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So you're saying you think that no American can transfer funds to and from any of the other 194 countries because they are foreign?
They are a bank here in Luxembourg and do business on the whole planet, just like any other bank.
Also Luxembourg still has bank secrecy and I doubt that they will give details to a foreign state (the US) in a civil case.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Bank_secrecy

"Hamm is a quarter in eastern Luxembourg City, in southern Luxembourg. It is the home of the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial, the final resting place of 5,076 American servicemen, including General Patton."

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hamm,_Luxembourg

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Military_career_of_Adolf_Hitler#Awards_and_decorations_of_Adolf_Hitler

Logical next step - unapproved encryption is illegal.

They already tried that in the 1990s. It didn't work because of the sheer ridiculousness of regulating encryption.

Because of a little factor known as minimum wage
You try being a piss poor student on a monthly wage of $250 and then come back to tell me about the evils of copyright infringement.

Yes, there will always be people who are too cheap to buy stuff they could otherwise copy illegally, but that's hardly the most common reason.

haha. You need to grow a brain. Are you denying that spies use fake identification? That's absurd. Sometimes they are even caught red handed. Here's the first example of that off the top of my head: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_al-Mabhouh .

Lol.. "grow a brain, moran!"

Do you see the different between people faking passports and faking biometric data?

No?

Then please, stop talking before you hurt yourself.

> I'm pretty sure Scorched Earth wasn't the original, either

Not by a long shot.

I remember playing Artillery on the Apple II, and it wasn't a new concept even then.

On the one hand, "super injunctions" themselves aren't news in the sense of being "a new thing".

On the other hand, they aren't news because, you know, you aren't allowed to report their existence....

As to "not the government", I would have to disagree. Just as with National Security Letters, there have to be legal underpinnings allowing such a concept. If the law didn't permit these "super-injunctions", they could not survive. Of course, I don't know that they have been challenged in court yet. Apparently the Trafigura order got nulled before it could reach court. And The Guardian has been served with almost one a month in 2009. That's a lot of court challenges it would have to undertake in the cause of freedom of speech. I imagine that they have to pick their battles. Perhaps the United Kingdom needs it's own version of the ACLU.

On the one hand, "super injunctions" themselves aren't news in the sense of being "a new thing".

On the other hand, they aren't news because, you know, you aren't allowed to report their existence....

As to "not the government", I would have to disagree. Just as with National Security Letters, there have to be legal underpinnings allowing such a concept. If the law didn't permit these "super-injunctions", they could not survive. Of course, I don't know that they have been challenged in court yet. Apparently the Trafigura order got nulled before it could reach court. And The Guardian has been served with almost one a month in 2009. That's a lot of court challenges it would have to undertake in the cause of freedom of speech. I imagine that they have to pick their battles. Perhaps the United Kingdom needs it's own version of the ACLU.

I am not sure you are aware of this, but many people that commit white collar crime are white/wealthy and many people that smoke crack are poor/black. Investigating white collar crime is a slippery slope. Whats next? Calling out non-Muslims for being terrorists? Calling out a white presidential candidate for being born outside of the US?

A slippery slope indeed!

I am not sure you are aware of this, but many people that commit white collar crime are white/wealthy and many people that smoke crack are poor/black. Investigating white collar crime is a slippery slope. Whats next? Calling out non-Muslims for being terrorists? Calling out a white presidential candidate for being born outside of the US?

A slippery slope indeed!

I am not sure you are aware of this, but many people that commit white collar crime are white/wealthy and many people that smoke crack are poor/black. Investigating white collar crime is a slippery slope. Whats next? Calling out non-Muslims for being terrorists? Calling out a white presidential candidate for being born outside of the US?

A slippery slope indeed!

I am not sure you are aware of this, but many people that commit white collar crime are white/wealthy and many people that smoke crack are poor/black. Investigating white collar crime is a slippery slope. Whats next? Calling out non-Muslims for being terrorists? Calling out a white presidential candidate for being born outside of the US?

A slippery slope indeed!

I am not sure you are aware of this, but many people that commit white collar crime are white/wealthy and many people that smoke crack are poor/black. Investigating white collar crime is a slippery slope. Whats next? Calling out non-Muslims for being terrorists? Calling out a white presidential candidate for being born outside of the US?

A slippery slope indeed!

It's called the Dilbert Principle.

Cooling systems is not just "cooling". It's an integral part of the generation system.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/PressurizedWaterReactor.gif

See? The red loop. That's the cooling system. Without it there's no steam to move the turbines.

Uh, what article are you reading? Only one part of that article puts nuclear with the most expensive methods. All other studies put it around the lower-middle of the pack.
See the 2010 DOE study, which puts the price per megawatt-hour of a nuclear plant at $119.0--compared to coal's $100.4, hydro's $119.9, wind's $149.3, and solar's $396.1.

This is such a well-known phenomenon, it has a name. The Peter Principle (In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence) was first stated in 1969. It's simple to model - in most corporations, employees who do a good job are promoted, but ones who do a bad job are not demoted. Therefore, each employee will keep being promoted until they are in a position where they are no longer doing a good job.

Thanks for the link, this was indeed well-written and, even if the guy might not be the world's expert #1, this text goes a lot further than any media outlet would care to go.

What I'm still not quite clear about: Some amounts of Caesium-137 and Iodine-131 are said to have been released. Here his report is a bit weak: While Iodine isotope poisoning can be averted by giving Iodine tables (this is currently being done), and half-life is about eight days, Caesium-137 has a much longer half-life (about 30 years). So, when he says that it was "carried out to the sea and will never be seen again", this is not an entirely convincing explanation. Does anyone know more about the dangers of Caesium and Iodine isotopes, and the amounts released in this incident (so far)?

Pish posh. You just need to apply a dust protectant upon storage and then periodically dust the files off if they accumulate too much: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Parchive

Apple supports an open lossless format? Last I checked, they only supported ALE, which is a proprietary Apple CODEC. It's supported by libavcodec, but only as a result of reverse engineering. There is no public documentation available on the format.

Hmm? I always thought Indiana was split between many time zones (with neighboring states' major cities). Are these articles wrong?
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/daylight1.html
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Time_in_Indiana

Yes, formal verification of non-trivial program has been done. The "industry usage" section of the Wikipedia article on formal verification for a few examples.

That said, it is currently extremely expensive because it requires skilled programmers spending a lot of time on the verification, so it is only done when the correctness of the program is very important. Making it cheap enough to be used in any significant proportion of software projects is indeed a pretty far off. Having a large, carefully considered test suite is much more tractable and generally considered good enough (the vast majority of software, in practice, does not need to be bug-free).

On the other hand, proving a specific algorithm (as opposed to an entire system) formally correct may require a lot less work and is often the only way to convince oneself that it is actually correct.

Also, I think the GP was talking about the formal thinking of mathematics in general carrying over to programming.

What you want is PACER, the only nuclear fusion plant whose construction is a "mere" engineering problem. Power by blowing up hydrogen bombs!

The construction isn't going to be as bad as the maintenance. That's a crew who's always going to be in a bad mood.

This could be very dangerous needless to say. I suspect that we have the next Chernobyl on our hands. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster

The Swedish government has asked all citizens to leave Japan as soon as possible.

What you want is PACER, the only nuclear fusion plant whose construction is a "mere" engineering problem. Power by blowing up hydrogen bombs!

It will take the media and Japan a while to circle around to what caused the explosion, so I'll explain it now.

1. 1. cooling circulation failed due to power loss.
2. 2. reactor boiled off the coolant inventory and exposed the core
3. 3. core overheated and damaged the fuel
4. 4. the damaged fuel reacted with water vapor (zircaloy+H2O) and created a hydrogen bubble
5. 5. the hydrogen burned (exploded, iow) and neatly removed the outer walls of the reactor building

The explosion you see in the videos aligns perfectly with the Fukushima Daiichi No.1 reactor building seen here (forth square building from the left.)

The BBC has provided this incredible before/after photo where you can actually see the reactor building structure with the walls removed by the explosion: the metal framework is still intact.

The exact same thing happened with TMI-2 in 1979. The hydrogen burn occurred inside the containment dome. The Fukushima reactor doesn't have such a dome, so the hydrogen accumulated in the reactor building.

You could have just looked it up on Wikipedia.

(And you really ought to watch the Marx Bros. movies -- at very least up through A Day at the Races)

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Smartphone -- Refer to the market share graph based on Gartner data.

You state "facts", but provide no data to support the 80% figure.

I have to nominate the Sandra Bullock abortion The Net--the entire film. Compared to that movie, Goldblum's antics are totally plausible.

You suggest the government manage food distribution, but that would only be worse. With a transport subsidy, the government partially pays for shipping. With a government-managed distribution, the government has to purchase food, transport it, and distribute it to those in need, paying for everything and trying not to act as a monopoly against actual companies. Thanks, but I'd prefer to keep the bureaucracy detached.

