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Is David Keith seriously comparing risks by counting individual deaths? Besides the inherent vagueness in how we attribute deaths of, say, people with asthma, to coal-related pollutants, there is another elephant in the room: nuclear power plant disasters have other costs besides human deaths due to radiation.

Consider this map. No one lives within 30 km of the site, and only loons or paid professionals live in the pink areas, and they pay for it with their health. And now look at this plant, 30 km upstream from Orleans. If a disaster strikes and that thing goes... no problem, right? Just a few dozen deaths, a total evacuation of the whole Orleans metropolitan area for decades, and radiation extending as far as Paris, with unpredictable hotspots far away from the ground zero, as determined by chaotic weather patters. David Keith got one thing right: we are very bad at evaluating risks.

Is David Keith seriously comparing risks by counting individual deaths? Besides the inherent vagueness in how we attribute deaths of, say, people with asthma, to coal-related pollutants, there is another elephant in the room: nuclear power plant disasters have other costs besides human deaths due to radiation.

Consider this map. No one lives within 30 km of the site, and only loons or paid professionals live in the pink areas, and they pay for it with their health. And now look at this plant, 30 km upstream from Orleans. If a disaster strikes and that thing goes... no problem, right? Just a few dozen deaths, a total evacuation of the whole Orleans metropolitan area for decades, and radiation extending as far as Paris, with unpredictable hotspots far away from the ground zero, as determined by chaotic weather patters. David Keith got one thing right: we are very bad at evaluating risks.

Sturgeon's law: 90% of anything is crap.

And yet here's an AI that can apparently beat it..... what does that say about my friends and coworkers?

That apparently, there are some things computers are better at than people?

QUICK! What's the 761st decimal place of pi?
Does it make some statement about you that a computer can calculate the above several of orders of magnitude faster than you?

Um, do you know what a failed state is? It's when a state does not have monopoly over the use of force within its borders. Think Somalia, Niger, Mexico is fast approaching with the Drug Wars in the area; according to a broader definition (mostly supported by the US Foreign Office and Fund For Peace), even North Korea and Iran, which have pretty firm grasps on their monopoly of violence...
This latter definition, however, does not reflect the traditional International Relations one, which is strictly the loss of monopoly on violence within its borders. According to this, there are comparatively few failed states. According to the broader one, well, see here. Soooo, what, now Russia is in Warning, almost the whole EU is Moderate, along with the US, and there are a grand total of 14 Sustainable states (including three microstates, the Papal State, and Ireland, which has been making headlines in the EU by having to ask for a bailout package). I think the Fund For Peace has some priorities wrong...

I agree that the GP post was unreasonable, and that many countries are of course much worse, but the US does still have legitimate problems which need to be faced. The government is making consistent efforts to increase their powers both to act in secret and without warrant or oversight - we've seen where this leads both on a small scale (violent and corrupt police officers intimidating citizens with cameras) and on a large one (warrantless wiretapping); that's a road I'd really rather not see the US follow any further than it has. Police raids on private residences are also becoming increasingly militarised, a trend which has been shown to drastically increase the "us and them" mentality on both sides, and again is a catalyst for violent abuses of power. Often the justice system shows a marked difference in treatment of the rich and powerful compared to that of the poor. While political speech may not be enough to have your website seized, an accusation of copyright infringement may do it, again without conviction, oversight, or recourse. Wikileaks has revealed that some people in Guantanamo were there for little to no reason - while the white American citizen might not have anything to fear on that side of things, the Pakistani guy in the wrong place at the wrong time might not be so lucky; again, the real problem is the lack of transparency making abuses almost impossible to catch, let alone rectify.

As for the 'where is better and more free?' question, I'd say most of Scandanavia, The Netherlands, and probably Canada and New Zealand too. No, the US isn't too bad, for the majority of citizens who are lucky enough not to have a run-in with the authorities, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't strive to be better.

