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If I parodied you by drawing a cartoon of you having sex with a dog, you might have a case for defamation :)

I don't know about Canada, but in the US the answer is no.

The are several requirements that must all be met:

1. Actual malice, intent to cause harm.
2. The statement must said with the knowledge that it was false or with "reckless disregard" for whether it is true or false.
3. The statement must be presented as true, and that reasonable people would interpret it as factual.

About the only way a cartoon drawing might be interpreted as factual by reasonable people is if you were to put it on the evening TV news with the caption "artist recreation of actual events". And even then one would hope reasonable persons would notice the news show itself is less than credible for presenting a cartoon as a reconstructed event.

There was a famous case where Hustler Magazine published an "interview" where Jerry Fallwell describes losing his virginity to his mother, and it proceeds to keep on shoveling more on from there. The lawsuit was thrown out of court because it was not intended for readers to take it as a factual description of events, and reasonable readers would not interpret it as a factual historical account. You can read Huslter's Fallwell "interview" here. It's definitely worth reading :)

If I call Officer Bubbles an idiot, he has no case because that is clearly an opinion. If I draw a cartoon of Officer Bubbles butt-raping puppies, he has no case because the cartoon is clearly satire which no reasonable person would take as a factual historical depiction.

And most of all Officer Bubble would have no case because he would have to establish the use of lies with actual malicious intent to inflict harm upon him personally.

The closest thing I have to "malice" would be harsh criticism against Canadian law if it allows this grotesque abusive case to move forward in court.

-

>iOS has, and continues to, outsell Android.
And what have you smoked? http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Smartphone_share_current.png

If a paper could just publish blatant nonsense that was incredibly defamatory

But they can publish blatant nonsense. Fox news went to court to prove as much.

http://www.ceasespin.org/ceasespin_blog/ceasespin_blogger_files/fox_news_gets_okay_to_misinform_public.html

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Monsanto
"The decision in Akre's favor was then overturned in 2003 by an appeals court because the whistleblower's statute under which the original case had been filed did not actually apply to the case. The court held that Fox News had no obligation to report truthfully, and the First Amendment protects their right to lie.[56] Therefore, the court held that firing a reporter for refusing to lie is not actionable under the whistleblower statute."

Not really... Some of the earliest computers used 'core memory', which was the only RAM and also non-volatile. You toggled in the bootstrap into this core memory, from your own memory or a cheat sheet (fortunately it was very short), and it was then used for multiple boots. Only if a really bad error caused a program to scribble over the bootstrap did you have to re-enter the bootstrap code.

On the PDP-8 I used, the bootstrap code was enough to read the OS in from paper tape - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-8 for background, the PDP-8/E picture at http://bits.wikimedia.org/skins-1.5/common/images/magnify-clip.png also shows the toggle switches.

There's a good summary of bootstrapping at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping#Computing

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

Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning

Google is working on PNaCl which lets you deliver [long-running] web apps as LLVM bytecode which can be JITed (or probably interpreted or even ahead of time compiled) so any language can be used and a lot of the optimizations can be done ahead of time when compiling to bytecode.

Javascript is not going away. Just because a replacement can't beat Javascript at its own game (very quick startup time for scripts) is not a good reason to ignore it.

Yes. Why do you ask?

Google "total solar irradiance" for direct satellite measurements of solar output from 1978 to the present. Compare to temperature records over the same period. Then re-evaluate your trust in a source that tells you something you can prove false in a matter of seconds.

For those who don't have a few seconds free, here ya go:

Insolation record 1975-2006 (see the black irradiance curve):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solar-cycle-data.png

Global temperatures 1880-2008:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f4/Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png

The main problem is with what economists call externalities. Waste byproducts, pollution, resource depletion, etc. are all negative externalities that aren't immediately reflected in the cost of a good or service. Policy decisions, though, such as pollution regulation, manufacturer takeback requirements, and so on can internalize those costs in the final selling price of a good or service.

This is where regulation meets the marketplace, and how proper regulations and policies can work together with market forces to drive sustainability. But, it does require forces outside the market (such as government regulation) to internalize those costs so that they get accounted for up front.

For example, I actually would be in favor of increased fuel taxes, with the money allocated directly to greenhouse gas abatement programs, whether it's planting tree farms or sequestering carbon by some other means, or converting power plants away from coal.

