I'm not an expert either. In fact, I have an odd feeling I might be ridiculed for asking such a question.
If you hadn't included that disclaimer, you probably would have been:) But yeah, you got it completely backwards. The higher the atmospheric pressure, the easier it is to generate lift. A balloon filled with regular air will rise just fine when submerged in water (an "H20 Atmosphere") , but won't do dick when it's in earth-normal atmosphere. If you had a pure-helium atmosphere, a helium balloon would likewise do absolutely nothing.
Yeah, a new study just came out which shows that long-term iPhone usage causes genital warts and severe rectal bleeding, so the fanboys are trying to bury the news.
Wassat? You hadn't heard about the study? SEE, they're SUCCEEDING!
I thought about volunteering, but the thought of having a 20 minute ping time while playing Modern Warfare kinda turned me off the whole thing. As soon as they figure out a way to send FTL signals, though, I'm all over it!
Given that Afghanistan and Iran were some of the most liberal and progressive societies in the region before the US, UK and USSR fucked them over for oil and a military pissing-match, that may well have been the case.
Right, so because Afghanistan and Iran were the most liberal, Saudi Arabia would have become a liberal paradise. Perfect logic. For my next trick, I shall show how 2+2=73 proves that the earth is an equilateral triangle.
It is, of course, entirely possible that the tyranny we see today would have emerged on its own without any foreign intervention, but that doesn't negate the fact that most of the tyrannical regimes in the region are directly traceable to Western sponsorship.
lulz. Easy on the white-mans burden there. You're starting to buckle under the load. The kind of convoluted, asinine "logic" used to arrive at that conclusion could just as easily be used to "prove" that WW2 is directly traceable to Iran.
The US has done a lot of good and it's done a lot of evil in the world. If you're well and truly sick of it, move to Eastern Europe for a bit, where everything is Russia's fault in pretty much exactly the way that you describe.
I was born in "Eastern Europe". Never saw what you describe. Most people there absolutely loved Russia, and huge numbers bought into every anti-US conspiracy that you can think of.
It is very difficult to say what Saudi Arabia or the whole Middle East would be like today without post-World War II US and Soviet influence. The potential hypothetical maybe that an even worse regime might exist in Saudi Arabia is no excuse and is bordering on a white man's burden argument.
Are you arguing with yourself now?
Also, I'd be careful about attacking fanaticism, especially in strawmen.
Oh, the irony!
Next time, if you're not going to respond to what I said / asked, don't bother responding at all.
You can grab a torrent file from a darknet, get addressing information via DHT and receive the content from other peers. What part of that is centralized?
None - which is why darknets are just as full of garbage and malware as the napster and gnutella networks ever were. If you're trying to argue for decentralization, you're doing a horrible job.
From a technical standpoint a decentralized system can be just as good.
Sure, but we weren't discussing technology, we were discussing the human element.
I think he had some "issues."
Dostoyevski? If you mean that he was one of the greatest literary psychologists in history, then yea, he had some "issues". If you honestly think that it's an insult to lump me in with him, you must be a few nodes short of a network.
No, they haven't, and no, they don't. They provide free vocational training to everyone, and provide university education to those who pass the entrance requirements. To claim that they are "giving free university education" is dishonest - you may as well claim that the US gives out free University Education because of the existence of scholarships.
BTW, according to wikipedia, even with these "free universities" (or maybe because of them?), Finland has fewer university graduates than the US.
Torrents, darknets and mesh networks (and even BGP) are all examples of decentralized systems
No, they're not, or at least not in the way that would be applicable to what's being discussed here. Torrent distribution may be decentralized, but the actual addressing and content management is handled by centralized servers. The quality of the service depends on the server. That's one of the big advantages that torrents have over, say, the gnutella network - you can chose a server that cares about - and controls - the quality of the data it distributes, whereas on a truly decentralized network like gnutella you're constantly inundated with crap. The best torrent experience comes from private trackers, the worst comes from randomly searching through google. The more tightly controlled the network, the more likely it is you'll find what you want instead of ending up with japanese midget porn and a fuckton of trojans.
As a side note - back when I ran my own botnets, I used to LOVE truly decentralized networks like Napster and Gnutella. I'd have a much tougher time pulling off that kind of shenanigans on TPB or Demonoid.
If you don't like sarcastic replies, avoid saying dumb things.
Sure, if you start from the perspective that college education is a zero-sum game related to some piece of paper that lets you into the "club" of people who get good jobs.