I have to vehemently disagree with you.
  The story of Bell, California that won the LA Times a pulitzer this year
The Hired Truck scandal in Chicago
Chicago Tribune exposes University of Illinois clout-based-admissions procedures

I can go on...

Or I'll throw you into the garbage cans again!

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/They_Live

"C is in decline because many modern programming challenges don't benefit from working on the level of machine code or operating system, nor should they. If I want to write a game, I want to focus on the game design and mechanics, not bit blitting pixels onto a buffer."

Modern 3d game engines are still largely written in C++, which is a superset of C (and not considered much of a high-level language). This Includes the Source engine (Valve), the very-widely-used Unreal Engine (Epic games), idTech 4 (id Software), CryEngine (CrtTek). Also, Check out the list of open-source engines at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Comparison_of_game_engines
They use C/C++ so as to be able to push every last fps out of the hardware and because C++ has all the low-level access and a lot of the performance that C does. All of the cool stuff (the engine) is still done in C++.

"...., not bit blitting pixels onto a buffer."
Writing Shader code is no glamorous, high-level, object-oriented affair, neither. Syntax for GLSL is very much like C. Only much more primitive and much less powerful.

If you want to write a game using these one of these engines, the engine does much of the heavy-limiting, so you might not need to write much C/C++. But the "Libraries, interfaces, and abstraction levels" are still written in C/C++. And as long as those things still need to be written, C/C++ is not going away any-time soon.

I would argue that drugs can be used to good effect or bad effect. The same drug. It often depends on dose.

Take an aspirin for a headache? Sure. Take a dozen? Not so much, as it were.

Just how harmful a drug tends to be is still relevant:
drug danger.

Hi, I am currently employed as a researcher at Fermilab. Funny you should mention the theory of the ether in this argument. It just so happens that recent experiments have revealed that we should re-examine the ether theory, and that there might be evidence for it (or something extremely similar).

A meme is an idea that spreads, and an inherent part or 'building block' of our culture and civilization.
What you describe are internet memes, a distinct subset of memes that spread virally over the internet with a less serious tone but a part of our culture nonetheless.

A meme is an idea that spreads, and an inherent part or 'building block' of our culture and civilization.
What you describe are internet memes, a distinct subset of memes that spread virally over the internet with a less serious tone but a part of our culture nonetheless.

Oh please, there's no such thing as a 'slippery slope'. Not since the Constitution of the US. and the Declaration of Independence established your right to rebel should your government lose track of its objectives. The slope continues as long as you let it continue.

You do know that the constitution can be amended? And that some pretty stupid stuff has been amended onto it before now. I know it's unlikely but it's not impossible for your rights to be removed.

Why should Apple be different?

Because the situation is completely different.

MS used undocumented OS features in Office, leveraging their OS to advantage in selling a separate expensive app suite which was in direct competition with third party products in a standard category of user app software.

In this case, the app, which broke stated rules in using a private API, clearly was treading in areas relating to core OS functionality. Users must not be subjected to modifications that may break when the OS is updated. A syncing utility can strongly affect network traffic, device speed, bandwidth costs, battery life, local or remote data loss or corruption... (error handling must account for many possible situations). Clearly such sensitive areas are appropriately controlled by Apple in order to uniformly achieve optimal performance.

Apple is not selling a competing app.
Some of the things Apple has developed or enhanced have been made open source in the interests of advancing the art, and can actually be used by competitors.
I believe a couple of those technologies would be called on by a well written syncing utility. Bonjour a service discovery protocol, and launchd a unified, service management framework for starting, stopping and managing daemons, applications, processes, and scripts. Obviously Apple started working with syncing many years ago.

Apple has promoted open-standards and has put a great deal of effort into Webkit, an open source browser technology that is widely used (in Apple's Safari, and also on Android)

There are people that look for excuses to bash Apple. This isn't a situation where that is appropriate. Someone submitted an app that broke rules, and now some whine about the consequences. It's destructive and distracting enough when political parties banter over nonsense. Shouldn't people with some technological understanding attempt to rise above that sort of thing? Time to move along...

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Launchd

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bonjour_(software)

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Webkit

Why should Apple be different?

Because the situation is completely different.

MS used undocumented OS features in Office, leveraging their OS to advantage in selling a separate expensive app suite which was in direct competition with third party products in a standard category of user app software.

In this case, the app, which broke stated rules in using a private API, clearly was treading in areas relating to core OS functionality. Users must not be subjected to modifications that may break when the OS is updated. A syncing utility can strongly affect network traffic, device speed, bandwidth costs, battery life, local or remote data loss or corruption... (error handling must account for many possible situations). Clearly such sensitive areas are appropriately controlled by Apple in order to uniformly achieve optimal performance.

Apple is not selling a competing app.
Some of the things Apple has developed or enhanced have been made open source in the interests of advancing the art, and can actually be used by competitors.
I believe a couple of those technologies would be called on by a well written syncing utility. Bonjour a service discovery protocol, and launchd a unified, service management framework for starting, stopping and managing daemons, applications, processes, and scripts. Obviously Apple started working with syncing many years ago.

Apple has promoted open-standards and has put a great deal of effort into Webkit, an open source browser technology that is widely used (in Apple's Safari, and also on Android)

There are people that look for excuses to bash Apple. This isn't a situation where that is appropriate. Someone submitted an app that broke rules, and now some whine about the consequences. It's destructive and distracting enough when political parties banter over nonsense. Shouldn't people with some technological understanding attempt to rise above that sort of thing? Time to move along...

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Launchd

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bonjour_(software)

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Webkit

Why should Apple be different?

Because the situation is completely different.

MS used undocumented OS features in Office, leveraging their OS to advantage in selling a separate expensive app suite which was in direct competition with third party products in a standard category of user app software.

In this case, the app, which broke stated rules in using a private API, clearly was treading in areas relating to core OS functionality. Users must not be subjected to modifications that may break when the OS is updated. A syncing utility can strongly affect network traffic, device speed, bandwidth costs, battery life, local or remote data loss or corruption... (error handling must account for many possible situations). Clearly such sensitive areas are appropriately controlled by Apple in order to uniformly achieve optimal performance.

Apple is not selling a competing app.
Some of the things Apple has developed or enhanced have been made open source in the interests of advancing the art, and can actually be used by competitors.
I believe a couple of those technologies would be called on by a well written syncing utility. Bonjour a service discovery protocol, and launchd a unified, service management framework for starting, stopping and managing daemons, applications, processes, and scripts. Obviously Apple started working with syncing many years ago.

Apple has promoted open-standards and has put a great deal of effort into Webkit, an open source browser technology that is widely used (in Apple's Safari, and also on Android)

There are people that look for excuses to bash Apple. This isn't a situation where that is appropriate. Someone submitted an app that broke rules, and now some whine about the consequences. It's destructive and distracting enough when political parties banter over nonsense. Shouldn't people with some technological understanding attempt to rise above that sort of thing? Time to move along...

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Launchd

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bonjour_(software)

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Webkit

Nope. Based on just those two requirements, this image of a woman would be acceptable: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meissnera.jpg

But, of course, any photo in which it could be determined whether or not the woman was wearing a burka would be a violation of the law, and you could heap on any number of other reasons for someone to be offended.

How much cargo do you think a 747 can hold?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-400#747-400ERF --> 112,760 kg

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-8#747-8_Freighter --> 140,000 kg

At a unit weight of 4kg, this is more than 30.000 laptop computers. Of course there's more different models shipping right now, but 30.000 different devices should be a good baseline.

So... will you be funding this, then? When can I expect a check?

How much cargo do you think a 747 can hold?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-400#747-400ERF --> 112,760 kg

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-8#747-8_Freighter --> 140,000 kg

At a unit weight of 4kg, this is more than 30.000 laptop computers. Of course there's more different models shipping right now, but 30.000 different devices should be a good baseline.

