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Comment Postal is an Ideological Fanatic (Score 4, Insightful) 454

The way he defines success and failure is framed to say all missile defense fails.

Iron Dome uses a combination of a proximity (radar activited) fuse and fragmentation. Sometimes the interceptor destroys the warhead. Sometimes it causes an explosion of the propellant which destroys the warhead. Sometimes it simply breaks the incoming missile or rocket into segments or destroys its ability to follow its planned ballistic path. According to Lloyd and Postol, if the warhead isn’t destroyed the interceptor failed.

You don’t need a Ph.D. to see the immense flaw in this logic: if someone fires a missile at you and you aren’t hit that is good news.

Comment Conservatives have been making the case... (Score 0) 474

...to end drug prohibition since at least 1996, on both practical and 10th Amendment grounds. Statists love the "War on Drugs" because it gives them more ways to control people.

Meanwhile, President Obama, the first president who openly admitted to using illegal drugs, has cracked down harder on medical marijuana and other uses of "choom" far harder than Bush ever did.

Comment I'd be more impressed if I heard of any of them (Score 4, Informative) 234

"Bright Future Jobs, the Programmers Guild and WashTech."

Who, who, and who?

As of August 1999, the Programmers Guild had 400 members. Mighty important organization there, if you can't be bothered to offer membership numbers from this century. Which, to be fair, looks to be the last time their web page look was updated.

As far as I can tell, "Bright Future Jobs" is one person Donna Conroy.

WashTech is a union. No thanks.

I suspect that IBM, Infosys and Manpower won't even notice their "boycott."

Comment Translation (Score 1) 255

"People didn't like my original piece and had points of view that disagreed with my own. Therefore they're wrong. Now I'll just double-down by calling my critics idiots whose ideas are based of science fiction stereotypes. Then I'll just wait for my critics to admit they were wrong and finally get around to praising my obvious genius."

Comment Turnstile Jumping and Broken Windows Policing (Score 2) 389

New York City's crackdown on turnstile jumping was part of the Giuliani Administrations implementation of broken window policing. But reducing low level disorder and misdemeanor crime, broken windows policing makes the law abiding residents of neighborhoods feel safer.

"A government’s inability to control even a minor crime like graffiti signaled to citizens that it certainly couldn’t handle more serious ones."

Stopping and arresting turnstile jumpers in particular frequently turned up wanted felons, parole violators, and gangbangers with illegal guns. Arresting them not only took criminal predators, off the streets, it encouraged other criminals to leave their guns at home for fear of having them confiscated. This further reduced their abilities to commit criminal acts in places like subways, and reduced criminal gun incidents when members of rival gangs would bump into each other.

Comment Because fabs can run $10 billion each (Score 1) 345

Actually running your own fab can give you tremendous economies of scale if you know you'll be running you part (or its die shrink successors) 24/7/365. The per chip costs are going to be lower.

But to build a state-of-the-art, 300mm, 14-nm fab with all the latest process technology can run you $10 billion. AMD doesn't have enough mnoney to make those bets anymore, and few companies do.

Going with a foundry means you earn less profit per chip sold, but it also let's you avoid that $10 billion up-front investment.

Comment First Swatting Victims Were Conservative Bloggers (Score -1, Troll) 350

Among the first instances of swatting I was aware of were conservative bloggers like Aaron Walker, Erick Erickson and Patrick Frey, all of whom were working to expose convicted felon and "Speedway Bomber" Brett Kimberlin.

There may have been earlier instances, but those are the first I'm aware of.

Comment As Successful as the Kellogg-Briand Pact (Score 1) 138

You know, the pact to outlaw war. Signed in 1928.

Didn't work out so well.

And even if it were signed by a significant number of nations, we could be sure the non-democratic ones would be violating the ban before the ink was even dry.

Unenforceable treaties are actually worse than worthless: they constrain good actors without deterring bad ones.

Comment Blindsight (Score 1) 105

Visual information controlling physical action without conscious thought. Think of it as a higher level of autonomous nervous system.

Peter Watts wrote a very depressing novel involving the idea which explores the possibility that consciousness is not necessary for intelligent life, and, indeed, may ultimately turn out to be an evolutionary dead end...

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