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SDI is long since defunct (since the Clinton years). It's now the Missile Defense Agency It's still easily thwarted by decoys

Or... coke, which is the traditional fuel used in the steelmaking process

I use nothing but Firefox on Mac, except when checking designs

I love people who condescend in utter ignorance A "hydrocarbon fire" is completely meaningless. Hydrocarbons vary greatly in both composition and properties. So you don't care about discussion, you just want to pimp some conspiracy theorist propaganda. What exactly am I "assuming"?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/conditions/06/11/autism.vaccines.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories While the nature of autism is not well understood, most current research points to a combination of genetic causes. While I can't question their devotion to their children, these parents are blinded by a correlation implies causation fallacy (the time of the onset of symptoms and when the vaccine was administered) with absolutely no scientific backing.

Two problems: 1) Aluminum (from the fuselage of the plane), not steel 2) Hydrocarbon fires have been used to melt steel for thousands upon thousands of years (ever heard of a blacksmith? coal?) You're confusing "hydrocarbon" with jet fuel. You're not only confused as to the details of the particular bit of misinformation you're trying to put forward (maximum temperature of a jet fuel fire), you're glossing over the other combustable materials present in the fire and their contribution (carpets, office furniture, computers, etc.) I would suggest you spend more time studying the official account than looking at the strawman version presented by the 9/11 conspiracy movement.

Sorry, Lee Smolin came up with this idea first, and he actually has the math to back it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecund_universes

I guess I have a different opinion of narrowly avoiding traffic. Boulder prides itself on a system of separated bike lanes. While the bike lanes are separate from the street, and in many places underpasses are provided, bikes still need to cross streets in many places. My general experience has been cars have a more difficult time dealing with separated bike lanes in terms of judging when bikes are coming. I say this having almost been hit by cars turning right several times, who don't have the decency to look to see if a bike is attempting to go straight before turning. While I certainly appreciate the safety afforded by separated bike lanes, they aren't the sort of universal panacea I see advocates of them touting them to be. (see , which cites Boulder as an example) Several times I have dealt with cars turning left who don't bother to look for a bike in the separated bike lane before making a turn. While separated bike lanes may improve your safety for the overwhelming majority of the stretch, they make interaction with bikes all the more confusing when the two systems do cross. My experience, after almost having been hit by cars (to the point they rub across my body) is always fear followed by intense anger, or embarrassment when such an occurrence is my fault.

Safari for Windows has one real use: Allowing Web designers without Macs to test their designs on their Windows systems Beyond that, I don't expect a high level of adoption

I see this as all much ado about nothing. Short of a MIRACL, missile defense is a flawed strategy. This is because missile defense systems are easily defeated by a combination of decoys and Multiple-Independent Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) Missile defense is a multibillion dollar boondoggle perpetrated upon the United States by defense contractors and those who would sell themselves out to sell such systems to the public (Reagan, Bush). The simple truth is laser-based systems, which actually have the capacity to target multiple incoming warheads within a short period of time, can be thwarted by covering the warhead with a highly reflective surface. The downside to this approach is reentry is typically enough to compromise the reflectivity of a warhead. In this approach a laser-based system is a gamble, in that you must keep a laser trained on the warhead until reentry has compromised its reflectivity enough for it to absorb energy from a laser beam. "Star Wars"/SDI originally pushed for a network of orbiting solar-powered satellite lasers. This was something of a pipe dream, for multiple reasons: electronic lasers were chosen over chemical lasers, as chemical lasers would require a service mission after firing. The fear was multiple waves of ICBMs could thwart an orbital chemical laser defense system, as the chemical fuel of such lasers could be exhausted. However, electronic lasers are not powerful enough to shoot down warheads in flight. Chemical lasers, such as the MIRACL, are still the only viable approach. Technology is changing this as electronic lasers grow increasingly powerful, but they're not yet powerful enough. Second, such networks were powered by satellite, as other sources of power are not renewable and are thus just as easy to thwart by multiple waves of ICBMs. However, photovoltaic arrays cannot recharge satellites fast enough for this approach to be feasible. Dozens of waves of ICBMs could be launched in the time it takes a satellite to recharge itself via photovoltaic arrays to the point where it can shoot down another ICBM. Given this, America has switched to a system of surface-to-air interceptor missiles. However, this system lacks the response time necessary to deal with a combination of MIRVs and decoys. Like SDI/"Star Wars" the system attempts to provide an illusion of security which is easily compromised by a simple analysis of flaws in the system. I contend that the best approach is a combination of the two systems: ground-based chemical lasers which are easily serviced by personnel manning them, which can target warheads rapidly enough to take out both MIRVs and decoys. This, combined with a satellite-based tracking network (already built) should be sufficient to build a feasible missile defense system. However, previous bias against laser-based systems due to the massive stupidity of the system advanced by the Reagan administration have left lasers like MIRACL in a prototype state. No one wants to seriously propose a national laser-based missile defense system, because thanks to "Star Wars" such a system now sounds fantastic. Instead, we push an antequated system based around interceptor missiles, with the full knowledge that such a system is vulnerable to decoys. Ladies and gentlemen, that's what you call a boondoggle

I would ask: Ever considered molten aluminum, from the fuselage of the plane?

http://www.slate.com/id/2167563/nav/tap3/ Apparently there's a "rumor" going around that the Tevatron found the Higgs Boson

There's one very important aspect to Erlang which doesn't allow for the above: its state is immutable, also known as "single assignment" Once you've assigned a variable, it cannot be changed. Variables are only variables because they can change from unbound to bound. Once bound, that's it cannot be unbound ever again (for that particular stack frame) This approach is used in conjunction with optimized tail recursion. In Erlang and many other functional languages, if the last thing to be evaluated in that function is a call to itself, it works sort of like a "goto" statement, to where the old stack frame is cleared and a new stack frame created. This means a function can call itself indefinitely without eating up stack frames. This is the typical approach used for looping in most functional languages. It's also the approach used by lambda calculus. It would be possible to write a small tail-recursive function to build a list of odd numbers

I could do that, but I'd have to start with a list of only odd numbers, which is a potential optimization. To do that, the function could be rewritten as: sieve(N) -> sieve([X * 2 - 1 || X <- lists:seq(2, N div 2)], [2]). i.e. start with a list of numbers from 2 to N/2, then go through the list multiplying each number by 2 and then subtracting 1. This will produce a list of all odd numbers between 3 and N.

