Slashdot Mirror

Which part of the unprecedented peace and prosperity of the 1990s would you qualify as "making matters much worse?"

The K Street Project, for one. Other parts of the story of the 1990's that really hurt were the free trade agreements such as NAFTA, which wrecked most of the remaining industry in the US.

As far as the "prosperity" part of the story, that's suspect, because the median incomes were mostly unchanged. And for the "peace" part, you only get peace if you ignore Somalia, the Balkans, Rwanda, occasional bombing raids into Iraq, the beginnings of fighting between the US and Al Qaeda, and the Oklahoma City Bombings.

Please go to meta wiki and insult the following idiot cock sucking stewards that work for the bastard Jimbo Wales (he rapes babies by the way)

Pathoschild
Bsadowski1
Mike.Lifeguard
Shanel
Mercy
Jyothis
J.delanoy
DerHexer
Dferg
Drini
Leinad
M7

Create insulting accounts attacking them, use the alt-gr key when typing vowels to get around the username filters.

Yeah I made the same mistake too, as I suspect does the author of the summary and indeed the Green Car Reports article.

I was in the middle of taking the piss out of TFA forgetting the currency conversion (says $1.17, average price is £1.17) when I realised they were probably talking about Canadian dollars, since it's the British Columbia Automobile Association. Then I was writing an anecdote about my error and jokingly suggesting I'd left another deliberate error in there when it occurred to me people using $ to refer to something else just might do the same thing with "gallons".

£1.17 at £1:$1.64= CAD$1.91 per litre.

$1.91 * 4.5 litres to the gallon= CAD$8.60. (so it seems they're even further out)

Seriously people. Metric system. But oh look, there's variations in that too. For fuck sake, I have enough of this shit revising for my tax exam.

Ok, I won't argue with you about the Indiana Toll Road. I am not that familiar with it. Secondly, you'll note that your dozen letters (and a check) are a government provided monopoly. I said packages are better from UPS, you can send letters via UPS, but it has to be overnight, not 1st class.

And to my last point, every state in the US is facing service cuts, not FUNDING cuts. Roads, bridges, and infrastructure are getting spent the hell out of (seen those stupid signs for the reinvestment act or whatever). Local schools are spending more than ever despite falling grades http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2010/08/05/grigori-rasputin-bailout/. Public safety funding is at all time highs as well. Service is being cut because of unions demanding more benefits and pay despite lower revenues due to lower tax income with the economic downturn. The only rollercoaster is on revenue, funding remains a positive slope. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/61/Annual_federal_outlay.png The last negative slope was after WWII. There has been no downturn since.

For a good example of this, I'd refer you to von Daniken. He makes a great deal in the preface to his books about being an autodidact and how it allows him to approach things from a novel perspective. Then he writes a load of logical fallacies and ignores masses of contradictory evidence and presents an argument that boils down to 'I'm not clever enough to think of an explanation for this, therefore it is magic'.

I meant asymmetric, which is what RSA is. Symmetric keys are usually exchanged relying on the discrete logarithm problem (RSA problem), not the integer factorization problem.

Dill is delicious. I prefer to call someone "dillhole" as it implies sex with a pickle.

Dillweed - skinny like the plant see illustration, aka pencil-dick.

Wikimedia (June): iPhone 1.78%, Linux 1.88%

the definition of the two may well overlap: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Psychopathy#Psychopathy_vs._sociopathy

or perhaps a pantograph? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pantograph_(rail)

couple it with some kind of traffic management system, and you could pull onto the highway, enter a destination, and let go of the controls until the vehicle comes to the off-ramp nearest the destination.

I think you may have misunderstood my question - I know what is illegal (or at least the relevant laws) and why it is (we have reactionary politicians with media- rather than logic-driven policies) illegal - I want to know why it should be illegal.

It's not the viewing of the material, per se, that should be illegal, but the creation of the material.

And I agree with this - in most cases. But that doesn't explain why possession (in some cases, even accidentally) should be illegal.

I also agree that there are consent issues with children; although it is for society to decide. Obviously when someone turns 18 they don't magically become capable of giving consent (after all, in the UK one can get married at 16... but not publish nude photos until 18... how does that make sense?) so like all age-based laws, it is completely arbitrary.

