First, by setting up the blockade, America had already committed itself to a war in Asia.
Second, it's quite plausible that even the best of strategies is bound to fail. In fact, it is almost guaranteed that one side's strategy will fail to bring it victory in any competition. This doesn't mean that the strategy was bad or not the best available, just that it was unable to overcome the opponent.
If the Japanese had succeeded in wiping out the Pacific fleet in one fell swoop, it would have unlocked the entire Asian continent for them. American was already fighting a war on the European front. A crippled Pacific fleet would have made it impossible to keep up a second front.
If you look at the progression of the Pacific front, you'll find that Japan actually made significant headway in fighting the Americans. However, once the American war machine got its production centers working, the fight was just too much for the under-resourced Japanese.
In order to find the answer to your question, let's take a look at the Middle East and consider that this wasteland of genocidal religious fanatics was once home to the most advanced mathematics in the world only 500 years ago. Mashallah.
Astroturf reviews are easy to spot. There are usually a flurry of similar looking reviews that praise the product, then these are followed by actual customer reviews. If the product is really good, the reviews will be good. If not, the contrast between the astroturf and real reviews will be stark.
Given the quality of other things that come out of China, especially in this festive holiday season, it is a good idea to be cautious of these things.
Japan had only one real front in the lead up to Pearl Harbor. For all intents and purposes Japan was only focused on expanding westward into Asia. They envisioned "breathing space" like Germany did and meant to build an "Eastern co-prosperity sphere" led by an enlightened Japanese government. Naturally there was some resistance from the neighboring countries, but America and Japan didn't really have any reason to fight except that Japan was allied with Germany and there was a greater anti-imperialist zeitgeist among the Allies.
So when America decided to blockade South Asian shipping routes to effectively starve Japan of steel and other necessary resources, the Japanese had only one recourse. They bombed Pearl Harbor in an attempt to destroy as much of the American fleet as possible in the shortest amount of time. It was strategically the right move.
Now, if you want to say that the American military had its head up its ass that fateful morning, you'll find support from most historians. But to make the claim that no one expected an attack is simply absurd.
While their actions and policies towards the Palestinians are pretty heinous, you can't just paint the whole society as evil. They have developed a verymodern society in the midst of their enemies and excel at many fields of science and literature.
You can blame the Jews for persecuting the Palestinians, but you can't say that everything they do is evil.
We aren't getting the advertised bandwidth! Waaah!
Richard Bennett's response is worth the read, and it puts Benoit's theory of "fair bandwidth" in its place.
No one is going to take Benoit up on his offer because there is nothing to be gained either way for the telcos, and there is no point in giving this attention whore any credibility by responding to him.
In just about any sport outside of bowling, referees are prone to make BS calls. Just because this guy got 100% of the achievements, he did it via a glitch in the program. Technically he may have beaten the game, but spiritually he fails.
In many countries, it is not uncommon to find namecards with information on both sides of the card. Typically it is English on one side and the local language on the other. This allows a single card to be useful just about anywhere in the world without putting undue strain on either the local partners or the foreign customers.
By flooding the networks with VoIP packets, we are in essence printing one-sided namecards. Instead of having two robust solutions, the American government again seems to want to force everyone into the same shoe size. Better systems will come about in time. The current switched system has served us for a very long time and most people are still using it.
The next step will not be VoIP over wires, but rather it will be some sort of wireless radio communication mechanism. The old wired system will remain for emergencies, but the vast majority of people will simply migrate to handheld personal communications devices. There just isn't a need for VoIP over wires at this point, at least not to the point that it needs to be mandated by the government.
There are already many civilian radar devices that are used frequently by law enforcement and fire fighters. This is a better version of it, and the article itself is nothing less than enthusiastic about the range of uses for it.
What I see happening more and more is that people are fearing technology because of what "bad people" will do with it instead of embracing new technology and the possibilities it brings.
A technology site filled with Luddites. Irony at its finest.
After watching the video, a very specific quotation comes to mind.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo. - Andy Finkel
If you look at the hardware itself, there is a gyroscope attached. Hence, when the fat white guy wants to lift the stone, he leans his head back. I suppose you are to watch him wave his hands, but the real action is going on literally on his head.
Now if someone could build an iPhone app that can do this, we'd have all the same functionality at an even higher price!
Your whole argument depends on the premise that government regulation is always detrimental. This is untrue on the face of it. Government has a strong role to play in regulation, rule making, arbitration, justice, social justice, and defense.
OSHA regulations protect workers from dangerous work environments. NTSB regulations protect travelers. Our courts provide a venue to exercise our most important right, the right to redress of grievances.
Government regulation is a good thing because it provides the rules to which our society must adhere. Without these rules, a veritable free-for-all would occur. In a market with many players, this may be beneficial, but in a market of captive customers like we have in the American ISP market this can be very detrimental.
It's not even good enough to make the rules once and let things be. As we've seen countless times the rules need to be readdressed occasionally to adapt to new situations. Our founding fathers new this, and that is why we have the Constitutional Amendment process.
Historically, the only real "laissez-faire" founding father was Thomas Jefferson and pretty much all his contemporaries considered him a fraud and brigand. Government regulation has been the cornerstone of our country for almost two and a half centuries. To claim some sort of high moral ground because you oppose it in this one specific case is pretty sad.
All I can say is that you need to read your contract.
20/2 is the maximum speed in optimal conditions. You'll find that not only is this not a guaranteed speed, it isn't even a likely speed for all intents and purposes.
Have you ever driven on the DC Beltway at rush hour?
The highways of our great country are paid for communally. We all pay a little in taxes and we all get the right to drive on them.
But some vehicles must pay extra. There are weigh stations on our highways to make sure that those drivers who cause extra damage to the roads pay their fair share to help keep the roads in pristine condition. Since they weigh more, they must pay extra fees.
A user who is constantly maxing his connection is doing much the same thing. There is only finite bandwidth available to everyone and one guy in his parents' basement can slow traffic for everyone else. This forces the ISPs to need to replace their cables more often due to the increase in average use. Shouldn't these users be forced to pay more for their extra usage or at least be throttled to the point they aren't causing physical damage to the entire system?
Cry about "unlimited bandwidth plans" and the like all you want. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. The issue is whether people whose usage habits affect others should have their activities curtailed to create a more balanced environment for everyone.
Net neutrality is a clever way of rephrasing "bandwidth abuse".
It's not that. The main problem for most consumers is that Microsoft licenses different levels of OS functionality at different price points. If Linux didn't exist, this kind of licensing wouldn't be a big deal, but since you can essentially go from a barebones OS all the way up to a fully featured OS for the same price with Linux, Windows seems less attractive.
When people get fed up with crippled "home" versions and paying more for "ultimate" versions, Linux will surely take off. If Microsoft is unwilling to provide all the features in one simple install, 2010 will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
On a beach in Mexico a whale beached itself. It's buoyant fatty body crushed the whale's lungs and suffocated it in the wide open air. Bacteria from the whale's intestines began to multiply and ferment and large amounts of gas accumulated in the whale's body. Soon a bulge was visible around the belly of the whale. Then the bulge grew until the whole carcass was bloated.
One day, the whale's rotting body broke and released the gas in a giant explosion.
Pushing functionality into the browser instead of relying on scripting means longer launch times, more failure points, and more disparate functionality from browser to browser for developers to consider. It's a fountain of whale guts, metaphorically speaking.
A message is encoded with the ultimate goal of its being decoded and transmitted. A message that is not decoded is a failed message. This means that someone has the key, if one exists.
A code that has no key is a joke or a puzzle. It has no important information to convey.
Fermat once wrote "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain." If he did indeed discover such a proof, he would have written it down somewhere else. This was a joke.
So too is a whole book written in an undecipherable code. Whatever the roots of this manuscript are, there is no doubt that it was the work of a prankster (or team of pranksters) playing a trick on posterity.
Dynamically typed, object-oriented, with features like lexical closures that are usually only found in advanced programming languages like Lisp, Javascript is really a great language that has gotten a bad rap.
It reminds me of the lowly tomato, a member of the poisonous nightshade family of plants, which for years was considered to be inedible. These days you can't get a salad without it. Things change when you realize how useful something actually is.
Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
We spend so much time arguing with each other here on Slashdot, but when it comes down to it, we're all in this together. We are going to need to secure a future for future generations, so putting an effort into developing non-volatile fuels which can be formulated anywhere is one huge step towards getting off this rock.
Aluminum is plentiful anywhere we intend to go. This could really be the breakthrough that we've been looking for.
In other words, please be true. In other words, I love you.
Software processes have their heyday. The design up front strategy of Waterfall. The staged Incremental approach. The cowboy coding Big Bang approach (my personal favorite, if only to see watch the aftermath).