I did not say it was "simple". I said it was the "simplest" (though that should be followed by "that I know of"). Subsidies put downward pressure on the price of whatever good they target, because participating companies can make a decent profit, while selling the goods at lower prices. Subsidizing transport forces food's final price to be lower, hopefully enough that even families with low incomes can afford it.

As an example of the situation, let's consider Ghana. In the southern half of the country, there is a food surplus, due to the Atlantic ocean, Lake Volta, and generally heavier rainfall. In the northern half, the farms can't produce enough food, due to winds from the Sahara and a lack of large water sources. Major northbound roads, such as the one from Kintampo to Tamale, have heavy tolls. Those roads are also in poor condition, and vehicles often have to be repaired after only a few crossings. There are fewer big cities in the north, and more small villages, so less wealthy people as well. Food brought to the north will sell, but it's not as profitable as keeping it in the south. Bear in mind that this disparity is in a country roughly the same size as Wyoming. A government-backed reduction in the transport cost would make the northern villages into feasible markets for southern suppliers.

The same situation applies to areas of the United States as well. On average, 1 in 6 Americans don't have secure food supplies. Where Ghana has long treacherous roads, America has mountains and sheer distance. There are areas, like my hometown, that simply can't afford enough food. I grew up less than a mile from a large grain farm, but it was primarily low-grade corn... good for turning into biofuel, but not suitable for human consumption, and certainly not directly contributing to local food stability.

A well-regulated subsidy of transport would improve the availability of food in small towns like mine. Yes, it'd require a lot of people to manage the system, but it's the simplest solution I've heard yet.

The home remedies in this previous version are worth the read.

Still in the genepool only very diluted: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hirsuties_coronae_glandis

PAVE-PAWS uses 435Mhz. In fact, there are regulations regarding ham use, power output, and directionality of transmissions in that frequency range by ham radio operators within 150 miles of those installations.

No. They will not auction that off. Peter King will sit down and STFU.

It's just for the casual user who never knows where he put his stamps, since he sends only a letter every couple of years nowadays.
For business it's old news.

"In 1999 Stamps.com became the first organization to be licensed by the United States Postal Service to print valid postage from a traditional PC printer. Their system allows the user to automatically download and print postage directly onto an envelope or "Netstamp""

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Postage_meter#Internet-_and_stamp_based_meters

Wow, that's impressive. Scandinavians are early adapters of technology, and cellphone ownership is pretty high (at least in Norway, probably the same in Sweden and Denmark).

Number of registered cellphone subscriptions in Norway in 2007 : > 5 million [ 1 ]
Estimated population in 2011: < 5 million [ 2 ]

In other words, cellphone subscriptions passed 100% of the population in 2007. People without cellphones here are few and far between.

[ 1 ] http://medienorge.uib.no/?cat=statistikk&medium=it&queryID=341
[ 2 ] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Norway

If I have to do that, then this is in effect not a turing complete device and thus factually no computer anymore.

(emphasis added)

I do not think that phrase means what you think it means.

I just use vegetable oil from any discounter for my Smart diesel car.
You can buy bulk at any oil mill.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Vegetable_oil_fuel

Winamp MP3 Player was originally freeware, but the author's mom told him he should really try offering it as shareware. Lots of people paid $10 in return for a player that they used for a lot of music that they didn't pay for :-)

Yes. From the discussion:

"Third, this flag itself was eligible for copyright and was released into the public domain by John Marcotte, its creator (not the MPAA or AACS LA)."

In other words, they were inspired by absolute fantasies, determined largely by creative shortcuts for ease of production, to make the fictional world more palatable to limited imagination of audiences determined by Earthly experiences, make the work of storytellers, scriptwriters and authors much easier?

Though - yes, it might be the best and most appropriate way to send off the Discovery as it goes home [1] - considering how the dream of "spaceplanes" grabbed public imagination mostly via pop scifi of the 30s, 40s or 50s (on which STS designers and decisionmakers were probably raised?) - a times of great advances and inspirations from airplanes (like those airplanes from "our" times were no doubt influenced by marine tech advances - and we can even build them: take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy - vs. boring appropriate ideas)

(BTW, why is the Enterprise counted as a Space Shuttle, as an orbiter, anyway? Equivalent in Buran program is called "Buran aerodynamic analogue"... Another "well meaning" grande lie?)

