Messages

346

General Discussion / Re: Troops to remain in Iraq until 2009?

« on: March 21, 2006, 11:25:18 pm »

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/21/bush.newsconference/index.html?section=cnn_topstories

Even I think that's a bit too long... it's gonna turn into a war that we win just like we did in Vietnam...

Note that reconstruction and rebuilding nations takes a long time. Also note that having troops in a country doesn't mean war/occupation/fighting or any of that. Look at Germany and all of Europe for that matter. We still have troops over there from 50 years after World War II. I think its a fair assumption that we will have troops in Iraq for just as long, however this doesn't mean that they will be involved in day-to-day combat just that they will be there. And thus this whole idea of pulling the troops out is a bit absurd and crazy.

347

General Discussion / Re: Fucking Politics.

« on: March 18, 2006, 03:20:41 pm »

A couple of points first off:

Before the war no one doubted the fact that Iraq likely had WMD. iago if you can find one article/interview/whatever from before the war that even suggests Iraq doesn't have WMD I'll be incredibly surprised. There were a lot of reasons for not going to war being tossed around, a lack of WMD in Iraq wasn't one of them.

Part of this can probably be blamed on an Iraqi deception, the Iraqi bases and such we took in the early weeks of the war were equipped with new chemical protection suits and drugs to counter the effects of nerve agents. You can't possibly believe they excepted the Americans to use chemical or biological weapons against them so the only logical conclusion is that they were for protection from their own weapons.

Also note that an artillery shell full of sarin nerve gas was found as part of an IED in Baghdad. Whether it was left over from the first Gulf War or not(I'm not entirely sure they ever found out) is irrelavant because Saddam swore that they destroyed ALL chemical weapons. So clearly Iraq still had WMD and quite possibly still does.


iago hit the nail on the head with his one good statement. If you'll recall after the reconstruction started people were complaining about a lack of power in the intense summer heat and such. However, from what I've read now more people have power than before the war so clearly life in Iraq is improving. The progress however is slow and the people clearly want more faster but oh well.


On the subject of hatred over seas, I think this is entirely false. The governments may publically be unsupportive of America and such but thats simply politics and going with the wind. If you look closely you'll see that America has the largest coalition in history working to stop the terrorists in Afghanistan. So the hatred is only skin deep and the governments are still working together.

348

Gaming / Re: Anyone still play CS?

« on: March 17, 2006, 08:18:07 pm »

I still play all the time.

349

General Discussion / Re: Gates Mocks $100 Laptop

« on: March 17, 2006, 07:00:27 pm »

Yeah, that's a pretty good point.  I still think there will be a decent market for these, though.  A TI calculator is certainly more practical in most cases, but they're also less powerful.  Plus, they cost just about as much.

Yeah thats the whole good deal and such part about using TI calculators, I can't imagine they actually cost $100 to produce where as I'm rather sure this laptop is being sold at cost.

Honestly, how much money do you think this project is going to pull in?  It cost $11 Million just to pull a few hundred miles of unmuxed T1 lines in Colorado.

I did a quick google search and as near as I can tell the cost of laying fiber depends on the location. Consider the fact that an undeveloped country won't have tons of underground things so laying fiber should be insanely cheap.

To me having internet access and a real laptop would be a million times more useful than having 30 laptops that require handcranking...

350

General Discussion / Re: Gates Mocks $100 Laptop

« on: March 16, 2006, 10:35:55 pm »

Pretty damn useful if what you're doing requires calculations to be done by a computer.  This is a common need in schools.

Have an example of something like this? Keep in mind they lack power so I doubt they need it to draw up plans for that skyscaper... Also a TI calculator could serve the same use, while it should be theoretically cheaper to acquire.

I don't think the revenue earned from the purchace of these laptops would even come close to covering the price for dropping an optical line down the middle of Nigeria.

It should be more than enough to start some sort of project be it a powerplant or wiring, etc. Also note that the money to purchase these would likely come from donations by outside sources so it would be just as easy to try and get more money for a more useful purpose.

351

General Discussion / Re: Gates Mocks $100 Laptop

« on: March 16, 2006, 10:13:17 pm »

Consider for a moment that if they lack power it also means they lack internet. They probably also lack printers because I've yet to hear of a handcrank printer. How useful is a laptop when it doesn't have internet access and there is no printer?

I'm with Warrior on this one that the thousands which would be spent to acquire these laptops could be better spent in providing infastructure and such so that they can eventually get power.

Another note to consider is the literacy rate of the people in such poor countries, I suspect its rather low and as such a laptop won't be all that helpful in furthering education.