So... will you be funding this, then? When can I expect a check?

How much cargo do you think a 747 can hold?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-400#747-400ERF --> 112,760 kg

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-8#747-8_Freighter --> 140,000 kg

At a unit weight of 4kg, this is more than 30.000 laptop computers. Of course there's more different models shipping right now, but 30.000 different devices should be a good baseline.

How much cargo do you think a 747 can hold?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-400#747-400ERF --> 112,760 kg

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Boeing_747-8#747-8_Freighter --> 140,000 kg

At a unit weight of 4kg, this is more than 30.000 laptop computers. Of course there's more different models shipping right now, but 30.000 different devices should be a good baseline.

This would not the done on the router level in any case.

The basic thing about IP6 is that as it uses hex it can take the MAC of a card and use that as the basis for a IP. Iirc, IPX had a similar feature.

However, it is still possible to tell the os to use something different then a MAC as a basis.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/MAC_address

note how if bit 2 of byte 1 in a MAC address is 1 rather then 0, the address is "locally administered". This means that the MAC on the chip have been overridden by the admin.

This can already today, in combination with something like a collection of public wifi hotspots visited at "random", be used to stay relatively anonymous online.

Why, oh why do people always treat this question as if the earth was a perfectly uniform surface with a perfectly uniform distribution of both resources and humans? Take a look at this list of countries sorted by population growth rate. It is not the rich developed nations capable (!=willing, but we could if we really wanted to) of sustaining their poor who are multiplying, it is those who already need foreign aid to prevent mass starvation. 9 billion people would maybe be a sustainable sum total, but not as they are distributed and not on a standard of living that I personally see as desirable. The US Census Bureau predicts 2 billion people in Africa by 2050. The continent cannot reasonably sustain its current population of a little more than half of this on its own. And going by current political and social consent I somehow doubt that we will happily let a proportionate share of those 2 billion immigrate into our countries and feed them here.

Bullshit. Check your facts: the Middle East is (as of a year ago, not sure how the Arab Spring affects the numbers) the most stable region of the world measured by frequency of war, civil unrest, and revolutions/regime change (sorry, I don't have a citation, my source is a lecture from a professor teaching politics of the Middle East). It's ridiculously stable. Part of this is that it is ruled by a bunch of very effective dictatorships. With the Arab Spring there may finally be hope for that to change.

See: tragedy of the commons...

the most dangerous substance known to man....

You should perhaps re-examine the data.

Botulinum Toxin

Last time I remember Germany phasing out something was the scharfes S and certain old spellings, in 1996. It seemed to work pretty well, aside from happening in the middle of my German GCSE so I was originally taught the old spellings and then the new ones for the exam...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/aa/GrouchonoseglassesSPK.jpg/800px-GrouchonoseglassesSPK.jpg

I have just finished such a annotated graphic, I hope you enjoy it. This was actually a lot of fun to do, and I learned a lot.

Wikipedia has a lot of information on the different modules that make up the space station in the ISS page.

You're at least 50 years later than you should be. Norbert Wiener says to say hi.

It's not (yet) illegal to write any kind of software you like, no matter what its purpose.

Well, it is in the US.

Just ask Justice Souter:

We hold that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties.

If you know (or should know) the illicit intent of the people you're giving the software to then you get lumped in with their actions.

Here you go. Link.

People in Italy speak one of the Neo-Latin languages descending from Latin, yes :-P

Wikimedia has a bunch of diagrams of the ISS you could probably use.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/wiki/Category:Diagrams_of_the_International_Space_Station

That looks even worse than the Atari Jaguar controller.

I count only one metaphor, and one pleonasm. I would say a "redundant pleonasm" were this not such an irony-deficient world.

Congrats on being chosen for the MOWOTD*

pleonasm

Often, pleonasm is understood to mean a word or phrase which is useless, clichéd, or repetitive, but a pleonasm can also be simply an unremarkable use of idiom.

* Most Obtuse Word of the Day

Most Obtuse person of the Day.

Zelda is not an adventure, it is an action-RPG (in fact, Zelda DEFINES what action-RPG even means).

It has elements of both, but Zelda is almost entirely an adventure game. Even though it's an action game and has RPG elements, that doesn't necessarily make it an "action RPG". Adventure games involve getting from Point A to Point B, usually from solving a puzzle or collecting an item that allows you to pass (in the case of Zelda, a weapon you find in a dungeon or a key item). This fits the definition of "adventure game" perfectly. The only Zelda game that I'd consider to be Action RPG-like would be Majora's Mask, because there's so many sidequests and optional things to do in that game that it really has that Action RPG feel.

If you want a good example of an Action RPG, check out Kingdom Hearts (first one preferably) or Monster Hunter, especially the latter game which is much more RPG-like in nature.

One important thing to remember: the "Chinese government" is not monolithic. Its various components often act in defiance of each other, much moreso than in Western nations.

The Chinese civilian government is not the same entity as the Chinese Communist Party, which is not the same entity as the Chinese military. There have been numerous examples of this. One prime example was the incident in which a US recon aircraft, operating in international airspace, was buzzed by Chinese fighter jets... and one of them collided with the recon aircraft, crippling it (and killing the fighter pilot). The US aircraft was forced to land at the nearest airport, which was Chinese. The Chinese civilian government did not want to cause an incident by entering the aircraft (the interior of an aircraft is sovereign territory of the nation in which it is registered, in the same manner and law as the deck of a ship at sea). They agreed to return the aircraft and crew; at the time, WTO membership was being considered for China. The Chinese military disagreed, claiming the landing was illegal (even though the aircraft had broadcast numerous distress signals, and ICAO treaties to which China is signatory allow any aircraft in an emergency to land at any airport without prior authorization... never mind that the emergency had been caused by the actions of the Chinese military...) and in full defiance of the civilian government imprisoned the crew and disassembled the plane to learn its capabilities. Later, the crew were released, and the plane returned in neatly boxed pieces.

There is also frequently conflict between local governments, which are largely corruption-funded (land seizures in which farmlands are seized and a pittance paid for them, then sold by the local government to developers at enormous profit, operation of product-counterfeiting factories, etc.) and the national government, which wants it people to not have cause for protests and which wants to minimize external economic conflicts. National laws are passed, but are not enforced by local authorities, and appeals to the national government go unheeded.

Reaching a deal with "China" doesn't mean much, as its component pieces frequently ignore each other and the agreements the other Chinese entities have reached. Perhaps a deal will be reached between the Chinese civilian government and the US government calling for curbing Internet-based intrusions, but that is meaningless to the Chinese military, which will do as it sees fit regardless. This is a reality which everyone doing business in China eventually figures out; reaching a deal with the big boys in Beijing is just the start of the process, not the end, and appeals to Beijing when other entities reneg on the agreement will get you little.

I count only one metaphor, and one pleonasm. I would say a "redundant pleonasm" were this not such an irony-deficient world.

Congrats on being chosen for the MOWOTD*

pleonasm

Often, pleonasm is understood to mean a word or phrase which is useless, clichéd, or repetitive, but a pleonasm can also be simply an unremarkable use of idiom.

* Most Obtuse Word of the Day

I'd say that going from losing 750K a month to net growth is an improvement thank you very much.

Didn't you notice that job growth wasnt happening when the Democrats had both House and Senate? Did you NOT notice that? Oh, we heard the Democrats time and again say there was job creation.. while unemployment grew and grew...

Yes the Dems have the majority in the Senate, but the GOP in the Senate is quite clearly doing everything they can to submarine anything productive happening.

We heard this same bullshit when the Democrats were ramming through the healthcare bill without any votes from any of the Republicans at all!