1. With the possible exception of, say, somebody from the ISS crew quietly installing HAL console (some small & light cardboard-like construction with LED, hidden inside ISS cargo, plus repurposed comms) in the cockpit of Discovery. :) Unfortunately, it's too late for that... and any possible Stargate: Atlantis or James Cook themes don't seem to be in the same league.

All laws are based on beliefs and there is no way to separate religious beliefs from other beliefs. What one considers to be "common sense". derives from one's world view. One's world view is a product of one's religion. Facts do not provide any direct basis for passing laws. It is not until those facts are passed through a value system that one has something that is the basis for laws.

You don't need to be religious to have a world view. Mine for example is based on how I experienced the world, and that does not include any proof nor sufficient evidence for the existence of any god or higher power.

For the common sense, I mean it like this: no one wants to be killed himself, so killing someone should be illegal, with very little exceptions (like when killing an attacker in direct self-defense is the only way to defend your own life). For those needing some help with it, the 30 articles of the https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikisource/en/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights are a good base to start with, as this declaration has been accepted worldwide in 1948, although even today you can hardly find any country not violating more or less of them.

In my ideal world, humankind has become wise enough to live together in peace and harmony without a need for laws telling them how to do that. Yes, I know that my lifespan is much too short to have a chance to experience that myself. As I'm afraid that we will have extincted our human race long before having reached such enlightenment, that is probably a good thing.

From what we know about our universe, it's very unlikely any survey ships will be coming back. Also, archetypal "dark ages" are largely a myth, a fabrication of following era - those were also times of immense progress.

Generally, it's possible that such grandiose inspirations do at least quite comparable amounts of harm and good. STS (and how it provoked ignorant Soviet generals into pushing for "strategic counterpart" for nonexistent advantage, when their engineers wanted to do different things, also outside LEO...) can be easily seen as a great contribution to the possibility of near Earth orbit being the final frontier of manned space exploration in our lifetime [1]. Unsustainable crash projects in the style of Apollo (not that STS was very different) also aren't the way (BTW, please remind me - what happened with public attention soon after July 20, 1969?). Overall, be careful for those "boldly going beyond the reaches of our imagination" minds to not fall out of their skulls (as one saying with being "open minded" goes) - for one example at hand: it's quite possible that designers and decisionmakers of the STS were raised by pop scifi from 30s, 40s and 50s - scifi with many dreams (nightmares, it turns out?) of "spaceplanes", no doubt inspired by rapid advances in airplane technology during that time. Kinda like those airplanes from "our times" - no doubt influenced by rapid advances in marine tech (and we can even build them! Take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy) - vs. what reality dictates as a good idea (for airplanes! Not launchers and spacecraft... unless you want something analogous to Catalina at best, Spruce Goose at worst)

(BTW, why is the Enterprise counted as a Space Shuttle, as an orbiter, anyway? Equivalent in Buran program was called "Buran aerodynamic analogue"...)

1. It's not very likely though. Have $100 million? Get yourself a ride (those are the people responsible for almost all orbital "tourists")

I'm confused... "This is the whole point of (good, hard) science fiction....to predict things so well that there's no real option but to go out and do it for real. Good on Discovery, good on Shatner, good on Roddenberry and good on humanity in general" in one line?

NVM how the point of (good, hard) science fiction seems to be somewhat different - to explore how perhaps possible (vs. "outright fantasies"; or creative shortcuts meant to ease production (Roddenberry...), make the wold more palatable for limited experiences of audiences, make the work of storytellers, scriptwriters and authors easier) future circumstances would influence us, our reality. NVM how the dream of "spaceplanes" (Discovery...) grabbed public imagination (humanity in general...) mostly via pop science fiction of the 30s, 40s or 50s - a times of great advances and inspirations from airplanes (kind of like those airplanes from "our" times were no doubt influenced by marine tech advances - vs. boring reality) - but it didn't make "go out and do it for real" a good idea (kinda how we can even build the airplanes from first Wiki link - take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy). If anything, STS set us back.

I still see Archimedean hulls over there :p

I say it very precisely, "ships with hulls overlooking Archimedes' principle"/etc., for a reason. :p But congrats, you're the first out of at least a dozen people replying to such posts [1] / I was starting to think nobody would ever point out hydrofoils ;> (which don't change much of course, their properties resulting in limited use, and how their essence is quite comparable... even to few swimming styles - especially "improper" (but common: head constantly above water) breaststroke or, to a lesser extent, "proper" one or butterfly; when the body is dynamically suspended above the equilibrium by movement of surfaces. Also, we can probably agree that small bike-like hydrofoils without hulls, often muscle-powered, are a joke ;) ) And I'm even from a place formerly behind the Iron Curtain - easy past contact with Meteor or Voskhod hydrofoils.