It isn't just a consent issue, though, it is an informed consent thing. The most obvious example of this is with EULAs, where people will consent to handing over their souls - the problem isn't that they weren't old enough to consent but that they weren't informed.

Moving on from consent - it isn't illegal to take pictures of children. It isn't even illegal to take nude pictures (in most places). It is usually considered appropriate (although decreasingly) for parents to take baby photos - or even young-child photos. Going back to the marriage thing, in the UK it is fine to possess pornographic pictures of someone aged 16 or 17 provided you are married to or in a long-term relationship with them - so really this whole area of law is a bit confused and messed up.

The next question is "what harm does it do?" - and this is a tricky one - partly because taboos make it very hard to do unbiased scientific research on the issue. Now, I want to make one thing very clear I am fully against any sort of abuse of children (or anyone else, for that matter). No compromises there. But how exactly does possessing a picture (or drawing) count as abuse?

This is where the change in definition comes in: In some circles some child porn is now being referred to as "child abuse images" to make the distinction between "images of children being abused, or who were abused to obtain them" and "images (including drawings) of children taken innocently but being used in a sexual context". The trouble is that it can be hard to tell these apart some time.

It is also worth remembering that some images of naked children are perfectly acceptable - particularly in art (a classic example being this - although it is worth noting that apparently female equivalents have caused issues) - so what if someone takes such art and uses it for sexual purposes, is that ok? Do we have to ban all art involving nudity of anyone who might be under 18?

Now, those are just some thoughts that I felt like throwing out there - but I hope it makes it clear that this issue is very complicated and not thought through by most people, including politicians. Unfortunately, (as you pointed out) it is very hard to fight against it without being demonised because "think of the children" is a very powerful motivator. I'm not saying we should legalise all child porn or CAIs, but I am saying that we shouldn't pretend that the issue has been properly thought through and is anything other than a reactionary impulse.

One last thought;

distribution is generally held, it seems, to encourage this material

It always amuses me when the anti-piracy lobby, when campaigning for Internet filters to block access to copyrighted material, hold up the success of the filters already being used to block child porn. According to them, the distribution of their content (for free) discourages the production of material, but in the case of child porn the distribution (potentially for free) enc

(I am serious here. I would be happy if you could give me some advice on how to convince people not to give up their privacy, because I failed at it so far.)

I use the Pandora's Box analogy - you may think you have nothing to hide NOW, but if circumstances change you will never ever be able to put that information back in the box.
Then I refer to something like the My Sister Sam murder which was assisted by DMV records as an example of how what someone thought was harmless information was used to kill them.

It could turn you into the lizard

If the tissue is correctly located, it "knows" into what it should differentiate thanks to morphogens : https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Morphogen These are substances emitted only in specific parts of the body and their concentration at a given place is the hint a cell use to know which kind of behavior it must adopt.

Uh huh...

If only more of the (sensible) netbooks had a Trackpoint, so as to be really portable - even from the short time I played with it on a Thinkpad of a buddy, I can say it's almost as good as a mouse for FPPs or Diablo II: LoD. Really portable would be important especially for the latter - I have this dream of playing it in a cathedral during some organ concert; or in a train with nuns nearby; or in the middle of 1-2 XI night in a cemetery ;p

With touchpad it's not exactly the same... (well, doable with necro, but...)

Except what people want is this...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8b/Google_Wave.png

and the open source thing they released gives you this..
http://wave-protocol.googlecode.com/hg/doc/client/05-with-bar2.png

So yeah, if only you could just set up your own wave server, because right now all the community has is junk.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Calvinism#Usury_and_capitalism

It will be more than a decade before humans even attempt another trip outside of Earth's orbit.

What about India's and China's plans to go to the moon, six years and three years away, respectively?

No shit. Some fools think that canvas with oil daubed on it and chunks of rock are worth a lot of money.

I want some of what they're smoking.

No shit. Some fools think that canvas with oil daubed on it and chunks of rock are worth a lot of money.

I want some of what they're smoking.

No shit. Some fools think that canvas with oil daubed on it and chunks of rock are worth a lot of money.