We don't buy the lie anymore. We know that the Democrats say this, but we also know its bullshit.

You would think that the assholes that complained about Bush's spending would be in complete rage at the sheer magnitude of the corporate handouts the Obama+Pelosi administration extracted from each and ever Americans ass.

Its OK to hate the Republicans.. fuck.. they are scum.. but to think for a second that the Democrats arent outrageously worse.. you've got your fucking eyes closed!

This graph says it all. When the Democrats control House and Senate, the debt-to-gdp ratio always goes up. When the Republicans control the House and Senate, the debt-to-gdp ratio nearly always goes down. Thats the end of the fucking debate you fucking moron.

Which ones? I'm looking at the edit list for the Revere Page, and I'm not finding anybody there who's showing up as having been editing Palin's page as well.

The one discussion that's linked to, the guy is CLEARLY trolling. On his User page at Wikipedia:

I quote reliable sources such as the LA Times, CNN, when they tell me that Sarah Palin said that Paul Revere used bells to warn colonists during his midnight ride. An enquiring mind such as mine wants to find out exactly how this was accomplished.

Accompanied by this graphic.

It looks to me like he's done most of the defense of the edits made (that were reversed), and I don't see any contributions from him to the Palin page either.

My guess is this is some Anonymous-style "for the lulz" raid.

Exactly what I was going to say. The Turing Award is frequently described as 'the Nobel Prize for computing', and comes with a $250,000 prize, as well as the prestige. It's been going since 1966, so it's hardly new. Looking down the list of winners, I can't see any that I don't think were worthy of the award.

Try this image: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b5/Kc_simulation.jpg/220px-Kc_simulation.jpg

If only someone had though of that idea 200 years ago.

Oh look, someone did.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

If only someone had though of that idea 200 years ago.

Oh look, someone did.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

Agreed. Simply looking at the Wikipedia page will provide this information, with many more sources than one leaked cable.

The UK system isn't perfect. Now that we have multiple exam boards, each handing out certificates that are nominally of the same value, there's an incentive for teachers to shop around for the easiest exam for their pupils. In the USA, the high school diploma typically isn't worth much - it's like having 5 GCSE, something that's just expected of anyone who is mostly literate and numerate. Individual schools with a good reputation may give out diplomas that are more valuable, but universities are more likely to look at SAT scores, or exams that they set.

In both countries, universities award their own degrees based on their own criteria. This is why degrees from some universities are not worth the paper that they're printed on, while others are in high demand.

It's been less that two years since the owners of a small business minting gold coins were imprisoned and all their assets stolen by the federal government.

If you mean the "Liberty Dollar" case then it happened not two but four years ago, and the guy was recently found guilty by a jury on money laundering and other crimes.

He has not been sentenced yet and the forfeiture trial is still ongoing - i.e. his assets are still his, not "stolen".

Take a look at the coins, it's easy to mistake them for specially minted US dollars and complaints from customers about those 'fake dollars' is what brought him the federal charges. He should have made them look more clearly distinct ...

Libertarians believe in necessary regulation. Those which don't simply don't know they aren't libertarians but anarchists. We DO have names for these things; you are hereby invited to use the proper ones.

And you are hereby invited to educate yourself on the various meanings of this particular term.

Anarchy (from Greek: anarchí, "without ruler") may refer to any of several political states, and has been variously defined by sources. Most often, the term "anarchy" describes the simple absence of publicly recognized government or enforced political authority. When used in this sense, anarchy may or may not imply political disorder or lawlessness within a society. In another sense, anarchy may not refer to a complete lack of authority or political organization, but instead refer to a social state characterized by absolute direct democracy or libertarianism.

Source: Wikipedia; emphasis added. Some libertarians may be surprised to find some like-minded people among the anarchists. You are also invited to realize that many political terms are used differently by different people in different circumstances, for example: "national security." This double meaning is a source of endless confusion, often purposeful.