Just because you put 500M of source on-line doesn't mean anybody will bother downloading it.
Furthermore, the site doesn't have to be a free-for-all: you can have people sign up an charge a few bucks for the download; except for setting it up once, there is no additional work for you.
Or, it is like the appendix, or some othe holdover.
That's possible, but seems less likely. Getting rid of the appendix in evolution is difficult, since it probably requires changing the coordinated activity of many genes. Getting rid of a single protein is simple: you get rid of the gene or just alter it slightly.
Furthermore, it's not clear that the human appendix is entirely without function; it may contribute to immune system function, at least early in life. (And, of course, it has a major function, in that it provides for the livelihood of a lot of surgeons.)
Called aP2, the protein has no useful function in the body. It only appears during the course of disease, and seems to cause adverse effects on blood sugar levels and fatty acid metabolism.
Proteins without useful functions tend not to stay around in populations. Chances are that this protein is important for something. Good candidates are fighting off various parasitic infections, or dealing with some kind of physiological stresses. Those conditions may not arise much in Western lifestyles, and hence getting rid of aP2 may be a good idea for us, but the protein almost certainly has some kind of useful function under some conditions.
What should Skype have patented? The company didn't invent anything, they just took existing technology and built a successful business around it. It took billions of dollars to develop the technologies that have made Skype successful, and Skype didn't pay a dime for those technologies.
If there is anything to complain about at all, it's the fact that Skype's protocols aren't open to begin with and that Skype fails to follow open Internet telephony standards. Skypte is the problem here, not the Chinese.
No, the people who decide the scientific curriculum should be scientists and science teachers. They, not popular opinion, define what is the truth in science.
That's how it works in most states: the public gives power to elected representatives, who give power to scientific experts, who then design the school curriculum. So, scientists are, in most cases, designing the curriculum.
But it's ultimately still the public's choice how to design science curricula or whether to teach science at all or how to choose scientific experts. A state may simply decide to cut all funding for science education, or they may define religious nuts to be the most qualified scientists. Or we, as a people, might even repeal the separation of church and state at the federal level.
The point is, there is no magic shield you or anybody else has against your fellow citizens. If they want to be unscientific or do anything else silly, it's not sufficient merely to be right, you have to convince them of that. World history is littered with democracies that disappeared because their citizens simply decided collectively that theocracy, monarchy, or anarchy were better choices, and the fact that they were obviously wrong and caused millions of deaths didn't make any difference.
This was already debated in federal court and found to be unconstitutional. And that's the way it should be.
What that ruling is about is that a particular schoolboard strayed outside the bounds of federal law in defining a particular curriculum. The court (correctly) struck that down. The school board may well be able to come up with another way of getting "intelligent design" into the curriculum. I think they're being stupid teaching their kids that stuff, but that's their choice.
Nevertheless, the ruling doesn't invalidate the principle that I stated: the curriculum for K-12 is determined by democratic institutions in the states, not by individual parents, teachers, or anybody else. You don't get to choose what your children learn in K-12 public schools, and that's a good thing.
but you are 110% correct. I am a high school history teacher and am thoroughly disgusted with the treatment history gets in our textbooks.
The posting you're responding to is a cynical slur at homosexuals and people of Arab descent, and you're using that to express your disgust with the "treatment of history [...] in our textbooks"? I hope you were simply confused about the posting you responded to, because otherwise you have no business teaching kids.
just think about those places where "intelligent design" has been adopted into the cuuriculum. Many want that no more than others want Heather has two mommies but it is exactly the same prinicple
Well, if the democratic process in a state leads to the adoption of "intelligent design" into the curriculum, then that's the way it should be. I'd rather have that sort of thing being debated in public at the state level, than to let every K-12 teacher make up their own curriculum.
wrote a great piece a while ago titled: PC textbooks full of skewed history [latimes.com] which details the way California (where I teach) purposefully uses history for every reason other than to teach about the past.
As a society, we need standards for public education at the K-12 level to ensure that there is some social cohesion and understanding. If the standards we have are bad (and the California standards may be bad), then the standards need to be changed through the democratic process; abolishing them is not the answer.
No, your problem is that you don't like the current standards, you know that it's politically hard to change them, so you take the easy way out and say that they should be abolished altogether.
Social skills: pretend that it's ok that Timmy has 2 daddies.
There's nothing to "pretend"; that's the family Timmy has got. Even if you disapprove of homosexuality, that's certainly nothing you should hold against Timmy.
No, "social skills" is to pretend that you didn't say what you just said should you have the bad taste to display your lack of decency and propriety in an actual social setting.
Respect for others: If Ahmal's father chooses to blow up a building full of innocent children, we have to respect that as his own personal life choice.
You evidently missed out on some of the important lessons of K-8, so let me spell it out for you: you are not supposed to respect the choice of people who blow up buildings with innocent children, no matter whether they are part of a terrorist organization or of some military.
I recommend you try to get some remedial education; the K-8 lessons you obviously missed are important, and you will never grow up to be a decent human being if you don't learn them.
Yes, precisely, you didn't say that. And that's the problem. I identified three areas where things have gone wrong, and you just ignored those and persisted in claiming that because I identified those three areas, that somehow supports your point that spending large amounts of money in another areas would be a good thing.
Let me say it again: the administration was rightfully criticized for their efforts before 9/11 because they did lousy intelligence work and had lousy policies on airport security (the latter is a valid criticism for previous administrations as well). Spending money on "missile shields" for airports fails to address that criticism. Just because you or the administration state that there is a linkage doesn't make it so.
Didn't say this system would be a solution to terrorism, just that it'd make our airports safer.
Quite right: you didn't say that it would be a solution to terrorism. The problem is that you fail to understand (even though I spelled it out for you) that "making the airports safer" is simply not a useful public policy goal by itself. Society has no specific interest in making airports safer, it has an interest in reducing the number of terrorist related deaths, either in air travel or in society as a whole. Neither you nor the administration have provided any evidence that this system does that.
Again, you are arguing now just for the sake of being contrary. I have logically answered all your points, and you have not bothered to find a logical counter-point to anything I said. Do us all a favor and find another topic to rant about.
I'm sorry you are incapable of participating in a normal discussion. You see, you don't get to define the content of the argument all by yourself. When someone else says "you can protect the assets, but it won't help protect Americans from terrorism", then that's the counterargument you have to respond to, not the argument you originally chose to make.
Of course, since your ability to read seems to be somewhat limited in the first place (see your non-sensical "Osprey" response), it's not difficult to see why you would have trouble with the finer points of an argument.
You can rail against Bush all you want - this system, or one like it to do the same thing, will likely get installed in at least the more vulnerable airports in the US, and likely in other countries as well. That is what this topic is about anyway.
Unless we vote people like Bush out of office. And people like you are hell-bent on voting for politicians that waste taxpayer money, that wreck the economy, and that advocate ineffective and harmful "quick fix" solutions to long-standing problems like terrorism and air travel safety and security. But since we live in a democracy, one has to try to convince even people like you.
You illustrate the point made in my sig very well...
Government and the general public education system (arguably = Government at this point) are arguably the slowest and least likely to "keep up" with changes in society and technology.
NASA is having funding problems; they can't afford to "keep up" with changes in society and technology, they can barely keep their core projects running.
How do these things happen? The archivist responsible for the recordings probably retired years ago and wasn't replaced due to funding cuts. At some point, someone probably needed more space, there was a room full of old dusty tapes, nobody knew that those old tapes were the originals, and they got thrown out. It's as simple as that, and the only people at fault are the politicians that promise to reduce the size of government and the people who voted for them.
Ok, seriously, how can you lose ~99% of the data from something that is such a HUGE part of history?
Simple: instead of employing archivists, librarians, and imaging experts, the government has been cutting budgets and spending money on sending soldiers to Iraq instead. In different words, if people vote for presidents that promise to reduce "the size of government" and increase the size of the military, that's what they mean. The American public got what the majority voted for.
What they want to do is have a hidden (from the consumer) revenue increase without raising consumer prices.
But they already do that: corporate customers pay completely different rates from home users, and home users are generally not permitted to host commercial sites or services.
Isn't one of the fundamental principals of capitalism that the strongest companies will survive?
We don't want "strong" companies to survive, we want efficient companies to survive. Free, capitalist economies go a long way towards that, but the government still has to make sure that companies don't cheat. Without government oversight, you're going to end up with a small number of inefficient monopolies, plus lots of fraud; definitely not efficient (or strong).
"The government "got pilloried" on 9/11 for the specific and avoidable ways in which they screwed up: lousy intelligence work, lousy police work, lousy in-flight security, lousy border security." I think that is just what I said - for not doing enough to protect us ahead of time. The details you mention just illustrate my point.
How does buying a high-tech boondoggle improve intelligence work, police work, or in-flight security?
