuming that's a reference to the sort of thing you see at various 'Grand Opening' events. The couple that I've seen close up appeared to be some sort of military-surplus arc lights. I've no idea how much power they consumed, and what we care about here is cd not W, anyway.
That 200W bulb gives you, what, a couple of thousand cd? A searchlight is probably on the order of a few tens of millions.
Almost as good: NASA have been on a couple of hunts for 8086 and 80386 CPUs. Google for 'nasa 386 chips'. Of course, it probably does cost a pile to certify new computer gear.
I'd guess very probably safer, as the crew vehicle is a pure vertical stack. So the insulation issues that NASA are currently *still* struggling with are unlikely to be a factor.
The cargo variant does use strap-ons, but I *think* the safety record has been good there. Anyone have any information on that?
Sounded good, all the way up to becoming part of a reality TV show. The sort of society that made reality TV popular is what I'd be willing to take a one way trip to another planet to get *away* from.
Another nice things about Mars is that at least until partial terraforming (if that could ever be done) stupid people would tend to remove themselves from the gene pool.
I'm not going to fight the Grammar Nazi battle, especially as I'm not really much of one. Sorry you couldn't see the humor I found in nuclear plants not going nuclear.
But this is getting to be a lot of electrons on both parts, and now insult on your part. Let's just drop the whole thing, shall we? Life is too short.
I was laughing at the inappropriate use of a colloquialism. 'Going nuclear' when the correct phrase was 'criticality accident'. Or you could have used other colloquialisms, like meltdown or explosion. A way to say it with a more 'no problems here, folks' spin would probably be 'yield excursion'.
'Going nuclear' sounds like the commencement of a nuclear reaction. A reactor that couldn't do this wouldn't *be* a reactor. It would be a billion-dollar inert pile. No pun intended.
'Going nuclear', in this context, is just funny. Hence the smiley at the end of my last message.
Actually, I'm fine with that. Many of these people seem to want to live in the 8th to 12th centuries, when the Muslim world prospered, and the Christian world was teh suck. The end of Middle East oil's their chance.
Slashdot Mirror
"Of course, if it's the cable companies they'll probably be working on trying to block streaming video."
d f
And I wish them much friggin' luck with that. It would be the start of a tunneling arms race which they would probably lose, in the case of clever people who really wanted to evade those filters. Security researcher Dan Kaminsky demonstrated tunneling video over DNS in 2004. See: http://www.doxpara.com/slides/BH_EU_05-Kaminsky.p
This sort of thing will rapidly improve if cable companies provide a reason. I doubt it will come to this, though, for the reasons stated above by Godeke.
Calling the argument silly is not a refutation.
:)
/. that it's deeply coded. :)
Nor is what you call "our natural gift of stereotype" going away. It's pattern recognition. It's something that brains tend to be very good at, for reasons that are probably deeply rooted in evolution by natural selection. Being able to distinguish predators from prey, etc., extremely rapidly are probably survival traits.
We all do it to some degree everyday, in more modern contexts, such as identifying aggressive or impaired drivers very rapidly. Overcoming it takes a higher level of mental effort. The loads on our signal processing systems are higher today than they've ever been, as we've much more news, etc., that's subconsciously evaluated. Things that we've always tagged as 'irrelevant to my daily life' in the past (as many regard religion) are not always going to get that full higher-brain reevaluation.
I agree that this can have some bad effects. I've not always been on my guard against the threats that organized supernaturalism may pose. The pattern-recognition meatware has now been updated.
"you should be striving (like me) to over ride your instinct to sterotype."
I've now pattern-recognized you as someone who deems it more important to advertise what you regard as your highly-evolved sense of morality than to address actually address an argument. Apparently I've now seen enough of that on
Which makes you about the last person on earth I'd accept a suggestion from, regarding what I should be striving for. I'm sure you have many admirable qualities, but frankly, I've no desire to be "like you" in this regard.