Nowadays, Agile development is the leading process du jour. With its short, incremental approach that relies on immediate feedback and rapid adaptation as well as well-scoped test points, Agile produces high quality software cheaply and quickly.
So to see NASA yearning for the days of design-heavy Waterfall with all risks supposedly identified up front, it's just a little bit disappointing. Years of actual practice have proven that Waterfall is one of the worst processes to follow, since it assumes that you can somehow know all necessary design points and risks at the outset.
Flight wasn't achieved overnight and certainly without tragedies. But we are where we are today because we took those accidents and tragedies and learned from them. NASA seems to think that they can bypass these failures by fiat. They are wrong, and this type of bad planning is going to cause huge budget overruns, delayed flight schedules, a loss of prestige, and worst of all less future funding.
Normally the reaction to someone saying this kind of pinko commie crap is to laugh and tell them to go fuck themselves back to Russia.
But Lyons has a point. Competition, in this particular case, may not be the best thing for customers. Why so, you may ask. It is because of the lopsidedness of the market that makes this situation so precarious.
From the end of WWII until the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were two sides to every geopolitical debate. The side of good, right, and the American Way and the side of the Soviet Union. Countries aligned themselves along these very clear geopolitical boundaries. Though it was easy enough to declare allegiance to one side or the other, many countries found their own geopolitical aspirations dashed to smithereens on either the broad wings of the American eagle or the hard, solid face of the Iron Curtain.
However, with the end of the Cold War, vassal states are now finding their own voice. Countries that were previously shackled now find that the lack of a superpower competition has resulted in more opportunities for growth. Take two countries that America fought wars in as examples. Korea and Vietnam are now booming with economic and technological growth.
These opportunities don't come because they are subservient states to a particular superpower, but because they no longer need to pledge allegiance and are able to make their own way.
So when two superpowers like Microsoft and Google start duking it out, the fallout is going to hit partner companies AND consumers alike.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me try to paraphrase your post.
"What about all the good things Hitler did!"
Wow.
First, by setting up the blockade, America had already committed itself to a war in Asia.
Second, it's quite plausible that even the best of strategies is bound to fail. In fact, it is almost guaranteed that one side's strategy will fail to bring it victory in any competition. This doesn't mean that the strategy was bad or not the best available, just that it was unable to overcome the opponent.
If the Japanese had succeeded in wiping out the Pacific fleet in one fell swoop, it would have unlocked the entire Asian continent for them. American was already fighting a war on the European front. A crippled Pacific fleet would have made it impossible to keep up a second front.
If you look at the progression of the Pacific front, you'll find that Japan actually made significant headway in fighting the Americans. However, once the American war machine got its production centers working, the fight was just too much for the under-resourced Japanese.
In order to find the answer to your question, let's take a look at the Middle East and consider that this wasteland of genocidal religious fanatics was once home to the most advanced mathematics in the world only 500 years ago. Mashallah.
iChinese. iPlay joke. iPut peepee in your Coke!
Astroturf reviews are easy to spot. There are usually a flurry of similar looking reviews that praise the product, then these are followed by actual customer reviews. If the product is really good, the reviews will be good. If not, the contrast between the astroturf and real reviews will be stark.
Given the quality of other things that come out of China, especially in this festive holiday season, it is a good idea to be cautious of these things.
Japan had only one real front in the lead up to Pearl Harbor. For all intents and purposes Japan was only focused on expanding westward into Asia. They envisioned "breathing space" like Germany did and meant to build an "Eastern co-prosperity sphere" led by an enlightened Japanese government. Naturally there was some resistance from the neighboring countries, but America and Japan didn't really have any reason to fight except that Japan was allied with Germany and there was a greater anti-imperialist zeitgeist among the Allies.
So when America decided to blockade South Asian shipping routes to effectively starve Japan of steel and other necessary resources, the Japanese had only one recourse. They bombed Pearl Harbor in an attempt to destroy as much of the American fleet as possible in the shortest amount of time. It was strategically the right move.
Now, if you want to say that the American military had its head up its ass that fateful morning, you'll find support from most historians. But to make the claim that no one expected an attack is simply absurd.
While their actions and policies towards the Palestinians are pretty heinous, you can't just paint the whole society as evil. They have developed a verymodern society in the midst of their enemies and excel at many fields of science and literature.
You can blame the Jews for persecuting the Palestinians, but you can't say that everything they do is evil.
We aren't getting the advertised bandwidth! Waaah!
Richard Bennett's response is worth the read, and it puts Benoit's theory of "fair bandwidth" in its place.
No one is going to take Benoit up on his offer because there is nothing to be gained either way for the telcos, and there is no point in giving this attention whore any credibility by responding to him.
In just about any sport outside of bowling, referees are prone to make BS calls. Just because this guy got 100% of the achievements, he did it via a glitch in the program. Technically he may have beaten the game, but spiritually he fails.
Socially too, I bet.
In many countries, it is not uncommon to find namecards with information on both sides of the card. Typically it is English on one side and the local language on the other. This allows a single card to be useful just about anywhere in the world without putting undue strain on either the local partners or the foreign customers.
By flooding the networks with VoIP packets, we are in essence printing one-sided namecards. Instead of having two robust solutions, the American government again seems to want to force everyone into the same shoe size. Better systems will come about in time. The current switched system has served us for a very long time and most people are still using it.
The next step will not be VoIP over wires, but rather it will be some sort of wireless radio communication mechanism. The old wired system will remain for emergencies, but the vast majority of people will simply migrate to handheld personal communications devices. There just isn't a need for VoIP over wires at this point, at least not to the point that it needs to be mandated by the government.
Joe Walsh should technically be included with Sammy Hagar, but his is a different problem altogether.
There are already many civilian radar devices that are used frequently by law enforcement and fire fighters. This is a better version of it, and the article itself is nothing less than enthusiastic about the range of uses for it.
What I see happening more and more is that people are fearing technology because of what "bad people" will do with it instead of embracing new technology and the possibilities it brings.
A technology site filled with Luddites. Irony at its finest.
http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44438000/gif/_44438417_headset_info416.gif
Don't shoot the messenger, man.
After watching the video, a very specific quotation comes to mind.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
- Andy Finkel
If you look at the hardware itself, there is a gyroscope attached. Hence, when the fat white guy wants to lift the stone, he leans his head back. I suppose you are to watch him wave his hands, but the real action is going on literally on his head.
Now if someone could build an iPhone app that can do this, we'd have all the same functionality at an even higher price!
Your whole argument depends on the premise that government regulation is always detrimental. This is untrue on the face of it. Government has a strong role to play in regulation, rule making, arbitration, justice, social justice, and defense.
OSHA regulations protect workers from dangerous work environments.
NTSB regulations protect travelers.
Our courts provide a venue to exercise our most important right, the right to redress of grievances.
Government regulation is a good thing because it provides the rules to which our society must adhere. Without these rules, a veritable free-for-all would occur. In a market with many players, this may be beneficial, but in a market of captive customers like we have in the American ISP market this can be very detrimental.
It's not even good enough to make the rules once and let things be. As we've seen countless times the rules need to be readdressed occasionally to adapt to new situations. Our founding fathers new this, and that is why we have the Constitutional Amendment process.
Historically, the only real "laissez-faire" founding father was Thomas Jefferson and pretty much all his contemporaries considered him a fraud and brigand. Government regulation has been the cornerstone of our country for almost two and a half centuries. To claim some sort of high moral ground because you oppose it in this one specific case is pretty sad.
All I can say is that you need to read your contract.
20/2 is the maximum speed in optimal conditions. You'll find that not only is this not a guaranteed speed, it isn't even a likely speed for all intents and purposes.
Have you ever driven on the DC Beltway at rush hour?
The highways of our great country are paid for communally. We all pay a little in taxes and we all get the right to drive on them.
But some vehicles must pay extra. There are weigh stations on our highways to make sure that those drivers who cause extra damage to the roads pay their fair share to help keep the roads in pristine condition. Since they weigh more, they must pay extra fees.
A user who is constantly maxing his connection is doing much the same thing. There is only finite bandwidth available to everyone and one guy in his parents' basement can slow traffic for everyone else. This forces the ISPs to need to replace their cables more often due to the increase in average use. Shouldn't these users be forced to pay more for their extra usage or at least be throttled to the point they aren't causing physical damage to the entire system?
Cry about "unlimited bandwidth plans" and the like all you want. It's completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. The issue is whether people whose usage habits affect others should have their activities curtailed to create a more balanced environment for everyone.
Net neutrality is a clever way of rephrasing "bandwidth abuse".
Comparing the Internet to the Telegraph?
I would have chosen a more appropriate comparison like the regrowth of injured legs on starfish, but maybe that's just me.
Here's a checklist
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/compare/default.aspx
Note that some pretty critical things like Domain Access and XP Mode are not included in the Home version.