This system is NOT a high tech boondoggle - it is based upon proven technology, and smarter heads than yours or mine have access to better info than we do to determine whether this is needed for US deployment.
It doesn't matter how "proven" the technology works; even if the system shoots down missiles with 100% accuracy, it's still 0% effective against terrorism. Unlike combat situations, terrorists have a nearly unlimited number of options of killing and terrorizing populations; you simply cannot prevent terrorism by protecting asset after asset.
The only feasible solution to terrorism is politicial; force and high-tech gadgets will not work.
And the decision will be made at a pay grade higher than yours or mine - unless your name is George W. Bush! (or whomever his successor may be)
The decision will be made by all of us at the ballot box, and if you're smart, you join me in voting people like Bush out of office, people who waste our hard-earned money on boondoggles and pork for their buddies in industry.
The proponents of "changing ourselves" to attract less hostility are implicit (and often explicit -- like yourself) about the hostility being our fault.
You can keep trying to misuse this issue as a device to score rhetorical points and insult others, but the fact remains that behaving in ways that reduce risks is an important part of prevention of every form of crime. Women and rape are no different in that regard than other groups and other crimes. And the kind of behavioral changes women have to make to reduce the risk of getting raped pale in comparison to the profound behavioral changes other groups have to make to reduce the risk of getting killed.
The marginal extra cost of worrying about the additional hostility caused by our doing the wrong things is, uhh, non-existent or very small.
Quite to the contrary: a large part of anti-US terrorism is attributable to bad and often indefensible US foreign policies: support of undemocratic regimes, support of fundamentalist groups, overthrow of foreign governments when it is convenient for US corporations, large and lucrative weapons exports, military training of foreign personnel, development and use of torture methods, ineffective military campaigns, etc. And military and political analysts predicted decades ago that those kinds of policies would have the consequences in terms of terrorism that we're experiencing.
If there is a way to disable the enemy's (military or rapist's) missile on approach, it should be widely deployed and used -- there are no "buts" about it.
There is no such way. The notion that you can protect a country like the US from terrorist attacks with military intervention or gadgets is a pipe dream. The US can't even finance policing Iraq, let alone worldwide anti-terrorism efforts.
The concept of appeasing the enemy is thus defeated on both -- the moral and the practical -- sides. Again.
In the face of widespread political oppression and poverty around the world, your sense of morality is little more than a self-serving sense of entitlement.
But be that as it may, from a purely practical point of view, you aren't going to keep the rest of the world at bay with military might or gadgets. There are billions of people around the world with nothing to lose, and unless you give them a stake in the economic game, they're going to keep coming at us.
But the point is that, if, as you argue, we "just stop flying", our economy would tank in a week! "We could lose a commercial airliner to a missile every month and flying would still be safer than driving a car." Yeah, because nobody would be flying! So we need something that will make the masses of air travelers feel that there is a system in place that will safeguard them, so they will keep flying.
Get real! There has never been a missile-based attack against a US airliner on US soil. To my knowledge, there hasn't even been one in Israel. This just isn't a real-world problem. And if it were, chances are that investing the money in better police work and perimeter security would be a whole lot more effective than these high tech gadgets.
"Demanding perfect safety is irrational" is just the argument used against you just a couple of posts back.
Indeed. Trouble is: that poster was using it in the wrong context. He was basically saying that we should deploy this system because even if it isn't 100% effective, it is still useful, and that argument is just nonsense.
But the point is that, if, as you argue, we "just stop flying", our economy would tank in a week!
If people actually stopped flying cold within a week, it would, simply because there are no alternatives right now. But people wouldn't do that even if there were on-going terrorist attacks. In the long term, there is just no question: if current commercial air travel is inherently too prone to terrorist attacks, we need to stop flying and let the market find other solutions. Big economies can function quite well without air travel.
This argument is ironic - most of the time, the government gets pilloried because, like with 9/11, it didn't do enough to protect us ahead of time.
The government "got pilloried" on 9/11 for the specific and avoidable ways in which they screwed up: lousy intelligence work, lousy police work, lousy in-flight security, lousy border security.
To my knowledge, nobody criticized them for failing to waste billions of dollars on high-tech boondoggles.
True, but does that mean you shouldn't try to defend against such threats?
You should only defend against threats if the defense makes sense in a cost/benefit analysis: how many lives to you expect to save for every million you spend.
Say that again after the first airliner is shot down by a MANPAD.
Demanding perfect safety is irrational. We could lose a commercial airliner to a missile every month and flying would still be safer than driving a car. People need to stop acting like headless chicken.