Well, one reason Christians as a whole are accumulating some blame might be that there are so many One True Christian Religions. To those of us who don't believe in the supernatural in the first place, keeping them all sorted is a lot of overhead. We're supposed to somehow know that Church Foo believes in evolution, while Church Bar believes in creationism, and remain current about the various splinter groups, arguments about the meanings of passages in the Bible, etc. I'd venture to guess that the number of Christians who are familiar with all the various Budhist sects isn't large. Some will be deeply knowledgable, out of intellectual curiosity, but there's simply no real driver for it. The ID in schools issue might then be seen as yet more generic supernaturalist weirdness, and people might then react against the entire indecipherable mess. There's probably no avoiding getting caught by some of the backlash.
If you're referring to numbered vulnerabilities, the vulnerability announcements are usually coordinated with the major distros, and released after patched vendor kernels are available.
If you use vanilla kernels from kernel.org, you're either going to have to try a snapshot (which carries additional risk) or wait for at least the next release candidate (which probably happens on longer timelines than you'll want).
Of course, you may get lucky, and find that the US-CERT, etc., announcement references a Web page containing code by whoever found the vulnerability. But most often, these only illustrate the problem. You'd have to write and test the patch yourself.
I don't know of any Web site that maintains a history of vulnerabilities against many distros, and all the various vendor kernels and/or patchbands which fix them. I'd love to find such a site, but doubt that it exists.
Nice catch, Call Me Black Cloud. I was wondering who would be the first to snap to that. :)
It's just corporate IT speak for 'users'. Not sure how it got so far into government (maybe the IT and/or biz edu system?), but it's everywhere. Look at government sites that provide datasets related to climate, GIS, etc., and everything is a 'product'.
/. looking for new security news. It's just due diligence."
When I worked at one or another of the semiconductor manufacturers, we had to attend various training courses to learn that everyone was a customer. The only difference was internal or external. This is the same sort of corp-think.
It's sad that sounding corporate and acquainted with the latest management fad, and/or using the latest buzzword(s) is now regarded as cool. So many people trying to sound like the latest and greatest suit!
My favorite buzz phrases are 'going forward', which swept the friggin' planet in about three months, and 'due diligence', which has long been popular, typically with those that don't know that 'due diligence' is only half the story. The other half is 'due care', and both are necessary to meet 'standard of care' requirements. And 'due x' comes from corporate governance requirements. Yet normal employees, not just execs, are just all over it, using it in wildly incorrect contexts.
They should only be seeing the term(s) in relation to why management is launching a project (if then), as *only* execs have legal 'due x' responsibilities. Instead, from some new-hire slacker, you get things like, "I'm reading
Again, it's a sad friggin' world when so many people are using the suits (who will outsource their jobs to low-wage country du jour in a heartbeat) as their role models.
I've a feeling that the reason major graphics card vendors don't supply their 'latest and greatest' to the OSS software community is that a storm of patent issues would arise overnight.
I don't like the idea of binary-only *anything* in the Linux kernel. OK, in a business environment, it may be expedient. For the long-term health of Linux, it's a risk. It's also a risk to anyone that deploys it in a business environment, though the vast majority don't recognize that.
As to reasonable expectations from vendors, I expect that they'll adapt to the market if they want to participate in it. Certainly many vendors have. I see no reason to believe that trend will reverse itself as OSS continues to become more popular in rather large markets.
Binary compatability not an issue? I'd have to take exception to that. For instance, while I'm not a huge fan of the LSB because of test quality, and some other issues, please note that binary compatability is supposed to be maintained across point releases. Breaking it is one of the defining aspects of a major release.
From
http://www.linuxbase.org/LSBWiki/ReleaseNotes3
"The LSB project team is proud to announce LSB Version 3.0. The specification is available for download at [WWW] http://refspecs.freestandards.org/lsb.shtml. As this is a major release, indicated by a change in the first component of the version number, there is no guarantee of binary compatibility with previous versions. The set of interfaces, the details and symbol versions, and layout of certain data structures may have changed between this release and the previous one. Thus, applications conforming to previous versions of the LSB will require recompilation and/or relinking (see also Compabitility section below)."
Clearly, binary compatability can affect developers, packagers, system admins, etc.
IMHO, the top of the thread wasn't flamebait, or a troll. He was correct about the vulnerability, though as I said above, this may have been due to a problem with MS SMB, which was then reverse engineered into Samba. That reverse engineering effort is *hard*. It's not too suprising that something could slip through.