352

General Discussion / Re: 13 people hanged in Iraq

« on: March 11, 2006, 12:51:05 am »

We should kill everything that's foreign.

I agree.  We should start with the US, then work our way down and over. 

Unless you just mean foreign to the US.  But I think that pretty much all countries (except the US) would agree, if every country but one should be destroyed, the only survivor probably shouldn't be the US. 

Too bad for the rest of the world that the US kicks ass and will continue to kick ass for a very long time to come. Hell, you Canadians might have to stoop to the level of the Palestinians and throw rocks at our armor if you even want to have a chance of destroying the US. Oh, no rocks you say? Well I guess snowballs will have to suffice.

353

General Discussion / Re: 13 people hanged in Iraq

« on: March 10, 2006, 12:38:02 pm »

Uh you do realize these people were most likely given a proper trial and death sentence right? Its hard to compare that to the guy walking down the street with an ak47 shooting women and children. Also when the bad guys are already doing everything in their power to cause problems its unlikely that they will be incited more by their buddies being hanged.

354

General Discussion / Re: Hot gas

« on: March 09, 2006, 11:06:24 pm »

Keep in mind this work is being done at a national lab so using it generate power probably isn't a priority. However, that being said using it to toast some asshole in a tank is more likely to be a future use for this technology.

355

General Discussion / Re: My town is scary...

« on: March 09, 2006, 06:31:54 pm »

Uh... the Unix license plate isn't real.

So yesterday there was a power outage and the local newpaper has an article on it http://www.lamonitor.com/articles/2006/03/09/headline_news/news01.txt.

The new switchgear includes computer controls that monitor power quality, said Assistant Utilities Manager John Arrowsmith as he explained the electrical outage.

"It's designed to open a breaker on that tieline if voltage drops, so that an alternate tieline can provide power without interruption to prevent damage to customer's equipment," he said. "There are two tielines, or feed connections, and because the second tieline is not connected, the open breaker resulted in a total loss of power to the switchgear. The second tieline is expected to be completed the end of this month."

Sounds like bad programming that it tried to switch to a non-existant backup to me, way to go whoever designed that system.

356

General Discussion / My town is scary...

« on: March 08, 2006, 07:33:00 pm »

So on my way to armed drill practice this morning there was a car infront of us with a "Linux" license plate. I have to say this is the first time I've seen reference to something geeky on a car.

Then after school the Army recruiter was hanging around and he admitted to being a gamemaster for a starwars rpg. What the hell has my town come too when even the military recruiters are geeks?

357

General Programming / Re: Is Visual Basic a good beginner's language?

« on: March 07, 2006, 08:10:29 pm »

I'd say yes because as the name states its a basic language. Being really easy to use is a huge plus for beginning programmers as they can get results fast. Also a person who understands programming and the general concept will quickly realize the limits of VB and move on to other languages if they need more control and power. Where as people who generally can't handle VB are unlikely to move on and unlikely to succeed with any other language.

The whole "bad habits" is rather silly. People will develop new habits when they move to a new programming language. I don't believe habits carry over between languages except in the case where a user tries to replicate the behavior of one language in another instead of taking advantage of said languages native abilities.

358

Entertainment District / Re: Lucas predicts end of big budget movies

« on: March 06, 2006, 08:07:11 pm »

Actually one of the other things that may bring cost down is the use of rendering farms. Instead of having to build their own they can just buy time on one and still get killer special effects.

359

General Discussion / Re: NASA Budget Cuts

« on: March 06, 2006, 07:53:07 pm »

The cost of sending the two MERs to Mars was $800 million for the total package.

We can't exactly wage a war to remove corrupt governments so that the poor people can actually get the needed asistance for $800 million so I'd say its justified to spend it on space.

People will always say there are better things to spend money on and there probably are but as the saying goes you shouldn't put all your eggs in one basket. Space exploration should get enough funding so that proper exploration can be carried out. However, at the same time it needs to be a realistic amount so that scientists are forced to prove the value of a mission before we dedicate the time and funding to making it happen. Also limited fundings limits wasted $ because every $ becomes more valuable to the agency.

You also have to remember that space exploration is risky business, look at the Europeans and what they have spent on sending failed missions to Mars. For that matter you can look at many of our earlier missions to Mars which crashed and burned. If billions is spent on a project and it catastrophicly fails because of a single bad component who is going to take the ultimate blame?

360

General Programming / Re: My C# server O.O

« on: February 26, 2006, 11:19:32 pm »

http://www.runuo.com/files/uploads/runuo-releases/RunUO-1.0.0-Source.zip is a good example of a server. Most of the code in the Network folder is clean enough to be understandable.