Posts by Dave Morris

Compartive pricing...

"Aegis ships in a Scottish tin" would likely be vastly more expensive than Aegis ships in a Korean tin. Surely this is obvious to anyone who has ever bought something from Korea and a similar item from Scotland.

There is also the greed factor: given that Bath Iron Works is a corporation interested in making profit, and the UK has a greater capacity to pay than Korea, I'm sure the price negotiated woudl increase sharply.

There is also another thing to consider: the Arleigh Burke class is pretty old already. This means that it is tried and tested and it's flaws have been identified (plus), but that it does not take advantage of the latest possible technology (minus). The Type 45 is the compliment to this: it has not been tried or tested, and its flaws remain a mystery, however when it is complete it should have some of the latest tech available. I suppose it could be possible to try to get in now for the Burke's replacements in 2020: the Zumwalt class. But, this would be astoundingly expensive, I'm sure, would not be delivered for at least 11 years (more likely 15-20), and, of course, is even less tested than the Type 45s.

Perhaps it would be better just to get a mixture, 1 or 2 Aegis destroyers to handle the "now," a couple Type 45s for "tomorrow," and maybe even a request to be able to order some Zumwalts after they are 5 or 10 years old for "the next day."

Thank goodness...

That certain breeds of cattle, pigs, and chicken exist for the sole purpose of eating... I'll stick to that diet

wait, wait, wait

What if you are the security conscious type who changes their passwords regularly? Today's passwords may not be tomorrow's; does security mindedness automatically disqualify you from having a personal (police) or property (fire) security oriented job?

All's good then

No need for the mission to mars then... it is coming here. Now we can spend that money on something cool.. like a mission to Io or Titan, or nuclear powered main battle hover tanks for our extra-planetary wars....

Sound like...

Just the excuse the Chancellor needs to declare martial law, overthrow the office of the president, dissolve parliament, and send out their personal "security forces" to assasinate political opposition!

Oh, wait.. not 1934.. ok

septuaginated

septuaginated is my guess as to the correct spelling, though I'm no latin whiz...

The promise of the Atom

"Meltdowns is a made up fear just like climate change to scare people. In reality, with a modern nuclear reactor, you have a better chance of seeing a flying unicorn than seeing a meltdown."

So you're saying the danger of massive mutation is greater than the danger from meltdown? Perhaps we need to work on contamination containment issues then!

Just kidding... and to the guy who said that proliferation of nuclear power would lead to nuclear wars; please present a sustainable, logical, coherent argument to this effect. I doubt it can be done, since it doesn't actually make any sense. In fact quite the opposite is the case; the more nuclear powers try to withhold safe civilian nuclear power from non-nuclear capable countries, the greater the incentive for those countries to create their own nuclear programs (cf. Iran, N. Korea). And if they are making their own programs, then they may as well skip the more difficult steps of trying to make purely civilian use plants, and instead make themselves fully capable of producing every aspect of nuclear capabilities, ie weapons grade Pu and U in addition to being able to process and reprocess their own fuel, make medical isotopes, and do nuclear research in general.

@Sly, re: 4-10 liters??

10 liters is closer to 2.5 gallons. A liter being slightly larger than a quart. Drinking 10 gallons of coke, however, may be sufficient to make one confuse liters with gallons, I suppose.

@Anonymous Coward Posted Monday 4th May 2009 02:46 GMT

"Just because the British broadcasters were originally responsible for such programs does not mean that all Brits have to like them. Anyone saying "yeah, but you were orignially responsible for this rubbish" needs their head examined. We were not personally responsible, we are not accountable for what crap our media decides to put on."

However, Americans are?

@oddly enough....

I think you'll find, upon research, that US Warrant Officers are not quite how you present them. I don't know much about UK warrant officers, but I get the impression that they are essentially senior NCOs. In the US, however, NCOs are merely a categorization of enlisted personnel; i.e. not officers at all, really, but senior enough that they have some level of authority. However, warrant officers are actually, truly, officers; in fact only the first rank of warrant officer is actually, a true warrant officer; they have a warrant from the Secretary of Defense. The other 4 warrant officer ranks all have a commission. The warrant officer category basically means that they are technical leaders and/or experts, as opposed to the commissioned officer ranks, which are more human resource leaders. Warrant officers have their own pay scale, but it is similar to the commissioned officers pay scale and they get most of the privileges accorded officers.

In the US (as the article states) pilots (except in the USAF) are commonly warrant officers, though the majority are commissioned officers.

Social Networking Improved

Surely the messages from this worm are no less useful than the average twatter to be had. As a bonus these required very little use intervention to create, and thus saved a massive amount of time that would have otherwise been wasted....

Door Not Opening

Perhaps they meant the bay doors to the launch tower. Perhaps this launch tower is a re-purposed missile silo, or purpose built that way in order to defend against difficult weather or the like. I would imagine if the personnel door to the control tower was stuck, they would probably not abort the launch - especially with only 7 seconds until ignition.

Re: Re: @Sean

Sarah, I think your posit is pretty accurate except that you fail to recognize that not only are there "weak" atheists (people who just don't know/care/bother with one or more deities), but there are also "weak" theists. A weak theist would have some sort of internalized belief in some deity or deities, however it would not affect their daily lives. In a sense, this means that if you don't have a religion, the lack thereof must occupy at least as much of your daily life as someone with a religion - ie none of it. A weak theist position can also be a default position, since, in many cases, one hears about some deity or another before one really has the capability to analyze - the act of analysis changes any position from default to non-default. In many cases weak theists and weak atheists are also agnostic: if pressed they would indicate that the existence, or lack thereof, of one or more deities is unprovable.

Strong atheists, like strong theists, are a whole different breed. Though sometimes also agnostic, these are the types that spend some significant portion of their daily lives devoted to their religious (not necessarily shared) belief system. The vocal members of these groups are the ones who call everyone ignorant for their obviously foolish ideas, etc. The less voracious of these (on both sides) can be very good people, but they do, even the atheist side, have a belief system - this is not a "default" position to take.

That being said, as far as I can tell the CoS don't see Xenu as a deity, proper, but rather an alien. If that is the case (and they have no other deities), then, technically, they would be atheists... and strong ones at that.

Defeating ISPs with Encryption

ISPs are indeed in prime position to perform man in the middle attacks on SSL and other kinds of anonymous encryption. However, if we had a key repository system that was standardized and people were allowed to register their personal public keys at convenient locations, with appropriate identification requirements. And corps had their public keys also registered there, then it would be quite difficult for an ISP to act as man in the middle. Assuming, of course, that when you registered your key you got the registry system's public key as well. A somewhat less secure, but still limited-liability method would be to have the registry system's key included in web browsers. Then only the browser companies would be able to man-in-the-middle. You could reduce this risk by simply making it so that the registry system would update your browser's key to said system, after verifying who it thinks it is talking to.

@Sean

Unless, of course the speaker is someone with governmental authority telling a commissioned command officer (Naval Captain) to unleash the dogs of war, which are commonly handled by such officers.

All metaphorically speaking, of course.

RE: Not a search engine

ixquick results (ignoring the clearly marked sponsored links) for "sidereal period of Jupiter" : # wikipedia, #2 www.spirasolaris.ca, #3 nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov

ixquick results (once again ignoring sponsored links) for "php mysql functions": #1 www.php.net #2 www.w3schools.com #3 www.phpdig.net

Those results seem counter to your claim of the results given (even the no whackypedia one....)

The term for thsi type of search engine is "metasearch" engine. I used dogpile for years, until it's target engines all started to churn the same results, thereby reducing dogpile's overall accuracy. I'm sure, eventually, the same will happen with ixquick, unless they continually update it with as many different search engines as possible.

So...

A meal of gruel followed by a sneak attack from behind... life's a bitch, then you die, I guess.

I wonder if this guy was attacked so much because he sold a lot of defect weapons or something?

unique perspective?

I guess I must have a very uncommon perspective. It seems many commenters above have indicated how difficult linux is, or how horrible, or what have you. I think this could not be farther from the truth.

I have been using linux at home for a very long time (since 1994). Even back then, when kernel panics happened with some level of frequency (perhaps once every month or two), and the installation and maintenance was a nightmare, and device support was lacking, I still found the experience much more pleasant than Win95, with it's regular hourly (or every other hourly) BSOD, along with requisite daily reboots. At the time I was also taking classes in c programming on macintosh, which was also a nightmare.

Things have changed. On all 3 OSes. Windows is much more stable now (at least XP is; I have yet to use Vista extensively, since it bogged my computer down too much when I tried it out). OS-X is, from my minimal use, more stable and more usable. and linux is very easily installed, and generally has pretty solid device support. Don't get me wrong; XP still crashes, OS-X still has some quirks, and not all devices come with linux support - but things are better. Maintaining both windows and linux has become easier by leaps and bounds. Ubuntu, for example, is now so easy to keep up to date, I think even most windows drones could (and possibly even would) keep it up to date.

Of course none of what I have said contradicts the author's assertion. It simply contradicts what many of the commenters have asserted. I'm a big proponent of disliking things for the factual/correct reasons rather than disliking them for false/incorrect reasons.

Dislike linux (and OSX) because they are unfamiliar, not because they are "hard to use" or "have no driver support" or any of the various other FUD reasons out there.

Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is empowering

So many of the comments before me have lambasted other commenters using a comparison to some other technical field, such as internal combustion engines, home repair, etc. Most are in the form of "do you know anything about X?"

First, to these people I say, yes, why yes I do know about the workings of my car, I know how to frame a house, install insulation, wire it up, plumb it, etc. Do I do these things on a regular basis? No, I don't; they are not my job. Do I do them for myself? Yes, sometimes, though I do have to weigh the costs and benefits.

This lady is obviously ignorant. Stupid? Not certain, but seems probable. I have little sympathy for people who learn of their ignorance and still choose to do nothing about it. In my area we have recently had an influx of Burmese refugees, along with past influxes of various African refugess. Most of these people know nothing of western life when they get here. One of the Burmese ladies was afraid of an egg beater because of it's lethal-looking mechanical nature (ROTM will never happen if she has any say, I'd guess). Many of the Africans were illiterate or nearly so in their native language, much less English or Spanish (I'm in the US, so English is pretty important for everyday life, barring that Spanish makes a good fallback in my area). The Burmese, nearly every one, know how to read English, but cannot even pronounce a single word of it when they arrive - they learn from teachers who do not know how to speak the language. I could go on, but I'm sure you've all got the plot by now: life is difficult for them.

(New paragraph for those who got bored) And yet, nearly all of these refugees can pick up not only the basic skills they need to live (how to ride a bus, where and how to shop, how to operate egg-beaters), whatever skills are required for their new job (many of them slaughter chickens), but also sideline skills, such as how to operate a computer, at least well enough to have a harem of online girlfriends, how to do basic repairs on a car, etc.

If they can do all that, why can't this woman learn how to plug her Ethernet cable in (Verizon provides DSL, and having used it, I know that to get it running with Ubuntu you have to plug it in, and plug the Ethernet cable into the machine)? If she NEEDS MS Word (as in she is taking a class in MS Word, and therefore cannot actually use OpenOffice), then there are a variety of solutions; she could/should have explained to the Dell rep that she has to use MS Word, because the class is on that particular program. If she wanted to be even less ignorant, she could have done a bit of research - wine (which has Ubuntu packages) will install and run MS Office 2007 (which, if it is a class about Word, or Office, would be what is required) without a hitch. If she wanted a slightly different approach, she could have installed the free version of VirtualBox or VMWare and acquired a copy of Windows to install there (though this seems unlikely, since it implies she actually wants to learn something about one or both OSes).

This lady is just *trying* to remain ignorant, (since it is a blissful state), which means that she is trying not to learn - not the correct mental state for advanced schooling.

So Apple is pulling the MS trick...

...of so tightly integrating it's own web browser into the OS that it can not readily be disabled?

Seems like it is Lynx inside a sandboxed command line FTW.....

It would seem...

"The Pavilion dv2 weighs only 3.8 pounds in its base configuration — in part due to its lack of an internal optical drive. It does have HDMI and DVI outputs for Blu-Ray support, although that would be a questionable benefit considering the small screen."

Given its lack of an internal optical (Blu-Ray) drive, the outputs are of questionable benefit, at least if they are, indeed, intended for Blu-Ray support. Surely the small screen actually makes these outputs of greater, less questioned benefit, since they will allow you to hook this thing to a large screen.

National animal?

Perhaps I'm just an ignorant yank, but I always thought the kangaroo was the national animal of Australia... the nation to which Tasmania belongs as a state. As far as de facto "national animal" goes, if it isn't the 'roo, it would seem to me more likely to be an emu or maybe even dingo, despite its non-native status. I'm pretty sure Tasmanian devils are associated solely with the island-state of Tasmania, where they are probably the de facto state animal, if not officially.

Of course, please feel free to correct and/or flame me if I'm wrong, especially any Aussies who know better by proximity.

hmm

I hope a lot of the applications for this phone make use of the big red button method of UI; I think if it had more than 4 buttons on that screen I would not be able to press one without pressing at least one other.... at least not with my finger. Perhaps if I get one, I'll have to grow a very carefully manicured fingernail for phone operation.

My wife, who could be the model's twin if she (my wife) were in her teens, would probably have much better luck with this device than I would.

@Interesting stuff

Actually, perhaps I'm not sufficiently brainwashed by media.. but the names that come to mind for best soldier and best pilot are Audie Murphy (Army) and Chuck Yeager (Air Force).

Additionally, to say that Marines are Navy is kind of short sighted. Both in the reality of the command structure, as well as with respect to your bodily well being.

In the first respect, while the USN and USMC both report to the same civilian (Secretary of the Navy an appointed political position), from there on down the entire command structure is separate - there is no admiral who has permanent command of any Marine soldier.

As for bodily well being, most Marines do not very much appreciate being considered Navy, and when drunk (ie when on at least 15 minutes leave), many continue being violent but get stupid. Luckily it would extremely unlikely to meet one who was drunk and in USMC blues - if one did, and somehow mistook the uniform for the blue of a US Air Force uniform... well it would probably not turn out well.

Why not just...

Treat this like software obtained on license from a vendor: ie they estimate needing 330,000 licenses, so you let them have that many, and if they need more access, well.. too bad.. should have made their estimate more accurate in the first place.

@Win mobile

The Neo Freerunner (http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Neo_FreeRunner) seems to fit your bill. My disclaimer, however, is that I do not own one of these (since I can't justify spending $400 on a phone).. so I can't be certain of its utility.

Grey vs Gray

Both are used/correct in the USA. Thus it is possible to use the grey spelling and not have made it up.

If you like to hear teeth gnashing...

Just ask anyone from Washington state pretty much any personal experience question about Washington DC.

<remainder of rant canceled>

Enviro-friendly?

How is any computer enviro-friendly when compared to the OLPC XO? I mean.. it doesn't get much greener than a hand-crank powered box... are these PCs tied to solar arrays that produce more electric than the PCs use and therefore feed back into the system?

Sorry for my ignorance, but...

If the European (original) term for moose is elk, what is the European term for elk?

@Christopher Michaelis

Turning yourself in is just recognition that the police are seeking to detain you and you'd like to make it as easy, and as much on your own terms, as possible, so as to not, say, have your face ground into asphalt or your bones "Accidentally" broken by overzealous arresting officers. Not to mention any property damage that may occur to your general surroundings when the arrest occurs.

In no way is it an admission of guilt. In fact, from what I can tell, it is supposed to be a signal of innocence. IF you were guilty you'd try to get away. Of course both of those views are about as accurate as the theory that if you're not guilty then you have nothing to hide.

Advertising as a necessary evil

As I see it Adverts are a necessary evil; to allow for free programming. However my view on this is not simply that advertising is good.

The only instances where adverts should be used is where the programming is free. This means that any pay-for cable/satellite/web services should not have advertising - if I'm paying to see it, then the excuse that you have to have ads to pay for it is lost and now you're just being greedy. Publicly funded TV IS being paid for by the viewers as well, so ads have no place there.