Most of them are from Sweden, where Erlang was originally developed

I wrote one in Erlang last week It's an implementation of the Sieve of Eratosthenes sieve(N) -> sieve(lists:seq(2, N), []). sieve([], L) -> lists:reverse(L); sieve([Prime|T], L) -> sieve([X || X <- T, X rem Prime /= 0], [Prime|L]). Here's a quick English translation of each line: sieve(N) -> sieve(lists:seq(2, N), []). To find all of the primes up to N, start by generating a list of numbers between 2 and N (since 2 is the smallest prime larger than 1). Use this list of numbers to seed the algorithm. sieve([Prime|T], L) -> sieve([X || X <- T, X rem Prime /= 0], [Prime|L]). Knowing the number at the start of the list is a prime, go through the list and remove everything which is evenly divisible by the known prime. After that, store the prime in a list of known primes, then recursively call the same function, with the knowledge that the new number at the head of the input list is prime since it was not divisible by any number before it (besides 1). sieve([], L) -> lists:reverse(L); When the input list is empty, we've successfully removed all the non-primes and moved all the prime numbers into the primes list.

The point of a slippery slope is that it's essentially a non sequitur which leaves out the connecting logic. "Letting gays marry? Next thing you know people will be entering into polygamist marriages with their goats and sheep!" alone fails to show how supporting polygamy and beastiality follows from supporting gay marriage. I've never heard Bill O'Reilly broach the issue of slippery slopes. I used to watch his show (followed by Hannity) for a period of some months, largely for comedic value. This is prior to YouTube, NewsHounds, etc. extracting the "gold" from his show so I don't have to listen to the interstitials. However, watching his show entirely I can't help but feel that he got into my head to a certain extent. Every time the issue of gay marriage was broached he would trot out the same, tired line: gay marriage = polygamy, beastiality, polygamist beastiality. He never supported this argument with any type of reasoning, beyond a category fallacy (quasi-strawman: "Gay marriage is indecent, polygamy is indecent, beastiality is indecent, therefore supporting any of these is supporting them all!") Bill O'Reilly certainly isn't a logician. While he may (now) pay lip service to logic (although I certainly never heard him do so) he certainly doesn't practice what he preaches. His arguments are riddled with logical fallacies.

We have a brewery here that serves some mighty strong beers (upwards of 16%) Their approach is to ask every group who arrives who's driving, then limit the number of samples they can drink, and deny them some of the stronger ones. Of course, he never asks me that. Perhaps because I walk in holding my bike helmet

Oh, no doubt. The "Gay marriage? What's next? Polygamist beastiality marriages?" arguments drive me nuts too. Bill O'Reilly is certainly one of the main perpetrators of this approach.

While I generally support "the left", and to a certain extent the crazy left (a.k.a. the "far left"), I really, really, really hate slippery slope arguments. They go a little somethin' like this... hit it! "Domestic spying? Next thing you know we'll be under the rule of a FASCIST REGIME!" "Patriot act? Next thing you know we'll be under the rule of MARTIAL LAW!" "Bush? Next thing you know we'll be electing HITLER as our president" etc. etc. Don't get me wrong, the erosion of civil liberties piss me off. But please, don't use that to paint some fantasy scenario that's hundreds of times worse than you can possibly even imagine. The Bush administration is the most totalitarian we've seen in decades, but that does not make them fascists, Nazis, etc. and those who would argue otherwise are relying on a logical fallacy in order to do so.

So it's about how painfully limiting Java is?

Which shows the folly of relying on CPU primitives for number handling. You run into arbitrary limitations. I was able to calculate the factorial of 30000 in approximately 12 seconds (benchmarked!) with the above Erlang code (on a 2GHz Core 2 Duo). The number it output was so large it exceeded the scrollback of my terminal.

Heh, the Erlang movie is hilarious. I remember reading that one of the people in it (I think the main "host" guy) absolutely loathed it and wish they never made it. The guy committing the horrible fashion faux paus by wearing that striped sweater is Erlang's principal creator, iirc However, if you can stand their stuttering and weird accents, it's a good introduction to Erlang's capabilities.

Yeah, this whole thread is basically a roundabout way of saying "the right" is in shambles while "the left" has their ducks in a row. So while "the left" has their choice of candidates, "the right" may very well end up voting for a moderate Democrat. Fortunately, the Democratic frontrunner is a moderate aiming for the middle of the middle (Obama) So yes, "the far right" may very well influence which "leftist" candidate ends up being president, because the neocon candidate on "the right" may very well have deviated more from "the right" than the moderate Democratic candidate. And thus we run into the problem of labels like "the left", "the right", "the far left", "the far right", etc. But of course I've complained about such labels and the inherent category fallacy they present on many occasions.

Not sure how many of you are familiar with LOLcats but I found this one to be funny: