But selective breeding for traits that are not inherited isn't Eugenics. It's not anything.

If you selectively breed for people who's middle initials is "K", you accomplish nothing. Because our names are not passed on genetically.

That economic status tends to prevail across generations is a happenstance of environment, not generics. Can the effect be the same as Eugenics? Sure. But it's not the same thing.

Morally equivalent? Perhaps. But not the same.

Let's take it a step further. If Eugenicists succeed, it pushes populations out of the breeding pool. Whatever race is deemed inferior will (if they're successful) disappear. No more black people, or jewish people, or whoever they deem undesirable.

But if you selectively breed out poor people, or people who like plaid, or anything else that's not passed on in genes, it doesn't keep other people from having those traits later. A person who has well off parents is likely to be well off themselves. But they're not guaranteed. The course their life takes can change that.

But a person born white, or a red head, or black or Persian will remain so his or her entire life. If you exterminate them, they're gone. That's the practical difference between this and Eugenics.

Again, I'm not supporting this. Just trying to explain that while there are similarities, it's not Eugenics.

The vulgar one has a point though. There are classes of software that are aimed at audiences that wouldn't want them if they had the skills to write them on their own.

Do you think that most children's games would exist if they had to be written by kids?

BASIC is this kind of problem. I suspect that nobody who ever wrote a BASIC interpreter had a practical use for it themselves. Maybe during the Apple II / TRS80 days, but certainly not more recently than that. In recent times, it's a tool for less experienced programmers to learn with and solve very simple problems, not a tool someone who could write software would employ to solve a practical problem.

Yeah, as others have alluded to, NewYorkCountryLawyer is one of several well-known Slashdot users. Like CleverNickname and some others of note.

Maybe not everyone on Slashdot knows who these folks are, but they are known by many if not most.

If you're only counting what we so quaintly used to call the "first world", I'd be inclined to agree.

But what about China? Saudi Arabia? Russia? Pakistan?

I don't think it's a given that the U.S. is to the right of the world's center. As others have pointed out, it's also how you define it.

The reason he wasn't pursued as a flip flopper for that was that the world had demonstrably changed (well, not really, but our eyes had opened to it). He didn't just wake up one day and change his mind. 9/11 defined his presidency.

I'm no fan of Bush. I have no illusions that there was a link between 9/11 and Iraq. But to say that there was no reason for Bush to change course just isn't fair. There's plenty we can pick on Bush for that he deserved.

Thanks for the info. Very interesting. It was my understanding that a big motivating factor was loiter time.

The military loves to tout pilot endurance as the limiting factor for mission time thanks to mid-air refueling. It was my understanding that a big part of this push was to further that. Any insight there?

"Acknowledge".

Pardon my typos. That's what I get for not using preview.

Read the report before you dismiss it.

If you had taken the time to read it before being so paranoid and dismissive, you'd learn the report acknokeges many of your concerns, including the EOS ring ergonomics.

Instead, you just sound foolish.

Easy. With bottled air, you've got to cart around what you can breathe. You're limited by that, and it takes up space and weight.

The early F-16s didn't have OBOGS. When they got an engine upgrade (block 50, I think) they recieved OBOGS. From the company that builds the OBOGS, here's the advantages:

OBOGS presents considerable advantages over
LOX, including:
* Significant life cycle cost advantage
* Improves safety
* Weighs less than LOX
* Reduces turn-around time
* Extends the operational theater of aircraft
* Enhances mission effectiveness
* Eliminates LOX quantity management
  workload in flight
* Reduces logistics infrastructure
* Eliminates the need for LOX generation,
  servicing and storage
* Eliminates Daily/Turn-around inspections
* Eliminates âoeIâ level support

http://www.cobham.com/media/75388/SYSTEM%20F-16%20OBOGS%20ADV10556.pdf

The problem is that if something goes wrong, you have to shut the system down. In this case a sensor detected hot air entering the system, which is a sign of a fire, or a potential cause of one. So the system shuts down, and the pilot needs to go to his emergency O2 supply. But this guy struggled trying to activate it. Possibly an ergonomic problem that needs to be addressed.