[...] I feel it's usually better to try for the lesser of the 2 evils than throw my vote away on a futile protest. I live in a red state, where even voting for Democrats seems like so much futility.

A third-party vote is only thrown away in a swing-state. Since you live in a red state, voting for a democrat is similarly thrown away. Vote for a third-party candidate and at least try to get them matching federal campaign funds.

See: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Tactical_voting

Or even better, use a brazil nut. It was a favourite trick of ours in the Scouts - a single brazil nut contains enough oil (read calories/joules) to fry an egg and a couple of rashers of bacon.

Wow. I never knew nigger toes were that useful.

That's not the only thing that causes the Brazil nuts to heat things up...

Brazil nuts are known to contain over 12,000 pico curies...

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

A good opportunity to repent? (some nice imagery)

A good opportunity to repent? (some nice imagery)

A good opportunity to repent? (some nice imagery)

I don't use e-mail encryption, but I find it relatively easy to get people to use IM encryption, especially as everyone using a Mac is using Adium which includes support for it, and usually when I show people Pidgin they like it and want to switch to it... so installing OTR as well is not that hard.

For databases, I would chose RAID10 over RAID5/6: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Standard_RAID_levels#RAID_5_performance

I only wonder what lays yet undiscovered in the Antarctic, there is no telling what sort of things can be found there.

Geologist William Dyer, a professor from Miskatonic University writes to disclose hitherto unknown and closely kept secrets in the hope that he can deter a planned and much publicized scientific expedition to Antarctica. On a previous expedition there, a party of scholars from Miskatonic University, led by Dyer, discovered fantastic and horrific ruins and a dangerous secret beyond a range of mountains taller than the Himalayas. They found the remains of fourteen ancient life forms, completely unknown to science and unidentifiable as either plants or animals, after discovering an underground cave while boring for ice cores. Six of the specimens are badly damaged, the others uncannily pristine. Their highly-evolved features are problematic: their stratum location puts them at a point on the geologic time scale much too early for such features to have naturally evolved yet. Because of their resemblance to creatures of myth mentioned in the Necronomicon, they are dubbed the "Elder Things" moar

... See where this is going ...

Boring a very, very long tunnel alone does not strike me as that hard (the summary already states that there are water ducts longer than this tunnel). But making it a tunnel for people to go through means that there have to be vertical ventilation shafts at regular intervals along its length, fire-fighting measures and, i suppose, escape routes. Especially the vertical shafts must have been also hard to manufacture since the tunnel is under the Alps, which is not the most comfortable place to make a vertical hole at. Here is a nice picture : http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Nrla_scheme.png

Looking at the image, one wonders why they didn't run the thing from Faido to Erstfeld, rather than from Pollegio to Estefeld. The Pollegion to Faido strech of the tunnel runs on basically the same route as the existing road - the only obvious advantage of a tunnel is reduce noise pollution and saved space in the valley. But, that strech seems like it will save little actual travel time at what is likely to be a great capital cost.

Maybe this is like a swiss watch - just a little too precise, and a little too efficient, with more consideration for aesthetics and - if we're honest - ego, than practicality.

The real answer is requiring companies to ask permission and bar them from trying to compel people to give them the permission. It's one thing to require a drug test and background check for a job, but it's quite another to include in that background check data scraping off the net.

It's called the rigth to informational self-determinism

And BTW, pre-employment drug tests are bullshit 999 out of a thousand - they are the result of the intersection between moralists and insurance liability since actual continued testing to maintain employment is illegal except in the most limited of safety-critical situations - might as well test for STDs for all the good it does.

A perfect example of an event so rare that it should never be used as a reason for a policy. Terrorist acts are just not that hard. Highway deaths are the equivalent of a 9/11 every few months. [...]

No. Highway deaths are the equivalent of a 9/11 every month:

US motor vehicle deaths per year

There were 33,808 highway motor vehicle deaths last year alone. In 2001 alone 42196 people died in road accidents. The 9/11 death toll was 2985.

Since 9/11 more than 30 thousand americans died in highway motor vehicle accidents - the death toll of more than one hundred 9/11s.

Money spent on the post-9/11 'war on terror': 3 trillion dollars and counting.

Money spent on the post-9/11 'war on highway terror': less than 3 billion dollars and counting.

So the US is spending 1000 times less on a mortal danger that has killed a hundred times more americans since 9/11 than it has spent on 9/11 itself. A 100,000x factor of spending disconnect.

