Slashdot Mirror

If you put all of the FICA taxes and T-bills owned by the Social Security Administration towards what they're supposed to be going for, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, are doing collectively just fine right now, and will continue to be more-or-less just fine for decades.

The problem is that instead the significant surpluses in FICA were used to cover up even-more-massive deficits in the general treasury. And where and when those deficits came isn't a mystery: In short, blame can be laid pretty squarely at the feet of Ronald Reagan (notice the huge inflection point between 1945 and 2010).

Basically, Reagan claimed he could cut taxes without affecting revenue. The effect of trying this was that he effectively proved that this was utter nonsense. But everybody likes paying less in taxes, so people who pointed out that it was nonsense were effectively told "Shhhh! Don't give the game away".

1) shame from nudity

You seriously want to see everyone naked? Further, don't clothes have any other functions? E.g., uniforms, winter coats, waders, control-top pantyhose, sports bras, etc?

2) hard work for sustenance

So a god was going to build our skyscrapers, grill our steaks, and wire our grids, but then... The god says: "Satan! Buddy! I've got a little problem involving this uh, contract, see... Anyways, I was wondering... [whisper whisper]"

3) painful childbirth

Which invisible super-friend invented this little miracle?

See Genesis 3.

Er... I'll get right on that, as soon as I finish this current issue of Scientific American, alright? =)

I see your demons but where is your God?

Asking for three-dimensional, physical proof of what is spiritual is rather illogical, yes? The proof that God exists has nothing to do with science whatsoever. It has to do with the historical accuracy of the scriptures themselves, the history and tradition of Christianity (Catholicism in particular) and Judaism, as well as various miracles which allegedly occurred. Of course you can't see these right in front of your face, but that's what faith is for. If you look beyond the simple "can you prove that He exists" argument, you'll find a lot of things that "prove" that He exists, but not quite in the way you're expecting. St. Thomas Aquinas, a Catholic philosopher, wrote the Summa Theologica, an unfinished work that (in part of it) attempts to prove that God exists using human logic alone, a rather incredible feat if you ask me.

...who cover up the crimes of baby-raping priests in order to protect their own interests.

Exactly what interests would those be? The Church doesn't "cover up the crimes", it openly opposes them. Some members of the Church have covered up some crimes, but that doesn't make the entire Church as a whole bad.

Not that I believe any of this God/Satan claptrap, but if you're gonna accuse others of Satanism, it's incumbent upon you to have a long, hard, honest look at yourself before doing so.

Last I checked, Satanism is the name of a variety of actual religions that are practiced in parts of the world (however small their membership may be relative to more popular religions). Mere sin itself is not "satanism". The Church HAS apologized for the sin of it's members. Some priests might have committed crimes, but can you explain to me how that makes the entire Church itself a criminal institution? What sense would it make for them to randomly abuse children? What in the world would they gain?

BTW, the Catholic church isn't primarily a religious institution, any more than the Mafia is primarily a waste disposal business. It's a huge financial and political entity - soul-saving and Satan-stomping are just tools to help maintain and consolidate the power base.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Your claims that the Church is "powerful" and "rich" are purely popular myths that are quickly debunked with a simple Google search. Likewise, the "millions" of Inquisition victims are also highly innacurate. Spouting that crap just makes you look like an idiot that only hates on the Church to seem cool and karma whore. You're going to need to troll a lot harder than that.

I haven't really kept up to date with quantum computation in the past 5 years or so, but back then it seemed like focus in research was placed primarily in quantum error correction, the idea being that we should just give up on being able to maintain coherence absolutely and try to modify algorithms that take decoherence as a matter of course. I don't know the state of the art in quantum error correction, though, and whether gains there would be enough to balance out the quadratic rate of decoherence.

...or you might launch just the expendable observation platform(s - many of them, when using the expendable rocket which lifts X-37B as a payload; best of all: a rocket with Russian-made main engine)

I was hoping Shuttle taught us something (say, with the Hubble - it would be less expensive to have new ones; they are already relatively "mass" produced, as spysats... launched by expendable rockets; or what Zenit sats taught us - the most popular payload of "the most reliable ... most frequently used launch vehicle in the world", and close to least expensive one), that we won't relive the dream started in scifi of the ~40s (times of rapid airplane advances no doubt influencing it [1]) on which STS designers and decision-makers were certainly raised. And pushed in scifi ever since; hey, it does look really familiar and reassuring...
About the only sensible thing maybe going for it seems to be testing / ability to maybe do noticeably larger, per delta-V & fuel required [2], lifting inclination changes. Maybe.

