If that actually worked, would you be willing to sell me your (very used) car for whatever the most expensive production car ever made costs now? I somehow think I can find some investors to help me pay for it.:-)
Pushing it by a laser would certainly be a more expensive solution but not do anything about the real problem.
Actually the whole idea of moving even a 1.4KG piece of scrap, much less a larger 17.5KG chunk, of the ammonia tank by a significant (useful) amount using any laser developed to date or likely to be developed within the next couple of decades, even if the laser beam was projected from a vehicle in space and didn't have to go through the dense part of the Earth's lower atmosphere, is ludicrous.
Sure, were have targeting systems that could keep the beam aimed at the debris, but we just don't have lasers powerful enough to move it enough to avoid Earth when it is orbiting just a few hundred kilometers above ground. Also, don't forget Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action". That laser is likely to be huge enough to require a massive spacecraft to carry it, so the steering thrusters on such a craft ought to be able to compensate for the laser shoving it in the direction opposite it is pushing the debris (assuming the debris masses less 17.5KG or so), but if we have spacecraft and lasers that advanced, then surely it would be far cheaper to use the same level of technology to design a guided missile that will home in on the debris with near 100% accuracy and then blow it to smithereens, or maybe "net it" (scoop it up) and proceed to thrust it into deep space.
Ralistically, the laser idea only works if the object is spotted and the laser beam can be applied to it for a long, long time while it is far, far away so as to divert just slightly and still change its trajectory enough to cause it to miss Earth. Such a laser ought to be powerful enough to burn up a 17.5KG object or at least fracture it into small pieces due to heat stress.
I'd even consider a smart guided missile tipped with a very small neutron bomb warhead that would vaporize the target if it were a few hundred kilometers up, but I have no idea how much fallout a small neutron bomb produces, although the idea is that there not be much. The very notion of using tiny, clean nukes to obliterate space junk is appealing in that it ought to make for a spectacular light show and it would certainly piss off the Greens (always a good thing). I just don't want to end up living in a world full of happy little mutants due to increased background radiation levels that might not cause much harm to current generations but could easily affect future ones. The ignorant twits who support Barack Hussein Obama are bad enough. (<== Obligatory political season comment.)
Yeah, it's called salmiak and it's probably an acquired taste. I have heard of a person who said that it tasted like catpiss. But on the other hand, the Americans invented McDonalds so I guess that makes us even:)
That makes me wonder how and why that person knows what cat piss tastes like.
A Boeing 747 with mass 340,000 kg takes off from JFK airport at 3:00 pm and heads towards Los Angeles at a cruising speed of 800 kph. A refrigerator-sized tank of toxic ammonia with mass 17 kg jettisoned from the ISS 560 days prior is about to achieve re-entry at 160 kph. Where and when will they meet?
I hate these stupid questions.
I suspect the tank will be almost completely empty when it hits Earth, due to major structural damage and subsequent leakage of the toxic ammonia during re-entry.
Remember, as the thing heats up a lot, that ammonia is going to switch into a gaseous state, causing incredible pressure which ought to burst leaks in the tank perhaps even blowing it into smaller chunks. I haven't bothered to research how much ammonia is left in the tank. If there is a negligible amount, the above does not apply. If there is a significant amount, and the tank somehow maintains its integrity, it would almost certainly hit far faster than 160KPH due to the extra mass of the toxic chemical.
Think: dropping a full can of soup on someone's head off a very tall building versus dropping an empty one... They might hit with the same speed in a vacuum, but the empty can will be slowed down a lot more than the full one near the surface of the Earth due to air resistance.
The odds of you actually hitting a person you are aiming for, either way, are far better than his/her chances of getting hit by parts of the ammonia tank due to crash into the Earth in several hours, although still not very good if the building is a skyscraper.
Given the distribution of objects and people near or on any road, compared with the probability that the asteroid hits any where near a population of meaningful size to even have a tiny chance of hitting a person, I'd say you have a better chance of hitting some one with your car than some one being hit by this chunk falling from space.
I can't prove it, but I suspect any given (typical) individual's chances of getting hit by falling space debris (man made or natural) are much less than those of said person winning the jackpot in the Mega Millions or Powerball multi-state lotteries with a single ticket, which are far less than his/her chance of getting hit by lightning, which are definitely less than his chances of getting hit by a motor vehicle.
Just hope the big chunk lands near front and center at some huge Barack Hussein Obama political rally. Not only would that give Obama supporters watching the event on the idiot box a dose of reality, it would probably raise the average IQ of that area of the country by a significant amount.
Alternatively, they may be trying to convince the world that they DO have a quantum computer.
Some quantum computing technology has apparently been tested in the lab (see: Spintronics), or do your own Google search on "quantum computing actual devices".
There is little doubt in my mind that the NSA either has or expects to soon have practical quantum computers and is now actively seeking help figuring out how to best make use of this new technology.
Once it is known a technology is feasible, it doesn't take long for others to duplicate it. Look at the atomic then thermonuclear arms races the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had during the cold war.
The NSA is huge compared to the CIA in both budget and staff (especially technical experts) -- something many people don't realize because the NSA was "no such agency" for several decades.
The NSA would be crazy not to use all of its resources to be making use of practical quantum computing systems for as long as possible before others develop the technology. For example, the NSA could implement quantum encryption/decryption schemes while using the latter to crack what is currently considered strong encryption used by whoever the NSA wants to spy on.
It stands to reason (hmmm...not that the U.S. government has ever tended to be reasonable) that the NSA wants to stay at least a step ahead of the "competition" whenever possible and its huge budget and massive amount of technical resources tend to allow for that to happen.
The only test that Microsoft cares about before some manufacturer slaps a "Vista Capable" label on one of their computers is that they leave enough room for a Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity that proves the end-user is wasting money on a bug-ridden POS of an OS.
The solution to bad government is not no government, but a fixed government, one that keeps people from screwing with each other but largely stands out of their way, allowing people the freedom to make of themselves what they want.
Libertarians recognize this. The lack of a government is often as bad a failure as a bad one.
When trying to explain the difference between libertarians and anarchists, it is helpful to point out that many libertarians consider government to be a necessary evil. Just as healthy people must eat but don't overeat, a healthy society must have some government but not too much. Governments almost always end up serving themselves first and merely maintain a pretense of serving the People. The explanation is cliche: power corrupts -- absolute power corrupts absolutely. Most of us want to feel financially secure and for goverment workers, especially those in policy-making positions, security can often be had most easily by entrenching themselves and their little section of government even when doing so works against the best interests of the citizenry.
In the U.S., governments at all levels tend to play the divide and conquer game very well. Whether it is pitting senior citizens against people still in the workforce when it comes to keeping the Ponzi scheme known as Medicare going for a few more years (raise income taxes or cut benefits or just phase out the entire scam?), the wealthy against the poor, people opposed to racial discrimination versus those against sexual discrimination (see the feud amongst many of those those who support one of the two leading contenders for the Democrat presidential candidate nomination), or those who want their children to enjoy quality education in private (often non-secular) schools versus those who think that the First Amendment precludes government funding of any school with religious affiliations and who think that kids have some sort of right to an education at the taxpayers' expense.
Anyone who doesn't believe the above should consider how much interaction the average family had with federal government in 1858, just 150 years ago. Can you say "little or none"? Nowadays, things which were once considered strictly local matters are being dragged up to the state and federal level. Individuals, cities, and entire states are becoming increasingly dependent on Big Government at the federal level because they've become addicted to handouts from federal government agencies -- which the federal government funds via income and Social (in)Security taxes.
Then lets look at things like the War on Some Drugs, the War Against Terror, etc. Whenever the government wants more money or power, it simply fabricates a major crisis to justify its increased intrusion into our daily lives and higher taxes to pay for some Big Government solution which never seems to work but always requires more sacrifice from the citizens via higher taxes and decreased freedom.
'We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well,' Mr. Gates will say in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.'
It sounds like Billy Gates wants to keep his title as World's Richest Man for at least as long as he lives, by denying others the benefits of the same nice capitalistic system, the fruits of which he has so enjoyed. "Pull the ladder up. I'm aboard!"
"Most Linux distros have a lot more software and contain more lines of code than Windows. Therefore, you'd expect more flaws in something like Ubuntu or RHEL."
I don't know how many lines of code make up Ubuntu versus XP or Vista. As someone who codes in C and.asm as a hobby, I definitely favor tight, fast code. But, as someone with a graduate degree in C.S., I'm well aware that there are times when you can gain a lot of performance at the expense of long, hairy code. (Think bubble versus Shell or Quicksort sort routines in most modern programming languages.) My problem with the bloatware MS calls an OS is that it typically wastes far too many lines of code on glitzy SFX that reduce performance and add unnecessary complexity (read: potential for bugs). Since the source for Winblows is not available, that is a major drawback. With most flavors of Linux, including Ubuntu, the source is there to change if something really needs to be fixed and there are many thousands of people who routinely hack Linux code. Let's not forget that Google and many ISPs depend on Linux. I'd put Google's software engineers up against the drone at Microsoft any day -- the best programmers at MS have been leaving heading toward greener pastures such as Google for years.
So, I don't think lines of code or number of vaguely defined "flaws" are the best metrics by which to judge an OS. Performance is crucial. Open source is a huge plus. DRM is a major minus. Any program that "phones home" without first asking the user for explicit permission is a no-no. A functional but intuitive UI is important if the OS is to be popular. Free is ideal!
About the only thing that keeps me from just wiping every stinking bit of MS code from all of my systems is the fact that some very good non-MS applications are Windows-specific, due to the monopoly Microsoft has established by its various unethical practices in the marketplace.
"I've not gone looking for security bugs, but I'd bed the only "security" part that's near bug free is the one that handles the DRM and anti-piracy functions. I've no doubt from the rest of the experience that the part that secures me and my data is full of holes."
It's nice to see an actual Vista victim confirming my educated suspicions. Vista is defective by design. What Microsoft considers features, rational people consider flaws and vice versa.
I have had the opportunity to try Vista out on somebody else's (new, OTS) machine. I found Aero to be laughable. It is nothing more than resource intensive eye candy to divert the computer naive folks attention from Vista's many drawbacks and outright user hostility as to true control over the system.
Let's face it, anyone with a clue about OS design recognizes Vista for the most gigantic pile of crap Microsoft has managed to excrete to date. But as long as there are a lot of flashy SFX like Aero to make the typically computer illiterate Best Buy and Circuit City shopper go "Oooh...shiny!" and spend the extra bucks for a machine preloaded with one of the more expensive versions of Vista, Microsoft doesn't care about support or performance issues. It financially rapes peeps who are dumb enough to pay for per issue support (read: your rich but stupid home users and desperate small business owners) and doesn't care once the rest have paid up, since they can't get a refund and are probably locked in, unless they realize how they've been suckered before they make a real commitment to using Vista i.e., putting all their data on it and dumping their old non-Vista system that was probably old but might have actually worked for them.
Friends don't let friends buy Vista (or any machine pre-infected with Vista).
