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This.

Dude, for someone who can't figure out how to create A Slashdot account and log in she's probably out-geaking him. Besides, what you got against BLOW?

From the summary:

...almost 50 years after coming close to possibly provoking a nuclear disaster, Secretary of State John Kerry, following years of wrangling between Spain and the U.S., signed an agreement...

Now, I'm not really John Kerry's biggest fan, but I think it's a bit much to blame him for "coming close to possibly provoking a nuclear disaster".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dangling_modifier

I also find the phrase "coming close to possibly provoking a nuclear disaster" rather strange. What sort of "disaster" does one "provoke"? One might provoke a war, or cause a disaster. And is "coming close to possibly" the same thing as "coming close", or does "possibly" mean that it wasn't that close?

P.S. It's not actually likely that a nuclear bomb that isn't armed will go off in a nuclear explosion by accident. The carefully-designed explosive charges need to go off in a specifically timed sequence, and if one of them goes off first because the bomb fell on it from a high altitude, what you would expect to happen is exactly what happened here: a non-nuclear explosion that scatters the radioactive components of the bomb over an area. If you define "scattering radioactive material" as a "nuclear disaster" then one did occur; if you don't define it that way, then no "nuclear disaster" was very likely to occur.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3bm65m/has_a_nuclear_bomb_ever_been_accidentally_set_off/

It's because of the above that I had trouble swallowing the plot of part of The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross. The protagonist needs to prevent a nuclear detonation from a warhead, and comes up with a needlessly elaborate plan involving a magical gadget that changes chemical compositions. All they needed to do was stick an explosive on one side of the warhead and light it off with a delay timer or remote detonator; after that, the radioactive bits would be blown here and there and no nuclear detonation would be possible.

I guess the protagonist of that story never read "The Long Watch" by Heinlein. You can read it, though, at this link:

http://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/1439133417/1439133417___4.htm

Just add some tobacco crops! Or, we could bring the concept forward into the 21st century, and make potannabis, and subsequently chips from those -- 'They're the mellow munchy!'

Well, I guess it's a good thing he blew up Alderaan instead.

That's what you get for looking for friends in Alderaan places

I don't think the future as we know it today would be the same if Zefram Cochrane didn't know about the tall statue in his honor that would marked the first test of a warp drive engine and First Contact with the Vulcans.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Zefram_Cochrane

Yes and no. It seems the Federation doesn't use currency officially, but allows for its use by citizens. Certainly the characters on the shows know what money is and where and how it's used. Picard pretending to be a John, negotiating Ro's price comes to mind.

Memory Alpha has an article where they include some quotes that seem to indicated money is indeed used, but is not necessary for most activities within the Federation.

Certainly when you build things like starships, you have to acquire a lot of things (or is the entire Enterprise replicated completely from raw molecules?) and keep an accounting of what has to go where and when. Money seems like a convenient way to do that. If not, then some other medium of exchange (maybe based on time/energy units?) would have to be used instead.

Inanimate Sponge for President 2016!

They could also consult the people living on this planet.

I instantly thought of this Icarus.

Every day Deus Ex seems less sci-fi and more non-fiction.

Herkimer Battle Jitney. 'Nuff said.

TOS wasn't a million-dollar budget production either. Memory Alpha says it averaged $190k for the first season, and decreased over the next two seasons.

According to various inflation calculators, $190k in 1966 would be around $1.4 million today.
So it actually was larger than a 'million dollar budget'.

TOS wasn't a million-dollar budget production either. Memory Alpha says it averaged $190k for the first season, and decreased over the next two seasons.

No, there was no currency in the future:

Yes, there was. Food and shelter were provided to all, but luxuries were earned. Scotty bought a boat. Benjaman Sisko's father worked in his own restaurant. In the DC Comics story “The Final Voyage“, Spock’s back pay was stated to be around 611,700 credits when his five-year mission ended.

And more: http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.c...

There was also no serious show of religion (among the main cast anyway) until DS9.

Wrong: http://www.ex-astris-scientia....

And individual rights (aside from property rights) have nothing to do with communism vs. capitalism.

Hahaha! Seriously, capitalism is a purely economic system, communism is a bizarre blueprint for an entire society from goatee-universe.

I recall that it was canon that certain things like dilithium crystals and antimatter fuel could not be replicated (at least, not on the kind of scale that would be necessary to power a starship).

They also couldn't replicate gold-pressed latinum. They needed a currency for cultures that were more capitalist, and it had to be one that had natural scarcity.

Star Trek couldn't even get rid of the concept of money in the show. This led to various inconsistencies throughout the various Star Trek shows and movies, even within the Federation. See http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.c...

what if they saw this? https://vimeo.com/96218245
partial transcript for the lazy: http://madagascar.wikia.com/wiki/Stop_Bugging_Me/Transcript

Stargate got it right.

Yes, they're fictional, but it's a good start, since after all it proves that modern-day researchers weren't the first people to think of classifying planets by their habitability characteristics. Also, the simple "class [letter]" scheme is easy to remember and use; I sure hope they don't come up with some arcane, complicated system instead. Finally, they should definitely use "Class M" to refer to Earth-like planets simply to pay homage to Star Trek. Everyone and his brother knows what a "Class M" planet is, as long as they watched some Star Trek within the last 50 years.

It looks like you got your classes from Star Trek too, as seen here, but with some differences. I'm not sure where you got Class Q or I. The system probably does need a little revision though. Class H's "generally uninhabitable" doesn't tell you why. The Class P (see appendices) for icy planets is a good example. Class N for "sulphuric" really isn't sufficient; Venus is more like the Class Y "demon planet" except there's no dilithium-based biomimetic lifeforms, but the fact that Venus is so hot is important it needs to be classified that way. If a planet is too cold or too hot to live on, that's an important factor for humans. Same if there's no atmosphere. A planet (or moon) that's not too warm or hot but has no atmosphere can still be inhabited using domes or other sealed habitats, so that should be a class by itself. Mercury probably wouldn't fit there however, because it's much too hot. But it's hot in a different way than Venus, so they should have different classifications (hot because it's too close to the star, vs. hot because it has a thick atmosphere and runaway greenhouse effect). Finally, moons and planets should be classified together. The orbital path doesn't really matter (except insofar as it affects the climate/temperature). There could very well be Earth-like moons out there somewhere, so those should be Class M (like the moon in "Avatar").

So here's my proposal which borrows from ST:
Class M - Earth-like, small, rocky, oxygenated atmosphere, right temperature
Class D - small, rocky, little to no atmosphere, right temperature, inhabitable with sealed habitats (e.g. Mars)
Class J - gas giant (any size; this may be expanded later after we explore more star systems and decide we need to classify them further)
Class E - small, rocky, little to no atmosphere, too cold (e.g. Pluto)
Class F - small, rocky, little to no atmosphere, too hot (e.g. Mercury)
Class G - small, thick atmosphere, too hot (e.g. Venus)
Class A - very very small, not spherical (e.g. moons of Mars, captured asteroids)
Class B - very small, spherical but extremely low gravity (e.g. Sedna, Ceres, Pluto, dwarf planets in general)

I'm probably missing something here, perhaps planets with only liquid surfaces. I avoided calling Venus "Class N" because it sounds too much like "Class M".

Example: esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310

---------

Should sexist opensource developers have their projects censored or removed?

Recently an opensource game release story was removed due to the game developer's open sexism(0) and harrasment(1) of women in tech.

A story posted by the editor of the popular Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was later manually removed(2). The reason cited was the game developer's unacceptable views on social issues such as gender equality (3).

The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(4).

With the recent inclusion of a code of conduct(5) for those wishing to contribute to the Linux Kernel some questions now need to be asked and answered about the inclusion of code from people who are known to engage in or promote socially unacceptable attitudes or harrasments of those whom the free-software movement would prefer to attract in their place:

* Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
* Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
* Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
* Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
* Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?

and

* What are the consequences of not doing this

Citations:
(0) Past related incident: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310
(1) http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/...
(2) Removed story URL: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...
(3) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
"Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
"Thanks everybody for speaking up."
(4) https://webcache.googleusercon...
(5) Linux "Code of Conflict"
http://whatwillweuse.com/fodde...

Sarah seems rather talented, considering she (apparently) wrote and maintained the USB 3.0 code for Linux. And Matthew seems okay, having been awarded the 2013 FSF Free Software Award.

But the news here: A PNW Millennial and a Feminist do not agree with someone who is the architect of a giant, massively adopted project, and who has no time nor inclination to mentor people. It's going to be great in the next 5-10 years as the coddled Millennials meet the kind of international attitude where being overly polite is rude because it wastes time (German specifically, confirmed).

The Sarah Sharp thread shows her as a typical Social Justice Warrior who flies off the handle incomprehensibly. If she is a typical woman who saves everything up until it boils over (sorry for generalizing based on every woman I've ever met, minus two who do not fit the stereotype, but bear with me) then she may have a point that we just don't see in print. But we don't see it in print.

As for Matthew, This shows the reasoning behind Linus not adopting BSD style securelevels. Not that he refuses to listen - he clearly understands the limitations, and explained how he would accept an implementation of securelevels. In 1998.

And is it just a coincidence that he decided to fork after Sarah quit, and references that in his blog post? It doesn't matter, he's arguing a 17 year old point, and Linus has already said how he would accept the code.

For example, I would personally never be interested in using the BSD kind
of securelevels: by design the BSD securelevels would prevent me from
doing exactly the kinds of things I need to do (ie install a new kernel
and reboot, which is a very obvious security risk).
In short, to me the BSD securelevels are completely useless. Why should I
support them, when there is something that is a _superset_ of the BSD
behaviour, that I could actually find useful (ie I might well want to
limit some people from doing specific things).
Read my email again - I specifically said that if you want the bsd
behaviour you can get it with the per-process-bitmap approach. I don't
want to (I _cannot_) work in that kind of fascist setup, but it certainly
works well enough.

More:
http://www.tldp.org/LDP/LGNET/...

Matthew characterized is this way:

... having to deal with interminable arguments over the naming of an interface because Linus has an undying hatred of BSD securelevel, or having my name forever associated with the deepthroating of Microsoft because Linus couldn't be bothered asking questions about the reasoning behind a design before trashing it.

Is that anything like the same thing?

Sarah Sharp - Portland State University
BS, Computer Engineering
2002 â" 2007
Pacific Northwest Millennial

Matthew Garrett
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/...
".. I'm very aware of how different my life might have been if Hanna hadn't gone to the trouble of ensuring that I knew not to be a dick. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"In October 2014, Garrett stated on his blog that he would no longer contribute Linux kernel changes relating to Intel hardware, in response to Intel pulling their ads from Gamasutra over the Gamergate controversy."

Linus Benedict Torvalds
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969) is a Finnish American
He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel

At an online chat with Finlandâ(TM)s Aalto University, Linus explained:

"Iâ(TM)d like to be a nice person and curse les

If a male developer was subject to perceived verbal abuse, he would have taken it up with the individuals in private. If a female developer perceives same, she can't wait to blast it out to the sisterhood. Who can find nothing better to do than attend tech conferences desperately in search of sexual harassment they can write about. If she had any common sense she would have paused before bring controversy to the LKML. Sometimes you would wish that certain people weren't on your side.

Linux kernel civility discussion

Excuse me sir, can you spare a minute so I can explain to you about the GIANT SPACE GOAT that is coming to eat the planet?
We need a crash program to build a space ark so our celebrities like Snooki & Kanye can escape destruction.
Mars One is valiant first effort...

Why not ask average drivers what they want from a car?

I'm sure you'll get some great results from that.

That bugged me too. It was stupid, impractical, and unbelievable. There was nothing wrong with the actual ending that needed to be fixed unless you feel the need to give the -ists and the Rambo crowd some thrills.

Yeah I have to concur, you pay for the ticket, spend all that time watching the move, it is so realistic and promising and then in the last 15 minutes Watney gets eaten by a pack of banths.... oops, was that a spoiler?

It's Meowmeowbeenz from Community.

In the episode, someone created MeowMeowBeanz and allowed you to rate people. This turned Greendale into a caste society with people voting each other up/down. http://community-sitcom.wikia.... I can only imagine the hellish nightmare that would be reality when this comes out.