Generally speaking though, OBOGS is a sound, logical way to go.

No. Read the report:

http://usaf.aib.law.af.mil/ExecSum2011/F-22A_AK_16%20Nov%2010.pdf

This wasn't a case of extraordinary circumstances. This was calm, high altitude flight where a critical (but understood) subsystem failed.

The pilot then became distracted by the system failure possible because of oxygen deprivation, or because the emergency air control was in an ergonomically challenging location. While distracted, he became inverted (240 degree roll during descent) and didn't attempt to correct until 3 seconds prior to impact.

The ergonomic issue may be a contributing cause. but a pilot *must* be able to continue instrument scan while dealing with an emergency. Just because you're air doesn't work doesn't mean you can't still crash while dealing with that.

It's sad, but more or less understood what happened.

No, that is not what this means.

"Air bleed" is the method by which the OBOGS generates breathable air. It's called "bleed" because it "bleeds" off a small amount of air from the engine's compressor system. (This air can also be used for deicing flight surfaces, generating power, and other purposes).

An "air bleed failure" means that either no air is getting into the system, or a sensor failed and it thinks no air is getting into the system.

To summarize, this wasn't a failure where air was bleeding, this was a failure of the system that bleeds air from the engine for the pilot to breathe. That's important to understand.

The effect we're discussing is easily observable to anyone who's reasonably familiar with a kitchen.

Ever fry french fries in oil? This is typically what? 350F?

Baking a pizza will typically be around 450F.

Yet it's easy to reach into a 450 degree oven and remove the pizza. As long as you use a towel or a tool, your hand can be in the same environment that just cooked the pizza for a relatively long time..

But any fool knows that reaching into the oil with your bare hand *at all* will burn your skin in less than a second. Even though the oil is 100 degrees cooler than the oven.

It's just a dramatic, every-day example of the difference in heat transfer between mediums (in this case, oil vs air).

It's fundamentally no different than doing it to Jews or black people, there's no genetic sequence to identify those people either.

I don't know about Jews, because that's sort of a complex label. But you can absolutely tell ancestry from a genetic sample. "African descent" (what most people in the U.S. would call "black") is easy to discern from a DNA sample.

Law enforcement agencies have been slower to adopt using this capability because it's considered a political landmine to say (for example) that they know that a murdering rapist is black with only DNA evidence to go by. But it can be done, and it has been done. Here's an example:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-16-dna_x.htm

You can get eye color, hair color, and other traits too. The science is getting better.

That said:

Just because you disagree with something, doesn't make it the same as something else that you disagree with.

Eugenics is selecting based on inherited traits. You can object to both practices without them being the same thing. This organization is doing something that you may object to. But it's distinct from eugenics. That doesn't make it right (or wrong), just different.

An interesting primer on the subject:
http://www.radiolab.org/2008/dec/15/race-doesnt-exist-or-does-it/

I know podcasts can be a PITA because it's slower than reading, but it's worth a listen if you're at all interested in the subject.

YES. THIS.

The same person can work for multiple outlets.

Take Keith Olbermann. Regardless of what you may think of him, his career has had him all over the place. Should he enjoy the same protections on ESPN as he did on MSNBC prior to Countdown (which was more news and less opinion) should that enjoy the same protection as Countdown which is largely opinion commentary? What about his Twitter account?

Most journalists will shy away from outlets that are not well regarded for journalistic integrity because they don't want to sully their own names via association. But just because it's rare, that doesn't mean that if a journalist DOES want to go work somewhere else that they should enjoy the same protections in both capacities.

Probably not for something like HTML, no. But for a new language, I'll pick up a book. Books will often be better constructed than online tutorials. YMMV of course.

I've always liked The Head First series in particular for some things. Especially for exposing someone who is new to a language or concept. The series is very novel and always reminded me of the "hers's how to do something fun" approach that the BASIC programming books I cut my teeth on had.

Is it any good for an experienced Java Programmer who wants to pick up C# or Objective C quickly? No. But they absolutely have their place.