In light of these numbers who is still of the opinion that the 'war on terror' is about our safety?

"Until quite recently, spider silk had the highest tensile strength of any substance known to man, and the name Silksteel pays homage to the arachnid for good reason."

Commissioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Scientific Survey"

Some of the best (sometimes prophetic) fictional quotes ever.

No matter what your personal feelings are about their products, they've clearly tapped into something that's getting large numbers of people to fork over their hard-earned money.

With a economic conditions that are best described as a depression being held at bay by devaluation of the currency, Apple still sets records. I wonder when they'll be worth more than Exxon.

Just hire this dude.

I am not sure if they do the same in other EU countries, but in Denmark we just ignore the data retention regulation.

The data retention regulation wasn't encoded into law here in the UK either (the world-leader in defending personal privacy). Instead, it is my understanding that the major ISPs have a "gentleman's agreement" with the Home Office (similar to the one for our Internet censorship scheme) whereby the Government agrees not to order them to retain data if they agree to retain it. As far as I know, most of the smaller service providers completely ignore it.

Is the amount of time spent sitting in a cell, the money lost in lawyers fees, and the hassle of going to court really worth it?

yes.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Ghandi

There is absolutely no encryption going on with your WoW account, let alone something as complex as RSA Encryption.

Your authentication verification is encrypted. This is exactly how, for example, most web-based auth systems (ie, try logging into mail.yahoo.com or battle.net, you'll see https) work... your actual content may be unencrypted but the auth validation should at least be secured.

If not, a simple Man in the Middle would compromise any account leading to mass item thefts and account hijacking.

Honestly, looks more like a circle/square - an Octagon to me.

But hey, I am not 100,000 light years away to make that kind of judgement.

Here is a nice photo of the Milky Way just for fun...

Looks more like a swastika to me. Who knew God was a NAZI.

Honestly, looks more like a circle/square - an Octagon to me.

But hey, I am not 100,000 light years away to make that kind of judgement.

Here is a nice photo of the Milky Way just for fun...

That phrase was familiar to me, but I wasn't sure where I had seen it... now I remember:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Laughing_Man_(Ghost_in_the_Shell)

What is generally referred to as AI is anything automated that doesn't follow a predetermined algorithm or fixed boundaries... An AI can be an adapting algorithm in something as simple as a thermostat or the CPU-player that tries to kill you in an FPS. This a very broad definition and can indeed be seen as a moving target.

Strong AI on the other hand is a well defined target of current AI research that isn't a moving target, but rather too complicated. The popularized version of AI that becomes sentient, creative and unpredictable in the movies is about strong AI.

In my experience, I have never seen a military or defence contractor (from any nation) run test that did end up with "Hooray for our side. We won."

See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Arjun_MBT#Trials_and_exercise The army openly released test results that claimed that DRDO's Arjun did not meet their requirements. Its only in 2010, that the Indian Army results showed that Arjun performed better than Russian tanks.

As I pointed out, the contractor insisted the weapon system they developed was fine, for example:

With the September 2007 winter trials, the Indian army deemed Arjun's performance unsatisfactory, including at least four engine failures.[46] DRDO, on the other hand, insisted the tank was a viable choice for adoption and suggested the unsatisfactory performance of the engine during the winter trials was due to sabotage.

Interestingly enough, the Indian Army decided they wanted T-90's:

Subsequently in September 2008, the Indian Army signed a deal with Russia to import 347 T-90 tanks and license build a further 1000. Transfer of key T-90 technologies has also been agreed upon as a part of the deal.

I don't know if export T-90s are the same as Russian Army versions, even so the MOD PR qouted in wiki makes no statement about beating the T-90's:

After many years of trial and tribulation it has now proved its worth by its superb performance under various circumstances, such as driving cross-country over rugged sand dunes, detecting, observing and quickly engaging targets, accurately hitting targets – both stationary and moving, with pin pointed accuracy. Its superior fire-power is based on accurate and quick target acquisition capability during day and night in all types of weather and shortest possible reaction time during combat engagements.

It goes on to say they Indian decided not stop production of the Arjun and instead build a variant of the T-90. All in all it looks like a typical defence procurement game, which is not limited to any one country - contractor builds item, military says it doesn't work; eventually the government decides it really does work and buys them in enough quantity to keep their buds in business happy. Same game, different location.

In my experience, I have never seen a military or defence contractor (from any nation) run test that did end up with "Hooray for our side. We won."