It's not that. The main problem for most consumers is that Microsoft licenses different levels of OS functionality at different price points. If Linux didn't exist, this kind of licensing wouldn't be a big deal, but since you can essentially go from a barebones OS all the way up to a fully featured OS for the same price with Linux, Windows seems less attractive.
When people get fed up with crippled "home" versions and paying more for "ultimate" versions, Linux will surely take off. If Microsoft is unwilling to provide all the features in one simple install, 2010 will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
On a beach in Mexico a whale beached itself. It's buoyant fatty body crushed the whale's lungs and suffocated it in the wide open air. Bacteria from the whale's intestines began to multiply and ferment and large amounts of gas accumulated in the whale's body. Soon a bulge was visible around the belly of the whale. Then the bulge grew until the whole carcass was bloated.
One day, the whale's rotting body broke and released the gas in a giant explosion.
Pushing functionality into the browser instead of relying on scripting means longer launch times, more failure points, and more disparate functionality from browser to browser for developers to consider. It's a fountain of whale guts, metaphorically speaking.
A message is encoded with the ultimate goal of its being decoded and transmitted. A message that is not decoded is a failed message. This means that someone has the key, if one exists.
A code that has no key is a joke or a puzzle. It has no important information to convey.
Fermat once wrote "I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain." If he did indeed discover such a proof, he would have written it down somewhere else. This was a joke.
So too is a whole book written in an undecipherable code. Whatever the roots of this manuscript are, there is no doubt that it was the work of a prankster (or team of pranksters) playing a trick on posterity.
Dynamically typed, object-oriented, with features like lexical closures that are usually only found in advanced programming languages like Lisp, Javascript is really a great language that has gotten a bad rap.
It reminds me of the lowly tomato, a member of the poisonous nightshade family of plants, which for years was considered to be inedible. These days you can't get a salad without it. Things change when you realize how useful something actually is.
Fly me to the moon. Let me play among the stars. Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.
We spend so much time arguing with each other here on Slashdot, but when it comes down to it, we're all in this together. We are going to need to secure a future for future generations, so putting an effort into developing non-volatile fuels which can be formulated anywhere is one huge step towards getting off this rock.
Aluminum is plentiful anywhere we intend to go. This could really be the breakthrough that we've been looking for.
In other words, please be true. In other words, I love you.
Software processes have their heyday. The design up front strategy of Waterfall. The staged Incremental approach. The cowboy coding Big Bang approach (my personal favorite, if only to see watch the aftermath).
Nowadays, Agile development is the leading process du jour. With its short, incremental approach that relies on immediate feedback and rapid adaptation as well as well-scoped test points, Agile produces high quality software cheaply and quickly.
So to see NASA yearning for the days of design-heavy Waterfall with all risks supposedly identified up front, it's just a little bit disappointing. Years of actual practice have proven that Waterfall is one of the worst processes to follow, since it assumes that you can somehow know all necessary design points and risks at the outset.
Flight wasn't achieved overnight and certainly without tragedies. But we are where we are today because we took those accidents and tragedies and learned from them. NASA seems to think that they can bypass these failures by fiat. They are wrong, and this type of bad planning is going to cause huge budget overruns, delayed flight schedules, a loss of prestige, and worst of all less future funding.
Be Agile, NASA!
Normally the reaction to someone saying this kind of pinko commie crap is to laugh and tell them to go fuck themselves back to Russia.
But Lyons has a point. Competition, in this particular case, may not be the best thing for customers. Why so, you may ask. It is because of the lopsidedness of the market that makes this situation so precarious.
From the end of WWII until the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were two sides to every geopolitical debate. The side of good, right, and the American Way and the side of the Soviet Union. Countries aligned themselves along these very clear geopolitical boundaries. Though it was easy enough to declare allegiance to one side or the other, many countries found their own geopolitical aspirations dashed to smithereens on either the broad wings of the American eagle or the hard, solid face of the Iron Curtain.
However, with the end of the Cold War, vassal states are now finding their own voice. Countries that were previously shackled now find that the lack of a superpower competition has resulted in more opportunities for growth. Take two countries that America fought wars in as examples. Korea and Vietnam are now booming with economic and technological growth.
These opportunities don't come because they are subservient states to a particular superpower, but because they no longer need to pledge allegiance and are able to make their own way.
So when two superpowers like Microsoft and Google start duking it out, the fallout is going to hit partner companies AND consumers alike.