Also, Samba has had a few buffer overflows, etc. It's not like OSS is immune to this sort of thing. There just tends to be less of it, and the fixes tend to be both quicker and of higher quality, for widely deployed packages, at any rate.
The MS bashing does get tiresome, even to a Unix-lover such as myself. It's just so damn *easy* that it occasionally gets to be repetitive and boring. And I do wish he'd taken the trouble to look up the reference--the burden was definitely on him.
Mods--over to you.
(1) I think the previous AC was referring to the Samba 2.x series exploit that Digital Defense unearthed back in 2003. See http://www.digitaldefense.net/labs/advisories/DDI- 1013.txt.
Note that this is a remote root access by an anonymous user, as Samba is commonly deployed. It was indeed serious.
This vulnerability may have been the result of a vulnerability in Microsoft's SMB protocol itself, which also unpatched for about the same length of time. I can't recall at the moment, and I don't have backups of my notes from the time right at hand. It was a late night, I'm still sucking coffee, and feeling lazy.
(2) Strictly speaking, that would depend on your threat model, wouldn't it? That said, I would regard the vulnerability in CSRSS as typically being far more dangerous.
Elmartinos, thanks for the post, (which needs a +5, moderators) and above all the link to http://abstractfactory.blogspot.com/. It's easily one of the best blogs I've seen. It's gotten a bookmark and been added to aKregator.
No worries; we have The Shrub!
s .htm
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/blbushism
You have to love the poll for favorite Bushism:
1 'Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.'
2 'I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.'
3 'They misunderestimated me.'
4 'Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?'
Ah well, this is getting way off-topic, and I have to go look at a server.
"You are assuming that we will know who is responsible for the wmd attack."
No, I am not. But I certainly think it's possible.
"Do you really trust Pakistan or North Korea or Iran to control all of its weapons."
No, I don't.
"The day may come when a bomb is smuggled into this country or maybe set off on our coastline and we will not have a clue as to who is responsible."
But the day may also come when we're attacked, and we *do* know who did it. And yes, I do worry that we'll have another Shrub-like creature in office if it should ever happen.
"The only way we can be safe is to rid the world of all these weapons and the ability to make them."
It does not follow that this will make us safe. It may make us less safe. The theory and politics of deterrence have been argued for half a century. I doubt we'll resolve all of those issues on Slashdot just now. My take is that a lot of smart people, with a lot of information available to them, have thought deeply about this problem. They've apparently decided that nuclear deterrence is still viable.
I will never be in a postion to duplicate their effort, and make more than a gut call. So my gut call is to trust the people who've made it a major part of their life's work to understand the issues.
"We could still destroy the economy of any nation with conventional weapon alone."
The country that attacks us may not have much of an economy to destroy. I can picture a nation with serious internal problems, fanatical leaders, and WMDs externalizing their problems, and attacking the US. I'm sure you can too.
Yeah, right. That's very sensitive of you, I'm sure.
We don't do chemical or biological warfare. All we have is nuclear weapons. So how do we respond, if and when some nutcase state hits us with a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack? Harsh language? Throw some nicely-folded proteins?
Personally, I prefer that we have some assurance that our nukes will work if we ever need them.
You can make any sort of argument you'd care to about our messed up foreign policy. I'd probably agree with quite a bit of it. But I still want our stockpiles to work if we ever need them.
It's a harsh world. Sensitivity and political correctness will only take you so far in dealing with it.
I don't know why Cowboy Neal linked to CNN, while quoting Sky and Telescope--a very good mag. Maybe he didn't want to slashdot them?
t icle_110_1.asp for this info and a neat shot of Mars taken through a 7" catadioptric telescope. Note that the photo was taken by a S&T editor--very probably an expert astrophotographer. Also, 7" cats of this type (Maksutov-Newtonian) do not grow on trees.
From the S&T site: "From now through mid-November, Mars is closer, brighter, and appears larger in a telescope than it will again until 2018! The so-called Red Planet (actually bright yellow-orange) is a real eye-catcher blazing high in the east by late evening, as it awaits your telescope. It's 20 arcseconds wide, larger than it almost ever appears. A full guide to this Mars apparition, including a surface-feature map, is in the September Sky & Telescope, page 67."