1. Like those airplanes from "our" times (can be even done - take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy), no doubt influenced by rapid advances in marine tech; vs. what so called reality dictates. Spaceplanes can be seen as analogous to flying boats (not many of those around now); Catalina at best (& hopefully), Spruce Goose at worst. Imagine how much further we could be without STS (a craft obsolete long before its first mission; first automatic orbital rendezvous & docking taking place in the 60s) or Buran (pushed by ignorant Soviet generals as a "counterpart" to nonexistent strategic advantage of STS; engineers wanted to do something very different)

2. Assuming worth the mass budget for an airframe...

It's called the Visby classcorvette. Pretty cool ship actually, although apparently the on-board systems run Windows, which should make it a pretty easy target ... :)

Nope, automated trains aren't dead.

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

Or even, it appears, dead in NYC.

http://articles.nydailynews.com/2009-02-24/local/17916708_1_nyc-transit-trains-subway-cars

with an interesting CV (resume).

He worked at Sinclair research in the 80's and later on at Konix and then Atari where he had a hand indeveloping the Panther and the Jaguar:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Martin_Brennan_(engineer)

I'm curious - do you have a source for the assertion that Kennedy was a rum runner?

Joseph Kennedy was widely reputed to have been in cahoots with the Canadian Bronfman brothers. They made their fortune running rum from Cuba and elsewhere in the Caribbean up to Canada and then slipping it across the US border from there.

Canadian Club whiskey is a legacy of that trade route. 'Canadian' clubs tended to have the best booze, you see. The families involved in this trade became extremely wealthy. The Bronfmans founded Seagrams distillery and one of their scions actually owned entertainment giant Vivendi/Universasl for a while.

Which doesn't go where I need to be, when I need to be there or leave there.

In fact, they cut the bus line that went near my workplace. Never mind that the public transport route from home to the job involves 3 transfers and takes 2+ hours while the drive is 25 minutes. And I can go out for lunch or run errands. Or basically be something more productive than a cog in a machine.

And there's the problem in a nutshell.

In the United States (the place with which I have the most experience), cars aren't just vehicles. Cars have become an extension of an individual's personal space. As several people have pointed out, it's not about safety it's about control.

In 2004, a former classmate who lives 1500 miles away from where we went to high school actually drove her car to come to our reunion. When I asked her why she didn't fly -- especially since driving is so much more dangerous than flying. She said that despite the statistics (of which she had at least a passing knowledge) she preferred to drive because she *felt* more in control.

As for the public transportation infrastructure, there are many places just like St0rmShad0w's locality where, from a practical standpoint, public transportation is infeasible or even non-existent.

Where does this extreme short-sightedness come from?
IMHO, it's a result of decades of marketing by the auto industry, aided by government subsidies and the efforts of such stellar jackasses as Robert Moses:

[Robert Moses'] works remain extremely controversial. His critics claim that he preferred automobiles to people, that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City, uprooted traditional neighborhoods by building expressways through them, contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League baseball teams, and precipitated the decline of public transport through disinvestment and neglect. [emphasis added]

The upshot is that, self-driving cars are anathema to Americans -- right up there with public transportation. Not because of any inherent benefits, but because of the marketing of automobiles, horrible community planning and (we knew this was coming) the US's extensive efforts to keep the price of oil down over the past 50 years.

Cars are tools and should be treated as such -- not as status symbols and prized possessions. If (and that's a big 'if') we can learn that lesson, we may actually be able to create viable, sustainable communities which are not dependent on the individual death traps we call our cars.

Actually, they were in an interesting lawsuit a while back fighting for their right to tell falsehoods as "news". They won.
Doesn't prove that they do lie, but... they're a news outlet. Of course they lie.

I'm not sure if that's a joke or not, but the standard technique to store oil is to locate it but not pump it out. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Oil_reserves

"I'm a rodeo clown!"

And the specific law is USC 17 Section 106 which says:

For distribution. You have the right to make as many backup copies as you want, and this has also been long settled law - it's called Time Shifting.

Just be careful you don't end up like this guy.

I'm not saying the so cal plant is necessarily better designed or prepared, I'm am just arguing against the armchair claim on this particular backup generator point.

It does have looking like a giant pair of breasts going for it at least.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/San_Onofre_Nuclear_Generating_Station

Any amount. The rootkit was detected by a "licensed" malware scanner, meaning a product that would probably willfully ignore detecting Magic Lantern.

Technically, so long as you cite the exact revision of the wikipage you're using (using the link from the history) and the page you're using is well cited, it's not a terrible source. The most basic problem with using wiki as a source is the same problem with using any encyclopedia or textbook as a source-it's a tertiary source and therefore a compilation of (often uncited, though that's not the case with wiki) primary and secondary sources rather than original work.