A deeper problem is that the tax payer is supposed to foot the bill for all of this: taxes already subsidize airports, fuel, airline bailouts, airport safety, and now airport missile defense systems? Where is it going to end? I say: leave it all to the free market. Airlines and airports can figure out the right tradeoff between safety, security, ticket prices, and passenger willingness to fly. If flying safely enough becomes too expensive, we should all just stop flying.
It would be cheaper and easier if women stopped wearing mini-skirts and other suggestive clothing so that they'd arouse less people and make less rapists.
It does not work.
Of course, it does: behavioral changes on the part of women are an important part of real-world rape prevention programs. They don't affect responsibility or culpability, but they certainly affect risk (you seem to be mixing up the two concepts).
There are plenty of rapes in the parts of the world, where women must cover themselves completely.
I suggest you look at actual numbers, rather than making assertions based on what fits your political preconceptions.
Similarly, there are terror attacks (successful and foiled), against countries, whose foreign policies bully no one -- like Canada or India.
Both India and Israel's terror problems both involve moving borders that ended up creating conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim populations. When Canada is the target of terrorism, it's likely because of their association with the US.
The US, however, does have a significant capacity to influence the level of terrorism against it through its foreign policy. And while there are some instances where the US has made enemies because the US did the right thing, there are also many instances where the US has made enemies and attracted terrorism because the US did the wrong thing, like training and supporting religious fundamentalists, and supporting undemocratic regimes. By avoiding doing the wrong things in our foreign policy, we can probably reduce terrorism against the US far more effectively than with any kind of military campaign of missile shield. In fact, so far, the administration has failed to demonstrate that its efforts since 9/11 have yielded any reductions in terrorist threats.
Of course. Because you CAN please all of the people all of the time.
Well, I don't know about Israel--they're in a tough situation. But the terrorism against the US that we have been experiencing is clearly "blowback"--the result of decades of serious, pointless, and largely avoidable US foreign policy mistakes.
Think about it: if you could shoot stuff down with.223, why even issue MANPADs?
For defense, you need to be able to shoot planes down reliably. For terror, even a rare hit would be sufficient.
you would have about 22 seconds to make all eight shots in the best conditions
Why would a terrorist need more than a single hit? It seems to me that there are lots of vital structures on an airplane that, when hit by a single bullet, could cause serious problems.
Why be afraid? The world is dangerous, but fear of someone shooting down a jet with a pop-gun doesn't help anybody.
Neither do illusions that an overpriced ray-gun is going to make air traffic safer.
certainly have the ability to better protect our airports.
From what? A threat that has (almost?) never been realized in the real world? And even if this were a real threat, the expected number of deaths per year from it is negligible to other, far more inexpensively preventable causes of death.
Microsoft may honestly deliver a reasonable ODF converter, or they may create a sham project in an attempt to get the item on their checklist without actually delivering anything usable.
Whichever it is, it doesn't really matter. Microsoft Office will have good support for reading/writing ODF, if not from Microsoft, then from third parties.
Whether Microsoft's converter works and is usable will tell us something about where Microsoft is heading; but for figuring that out, we'll have to wait until the converter and the new version of MS Office are actually out.
Your cynicism is typical of right-wing whiners: your kind can't look at a scientific result without either misusing it for political purposes or accusing/suspecting other people of doing so. A genetic basis for novelty seeking is just a scientific fact, and not even a surprising or new one. Deal with it.
In fact, most of our behaviors will likely turn out to have a genetic basis. A genetic basis or predisposition doesn't say anything a priori about the personal responsibility to act in certain ways.
And, yes, that includes right wing nuttiness, perpetual cynics, and religious fundamentalism: people are probably genetically predisposed to those behaviors, but that's no excuse for you or anyone else to wallow in those behaviors. You, too, can overcome them if you just try.
Do you have any data to back up your claim that the Windows JVM is faster than the Linux JVM?
Just my own experience. Note that they are probably about equal on microbenchmarks; it's the OS interfaces that usually kill Java on Linux, things like threading, graphics, and networking.
Conspiracy theories aside, I don't envision Sun deliberately helping Microsoft.
In Sun's twisted logic, providing good Java support on Windows and lousy Java support on Linux makes sense: they want to move large number of Windows developers to Java, but for Linux developers, their attitudes seem to range from "they don't have any alternatives anyway" to "they don't matter". And make no mistake about it, to Sun, Linux is a far greater threat than Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
[Slashdot] is my sanctuary from the rest of the internet.
You poor, poor man.