Historically, that's all they've ever been. A talented hard working individual can learn far more on his own at the local library than can be taught to a beer-swilling buffoon by even the most talented of educators. Colleges and Universities provide the opportunity for learning, but they've never made much in the way of guarantees. The only degrees that mean a damn are the ones in hard sciences, medicine, and engineering - all others really are just a "club membership" designed to get better jobs for graduates.
I would be perfectly happy living in a world where everyone had a college degree, provided the degrees actually came with a real education.
Ditto. I would also be perfectly happy living in a world where all nations were communist yet people still strove to better themselves on a daily basis and the economy didn't suck. I'd also be perfectly happy riding on a unicorn.
In the real world, a more practical goal isn't to get everyone a college degree, but to make sure that talented people who could benefit from one (and consequently make us all richer) don't wind up flipping burgers instead 'cause they can't afford the tuition.
The problem is identifying those people. If you want to give a government scholarship for the top 1% of every graduating highschool class, sure, I think that could be made to work. Or if you want to offer, say, a 50% discount on tuition and all associated costs to anyone going into a group of fields (eg. science, math, engineering) that are changed on a regular basis in order to better meet future demand, then sure, that could also be workable, although it might prove more problematic. Giving everyone "free" admittance, though? Fuck no.
Alternatively, we could just make sure that rich, dumb kids get all the opportunities.
We've been doing it or 2,000 years, and it seems to have worked out ok. I don't mind changing the system, but first you have to convince me that your changes won't make things worse.
Thanks for the initial comment - couldn't have said it better myself. We've already gotten to the point where college degrees are so common that they're essentially worthless - making them "free" by fleecing taxpayers would only exacerbate the problem.
It's worse than that. Louisiana is now officially looking at changing textbooks in order to get rid of evolution. They want to replace one of the best documented scientific theories in existence with "I dunno how this works, ergo God did it". If the rest of the US decides to go down that path, I don't foresee a very bright future for science and technology in America.
Well you got that half right, anyway:) I just didn't see anything worth responding to in your initial comment, so I figured I'd have some fun with it. Next time, if you actually have some sort of point to make, put the sarcasm aside and just spit it out.
Half right The US props up the Saudi Arabian theocracy because an oppressed Saudi Arabia is a Saudi Arabia which delivers energy and military supremacy to the US without anyone having the chance to question it.
WTF? How does that make him "half-right"? Because Saudi Arabia would be a liberal paradise if it weren't for US support?
I'm starting to think that blaming the US is a religion in and of itself for some folks. I swear, I could say "looks like it might rain tonight", and some twit would jump out of the bushes and yell "Ah, but the weather patterns in this part of the globe would be completely different if American Big Business protected by the Military-Industrial Complex wasn't pouring CO2 into the atmosphere!". I mean, sure, ok, there's some teeny degree of factuality to the statement, but seriously, get a life.
They ARE atheists. They're simply atheists who mindlessly believe in a whole host of secular bullshit. I don't think atheism means what you think it means.
The result would be anarchy, period. You can bet your ass that the "decentralized DNS" record for fox.com would permanently point to goatse. As would any other record that any significant group of technically-minded people found objectionable.
Also, since he said "in either direction", I should point out that I'm extremely upset that I will no longer be able to find random burqa-clad hotties to cyber-sex with. This is a disaster of epic proportions.
That is "homegrown". Some hobbyists spend that much building a single RC-aircraft. Get together with 5 or 6 like-minded friends, and you can put together a similar project no problem.
There's pretty much no way you can get away with that nowadays...
Pure unadulterated nonsense. Drive around town and find an open WiFi access point. Use an internet cafe. Use the TOR network. Hack a couple foreign computers (for some reason, Korea is especially easy), and bounce the connection through them. For best results, combine all of the above. There's pretty much no way you could NOT get away with it, unless you're a complete idiot. Which this guy obviously is since not only did he not bother to cover his tracks while breaking into the account, but he also didn't take any precautions when he released the information. He was just begging to be busted.
On the other hand, there are probably less than a million Bison left in the world, and they taste MUCH better than cows or chicken. Being tasty might be a survival trait today in some parts of the world, for some species, but it's also been rather detrimental at times.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not an expert either. In fact, I have an odd feeling I might be ridiculed for asking such a question.
If you hadn't included that disclaimer, you probably would have been :) But yeah, you got it completely backwards. The higher the atmospheric pressure, the easier it is to generate lift. A balloon filled with regular air will rise just fine when submerged in water (an "H20 Atmosphere") , but won't do dick when it's in earth-normal atmosphere. If you had a pure-helium atmosphere, a helium balloon would likewise do absolutely nothing.