One must understand that Microsoft defines a "flaw" in one of its operating systems as anything that seriously threatens its monopolistic stranglehold on the OS marketplace or (in this case) impedes Vista's ability to override the owner's decisions as to what software should run on or media be played on any given system. Things that annoy users or expose their systems to invasion (except from Microsoft) are of little concern to Microsoft. Vista is defective by design which implies that when a system owner or user manages to get it to do something Microsoft disapproves of, that gets counted as a "flaw". In other words, what most people would consider great features are very scarce on Vista, so it isn't flawed much, according to Microsoft.
So yes, from Microsoft's perspective, the subject line of the original article is true. From any computer owner/user's perspective, it is almost certainly false -- just more Microsoft Bullshit(TM).
Why should the ISP's police what anybody sends over their wires, by looking what's inside the packets, anymore than the postal service looks inside mail envelopes to see if there are illegal messages or pictures therein? The technical solution would be to force or at least strongly encourage everybody to use secure encryption (security envelopes).
I like the way you think! It would be seriously inconvenient for the MPAA, the RIAA, and the USPS amongst other organizations I can think of if the RIAA and MPAA proposed standards of content scrutiny were applied to the USPS. Most folks expect their snail mail to be private. By establishing a legal precedent making the same standards that apply to 'Net communications carriers apply to the USPS, Jane Average is likely to take note and start voting certain fascist assholes out of office. Most Americans abhor Big Brother, but they need to know he is lurking behind the scenes.
Make the USPS liable for any snail-mailed photocopies of copyrighted material or kiddie porn or other "thought crime" it transports and it would be belly up very quickly...not that I'd mind that outcome.
Regards,
FractalZone
P.S. Dear Santa, for Xmas, I would like my kharma rating restored to its high point of "Excellent".:-)
Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implement then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.
You've hit on a very fundamental relationship in finance, risk is very related to reward. A bank than only makes loans to zero-risk customers is going to miss a lot of profitable opportunities. A bank that makes too many risky loans is going to lose it's proverbial shirt. A business must balance its risks so as to maximize its profits.
Any ISP, including the one I use now which is being bought out by Comcast is going to lose my business if it meddles too much in my 'Net activity. I rarely upload much, but when I do, it is usually a one-shot multi-GB file transfer to a client. I have a residential account, but I need to eat, starving grad student that I am at the moment. In a perfect world, ISP would be content unaware -- they'd just move the bits from here to there without question or scrutiny, except in cases where the send has been convicted of a felony related to the 'Net. I've DL'ed some music -- all of which I already paid for on vinyl or disc, just because my collection was in storage 800 miles away. The way I see it, I have a right to listen to that music, however I obtain it at the moment. (This is coming from a guy who has purchased Pink Floyd's DSOTM album in four different physical copies over the years -- regular and Mobile Fidelity copies on vinyl and CD. I've also downloaded the MF version to my computer since my physical copy was out of reach at the time. Go figure.)
Almost anything in the digital domain, and most info is these days, can be copied easily which means it can be pirated easily, too. The MPAA and RIAA ought to wise up to that fact, lest people start getting really serious about bypassing their pathetic efforts and just demand that legislators change the copyright laws.
The cost of stopping all music/video/literature piracy is definitely going to be fatal for vendors who go to extremes to prevent such activity, since a lot of regular customers do what is considered "piracy" now and then. In the long run, the customer is always right.
I like using premium CAT5 cables for my internet data, I find they make porn a bit more 'fappable'.
Well, *I* settle for nothing less than plenum grade CAT6 cables for my Internet data, including pr0n, "shared" music and movies, etc. CAT5 is so last century! When I get some serious money, I'm going all fiber optic with my data connections.
I predict the sudden rise of on-screen keypads, operated via the mouse.
I predict the sudden rise of use of cheap (think OLPC or slightly used) laptops they carry into cyber cafes. Secure USB drives with lots of security software (think password vaults, heavy encryption tools, and lists of servers outside of restrictive zones that will decrypt traffic sent to ordinary sites, snag the responses and encrypt them before passing them back to the user in the cyber cafe. All of the hardware and software I'm thinking of can easily be obtained for under $300(USD) as much of the software is freely available.
The catch is that anonymous secure servers can be easily blocked by fascist governments so that their victims...er, uh...subjects can't access those IPs easily from within the borders of totalitarian nations. But look at what has been happening to Internet traffic in and out of mainland China in recent years. News still gets through.
Sure, the gestapo types in oppressive nations will still have complete access to all of the traffic going in and out of the cyber cafe in this scenario, but the bulk of it will be unreadable gibberish unless they have the right keys but those are stored (encrypted) on the USB drives of people carrying inexpensive laptops with only mundane software installed on them and holding only innocuous data. The stuff meant to be kept away from prying eyes is all on a reasonably locked down memory stick that can be concealed on the user's person. If the software he uses any good, all traces of the private communications that took place over the cafe's subnet will be wiped from the laptop's drives. The software should have a boss (Big Brother?) feature that will quickly perform such a cleaning and secure the memory stick in the event of a raid.
None of the above will thwart a determined bunch of government goons who are targeting a handful of suspects, but unless that government wants to either make using any sort of encryption ware illegal and also frisks a significant number of cafe goers, or prohibits the use of private laptops at public sites, it will certainly be enough for the guy who is having an affair with the local police chief's daughter.
(I'm sure I left out some stuff, but/. readers are savvy enough to know that what I describe can be done at the price I mentioned or perhaps a lot less in developing nations with thriving black markets for anything the government doesn't want its oh-so-content citizens to have.)
The real key will be the availability of sufficient numbers of secure servers in more free nations. Those servers will have to have lots of floating IP addresses all over the world, so when a draconian government blocks one known set, another will go into use and the (underground) rumor mill will quickly ensure that things are restored to business as usual.
It would be way cool if large organizations such as MS, Google, Yahoo, etc., that have a lot of normal traffic coming through their IP addresses would also provide secure communication server services via those same IPs. That way, if India or China wants to start blocking IPs, it also effectively cuts off the access to the important Internet sites and services that its own government officials and major business people have come to rely upon. Given that MS, Google, Yahoo, etc. are very busy trying to make piles of money in nations such as India and China, I don't expect that to happen.
[Can you tell I'm killing time while doing laundry?]
One final thought: governments ultimately exist to serve themselves, most sooner rather than later.
Capitalism puts the smack down on the hippy dippy Apple company once again!
Pity the poor iPhonies! They're stuck with 2-year service contracts with AT&T (a fate worse than death) and their silly little overpriced, defective-by-design iPhones. That just gives me the warm fuzzies! Heheheh.
Do they really need to spend thousands of dollars analyzing data to determine there's more crime around check-cashing stores on paydays?
Exactly. Apparently they aren't bright enough to follow the money without computer guidance, even when it is actual cash used in predictably occuring/recuring transactions right in front of their noses. But then again, there's little profit motive for the police themselves to stake out check cashing shops on paydays. That doesn't line their own coffers nearly as much as making gestapo-style drug raids that net them cash, cars, homes, and boats via asset forfeiture and seizure. Nor does it provide a steady cash flow like a bunch of speed traps that nick motorists a few hundred bucks for trivial violations of absurdly low speed limits.
No, I'm waiting to find out how the police are really utilizing data mining technology to skin an extra few bucks off of their vict^H^H^H^Hemployers, the ordinary taxpaying citizens.
The city is looking to replace its ubiquitous but mostly annoying beach tags -- which indicate you paid to get on the beach $5 per day, $10 for a week, or $20 for the whole summer -- with wristbands that contain an RFID chip. Yet another cool feature of the high-tech beach will be the ability to track beachgoers -- an application that is being touted by parents.
Pardon me for asking, but why are beach tags or RFIDs necessary in the first place? Is the beach in question not a public one? If so, why does anyone need to pay to visit it? Next thing ya know, New Jersey will be implementing a tax on the air people breath and an admission tax to anyone crazy enough to want to enter the state!
What the people of New Jersey should do is impose a stupidity tax on New Jersey legislators...
better for less... no
different for less or less for less yes.
It's an important distinction to make as Apple's hardware is less expensive when compared equally
Nah...you always pay too much for that stupid Apple logo. Apple does make some nifty hardware, but you can almost always get better from other reputable manufacurers for less. And they don't tend to be as anal about the proprietary nature of their wares. Look at all those poor iPodiots and iPhonies who paid too much for lame but oh-so-trendy hardware, when the competition delivers moreand better for less $$$.
Says the guy who can't even spell Democratic Party properly.
There is very little democratic about the Democrat Party. Historically, the Democrats backed slavery and the Republicans fought against it. I didn't spell it "Democrap", but I should have...the party is filled with shitheads such as Hillary, Obama, Pelosi, etc.
Grow up. Stop with the spelling flames until you can do them right. You might even become something clever and useful like a Libertarian!
they may be selling 15%, but they don't have the huge market share. It's not strange: Think about all the legacy machines out on the net
Hey, I grok legacy machines. I rarely pitch or sell my old computers (when I do, it is usually almost a gift to a friend who desperately needs one and can't afford to buy it new -- my friends understand that my hand-me-down systems are usually a lot better than the crap sold at Best Buy and will be secure from the moment they take possession). I have actually had as many as 13 reasonably modern Wintel/Linux boxes on my home network -- I had to move some of them from the bedroom I used as my office into another bedroom I used as a library, workroom, and reloading room because that many computers running in one room overheated it in spite of a very good air conditioning system I had in that house. I'm down to only three comps right now but am planning to build a fourth RSN. It will run Unbuntu Linux and WinXP and maybe Solaris.
I were smart, I'd buy a rack and build a rack mountable system. The problem is that I'd be sorely tempted to completely fill it with computer gear. Old systems are nice because one doesn't get so worried about experimenting with them. When I want to try out a new OS or do a little hardware hacking, having a legacy system to tinker with is very convenient and doesn't put my current (read: critical) data at risk.
I wouldn't mind having an Apple laptop, if someone sold it to me cheap. The only Apple computer I've ever possesed was a Lisa (the machine that was the predecessor to the Mac). I got that because the Entre computer store that gave it to me on long term load didn't know what the fuck to do with it. I got a pre-release IBM AT with a plexiglass cover that way, too -- they wanted to have an expert to call when customers started asking about IBM ATs. There deal with me was that I got first dibs on any new toys I fancied in return for helping their tech department with tough questions and repairs. Those were good days!
With Apple selling 15% of new laptops this year, it is slightly surprising that they only have a 6-7% market share.
Maybe the folks who are buying the Apple laptops are installing Windows or Linux. I understand that now that Apple is using Intel chips, Apple laptops make nice (if overpriced) Wintel systems. I still don't see the point, as one can get better laptops for less money from a variety of vendors.
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If that actually worked, would you be willing to sell me your (very used) car for whatever the most expensive production car ever made costs now? I somehow think I can find some investors to help me pay for it. :-)
Pushing it by a laser would certainly be a more expensive solution but not do anything about the real problem.
Actually the whole idea of moving even a 1.4KG piece of scrap, much less a larger 17.5KG chunk, of the ammonia tank by a significant (useful) amount using any laser developed to date or likely to be developed within the next couple of decades, even if the laser beam was projected from a vehicle in space and didn't have to go through the dense part of the Earth's lower atmosphere, is ludicrous.
Sure, were have targeting systems that could keep the beam aimed at the debris, but we just don't have lasers powerful enough to move it enough to avoid Earth when it is orbiting just a few hundred kilometers above ground. Also, don't forget Newton's Third Law of Motion: "For every action there is an equal and opposite re-action". That laser is likely to be huge enough to require a massive spacecraft to carry it, so the steering thrusters on such a craft ought to be able to compensate for the laser shoving it in the direction opposite it is pushing the debris (assuming the debris masses less 17.5KG or so), but if we have spacecraft and lasers that advanced, then surely it would be far cheaper to use the same level of technology to design a guided missile that will home in on the debris with near 100% accuracy and then blow it to smithereens, or maybe "net it" (scoop it up) and proceed to thrust it into deep space.
Ralistically, the laser idea only works if the object is spotted and the laser beam can be applied to it for a long, long time while it is far, far away so as to divert just slightly and still change its trajectory enough to cause it to miss Earth. Such a laser ought to be powerful enough to burn up a 17.5KG object or at least fracture it into small pieces due to heat stress.
I'd even consider a smart guided missile tipped with a very small neutron bomb warhead that would vaporize the target if it were a few hundred kilometers up, but I have no idea how much fallout a small neutron bomb produces, although the idea is that there not be much. The very notion of using tiny, clean nukes to obliterate space junk is appealing in that it ought to make for a spectacular light show and it would certainly piss off the Greens (always a good thing). I just don't want to end up living in a world full of happy little mutants due to increased background radiation levels that might not cause much harm to current generations but could easily affect future ones. The ignorant twits who support Barack Hussein Obama are bad enough. (<== Obligatory political season comment.)
Yeah, it's called salmiak and it's probably an acquired taste. I have heard of a person who said that it tasted like catpiss. But on the other hand, the Americans invented McDonalds so I guess that makes us even :)
That makes me wonder how and why that person knows what cat piss tastes like.
A Boeing 747 with mass 340,000 kg takes off from JFK airport at 3:00 pm and heads towards Los Angeles at a cruising speed of 800 kph. A refrigerator-sized tank of toxic ammonia with mass 17 kg jettisoned from the ISS 560 days prior is about to achieve re-entry at 160 kph. Where and when will they meet?
I hate these stupid questions.
I suspect the tank will be almost completely empty when it hits Earth, due to major structural damage and subsequent leakage of the toxic ammonia during re-entry. Remember, as the thing heats up a lot, that ammonia is going to switch into a gaseous state, causing incredible pressure which ought to burst leaks in the tank perhaps even blowing it into smaller chunks. I haven't bothered to research how much ammonia is left in the tank. If there is a negligible amount, the above does not apply. If there is a significant amount, and the tank somehow maintains its integrity, it would almost certainly hit far faster than 160KPH due to the extra mass of the toxic chemical.
Think: dropping a full can of soup on someone's head off a very tall building versus dropping an empty one... They might hit with the same speed in a vacuum, but the empty can will be slowed down a lot more than the full one near the surface of the Earth due to air resistance.
The odds of you actually hitting a person you are aiming for, either way, are far better than his/her chances of getting hit by parts of the ammonia tank due to crash into the Earth in several hours, although still not very good if the building is a skyscraper.
Given the distribution of objects and people near or on any road, compared with the probability that the asteroid hits any where near a population of meaningful size to even have a tiny chance of hitting a person, I'd say you have a better chance of hitting some one with your car than some one being hit by this chunk falling from space.
I can't prove it, but I suspect any given (typical) individual's chances of getting hit by falling space debris (man made or natural) are much less than those of said person winning the jackpot in the Mega Millions or Powerball multi-state lotteries with a single ticket, which are far less than his/her chance of getting hit by lightning, which are definitely less than his chances of getting hit by a motor vehicle.
Just hope the big chunk lands near front and center at some huge Barack Hussein Obama political rally. Not only would that give Obama supporters watching the event on the idiot box a dose of reality, it would probably raise the average IQ of that area of the country by a significant amount.
Alternatively, they may be trying to convince the world that they DO have a quantum computer.
Some quantum computing technology has apparently been tested in the lab (see: Spintronics), or do your own Google search on "quantum computing actual devices".
There is little doubt in my mind that the NSA either has or expects to soon have practical quantum computers and is now actively seeking help figuring out how to best make use of this new technology.
Once it is known a technology is feasible, it doesn't take long for others to duplicate it. Look at the atomic then thermonuclear arms races the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had during the cold war.
The NSA is huge compared to the CIA in both budget and staff (especially technical experts) -- something many people don't realize because the NSA was "no such agency" for several decades.
The NSA would be crazy not to use all of its resources to be making use of practical quantum computing systems for as long as possible before others develop the technology. For example, the NSA could implement quantum encryption/decryption schemes while using the latter to crack what is currently considered strong encryption used by whoever the NSA wants to spy on.
It stands to reason (hmmm...not that the U.S. government has ever tended to be reasonable) that the NSA wants to stay at least a step ahead of the "competition" whenever possible and its huge budget and massive amount of technical resources tend to allow for that to happen.
The only test that Microsoft cares about before some manufacturer slaps a "Vista Capable" label on one of their computers is that they leave enough room for a Microsoft Certificate of Authenticity that proves the end-user is wasting money on a bug-ridden POS of an OS.