To add, a credentialed individual is more likely to be involved in an ongoing debate on the subject matter, and have a bit of a PoV bias.

So it's important to have the amateurs around to A) referee for the brainiacs B) clean up after the mundane stuff the brainiacs leave cluttered because such work is beneath them and C) smooth out the article so that it has some accessible material for the curious, in addition to the denser material that might be inpenetratble to the layman.

Despite all the Wikipedia naysaying, it continues to improve daily, and continues to gather market share for organized, searchable knowledge. It is inevitable that academics will get involved, and there are some programs running to speed up the adoption rate. Eventually those that thumbed their noses at Wikipedia won't care to admit that they did.

So thank you Wikipedia jack-of-all-trades.

Or look at Germany and it's relationship with industry and it undermines your point.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Rhine_Capitalism
If we apply your thinking to the banks we let them burn and us with them.

Don't everyone thinks the cuts should being being done as they are:
http://falseeconomy.org.uk/

Too late. Everybody that's read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is probably in the nursing home by now. (Wanders off in search of a shuffleboard partner)

Hahaha. Before clicking on the story, I did tag it with "orshoppinglist".

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Blank.gif

... functionality to follow real soon now

Too late. Everybody that's read "A Canticle for Leibowitz" is probably in the nursing home by now.

(Wanders off in search of a shuffleboard partner)

Unless you're proposing to make Autistic children the "Queens" of our hive, and relegate everyone else to supporting them and their broods...

I am cognizant of the tongue in cheek nature of your remark, but strangely, eusocial mammals are not without precedent.

Very bizarre. I had always considered eusociality to be the exclusive domain of the insects...

The proposal above will do nothing to stop oppressive governments from taking advantage of blacklists created by western companies. These adversaries can simply request updates from fully-supported jurisdictions and forward them privately to filters running on their gateway routers. The filters are made up of bytes. Bytes can be copied. If adversaries are already pirating the software itself, they can certainly pirate updates to the software.

Yes, yes, you can try using some kind of traitor tracing technique to figure out who might be leaking blocking lists --- but it's a cat and mouse game, and these regimes have more resources than you do.

Look: in a larger sense, antipathy toward western hardware and software companies is misplaced. To internet censors, filtering is an existential imperative, especially in light of the recent unrest in the middle east. No cost is too great. If our adversaries need to sign up with multiple expensive dummy accounts in order to receive filter lists, they will. If they need to break DRM, they'll do it. And if all that becomes too expensive, they'll just switch to open source and home-grown filtering solutions. Currently, they use these filtering products because they're cheap, not because they're essential.

We all want to stop internet censorship, but haranguing individual companies over the misuse of their software won't do it. Circumvention works. Alternative routing works. Political pressure works.

Internet censorship is a real problem. While it may feel good, hysterically screaming at corporations does nothing to solve it. Let's talk about thing we can to actually help.

(Note: I have a bit of experience in this area.)

The proposal above will do nothing to stop oppressive governments from taking advantage of blacklists created by western companies. These adversaries can simply request updates from fully-supported jurisdictions and forward them privately to filters running on their gateway routers. The filters are made up of bytes. Bytes can be copied. If adversaries are already pirating the software itself, they can certainly pirate updates to the software.

Yes, yes, you can try using some kind of traitor tracing technique to figure out who might be leaking blocking lists --- but it's a cat and mouse game, and these regimes have more resources than you do.

Look: in a larger sense, antipathy toward western hardware and software companies is misplaced. To internet censors, filtering is an existential imperative, especially in light of the recent unrest in the middle east. No cost is too great. If our adversaries need to sign up with multiple expensive dummy accounts in order to receive filter lists, they will. If they need to break DRM, they'll do it. And if all that becomes too expensive, they'll just switch to open source and home-grown filtering solutions. Currently, they use these filtering products because they're cheap, not because they're essential.

We all want to stop internet censorship, but haranguing individual companies over the misuse of their software won't do it. Circumvention works. Alternative routing works. Political pressure works.

Internet censorship is a real problem. While it may feel good, hysterically screaming at corporations does nothing to solve it. Let's talk about thing we can to actually help.

(Note: I have a bit of experience in this area.)

The proposal above will do nothing to stop oppressive governments from taking advantage of blacklists created by western companies. These adversaries can simply request updates from fully-supported jurisdictions and forward them privately to filters running on their gateway routers. The filters are made up of bytes. Bytes can be copied. If adversaries are already pirating the software itself, they can certainly pirate updates to the software.