Just because you put 500M of source on-line doesn't mean anybody will bother downloading it.
Furthermore, the site doesn't have to be a free-for-all: you can have people sign up an charge a few bucks for the download; except for setting it up once, there is no additional work for you.
Or, it is like the appendix, or some othe holdover.
That's possible, but seems less likely. Getting rid of the appendix in evolution is difficult, since it probably requires changing the coordinated activity of many genes. Getting rid of a single protein is simple: you get rid of the gene or just alter it slightly.
Furthermore, it's not clear that the human appendix is entirely without function; it may contribute to immune system function, at least early in life. (And, of course, it has a major function, in that it provides for the livelihood of a lot of surgeons.)
Called aP2, the protein has no useful function in the body. It only appears during the course of disease, and seems to cause adverse effects on blood sugar levels and fatty acid metabolism.
Proteins without useful functions tend not to stay around in populations. Chances are that this protein is important for something. Good candidates are fighting off various parasitic infections, or dealing with some kind of physiological stresses. Those conditions may not arise much in Western lifestyles, and hence getting rid of aP2 may be a good idea for us, but the protein almost certainly has some kind of useful function under some conditions.
What should Skype have patented? The company didn't invent anything, they just took existing technology and built a successful business around it. It took billions of dollars to develop the technologies that have made Skype successful, and Skype didn't pay a dime for those technologies.
If there is anything to complain about at all, it's the fact that Skype's protocols aren't open to begin with and that Skype fails to follow open Internet telephony standards. Skypte is the problem here, not the Chinese.
No, the people who decide the scientific curriculum should be scientists and science teachers. They, not popular opinion, define what is the truth in science.
That's how it works in most states: the public gives power to elected representatives, who give power to scientific experts, who then design the school curriculum. So, scientists are, in most cases, designing the curriculum.
But it's ultimately still the public's choice how to design science curricula or whether to teach science at all or how to choose scientific experts. A state may simply decide to cut all funding for science education, or they may define religious nuts to be the most qualified scientists. Or we, as a people, might even repeal the separation of church and state at the federal level.
The point is, there is no magic shield you or anybody else has against your fellow citizens. If they want to be unscientific or do anything else silly, it's not sufficient merely to be right, you have to convince them of that. World history is littered with democracies that disappeared because their citizens simply decided collectively that theocracy, monarchy, or anarchy were better choices, and the fact that they were obviously wrong and caused millions of deaths didn't make any difference.
This was already debated in federal court and found to be unconstitutional. And that's the way it should be.
What that ruling is about is that a particular schoolboard strayed outside the bounds of federal law in defining a particular curriculum. The court (correctly) struck that down. The school board may well be able to come up with another way of getting "intelligent design" into the curriculum. I think they're being stupid teaching their kids that stuff, but that's their choice.
Nevertheless, the ruling doesn't invalidate the principle that I stated: the curriculum for K-12 is determined by democratic institutions in the states, not by individual parents, teachers, or anybody else. You don't get to choose what your children learn in K-12 public schools, and that's a good thing.
but you are 110% correct. I am a high school history teacher and am thoroughly disgusted with the treatment history gets in our textbooks.
The posting you're responding to is a cynical slur at homosexuals and people of Arab descent, and you're using that to express your disgust with the "treatment of history [...] in our textbooks"? I hope you were simply confused about the posting you responded to, because otherwise you have no business teaching kids.
just think about those places where "intelligent design" has been adopted into the cuuriculum. Many want that no more than others want Heather has two mommies but it is exactly the same prinicple
Well, if the democratic process in a state leads to the adoption of "intelligent design" into the curriculum, then that's the way it should be. I'd rather have that sort of thing being debated in public at the state level, than to let every K-12 teacher make up their own curriculum.
wrote a great piece a while ago titled: PC textbooks full of skewed history [latimes.com] which details the way California (where I teach) purposefully uses history for every reason other than to teach about the past.
As a society, we need standards for public education at the K-12 level to ensure that there is some social cohesion and understanding. If the standards we have are bad (and the California standards may be bad), then the standards need to be changed through the democratic process; abolishing them is not the answer.
No, your problem is that you don't like the current standards, you know that it's politically hard to change them, so you take the easy way out and say that they should be abolished altogether.
Social skills: pretend that it's ok that Timmy has 2 daddies.
There's nothing to "pretend"; that's the family Timmy has got. Even if you disapprove of homosexuality, that's certainly nothing you should hold against Timmy.