1. Generally, posts dispelling tendencies to mix fiction and wishful thinking with reality, most often when... related to space activities, as above. This picture is useful too (airplanes from "our" times, no doubt influenced by rapid advances in marine tech 100+ years ago [2] - and we can even build them: take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy... doesn't make it a good idea), vs. boring reality (yes, typically this picture ;p It's not only a nice shot, also the most widely used passenger airliner, the airline (as far as my part of the woods goes), and one of few profitable ones)

2. One can wonder how strong was this effect in giving us the Shuttle - after all, scifi from 30s, 40s and 50s (times of rapid advances in airplane technology / I can see a pattern...) was full of "spaceplanes". Shuttle designers and decisionmakers grew up on those works of fiction before they gave us... an analogue of Catalina, at best (Spruce Goose, at worst)

The average joe doesn't understand how Microsoft's ownership of the browser market was a serious setback for technology, for user experience, for productivity. For five years MS had nothing better to offer than IE6 because they owned the market. They didn't need to rev their browser because they weren't competing. Five years, from 2001 to 2006. The Great Languish. Or maybe The Great Rot. How many Windows systems did you have to clean up for friends and family? How fun was it coping with all the standards noncompliance? Thanks a lot, Microsoft. I don't ever want that again.

So, for one thing, I will fight Microsoft's domination of the market by being against them so long as they're over, say, 1/3 the market. (I don't think the platform (OS/browser) is really a commodity until it shows greater signs of market variance.) And for another, I will push for the best and most standards compliant alternatives to cover whatever ground MS loses.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/ce/Internet-explorer-usage-data.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Web_browser_usage_share.svg

We're not quite there yet. The browser wars aren't over.

If the people who in effect vote by their choice of browser don't know what kind of effect they're having, it's my responsibility as a technology aware friend and netizen to encourage their better choices.

It could be based on perspective. Asimov wrote a couple of short stories with positronic brains making world decisions.

Given the nature of the human condition these days, perhaps the overused meme "I for one welcome our life decision making robots" is better then the current option, greedy, political, me oriented humans.

Obviously, I meant evolution as an explanation of prehistory. Few people deny the small steps that can be shown in a lab, but every few months we see research come out that challenges natural-selection evolution as we understand it as the sole explanation of our existence.

I think you misunderstand the research "coming out every few months".

Steves seem to think this whole "evolution thing" is a pretty useful scientific concept:

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

"Evolution is a vital, well-supported, unifying principle of the biological sciences, and the scientific evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the idea that all living things share a common ancestry. Although there are legitimate debates about the patterns and processes of evolution, there is no serious scientific doubt that evolution occurred or that natural selection is a major mechanism in its occurrence. It is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible for creationist pseudoscience, including but not limited to "intelligent design," to be introduced into the science curricula of our nation's public schools."

The way a society treats its least powerful and valued members, its enemies, and its critics is a measure of that society's strength and fitness.

Why do it's enemies matter?

Because they are a useful metric. The lowest level or respect a society shows for anyone, in my opinion, can be a good measure of how just, honorable, fair, etc. that society is overall. You don't get many "points" for treating your kings well - everyone does that. Treating your enemies well takes some serious effort.

And these people are treated badly because they are criminals, not because they are the least powerful or least valued.

Criminals, in general, are not valued highly by a society. In some sense, they are "enemies" of the society. I think it degrades us all when we treat them as less than human, even (or especially) if we feel that they have behaved in a less-than-human manner. Fortunately back in 1948 we all agreed to the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights", so these types of abuse are purely theoretical at this point, no?

Article 5 - No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights

As an aside, I heard an interview with a military doctor serving in Afghanistan who spoke about their policy of treating the wounded of the enemy Taliban. He said that personally he would be more than happy to leave them dying on the field, but that he recognized the tremendous PR value of actually fixing them up. He claimed that the Taliban were actually leaving their wounded by the side of the road on occasion because they realized they would get better treatment than could be offered by their own side. The doctor wondered how long the Taliban could maintain the idea that the west were a bunch of evil devils while implicitly stating that they gave their enemies as good treatment as they did their allies.

Don't you have any kind of constitutional court, like we have in Germany ( https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Federal_Constitutional_Court_of_Germany ), who is there to take down such laws?

Btw, in civilized countries there is no death penalty and no torture.