Yes, yes, you can try using some kind of traitor tracing technique to figure out who might be leaking blocking lists --- but it's a cat and mouse game, and these regimes have more resources than you do.

Look: in a larger sense, antipathy toward western hardware and software companies is misplaced. To internet censors, filtering is an existential imperative, especially in light of the recent unrest in the middle east. No cost is too great. If our adversaries need to sign up with multiple expensive dummy accounts in order to receive filter lists, they will. If they need to break DRM, they'll do it. And if all that becomes too expensive, they'll just switch to open source and home-grown filtering solutions. Currently, they use these filtering products because they're cheap, not because they're essential.

We all want to stop internet censorship, but haranguing individual companies over the misuse of their software won't do it. Circumvention works. Alternative routing works. Political pressure works.

Internet censorship is a real problem. While it may feel good, hysterically screaming at corporations does nothing to solve it. Let's talk about thing we can to actually help.

(Note: I have a bit of experience in this area.)

I find that Yamamoto may have put that in a diary entry, but as for actually speaking it? The movies are likely to have put the words in his mouth. ... And then later shortened the quote.

I find that Yamamoto may have put that in a diary entry, but as for actually speaking it? The movies are likely to have put the words in his mouth. ... And then later shortened the quote.

I find that Yamamoto may have put that in a diary entry, but as for actually speaking it? The movies are likely to have put the words in his mouth. ... And then later shortened the quote.

You mean something like half of the countries in this list?

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Abandonware Looks to me that EA is being uncharacteristically non-dickish here and is following the spirit of Abandoned Ware. During the time they believe they would not be developing the product they let fan enjoy many many freedoms with their IP. Now they have decided that they want to do something with their IP and have sent cease and desist instead of filing a copy right infringement case. Anyone who thinks EA is out of line here is a crack smoker.

EA has done some really crappy things to gamers as of late, but sorry, this isnt one of them. If they are seriously going to release a redeux of Ultima IV it is one of the best things they have done for a long while. It will breath new life into one of the best games that has ever been produced. They have the advertising and promotion clout to bring this tale of greatness to a new generation... and one that I think is sorely in need of finding some kinda moral compass.

I wonder how Skittle the Skeleton has fared after all these years. A very close friend of mine passed away last friday. One of the only possessions of his I deemed of value was his Ultima IV Ankh, and thusly I snagged it to save it from the trash. It sat on his desk, under his monitor, for 25 years. (I lost mine at the beach in the 80s). This game was seriously important to many of my generation. Not only because of the great story, the morality, that demanded an emotional response, and left with something we would reference for the rest of our lives, But because Lord British was one of us. He was our age and way too in love with technology. Lets hope that EA's resurrection rises from the ashes like a phoenix.

Before we get too excited, apparently most of his research to date has been with cobalt, phosporus, tungstun and rhodium. Not sure where all this stuff comes from, but hopefully it is widespread enough won't turn into another middle east problem.

Most of the metals required are either located in politically challenging locations, very expensive, or both:

Tungsten: "China produced over 75% of this total in 2000".

Cobalt: The political situation in the Congo influences the price of cobalt significantly"

Rhodium: As of October 2007, rhodium cost approximately eight times more than gold.

If you want a greener world, then to help promote peace in Africa, would be a good place to start.

Before we get too excited, apparently most of his research to date has been with cobalt, phosporus, tungstun and rhodium. Not sure where all this stuff comes from, but hopefully it is widespread enough won't turn into another middle east problem.

Most of the metals required are either located in politically challenging locations, very expensive, or both:

Tungsten: "China produced over 75% of this total in 2000".

Cobalt: The political situation in the Congo influences the price of cobalt significantly"

Rhodium: As of October 2007, rhodium cost approximately eight times more than gold.

If you want a greener world, then to help promote peace in Africa, would be a good place to start.

Before we get too excited, apparently most of his research to date has been with cobalt, phosporus, tungstun and rhodium. Not sure where all this stuff comes from, but hopefully it is widespread enough won't turn into another middle east problem.

Most of the metals required are either located in politically challenging locations, very expensive, or both:

Tungsten: "China produced over 75% of this total in 2000".

Cobalt: The political situation in the Congo influences the price of cobalt significantly"

Rhodium: As of October 2007, rhodium cost approximately eight times more than gold.

If you want a greener world, then to help promote peace in Africa, would be a good place to start.

Of course, Erdos fueled that spark with a ton of coffee and some amphetamines....

Pfft! Man up and use an IBM 129.