Perhaps if you had paid closer attention during TNG, you would have understood that while the program generally focused on the actions and experiences of the main characters it was made abundantly clear on numerous occasions, both explicitly as in Lower Decks and in the background of many other episodes, that there were thousands of crew members including lower ranking officers, support crew members in the five general divisions (command, security, science, engineering and medical) as well as various specialized personnel. In Remember Me? Dr. Crusher actually asks the computer, in jest, why she is the only crew member if she, as the computer insists, doesn't have all of the necessary skills to complete the mission.

Perhaps if you had paid closer attention during TNG, you would have understood that while the program generally focused on the actions and experiences of the main characters it was made abundantly clear on numerous occasions, both explicitly as in Lower Decks and in the background of many other episodes, that there were thousands of crew members including lower ranking officers, support crew members in the five general divisions (command, security, science, engineering and medical) as well as various specialized personnel. In Remember Me? Dr. Crusher actually asks the computer, in jest, why she is the only crew member if she, as the computer insists, doesn't have all of the necessary skills to complete the mission.

Optical memory chips, transparent aluminum. Holy shit, Roddenberry had it right!

Dr Who Detective Philip Morris Hints At More Rediscovered Episodes

It's called "Doctor Who." It's never been called Dr Who.

And that's not just nerdly outrage talking. Dr Who is someone else entirely. Sort of.

That sounds ridiculous. They should have used something with more of a verbal punch, perhaps recalling banditry and tracking on a live document.

All puns aside, the name is no more ridiculous than any bullshit justification for tracking "every visible user on the internet".

Yeah, go ahead three/four-letter agencies, I'd love to see what reasons you'll pull out of your ass for this one.

That sounds ridiculous. They should have used something with more of a verbal punch, perhaps recalling banditry and tracking on a live document.

How long will it be before the police come a'knocking at your door to arrest you and take you into custody the day before you were intending to commit a crime?

before or after being sued by CBS for copying the plot of Person of Interest? ;)

Oh please!

Civ4 doesn't run on Linux

AppDB says otherwise. It's rated Platinum as of May 2015.

I'd try Civ 5 - since they've splintered Christianity into 3

Did they also split Islam into 2 (Gummi and LaBeouf)? Because I can think of a lot more than 3 divisions of Christendom: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Baptist, Methodist, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter Day Saints, etc.

A quantum-computing bio-neural gel pack would be great.
Photonic co-processor would be nice.
(Life-support and control housing would be 3D printed, naturally.)

http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.c...

I mean, look what Paxil did for Miranda

http://southpark.wikia.com/wik...

I'd love to link to the scene where Cartman asks if he has been checked for bombs, but alas, DMCA and all...

I initially thought the last words he used were Soong genetics.

They did touch on the teleporter cloning aspect in one episode: http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.c...
although they didn't really dive into the philosophical implications of it.

Presumably there was a technological reason why you ordinarily can't replicate people using the transporter/replicator, beyond merely being taboo (like the Federation's anti-generic-engineering laws), otherwise I figure it would have been exploited more frequently.

It's unclear if the Vorta were exact replicas or biological clones, but it does seem like some kind of brain backup/restore was involved.

Yeah, but that hardware would have been useless for oppressing people, you could only use it for science

Within 20 years of us being able to regularly move back and forth between the moon and earth like we move personnel between military commands, we'd have the technology to give the USMC their very own ODST special forces unit. The military tech opportunities would be immense...

Yes, you're correct. Those arrogant sisters that plagued me so could only see their maternal lineage thru Other Memory.

According to Memory Alpha, there's actually a DS9 novel that serves as a sequel of sorts, revealing the parasites to be genetically modified Trill symbionts.

Here's a list of all references to money in Star Trek.

In the 60s episodes Rodenberry hadn't decided that money was verbotten. By the time of the movies it's quite clear that the Federation's core worlds have moved on from money, but still use it in dealing with non-Federation peoples (ie: everyone has money to spend at Quark's on DS9). Since the 60s episodes are set like 90 years before the movies/NextGen/etc. they haven't really addressed when money stopped being something the Federation uses internally.

Wait... They've discovered Cacodemons in the Arctic...

http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Cat...