Now that I've somewhat narrowed the media that should have advertising at all, I'd say the next most important thing is that advertising should be subtle. It should not interfere with the suspension of disbelief required to enjoy fiction and it should not distract from the information flow involved in non-fiction. As far as I can see, putting ads in the sky or random "blank" spaces is completely contrary to this concept. Commercial breaks are almost as bad, however. I think the best thing is subtle product placement and/or product integration. When this is done poorly it is horrible, though still not as bad as a giant logo floating in the sky (or, for that matter in the corner of the screen where so many networks put their own logos). If media creators could create the shows with a technology liek the one in the article in mind then a very subtle sort of dynamic product placement could be achieved. Whenever a creator felt that a space could be used for a product placement, then they could create the image with placement, shading, and coloring hints so that any appropriate product could be integrated. If this was done well, and tastefully, then it would not be as obtrusive as most other advertising. It may, however require quite a bit of experimentation and practice to get it right, especially with more complex placements. For example, a placement spot for a billboard is relatively easy; a placement spot for a sedan would be quite a bit trickier. Both, however, I believe could be accomplished. This kind of scheme would allow subtle advertising that could be adjusted for different markets and for different viewing dates (for instance, all of the cars in a 3 year old rerun could be updated to newer models that are made by the sponsor for the rerun, rather than the original production).

The biggest problem I see is with children's programming. Children tend to be more impressionable than (most) adults. This means this sort of subtle integrated type of advertising may have an undesirably strong effect on them.

E=mc^2

Unless I missed some recent newsbreaking update from our dearly departed Einstein, he said nothing about E=mc^2 having anything to do with how fast something can move. E=mc^2 is only an explanation of how much energy a mass contains if the entire mass is converted is a loss less manner into energy.

I think what you're looking for is the relativistic mass formula: mrel = m0/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)

This is part of special relativity, as implied by many others above. It says that the relative mass is increased as the mass' velocity increases. If v == c then you get a divide by 0 error; this can be treated as infinite (since that is what the limit as v approaches c is), or it could be seen as a special case not covered by the formula.

Er....

Holy factual inaccuracy Batman!.

According to this: http://www.commodorecorp.com/repository/document/90.pdf factsheet from the Commodore website. Which is freely available and publicly facing, and should have been easily accessed by anyone. This machine comes with "MS WinXP or Linux Operating System."

Also note that this SCC has it's own girl on the first page. While not as scantily clad as the EEE girl, she's still quite attractive.

The guy on the second page, however, looks pretty confused; and well he should be.. why is he there.. he doesn't even have a computer.. just a cup of coffee or tea.

@ It's Easy

Very good answer: not only can you find Google's privacy policy, Yahoo has decided to include thiers on thier home page, so you can read it, before you use the service to find Goggle's privacy policy.

Athiest vs Agnostic

I think the difference between atheism and agnosticism is a huge source of disconcert and misunderstandings. I would even go so far as to say that a huge portion of self-proclaimed atheists do not actually understand the correct term for their own beliefs. The vast majority of religious people are eve more ignorant of the difference, as is understandable, given that both groups "are not them," and people's general habit of focusing more on the details of things that "are them."

Simply, atheism means no god. It means, strictly, that the follower believes there is no god. This is inherently a belief.

Agnosticism means without knowledge. This means, almost literally, "I don't know." This means it would apply to anyone, and everyone, who is not confident in the existence or non-existence of some form of deity. Technically this means that many Christians are actually agnostics, since they don't really know. It also means that virtually all people who's belief in a lack of deity is science based are actually agnostic, since the statement "there is no God," cannot (yet at least) be proven.

So, when someone says that atheism is a belief, they are technically correct (unless said atheist has proof that no deity exists). But, believing, itself, should also not be considered somehow bad. If not for belief, we would not be able to function. Consider not being able to believe anything you see, hear, taste, or smell. Biology tells us that all of our senses are perceptive, that is, interpretive... so if you see something, you believe it is as you see it.

The understanding that no one is perfect, and that all of our beliefs must be flawed in some way also allows some who believe one thing to tolerate the beliefs of others; maybe they have it right? maybe not?

And, of course as a final note, I'd just like to say: All hail our new Alien galactic theocratic overlords!!

The silver lining....

Hey.. look on the bright side.. with a law like this, everyone might be spared the pain of encountering two girls, one cup. That might almost make it worth it...

Wow, I hate my "friends" who expose me to such horrible things.