See https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Arjun_MBT#Trials_and_exercise The army openly released test results that claimed that DRDO's Arjun did not meet their requirements. Its only in 2010, that the Indian Army results showed that Arjun performed better than Russian tanks.

I don't know if you can do it from Explorer, but you can create symlinks from the command line, at least in Vista and 7. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/NTFS_symbolic_link

A distinction without a difference. A law prohibiting discrimination, by definition, creates a protected class.

It does no such thing. And most certainly not by definition.

From Wikipedia:

Protected class is a term used in United States anti-discrimination law. The term describes characteristics or factors which can not be targeted for discrimination and harassment.

The definition seems pretty clear to me.

Yes, your repetitive misstatements of what two English sentences mean, introducing concepts that are not there, is completely non-productive. Bordering on trolling.

Just because someone doesn't agree with you 100% doesn't mean he's a troll. In fact, antagonizing someone like myself, who actually largely supports marijuana legalization and anti-discrimination, is pretty much exactly the wrong thing to do if you expect to win political campaigns.

I fear seeing the urban equivalent of the unmanned aerial vehicle. If anything these ULVs (unmanned land vehicles) should be confined to supervised bomb disposal work. No general purpose robocops, please. Would-be drivers should still be tested for their road skills, just as pilots have to be licensed even when it's already possible to fly a plane by autopilot.

I'd mod you funny.

But taking your post seriously: I don't expect machines to be smarter than us. Or at least all of us. What I fear seeing in the future are a select class, enhanced via cybernetics or genetics (or both), lording it over the rest of the human race. There would be a kind of cybernetic divide, analogous to today's digital divide, between this enhanced "uberclass" and the non-enhanced, technologically disadvantaged underclass. Of course, this is the dystopian scenario. The singularity could, after all, turn out to be a geek utopia.

USSR economy "failing so badly" is propaganda. USSR was far from perfect and had many problems, mostly political ones, but also some economical ones, but you can't said it "failed". Just look at https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:Soviet_Union_GDP.gif . GDP of USSR in 1990, just before the fall, was more than 3x the GDP of USSR in 1970, +200% in 20 years is a feat few countries can achieve. And it took very long for the capitalist Russian Federation to reach the level of the USSR.

USSR collapse was much more due to political reason and the "usual" collapse of a repressive regime than to economical reasons.

That's exactly what GOP policy has been for the past few decades. They couldn't get rid of entrenched government bureaucrats, so they put complete incompetent people into government. Result: government falls apart, and suddenly we need 3-5x as many people to do the same work, government blooms and drains tax dollars: society goes down. You don't accomplish anything buy encouraging destructive or stupid behavior. If we had efficient people in government, you wouldn't need as much government, taxes would be less, there would be more economic prosperity and less crime.

The GOP policy has been documented in books like 'The Wrecking Machine', and if you look at the noticeable effect (see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg/693px-US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg.png). Note how the graph turns sharply up just after 1980 and has been on the upswing ever since. The economy was in the pit in 1980, and the GOP came into office and have dominated for most of the past 3 decades.

Government inefficiency and *imprisonment* rate have gone up hand in hand; the imprisonment rate didn't go up significantly even in the tumultuous 60's or early 70's.

No idea if that was a troll but I never heard of her or the astronaut before or even seen the picture. "Dido" made me go "hmm is that the old 80ies group with the annoying hit?" (nope).

Famous? To people who listen to mainstream music or radio perhaps and who also know every astronauts name by heart or something (I don't know more than a handful by chance) and who read glossy space mags or popular science mags (nope I don't do that either and I have a way above interest in space).

I guess that might somehow be a large group of people although I don't really see why (I thought I wasted too much time on all kinds of fluff but some people must really go for it if they knew all three).

I know who Eminem is and have found some of his stuff to be cool, I've heard of and seen pictures of Lady Gaga (some pretty cool stuff imho) but never ever heard anything by her as far as I know. Famous isn't what it used to be, the world of available things of any nature is huger than it has ever been (I have way more things I would like to do and experience than I will ever have time for and it's only going to get "worse" --maybe it's because I don't own a TV).

Darin Epsilon, Christer Fuglesang, Durarara!!, and Rumpistol are also famous but have you (or most of humanity) heard of all? No reason you should have.