No, "social skills" is to pretend that you didn't say what you just said should you have the bad taste to display your lack of decency and propriety in an actual social setting.
Respect for others: If Ahmal's father chooses to blow up a building full of innocent children, we have to respect that as his own personal life choice.
You evidently missed out on some of the important lessons of K-8, so let me spell it out for you: you are not supposed to respect the choice of people who blow up buildings with innocent children, no matter whether they are part of a terrorist organization or of some military.
I recommend you try to get some remedial education; the K-8 lessons you obviously missed are important, and you will never grow up to be a decent human being if you don't learn them.
Didn't say it did, now did I?
Yes, precisely, you didn't say that. And that's the problem. I identified three areas where things have gone wrong, and you just ignored those and persisted in claiming that because I identified those three areas, that somehow supports your point that spending large amounts of money in another areas would be a good thing.
Let me say it again: the administration was rightfully criticized for their efforts before 9/11 because they did lousy intelligence work and had lousy policies on airport security (the latter is a valid criticism for previous administrations as well). Spending money on "missile shields" for airports fails to address that criticism. Just because you or the administration state that there is a linkage doesn't make it so.
Didn't say this system would be a solution to terrorism, just that it'd make our airports safer.
Quite right: you didn't say that it would be a solution to terrorism. The problem is that you fail to understand (even though I spelled it out for you) that "making the airports safer" is simply not a useful public policy goal by itself. Society has no specific interest in making airports safer, it has an interest in reducing the number of terrorist related deaths, either in air travel or in society as a whole. Neither you nor the administration have provided any evidence that this system does that.
Again, you are arguing now just for the sake of being contrary. I have logically answered all your points, and you have not bothered to find a logical counter-point to anything I said. Do us all a favor and find another topic to rant about.
I'm sorry you are incapable of participating in a normal discussion. You see, you don't get to define the content of the argument all by yourself. When someone else says "you can protect the assets, but it won't help protect Americans from terrorism", then that's the counterargument you have to respond to, not the argument you originally chose to make.
Of course, since your ability to read seems to be somewhat limited in the first place (see your non-sensical "Osprey" response), it's not difficult to see why you would have trouble with the finer points of an argument.
You can rail against Bush all you want - this system, or one like it to do the same thing, will likely get installed in at least the more vulnerable airports in the US, and likely in other countries as well. That is what this topic is about anyway.
Unless we vote people like Bush out of office. And people like you are hell-bent on voting for politicians that waste taxpayer money, that wreck the economy, and that advocate ineffective and harmful "quick fix" solutions to long-standing problems like terrorism and air travel safety and security. But since we live in a democracy, one has to try to convince even people like you.
You illustrate the point made in my sig very well...
Yes, with you being the pig.
Government and the general public education system (arguably = Government at this point) are arguably the slowest and least likely to "keep up" with changes in society and technology.
NASA is having funding problems; they can't afford to "keep up" with changes in society and technology, they can barely keep their core projects running.
How do these things happen? The archivist responsible for the recordings probably retired years ago and wasn't replaced due to funding cuts. At some point, someone probably needed more space, there was a room full of old dusty tapes, nobody knew that those old tapes were the originals, and they got thrown out. It's as simple as that, and the only people at fault are the politicians that promise to reduce the size of government and the people who voted for them.
Ok, seriously, how can you lose ~99% of the data from something that is such a HUGE part of history?
Simple: instead of employing archivists, librarians, and imaging experts, the government has been cutting budgets and spending money on sending soldiers to Iraq instead. In different words, if people vote for presidents that promise to reduce "the size of government" and increase the size of the military, that's what they mean. The American public got what the majority voted for.
What they want to do is have a hidden (from the consumer) revenue increase without raising consumer prices.
But they already do that: corporate customers pay completely different rates from home users, and home users are generally not permitted to host commercial sites or services.
Isn't one of the fundamental principals of capitalism that the strongest companies will survive?
We don't want "strong" companies to survive, we want efficient companies to survive. Free, capitalist economies go a long way towards that, but the government still has to make sure that companies don't cheat. Without government oversight, you're going to end up with a small number of inefficient monopolies, plus lots of fraud; definitely not efficient (or strong).
"The government "got pilloried" on 9/11 for the specific and avoidable ways in which they screwed up: lousy intelligence work, lousy police work, lousy in-flight security, lousy border security." I think that is just what I said - for not doing enough to protect us ahead of time. The details you mention just illustrate my point.
How does buying a high-tech boondoggle improve intelligence work, police work, or in-flight security?
This system is NOT a high tech boondoggle - it is based upon proven technology, and smarter heads than yours or mine have access to better info than we do to determine whether this is needed for US deployment.
It doesn't matter how "proven" the technology works; even if the system shoots down missiles with 100% accuracy, it's still 0% effective against terrorism. Unlike combat situations, terrorists have a nearly unlimited number of options of killing and terrorizing populations; you simply cannot prevent terrorism by protecting asset after asset.
The only feasible solution to terrorism is politicial; force and high-tech gadgets will not work.
And the decision will be made at a pay grade higher than yours or mine - unless your name is George W. Bush! (or whomever his successor may be)
The decision will be made by all of us at the ballot box, and if you're smart, you join me in voting people like Bush out of office, people who waste our hard-earned money on boondoggles and pork for their buddies in industry.
The proponents of "changing ourselves" to attract less hostility are implicit (and often explicit -- like yourself) about the hostility being our fault.
You can keep trying to misuse this issue as a device to score rhetorical points and insult others, but the fact remains that behaving in ways that reduce risks is an important part of prevention of every form of crime. Women and rape are no different in that regard than other groups and other crimes. And the kind of behavioral changes women have to make to reduce the risk of getting raped pale in comparison to the profound behavioral changes other groups have to make to reduce the risk of getting killed.
The marginal extra cost of worrying about the additional hostility caused by our doing the wrong things is, uhh, non-existent or very small.
Quite to the contrary: a large part of anti-US terrorism is attributable to bad and often indefensible US foreign policies: support of undemocratic regimes, support of fundamentalist groups, overthrow of foreign governments when it is convenient for US corporations, large and lucrative weapons exports, military training of foreign personnel, development and use of torture methods, ineffective military campaigns, etc. And military and political analysts predicted decades ago that those kinds of policies would have the consequences in terms of terrorism that we're experiencing.
If there is a way to disable the enemy's (military or rapist's) missile on approach, it should be widely deployed and used -- there are no "buts" about it.
There is no such way. The notion that you can protect a country like the US from terrorist attacks with military intervention or gadgets is a pipe dream. The US can't even finance policing Iraq, let alone worldwide anti-terrorism efforts.
The concept of appeasing the enemy is thus defeated on both -- the moral and the practical -- sides. Again.
In the face of widespread political oppression and poverty around the world, your sense of morality is little more than a self-serving sense of entitlement.
But be that as it may, from a purely practical point of view, you aren't going to keep the rest of the world at bay with military might or gadgets. There are billions of people around the world with nothing to lose, and unless you give them a stake in the economic game, they're going to keep coming at us.
But the point is that, if, as you argue, we "just stop flying", our economy would tank in a week! "We could lose a commercial airliner to a missile every month and flying would still be safer than driving a car." Yeah, because nobody would be flying! So we need something that will make the masses of air travelers feel that there is a system in place that will safeguard them, so they will keep flying.
Get real! There has never been a missile-based attack against a US airliner on US soil. To my knowledge, there hasn't even been one in Israel. This just isn't a real-world problem. And if it were, chances are that investing the money in better police work and perimeter security would be a whole lot more effective than these high tech gadgets.
"Demanding perfect safety is irrational" is just the argument used against you just a couple of posts back.
Indeed. Trouble is: that poster was using it in the wrong context. He was basically saying that we should deploy this system because even if it isn't 100% effective, it is still useful, and that argument is just nonsense.
But the point is that, if, as you argue, we "just stop flying", our economy would tank in a week!
If people actually stopped flying cold within a week, it would, simply because there are no alternatives right now. But people wouldn't do that even if there were on-going terrorist attacks. In the long term, there is just no question: if current commercial air travel is inherently too prone to terrorist attacks, we need to stop flying and let the market find other solutions. Big economies can function quite well without air travel.
This argument is ironic - most of the time, the government gets pilloried because, like with 9/11, it didn't do enough to protect us ahead of time.
The government "got pilloried" on 9/11 for the specific and avoidable ways in which they screwed up: lousy intelligence work, lousy police work, lousy in-flight security, lousy border security.
To my knowledge, nobody criticized them for failing to waste billions of dollars on high-tech boondoggles.
True, but does that mean you shouldn't try to defend against such threats?
You should only defend against threats if the defense makes sense in a cost/benefit analysis: how many lives to you expect to save for every million you spend.
Say that again after the first airliner is shot down by a MANPAD.
Demanding perfect safety is irrational. We could lose a commercial airliner to a missile every month and flying would still be safer than driving a car. People need to stop acting like headless chicken.