Most US libraries have S&T, if you don't subscribe. Peel yourself away from the monitor and go have a look.
See http://skyandtelescope.com/observing/ataglance/ar
This close approach is mainly of interest to amateur astronomers. It's an opportunity to see and photograph detail that's completely invisible in unfavorable approaches.
Note that you don't need much in the way of dark skies to see Mars. It's bright, and dark skies are only vital when you're trying to see faint stars and anything nebulous. Comets, the Milky Way, etc. That said, dark skies do add to the beauty. Plus, if you can see that background of fainter stars, it's a chance to easily see the planets' relative motion over several nights.
Overall, a very cool naked-eye astronomy thing. So get your geek on, and have fun.
"I hate to get involved in a hot-button US article of faith like gun ownership"
Then don't. You're not an American. This is no concern of yours.
You're obviously not very knowledable about our society if you think there's any chance of getting guns out of the hands of criminals. It may not be comfortable, but there's a lot of truth in, "If you outlaw guns, only criminals will have guns."
Also, media uses of the term 'assalt weapon' are all over the map. From anything with a magazine capacity of more than a very few rounds, to anything with a folding stock--as if that has anything to do with it. They generally fail to consider such things as the presence of a bayonet lug, which has a *lot* to do with it. Somehow I doubt you were thinking of any real definition--just parroting media.
I could go on and on, but I suspect you're most interested in impressing everyone with your supposed intelligence and moral superiority. Why else post about something that's none of your business to begin with, and which you seem to have very little knowledge of?
There's only one more bit that I just can't pass up.
"...could you please name me one occasion from your personal experience where you were required to shoot someone?" I've never used my fire extinguisher. Should I bin that, too?
TFA referred to a commercial searchlight. I'm assuming that's a reference to the sort of thing you see at various 'Grand Opening' events. The couple that I've seen close up appeared to be some sort of military-surplus arc lights. I've no idea how much power they consumed, and what we care about here is cd not W, anyway.
That 200W bulb gives you, what, a couple of thousand cd? A searchlight is probably on the order of a few tens of millions.
Almost as good: NASA have been on a couple of hunts for 8086 and 80386 CPUs. Google for 'nasa 386 chips'. Of course, it probably does cost a pile to certify new computer gear.
I'd guess very probably safer, as the crew vehicle is a pure vertical stack. So the insulation issues that NASA are currently *still* struggling with are unlikely to be a factor.
The cargo variant does use strap-ons, but I *think* the safety record has been good there. Anyone have any information on that?
Sounded good, all the way up to becoming part of a reality TV show. The sort of society that made reality TV popular is what I'd be willing to take a one way trip to another planet to get *away* from.
Another nice things about Mars is that at least until partial terraforming (if that could ever be done) stupid people would tend to remove themselves from the gene pool.
"Think of it as evolution in action."
I'm not going to fight the Grammar Nazi battle, especially as I'm not really much of one. Sorry you couldn't see the humor I found in nuclear plants not going nuclear.
But this is getting to be a lot of electrons on both parts, and now insult on your part. Let's just drop the whole thing, shall we? Life is too short.
I was laughing at the inappropriate use of a colloquialism. 'Going nuclear' when the correct phrase was 'criticality accident'. Or you could have used other colloquialisms, like meltdown or explosion. A way to say it with a more 'no problems here, folks' spin would probably be 'yield excursion'.
'Going nuclear' sounds like the commencement of a nuclear reaction. A reactor that couldn't do this wouldn't *be* a reactor. It would be a billion-dollar inert pile. No pun intended.
'Going nuclear', in this context, is just funny. Hence the smiley at the end of my last message.
There's a good discussion of this on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticality_accident
"Algebra (Al Jabar), astronomy, medicine were developed in the middle-east during that time period."
I know. That was their period of glory--when their civilization shone especially brightly compared to the state of affairs in Europe.
As their most recent technological innovation seems to have been the dumb bomb, I wish them every success in retreating from the modern world.
Wouldn't a nuclear reactor that wouldn't 'go nuclear' be rather a waste of money? :)
Actually, I'm fine with that. Many of these people seem to want to live in the 8th to 12th centuries, when the Muslim world prospered, and the Christian world was teh suck. The end of Middle East oil's their chance.