Or a single page that lists them all.

prior art:

Charles Joseph Minard, a french civil servant drew a fantastic line/statistical diagram showing data from Napoleon's March to Russia on the 20th November 1869. This combines many data points and also shows the horrific losses sustained by Napoleon during the winter (and river crossings) and is actually far more complex than examples in TFA.

1. invent new idea
2. write about it on interwebs
3. ...
4. ... (think about profit and all round cleverness)
5. ....
6. errr?
7. .....
8. !profit
8a. because lots of slightly older nerds have seen it all before.
8b. and see you for the young whipper-snapper that you are, wee laddie.

PS - Gay sex, illegal in Texas and 13 other states until the "activist" SCOTUS struck down the law in 2003 (and even then 3 of the 9 justices were still in favor of keeping it illegal).

No, its not "more useful" to us. It's a stupid grammar hack that people think is funny. It's the FIPS 10-4 code for Libya -- https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/List_of_FIPS_country_codes -- and I'd argue that keeping with in FIPS and ISO standards is more "useful" than being able to have the domain going-swimming.ly or whatever stupid shit the kids are doing these days in goatse.cx-like fashion.

Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of these: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Pied_piper.jpg

Totally agree with you about keeping religion out of government and public life in general.

That being said, can we please not make this story about Islam?

This has nothing do to with Islam or cultural relativism and everything to do with Lybia being a totalitarian regime. Gaddafi is the local thug and dictator, but he is not an islamist by far. He's an arab nationalist, an ideology that is largely secular (very much like Saddam Hussein was), yet he has supported and backed terrorism several times in the past (Lockerbie Bombing). Please try to have a wider perspective, most of the dictators in power in Muslim countries don't give a shit about Islam, they are only looking out for themselves. They might use religion to try to legitimize their regimes or as a populist tool to fight their democratic opponents.

This is what happen we you do business with autocratic regimes that have no respect for the law or for basic human rights and liberties. The only real rule is the whim of the local leader/prince.

Switzerland learned the hard way, when Lybia kept two Swiss nationals hostage during several months as retaliation. This because the Swiss police arrested Gaddafi's son for beating his servants and treating them as slaves.

Bottom line: If you do chose to do business in authoritarian non-democratic countries, be prepared to pay the cost and lose it all at any point in time.

Totally agree with you about keeping religion out of government and public life in general.

That being said, can we please not make this story about Islam?

This has nothing do to with Islam or cultural relativism and everything to do with Lybia being a totalitarian regime. Gaddafi is the local thug and dictator, but he is not an islamist by far. He's an arab nationalist, an ideology that is largely secular (very much like Saddam Hussein was), yet he has supported and backed terrorism several times in the past (Lockerbie Bombing). Please try to have a wider perspective, most of the dictators in power in Muslim countries don't give a shit about Islam, they are only looking out for themselves. They might use religion to try to legitimize their regimes or as a populist tool to fight their democratic opponents.

This is what happen we you do business with autocratic regimes that have no respect for the law or for basic human rights and liberties. The only real rule is the whim of the local leader/prince.

Switzerland learned the hard way, when Lybia kept two Swiss nationals hostage during several months as retaliation. This because the Swiss police arrested Gaddafi's son for beating his servants and treating them as slaves.

Bottom line: If you do chose to do business in authoritarian non-democratic countries, be prepared to pay the cost and lose it all at any point in time.

Totally agree with you about keeping religion out of government and public life in general.

That being said, can we please not make this story about Islam?

This has nothing do to with Islam or cultural relativism and everything to do with Lybia being a totalitarian regime. Gaddafi is the local thug and dictator, but he is not an islamist by far. He's an arab nationalist, an ideology that is largely secular (very much like Saddam Hussein was), yet he has supported and backed terrorism several times in the past (Lockerbie Bombing). Please try to have a wider perspective, most of the dictators in power in Muslim countries don't give a shit about Islam, they are only looking out for themselves. They might use religion to try to legitimize their regimes or as a populist tool to fight their democratic opponents.

This is what happen we you do business with autocratic regimes that have no respect for the law or for basic human rights and liberties. The only real rule is the whim of the local leader/prince.

Switzerland learned the hard way, when Lybia kept two Swiss nationals hostage during several months as retaliation. This because the Swiss police arrested Gaddafi's son for beating his servants and treating them as slaves.

Bottom line: If you do chose to do business in authoritarian non-democratic countries, be prepared to pay the cost and lose it all at any point in time.