Yeah, a new study just came out which shows that long-term iPhone usage causes genital warts and severe rectal bleeding, so the fanboys are trying to bury the news.
Wassat? You hadn't heard about the study? SEE, they're SUCCEEDING!
Incidentally, many of the early settlers were criminals of some sort
In Australia, maybe. In North America it was mostly people fleeing poverty and persecution.
Hey, there's an idea: offer Mars to Israel or Palestine! Want land of your own, with no chance of persecution? Get on that rocket-ship!
I thought about volunteering, but the thought of having a 20 minute ping time while playing Modern Warfare kinda turned me off the whole thing. As soon as they figure out a way to send FTL signals, though, I'm all over it!
Given that Afghanistan and Iran were some of the most liberal and progressive societies in the region before the US, UK and USSR fucked them over for oil and a military pissing-match, that may well have been the case.
Right, so because Afghanistan and Iran were the most liberal, Saudi Arabia would have become a liberal paradise. Perfect logic. For my next trick, I shall show how 2+2=73 proves that the earth is an equilateral triangle.
It is, of course, entirely possible that the tyranny we see today would have emerged on its own without any foreign intervention, but that doesn't negate the fact that most of the tyrannical regimes in the region are directly traceable to Western sponsorship.
lulz. Easy on the white-mans burden there. You're starting to buckle under the load. The kind of convoluted, asinine "logic" used to arrive at that conclusion could just as easily be used to "prove" that WW2 is directly traceable to Iran.
The US has done a lot of good and it's done a lot of evil in the world. If you're well and truly sick of it, move to Eastern Europe for a bit, where everything is Russia's fault in pretty much exactly the way that you describe.
I was born in "Eastern Europe". Never saw what you describe. Most people there absolutely loved Russia, and huge numbers bought into every anti-US conspiracy that you can think of.
It is very difficult to say what Saudi Arabia or the whole Middle East would be like today without post-World War II US and Soviet influence. The potential hypothetical maybe that an even worse regime might exist in Saudi Arabia is no excuse and is bordering on a white man's burden argument.
Are you arguing with yourself now?
Also, I'd be careful about attacking fanaticism, especially in strawmen.
Oh, the irony!
Next time, if you're not going to respond to what I said / asked, don't bother responding at all.
So what prayers do I need to exorcise C++ threading bugs?
In the name of the Gates, the Torvalds, and the holy Jobs, I command you to leave this box NOW!
You can grab a torrent file from a darknet, get addressing information via DHT and receive the content from other peers. What part of that is centralized?
None - which is why darknets are just as full of garbage and malware as the napster and gnutella networks ever were. If you're trying to argue for decentralization, you're doing a horrible job.
From a technical standpoint a decentralized system can be just as good.
Sure, but we weren't discussing technology, we were discussing the human element.
I think he had some "issues."
Dostoyevski? If you mean that he was one of the greatest literary psychologists in history, then yea, he had some "issues". If you honestly think that it's an insult to lump me in with him, you must be a few nodes short of a network.
No, they haven't, and no, they don't. They provide free vocational training to everyone, and provide university education to those who pass the entrance requirements. To claim that they are "giving free university education" is dishonest - you may as well claim that the US gives out free University Education because of the existence of scholarships.
BTW, according to wikipedia, even with these "free universities" (or maybe because of them?), Finland has fewer university graduates than the US.
If you think that schools make you smart, then you're stupid.
Torrents, darknets and mesh networks (and even BGP) are all examples of decentralized systems
No, they're not, or at least not in the way that would be applicable to what's being discussed here. Torrent distribution may be decentralized, but the actual addressing and content management is handled by centralized servers. The quality of the service depends on the server. That's one of the big advantages that torrents have over, say, the gnutella network - you can chose a server that cares about - and controls - the quality of the data it distributes, whereas on a truly decentralized network like gnutella you're constantly inundated with crap. The best torrent experience comes from private trackers, the worst comes from randomly searching through google. The more tightly controlled the network, the more likely it is you'll find what you want instead of ending up with japanese midget porn and a fuckton of trojans.
As a side note - back when I ran my own botnets, I used to LOVE truly decentralized networks like Napster and Gnutella. I'd have a much tougher time pulling off that kind of shenanigans on TPB or Demonoid.
If you don't like sarcastic replies, avoid saying dumb things.
Sarcasm is the first refuge of the incompetent.