If they did, they would've ripped off $1M in donuts.

http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Donuts

Leaks or not, the law says she was supposed to use her secure government-provided email for work. She ignored that law.

No it didn't say that till two years after she left office. Also the government email isn't secure and can only be used for non secure communication.

Nice cherry-pick, but her home email server is not considered secure communications either. I'll address the "two years after she left office" below.

Secure communications require usage of an internal distribution server that is secure and is not actually email.

What in the fuck are you talking about? Secure communications are carried out using the same fucking tools as unclassified communications on networks that appear *nearly* the fucking the same to end-users. In this context, ZOMFG, Hillary is an end-user. One that is a headache for admins, but an end-fucking-user nonetheless.

There is literally nothing Hillary could do better on her home server than she could do on the state department's servers, except violate the Federal Records Act; unless of course your argument is that the functional portion of 44 U.S. Code 3101 (June 30, 1949, ch. 288, title V, 506(a), as added Sept. 5, 1950, ch. 849, 6(d),64 Stat. 58) was not in effect when Hillary left office in Feb 2013 (hint: she was just shy of 3 when the law went into effect). For fuck's sake, the law was modified halfway through her term, by Obama's executive order and she still fucked that up (regardless of your feelings about EOrders and their impact on Federal agencies, agency heads are expected to salute the flagpole or GTFO).

I find it really hard to believe neither of the lawyers in that family could see that was a bad idea. I picture the dumber of the two saying something to the effect of "Um, hon, running an email server out of the house for SECSTATE business is dumber than me sticking a cigar up Monica's hoo-hoo and then cumming on her dress."

Look! I'd really, really like to embrace Hillary as a candidate, but I find her history of sneaky, slimy, dishonesty fairly well established.

I also hate every Republican candidate, for varying reasons. I hope I'm not put into a position of choosing between one of them and her in the ballot booth.

Quit trying to defend her. Stop siding with THEM. I gives a fuck - one side or the other PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF EVERYTHING, FLOAT A CANDIDATE THAT IS SOMETHING OTHER THAN A FUNCTIONAL RETARD SLURPING ON THE GENITALS OF MULTIPLE 501(c)(3) PACs.

Let us all stop being sheep, please.

My dad had a saying, I think it applies here: "A poor workman blames his tools"

Ehh...yes and no. A workman generally isn't competing against others, which is why he has no excuse. Not so with gamers.

If two craftsman are up against each other in a woodworking competition, their tools absolutely matter. Give one a dull blade to work with instead of the sharp one the other guy has, and he'd have every reason to complain about his tools and how they're affecting his ability to produce results. After all, the fact that he is fully capable of producing absolutely amazing results using just that dull blade doesn't matter one bit in a competition setting, since what matters in a competition is his ability to produce better results than the person he is competing against.

So it is with much of gaming.

A "craftsman" of the gaming world may be more than capable of producing amazing results on an everyday basis by wiping the floor with their opponents, regardless of their tools, but put them up against someone of similarly-masterful skill and their tools can absolutely make a load of difference.

That said, I actually agree with your sentiment, since computers, latency, and other factors get overused as excuses when the bigger issue is merely the player's competency. I recall back when I played vanilla World of Warcraft, I was getting 0.5 frames per second (i.e. 1 frame every two seconds; that is not a typo) at minimum settings in some of the raids, simply because I was at the time running the game on a laptop that was well under the minimum specs (the bug tunnel in AQ40 was particularly bad for me). Yet, despite that, I'd consistently come in with the least "overheal" and the second highest healing among the members of the 40-man raid (i.e. I healed the second most and did so with better efficiency than anyone else). When the raid leaders got wind of how poor my computer was, they started calling the other healers to task over their performances, since if I was able to produce those sorts of results with such a crappy setup, the others had no excuse.

All of which is to say, bad gamers do indeed blame their tools inappropriately in the vast majority of cases, but gamers also have better and more valid reasons for blaming their tools than a typical craftsman.

Not every game on Steam requires Steam to be open and logged in to play. There are many that are 100% DRM free. You can literally take the folder, move it and still launch the game even if steam is closed out completely. You just need Steam to install it initially then you can do what you wish with the game. Examples of some of these games: http://steam.wikia.com/wiki/Li... http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/T...