A deeper problem is that the tax payer is supposed to foot the bill for all of this: taxes already subsidize airports, fuel, airline bailouts, airport safety, and now airport missile defense systems? Where is it going to end? I say: leave it all to the free market. Airlines and airports can figure out the right tradeoff between safety, security, ticket prices, and passenger willingness to fly. If flying safely enough becomes too expensive, we should all just stop flying.
It would be cheaper and easier if women stopped wearing mini-skirts and other suggestive clothing so that they'd arouse less people and make less rapists.
It does not work.
Of course, it does: behavioral changes on the part of women are an important part of real-world rape prevention programs. They don't affect responsibility or culpability, but they certainly affect risk (you seem to be mixing up the two concepts).
There are plenty of rapes in the parts of the world, where women must cover themselves completely.
I suggest you look at actual numbers, rather than making assertions based on what fits your political preconceptions.
Similarly, there are terror attacks (successful and foiled), against countries, whose foreign policies bully no one -- like Canada or India.
Both India and Israel's terror problems both involve moving borders that ended up creating conflicts between Muslim and non-Muslim populations. When Canada is the target of terrorism, it's likely because of their association with the US.
The US, however, does have a significant capacity to influence the level of terrorism against it through its foreign policy. And while there are some instances where the US has made enemies because the US did the right thing, there are also many instances where the US has made enemies and attracted terrorism because the US did the wrong thing, like training and supporting religious fundamentalists, and supporting undemocratic regimes. By avoiding doing the wrong things in our foreign policy, we can probably reduce terrorism against the US far more effectively than with any kind of military campaign of missile shield. In fact, so far, the administration has failed to demonstrate that its efforts since 9/11 have yielded any reductions in terrorist threats.
Of course. Because you CAN please all of the people all of the time.
Well, I don't know about Israel--they're in a tough situation. But the terrorism against the US that we have been experiencing is clearly "blowback"--the result of decades of serious, pointless, and largely avoidable US foreign policy mistakes.
Think about it: if you could shoot stuff down with .223, why even issue MANPADs?
For defense, you need to be able to shoot planes down reliably. For terror, even a rare hit would be sufficient.
you would have about 22 seconds to make all eight shots in the best conditions
Why would a terrorist need more than a single hit? It seems to me that there are lots of vital structures on an airplane that, when hit by a single bullet, could cause serious problems.
Why be afraid? The world is dangerous, but fear of someone shooting down a jet with a pop-gun doesn't help anybody.
Neither do illusions that an overpriced ray-gun is going to make air traffic safer.
certainly have the ability to better protect our airports.
From what? A threat that has (almost?) never been realized in the real world? And even if this were a real threat, the expected number of deaths per year from it is negligible to other, far more inexpensively preventable causes of death.
Microsoft may honestly deliver a reasonable ODF converter, or they may create a sham project in an attempt to get the item on their checklist without actually delivering anything usable.
Whichever it is, it doesn't really matter. Microsoft Office will have good support for reading/writing ODF, if not from Microsoft, then from third parties.
Whether Microsoft's converter works and is usable will tell us something about where Microsoft is heading; but for figuring that out, we'll have to wait until the converter and the new version of MS Office are actually out.
Your cynicism is typical of right-wing whiners: your kind can't look at a scientific result without either misusing it for political purposes or accusing/suspecting other people of doing so. A genetic basis for novelty seeking is just a scientific fact, and not even a surprising or new one. Deal with it.
In fact, most of our behaviors will likely turn out to have a genetic basis. A genetic basis or predisposition doesn't say anything a priori about the personal responsibility to act in certain ways.
And, yes, that includes right wing nuttiness, perpetual cynics, and religious fundamentalism: people are probably genetically predisposed to those behaviors, but that's no excuse for you or anyone else to wallow in those behaviors. You, too, can overcome them if you just try.
Do you have any data to back up your claim that the Windows JVM is faster than the Linux JVM?
Just my own experience. Note that they are probably about equal on microbenchmarks; it's the OS interfaces that usually kill Java on Linux, things like threading, graphics, and networking.
Conspiracy theories aside, I don't envision Sun deliberately helping Microsoft.
In Sun's twisted logic, providing good Java support on Windows and lousy Java support on Linux makes sense: they want to move large number of Windows developers to Java, but for Linux developers, their attitudes seem to range from "they don't have any alternatives anyway" to "they don't matter". And make no mistake about it, to Sun, Linux is a far greater threat than Windows.