The solution to bad government is not no government, but a fixed government, one that keeps people from screwing with each other but largely stands out of their way, allowing people the freedom to make of themselves what they want.
Libertarians recognize this. The lack of a government is often as bad a failure as a bad one.
When trying to explain the difference between libertarians and anarchists, it is helpful to point out that many libertarians consider government to be a necessary evil. Just as healthy people must eat but don't overeat, a healthy society must have some government but not too much. Governments almost always end up serving themselves first and merely maintain a pretense of serving the People. The explanation is cliche: power corrupts -- absolute power corrupts absolutely. Most of us want to feel financially secure and for goverment workers, especially those in policy-making positions, security can often be had most easily by entrenching themselves and their little section of government even when doing so works against the best interests of the citizenry.
In the U.S., governments at all levels tend to play the divide and conquer game very well. Whether it is pitting senior citizens against people still in the workforce when it comes to keeping the Ponzi scheme known as Medicare going for a few more years (raise income taxes or cut benefits or just phase out the entire scam?), the wealthy against the poor, people opposed to racial discrimination versus those against sexual discrimination (see the feud amongst many of those those who support one of the two leading contenders for the Democrat presidential candidate nomination), or those who want their children to enjoy quality education in private (often non-secular) schools versus those who think that the First Amendment precludes government funding of any school with religious affiliations and who think that kids have some sort of right to an education at the taxpayers' expense.
Anyone who doesn't believe the above should consider how much interaction the average family had with federal government in 1858, just 150 years ago. Can you say "little or none"? Nowadays, things which were once considered strictly local matters are being dragged up to the state and federal level. Individuals, cities, and entire states are becoming increasingly dependent on Big Government at the federal level because they've become addicted to handouts from federal government agencies -- which the federal government funds via income and Social (in)Security taxes.
Then lets look at things like the War on Some Drugs, the War Against Terror, etc. Whenever the government wants more money or power, it simply fabricates a major crisis to justify its increased intrusion into our daily lives and higher taxes to pay for some Big Government solution which never seems to work but always requires more sacrifice from the citizens via higher taxes and decreased freedom.
'We have to find a way to make the aspects of capitalism that serve wealthier people serve poorer people as well,' Mr. Gates will say in a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.'
It sounds like Billy Gates wants to keep his title as World's Richest Man for at least as long as he lives, by denying others the benefits of the same nice capitalistic system, the fruits of which he has so enjoyed. "Pull the ladder up. I'm aboard!"
"Most Linux distros have a lot more software and contain more lines of code than Windows. Therefore, you'd expect more flaws in something like Ubuntu or RHEL."
.asm as a hobby, I definitely favor tight, fast code. But, as someone with a graduate degree in C.S., I'm well aware that there are times when you can gain a lot of performance at the expense of long, hairy code. (Think bubble versus Shell or Quicksort sort routines in most modern programming languages.) My problem with the bloatware MS calls an OS is that it typically wastes far too many lines of code on glitzy SFX that reduce performance and add unnecessary complexity (read: potential for bugs). Since the source for Winblows is not available, that is a major drawback. With most flavors of Linux, including Ubuntu, the source is there to change if something really needs to be fixed and there are many thousands of people who routinely hack Linux code. Let's not forget that Google and many ISPs depend on Linux. I'd put Google's software engineers up against the drone at Microsoft any day -- the best programmers at MS have been leaving heading toward greener pastures such as Google for years.
I don't know how many lines of code make up Ubuntu versus XP or Vista. As someone who codes in C and
So, I don't think lines of code or number of vaguely defined "flaws" are the best metrics by which to judge an OS. Performance is crucial. Open source is a huge plus. DRM is a major minus. Any program that "phones home" without first asking the user for explicit permission is a no-no. A functional but intuitive UI is important if the OS is to be popular. Free is ideal!
About the only thing that keeps me from just wiping every stinking bit of MS code from all of my systems is the fact that some very good non-MS applications are Windows-specific, due to the monopoly Microsoft has established by its various unethical practices in the marketplace.
Friends don't let friends buy Vista.
"I've not gone looking for security bugs, but I'd bed the only "security" part that's near bug free is the one that handles the DRM and anti-piracy functions. I've no doubt from the rest of the experience that the part that secures me and my data is full of holes."
It's nice to see an actual Vista victim confirming my educated suspicions. Vista is defective by design. What Microsoft considers features, rational people consider flaws and vice versa.
I have had the opportunity to try Vista out on somebody else's (new, OTS) machine. I found Aero to be laughable. It is nothing more than resource intensive eye candy to divert the computer naive folks attention from Vista's many drawbacks and outright user hostility as to true control over the system.
Let's face it, anyone with a clue about OS design recognizes Vista for the most gigantic pile of crap Microsoft has managed to excrete to date. But as long as there are a lot of flashy SFX like Aero to make the typically computer illiterate Best Buy and Circuit City shopper go "Oooh...shiny!" and spend the extra bucks for a machine preloaded with one of the more expensive versions of Vista, Microsoft doesn't care about support or performance issues. It financially rapes peeps who are dumb enough to pay for per issue support (read: your rich but stupid home users and desperate small business owners) and doesn't care once the rest have paid up, since they can't get a refund and are probably locked in, unless they realize how they've been suckered before they make a real commitment to using Vista i.e., putting all their data on it and dumping their old non-Vista system that was probably old but might have actually worked for them.
Friends don't let friends buy Vista (or any machine pre-infected with Vista).