Wimp. A keypunch with a fucking Backspace key, so you don't have to get it right the first time or waste a card? Real menu use an 029. (I'd say an 026, but that might not have had the character set you need; if it did, you might as well go The Full Monty and get an 024 - who needs to see what's on the card printed on the top?)

Pfft! Man up and use an IBM 129.

Wimp. A keypunch with a fucking Backspace key, so you don't have to get it right the first time or waste a card? Real menu use an 029. (I'd say an 026, but that might not have had the character set you need; if it did, you might as well go The Full Monty and get an 024 - who needs to see what's on the card printed on the top?)

Pfft! Man up and use an IBM 129.

Wimp. A keypunch with a fucking Backspace key, so you don't have to get it right the first time or waste a card? Real menu use an 029. (I'd say an 026, but that might not have had the character set you need; if it did, you might as well go The Full Monty and get an 024 - who needs to see what's on the card printed on the top?)

Well they still haven't measured up to that 1961 accident in Idaho in some ways... The 26,000 pound reactor jumped 9 feet in the air, one of the guy was found pinned to the ceiling. The dead were so radioactive they had to be buried in lead-lined coffins.

Lesson learned: Don't design a reactor that can go prompt-critical by accidentally pulling one control rod too far. (Prompt critical is a level beyond which the moderating effect of additional bubbles in the water can provide negative-feedback stabilization).

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Sl-1

I half expected those clever Japanese would have little robots working on this...

Explanation at http://www.indystar.com/article/20110320/LOCAL01/103200369/Genius-work-12-year-old-studying-IUPUI

Here is his "debunking" of the big bang:

"So, um, in the big-bang theory, what they do is, there is this big explosion and there is all this temperature going off and the temperature decreases really rapidly because it's really big. The other day I calculated, they have this period where they suppose the hydrogen and helium were created, and, um, I don't care about the hydrogen and helium, but I thought, wouldn't there have to be some sort of carbon?"
...
I calculated, the time it would take to create 2 percent of the carbon in the universe, it would actually have to be several micro-seconds. Or a couple of nano-seconds, or something like that. An extremely small period of time. Like faster than a snap. That isn't gonna happen."

This is total gibberish. There is no carbon created in the Big Bang, only hydrogen, helium, and lithium. This was understood in the 1970's. All of the carbon in the universe is created in stars. This is likewise well understood. Also, the earth is mostly iron, not carbon. If this kid's new theory of relativity is anything like his theory of cosmology, he needs to be back in school getting an education, not doing independent research.

Suppress and intimidate political distention. Tick that box.

Congratulations. You rediscovered the political spectrum.

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

http://www.markville.ss.yrdsb.edu.on.ca/politics/Political-Spectrum_MM.gif

Either use a physical board or a simulator (I seem to recall there is one of those as part of the GCompris suite) and build different logical gates out of wires, switches and some lightbulbs (or chainsaw/lasers/fricking sharks if you get more kicks out of it). Once you've done this you will actually understand how a modern computer actually works. The difference between what you built and a real world processor is quantitative.

    Actually, that Snopes debunking is in relation to specific celebrities. It can and does happen. It only took a quick Google search on "Rib removal surgery". The second link is for Dr. Aaron Stone in Los Angeles, who does do the surgery. The third link is the Snopes article you mentioned, and then the fourth link is to the Wikipedia article referencing the procedure. I know, Wikipedia is the weakest evidence you can possibly provide, but still.

    If you want something done, if you look hard enough you'll find a doctor to do it. But hey, live in your happy little world, where you believe everything you see. If I wanted to BS you, I would have come up really good lies. The truth is weird enough.

Law is not a "Do as I say, not as I do" type thing.

When it's written by corporations, enacted by buffoons and sociopaths elected by those same corporations, enforced by hired thugs in both flak jackets and suits, and interpereted by judges who are bought, paid for, and traded like so many Goddamn stocks, yeah, it pretty much is. Just a question of how much it'll cost. Somehow, people seem to be okay with this. Some even consider it normal. I don't get it.

The only thing HTTP is vulnerable to that HTTPS is not vulnerable to is a passive attack. In most cases, when someone is able to position themself between you and the internet and listen in, they can also modify your traffic and give you bogus certs if you insist on HTTP. Then, because you see the happy, friendly padlock, you are reassured that everything is fine and dandy and nobody is listening in on your connection just because the attacker gave you a certificate which doesn't happen to be the right one.

Even older, with more functions:

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

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Iodine#Isotopes_and_their_applications
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Caesium#Isotopes

Half-life is not measured in hours but is 8 days for this Iodine-131 and 30 years for Caesium-137.

Please, countering FUD with lies does not help.