Sure, if you start from the perspective that college education is a zero-sum game related to some piece of paper that lets you into the "club" of people who get good jobs.
Historically, that's all they've ever been. A talented hard working individual can learn far more on his own at the local library than can be taught to a beer-swilling buffoon by even the most talented of educators. Colleges and Universities provide the opportunity for learning, but they've never made much in the way of guarantees. The only degrees that mean a damn are the ones in hard sciences, medicine, and engineering - all others really are just a "club membership" designed to get better jobs for graduates.
I would be perfectly happy living in a world where everyone had a college degree, provided the degrees actually came with a real education.
Ditto. I would also be perfectly happy living in a world where all nations were communist yet people still strove to better themselves on a daily basis and the economy didn't suck. I'd also be perfectly happy riding on a unicorn.
In the real world, a more practical goal isn't to get everyone a college degree, but to make sure that talented people who could benefit from one (and consequently make us all richer) don't wind up flipping burgers instead 'cause they can't afford the tuition.
The problem is identifying those people. If you want to give a government scholarship for the top 1% of every graduating highschool class, sure, I think that could be made to work. Or if you want to offer, say, a 50% discount on tuition and all associated costs to anyone going into a group of fields (eg. science, math, engineering) that are changed on a regular basis in order to better meet future demand, then sure, that could also be workable, although it might prove more problematic. Giving everyone "free" admittance, though? Fuck no.
Alternatively, we could just make sure that rich, dumb kids get all the opportunities.
We've been doing it or 2,000 years, and it seems to have worked out ok. I don't mind changing the system, but first you have to convince me that your changes won't make things worse.
:D
Best series of responses, EVAR!
Thanks for the initial comment - couldn't have said it better myself. We've already gotten to the point where college degrees are so common that they're essentially worthless - making them "free" by fleecing taxpayers would only exacerbate the problem.
It's worse than that. Louisiana is now officially looking at changing textbooks in order to get rid of evolution. They want to replace one of the best documented scientific theories in existence with "I dunno how this works, ergo God did it". If the rest of the US decides to go down that path, I don't foresee a very bright future for science and technology in America.
Well you got that half right, anyway :) I just didn't see anything worth responding to in your initial comment, so I figured I'd have some fun with it. Next time, if you actually have some sort of point to make, put the sarcasm aside and just spit it out.
Of course, it must be me!
Exactly. Thanks for the reinforcement.
Half right The US props up the Saudi Arabian theocracy because an oppressed Saudi Arabia is a Saudi Arabia which delivers energy and military supremacy to the US without anyone having the chance to question it.
WTF? How does that make him "half-right"? Because Saudi Arabia would be a liberal paradise if it weren't for US support?
I'm starting to think that blaming the US is a religion in and of itself for some folks. I swear, I could say "looks like it might rain tonight", and some twit would jump out of the bushes and yell "Ah, but the weather patterns in this part of the globe would be completely different if American Big Business protected by the Military-Industrial Complex wasn't pouring CO2 into the atmosphere!". I mean, sure, ok, there's some teeny degree of factuality to the statement, but seriously, get a life.
They ARE atheists. They're simply atheists who mindlessly believe in a whole host of secular bullshit. I don't think atheism means what you think it means.
The result would be anarchy, period. You can bet your ass that the "decentralized DNS" record for fox.com would permanently point to goatse. As would any other record that any significant group of technically-minded people found objectionable.
Also, since he said "in either direction", I should point out that I'm extremely upset that I will no longer be able to find random burqa-clad hotties to cyber-sex with. This is a disaster of epic proportions.
That is "homegrown". Some hobbyists spend that much building a single RC-aircraft. Get together with 5 or 6 like-minded friends, and you can put together a similar project no problem.
He obviously hasn't spoken with his Very Educated Mother
There's pretty much no way you can get away with that nowadays...
Pure unadulterated nonsense. Drive around town and find an open WiFi access point. Use an internet cafe. Use the TOR network. Hack a couple foreign computers (for some reason, Korea is especially easy), and bounce the connection through them. For best results, combine all of the above. There's pretty much no way you could NOT get away with it, unless you're a complete idiot. Which this guy obviously is since not only did he not bother to cover his tracks while breaking into the account, but he also didn't take any precautions when he released the information. He was just begging to be busted.
On the other hand, there are probably less than a million Bison left in the world, and they taste MUCH better than cows or chicken. Being tasty might be a survival trait today in some parts of the world, for some species, but it's also been rather detrimental at times.