"Microsoft Says Vista Has the Fewest Flaws"
One must understand that Microsoft defines a "flaw" in one of its operating systems as anything that seriously threatens its monopolistic stranglehold on the OS marketplace or (in this case) impedes Vista's ability to override the owner's decisions as to what software should run on or media be played on any given system. Things that annoy users or expose their systems to invasion (except from Microsoft) are of little concern to Microsoft. Vista is defective by design which implies that when a system owner or user manages to get it to do something Microsoft disapproves of, that gets counted as a "flaw". In other words, what most people would consider great features are very scarce on Vista, so it isn't flawed much, according to Microsoft.
So yes, from Microsoft's perspective, the subject line of the original article is true. From any computer owner/user's perspective, it is almost certainly false -- just more Microsoft Bullshit(TM).
Friends don't let friends install Vista.
Why should the ISP's police what anybody sends over their wires, by looking what's inside the packets, anymore than the postal service looks inside mail envelopes to see if there are illegal messages or pictures therein? The technical solution would be to force or at least strongly encourage everybody to use secure encryption (security envelopes).
:-)
I like the way you think! It would be seriously inconvenient for the MPAA, the RIAA, and the USPS amongst other organizations I can think of if the RIAA and MPAA proposed standards of content scrutiny were applied to the USPS. Most folks expect their snail mail to be private. By establishing a legal precedent making the same standards that apply to 'Net communications carriers apply to the USPS, Jane Average is likely to take note and start voting certain fascist assholes out of office. Most Americans abhor Big Brother, but they need to know he is lurking behind the scenes.
Make the USPS liable for any snail-mailed photocopies of copyrighted material or kiddie porn or other "thought crime" it transports and it would be belly up very quickly...not that I'd mind that outcome.
Regards,
FractalZone
P.S. Dear Santa, for Xmas, I would like my kharma rating restored to its high point of "Excellent".
Visa and Mastercard don't try to stop all credit card fraud. They look to reduce it to manageable levels. If a solution is going to cost more to implement then it's going to save then they probably aren't going to run with it. If it's going to cost them more in customer goodwill then it gains them in fraud prevention they probably aren't going to run with it.
You've hit on a very fundamental relationship in finance, risk is very related to reward. A bank than only makes loans to zero-risk customers is going to miss a lot of profitable opportunities. A bank that makes too many risky loans is going to lose it's proverbial shirt. A business must balance its risks so as to maximize its profits.
Any ISP, including the one I use now which is being bought out by Comcast is going to lose my business if it meddles too much in my 'Net activity. I rarely upload much, but when I do, it is usually a one-shot multi-GB file transfer to a client. I have a residential account, but I need to eat, starving grad student that I am at the moment. In a perfect world, ISP would be content unaware -- they'd just move the bits from here to there without question or scrutiny, except in cases where the send has been convicted of a felony related to the 'Net. I've DL'ed some music -- all of which I already paid for on vinyl or disc, just because my collection was in storage 800 miles away. The way I see it, I have a right to listen to that music, however I obtain it at the moment. (This is coming from a guy who has purchased Pink Floyd's DSOTM album in four different physical copies over the years -- regular and Mobile Fidelity copies on vinyl and CD. I've also downloaded the MF version to my computer since my physical copy was out of reach at the time. Go figure.)
Almost anything in the digital domain, and most info is these days, can be copied easily which means it can be pirated easily, too. The MPAA and RIAA ought to wise up to that fact, lest people start getting really serious about bypassing their pathetic efforts and just demand that legislators change the copyright laws.
The cost of stopping all music/video/literature piracy is definitely going to be fatal for vendors who go to extremes to prevent such activity, since a lot of regular customers do what is considered "piracy" now and then. In the long run, the customer is always right.
I like using premium CAT5 cables for my internet data, I find they make porn a bit more 'fappable'.
Well, *I* settle for nothing less than plenum grade CAT6 cables for my Internet data, including pr0n, "shared" music and movies, etc. CAT5 is so last century! When I get some serious money, I'm going all fiber optic with my data connections.
I predict the sudden rise of on-screen keypads, operated via the mouse.
/. readers are savvy enough to know that what I describe can be done at the price I mentioned or perhaps a lot less in developing nations with thriving black markets for anything the government doesn't want its oh-so-content citizens to have.)
I predict the sudden rise of use of cheap (think OLPC or slightly used) laptops they carry into cyber cafes. Secure USB drives with lots of security software (think password vaults, heavy encryption tools, and lists of servers outside of restrictive zones that will decrypt traffic sent to ordinary sites, snag the responses and encrypt them before passing them back to the user in the cyber cafe. All of the hardware and software I'm thinking of can easily be obtained for under $300(USD) as much of the software is freely available.
The catch is that anonymous secure servers can be easily blocked by fascist governments so that their victims...er, uh...subjects can't access those IPs easily from within the borders of totalitarian nations. But look at what has been happening to Internet traffic in and out of mainland China in recent years. News still gets through.
Sure, the gestapo types in oppressive nations will still have complete access to all of the traffic going in and out of the cyber cafe in this scenario, but the bulk of it will be unreadable gibberish unless they have the right keys but those are stored (encrypted) on the USB drives of people carrying inexpensive laptops with only mundane software installed on them and holding only innocuous data. The stuff meant to be kept away from prying eyes is all on a reasonably locked down memory stick that can be concealed on the user's person. If the software he uses any good, all traces of the private communications that took place over the cafe's subnet will be wiped from the laptop's drives. The software should have a boss (Big Brother?) feature that will quickly perform such a cleaning and secure the memory stick in the event of a raid.
None of the above will thwart a determined bunch of government goons who are targeting a handful of suspects, but unless that government wants to either make using any sort of encryption ware illegal and also frisks a significant number of cafe goers, or prohibits the use of private laptops at public sites, it will certainly be enough for the guy who is having an affair with the local police chief's daughter.
(I'm sure I left out some stuff, but
The real key will be the availability of sufficient numbers of secure servers in more free nations. Those servers will have to have lots of floating IP addresses all over the world, so when a draconian government blocks one known set, another will go into use and the (underground) rumor mill will quickly ensure that things are restored to business as usual.
It would be way cool if large organizations such as MS, Google, Yahoo, etc., that have a lot of normal traffic coming through their IP addresses would also provide secure communication server services via those same IPs. That way, if India or China wants to start blocking IPs, it also effectively cuts off the access to the important Internet sites and services that its own government officials and major business people have come to rely upon. Given that MS, Google, Yahoo, etc. are very busy trying to make piles of money in nations such as India and China, I don't expect that to happen.
[Can you tell I'm killing time while doing laundry?]
One final thought: governments ultimately exist to serve themselves, most sooner rather than later.
Capitalism puts the smack down on the hippy dippy Apple company once again!
Pity the poor iPhonies! They're stuck with 2-year service contracts with AT&T (a fate worse than death) and their silly little overpriced, defective-by-design iPhones. That just gives me the warm fuzzies! Heheheh.
Do they really need to spend thousands of dollars analyzing data to determine there's more crime around check-cashing stores on paydays?
Exactly. Apparently they aren't bright enough to follow the money without computer guidance, even when it is actual cash used in predictably occuring/recuring transactions right in front of their noses. But then again, there's little profit motive for the police themselves to stake out check cashing shops on paydays. That doesn't line their own coffers nearly as much as making gestapo-style drug raids that net them cash, cars, homes, and boats via asset forfeiture and seizure. Nor does it provide a steady cash flow like a bunch of speed traps that nick motorists a few hundred bucks for trivial violations of absurdly low speed limits.
No, I'm waiting to find out how the police are really utilizing data mining technology to skin an extra few bucks off of their vict^H^H^H^Hemployers, the ordinary taxpaying citizens.
The city is looking to replace its ubiquitous but mostly annoying beach tags -- which indicate you paid to get on the beach $5 per day, $10 for a week, or $20 for the whole summer -- with wristbands that contain an RFID chip. Yet another cool feature of the high-tech beach will be the ability to track beachgoers -- an application that is being touted by parents.
Pardon me for asking, but why are beach tags or RFIDs necessary in the first place? Is the beach in question not a public one? If so, why does anyone need to pay to visit it? Next thing ya know, New Jersey will be implementing a tax on the air people breath and an admission tax to anyone crazy enough to want to enter the state!
What the people of New Jersey should do is impose a stupidity tax on New Jersey legislators...
better for less... no different for less or less for less yes. It's an important distinction to make as Apple's hardware is less expensive when compared equally
Nah...you always pay too much for that stupid Apple logo. Apple does make some nifty hardware, but you can almost always get better from other reputable manufacurers for less. And they don't tend to be as anal about the proprietary nature of their wares. Look at all those poor iPodiots and iPhonies who paid too much for lame but oh-so-trendy hardware, when the competition delivers moreand better for less $$$.
Says the guy who can't even spell Democratic Party properly.
There is very little democratic about the Democrat Party. Historically, the Democrats backed slavery and the Republicans fought against it. I didn't spell it "Democrap", but I should have...the party is filled with shitheads such as Hillary, Obama, Pelosi, etc.
Grow up. Stop with the spelling flames until you can do them right. You might even become something clever and useful like a Libertarian!
they may be selling 15%, but they don't have the huge market share. It's not strange: Think about all the legacy machines out on the net
Hey, I grok legacy machines. I rarely pitch or sell my old computers (when I do, it is usually almost a gift to a friend who desperately needs one and can't afford to buy it new -- my friends understand that my hand-me-down systems are usually a lot better than the crap sold at Best Buy and will be secure from the moment they take possession). I have actually had as many as 13 reasonably modern Wintel/Linux boxes on my home network -- I had to move some of them from the bedroom I used as my office into another bedroom I used as a library, workroom, and reloading room because that many computers running in one room overheated it in spite of a very good air conditioning system I had in that house. I'm down to only three comps right now but am planning to build a fourth RSN. It will run Unbuntu Linux and WinXP and maybe Solaris.
I were smart, I'd buy a rack and build a rack mountable system. The problem is that I'd be sorely tempted to completely fill it with computer gear. Old systems are nice because one doesn't get so worried about experimenting with them. When I want to try out a new OS or do a little hardware hacking, having a legacy system to tinker with is very convenient and doesn't put my current (read: critical) data at risk.
I wouldn't mind having an Apple laptop, if someone sold it to me cheap. The only Apple computer I've ever possesed was a Lisa (the machine that was the predecessor to the Mac). I got that because the Entre computer store that gave it to me on long term load didn't know what the fuck to do with it. I got a pre-release IBM AT with a plexiglass cover that way, too -- they wanted to have an expert to call when customers started asking about IBM ATs. There deal with me was that I got first dibs on any new toys I fancied in return for helping their tech department with tough questions and repairs. Those were good days!
With Apple selling 15% of new laptops this year, it is slightly surprising that they only have a 6-7% market share.
Maybe the folks who are buying the Apple laptops are installing Windows or Linux. I understand that now that Apple is using Intel chips, Apple laptops make nice (if overpriced) Wintel systems. I still don't see the point, as one can get better laptops for less money from a variety of vendors.
I'll take stupid over evil any day.
You seem to have selected both -- and maybe ignorant, too.