I want some of what they're smoking.

that they are not doing it the usb battery charging way:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Universal_Serial_Bus#Power

As the President of the United States, I hereby instruct you to cease and desist from bothering Wikipedia about this whole seal nonsense. It, like the war on terrorism, and the war on drugs, is a waste of time. Therefore, under the authority of the Constitution, I hereby pardon everybody who ever edits on Wikipedia, from any crime subject to Federal Jurisdiction, in perpetuity, ad infinitum, excelsior! Also, that whole Tax cut business? Screw it. No Tax Cuts for anybody who makes more than half of what I do.

Signed with http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Seal_Of_The_President_Of_The_United_States_Of_America.svg

Initial letter from FBI and response by Wikimedia Foundation
  Wikipedia article in question, image in question.
  New York Times story (login). Britannica uses the logo

wget http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/70/US-FBI-ShadedSeal.svg

Posting anonymously because i am now a outlaw.. at last in the US of A.

Computers were a bit more primitive back then.

Gorilla glass for devices that cause gorilla arm syndrome. There must be a sarcastic tag somewhere in there.

Please mod my parent post up - or undo the ignorant troll moderation via meta-moderation.

Nothing in the post is trolling.

The Troll mod should stay, you deserved it. If you were not trolling, your extremely naive. Only Rupert Murdochs paper The Times/Fox media mouthpieces tried to make the claim that people have already been assassinated based on this material. However there is not one single shred of evidence to back up the claim - not even a single name of someone potentially in danger. Oh yeah, the one name that they did mention on the front page, implying that it was recent assassination - actually died two years ago... but they fail to mention little facts like that, or tell you buried right down on page 13.

On the other hand, you have direct evidence of thousands of civilian deaths. I don't see you being too concerned about that FACT - only some Fox fiction. So, please stop your trolling - or switch off Fox news and friends, mouthpieces for the MIC, and start thinking for yourself.

Wikileaks is a small group of people dealing with lots and lots of data. It's not surprising that they screwed up and released papers with personal info in them.

Well, actually, they didn't released papers with personal info - Only Rupert Murdochs paper The Times/Fox media mouthpieces tried to make that shit stick - however the echo chamber that is the US mainstream media has tried (successfully I might add) to amplify this lame point despite there being not one single shred of evidence to back up the claim. Oh yeah, the one name that they do mention as already dead - died two years ago... but they fail to mention little facts like that, or tell you buried down on page 13.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/32/Stephen_Tyrone_Johns.JPG

The whole thing is based in a inane Rand Paul-esque argument, that saying the government can impose conditions on how you offer your good or service to the public qualifies as a regulatory 'taking'.

And yes, I use the term Rand Paul-esque advisedly - this not a slipperly slope argument, but a statement that imposing quality controls on medicine, or forcing a phone service to allow any phone to be attached, or forcing a business to serve people regardless of gender/race, are all regulatory 'taking'.

Daniel Lyons is an Assistant Professor at Boston College acting as a stalking horse for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. God save us from idiot libertarians and Ayn Rand wannabees.

Pug

For the most part, that's right. However, without knowing the exact details of the federal VAWA, here is the wiki page

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

and a short quote: "...the Office on Violence Against Women has the authority to ... develop federal policy around ... domestic violence..."

Some might say that the Feds have no authority in this realm, but there is some amount, at least, of Federal involvement in domestic battery law.

But, let me be clear, I'm not disagreeing with your point, which is almost totally right, and maybe should be totally right.

Who gives a shit what others where doing? Where you speeding or not? If yes, you are guilty of speeding, if no, then why the hell do you care what other people are doing? A ticket doesn't say you where the only one breaking the law, it says you where caught. Grow a pair and pay the ticket. If you still have that chip on your shoulder, then by all means, call in the police who break the law. You are still entitled to being an ass. Just don't blame others for the you own actions.

Also, Tu quoque. I linked it so you could get an edumacation. This is why the judge would laugh at your log book as a defense.

I do not see how the Army can tell him he is "detained."

Posse Comitatus would seem to indicate that they can't.

But then, the constitutional rule of law hasn't applied in America for some time now.

Changing the temperature balance between two regions will definitely have an effect on weather. Simple thermodynamics tells you that.

Wait, wait - when we say we're going to "change the climate" on a global scale, that isn't an assertion that we know how, or if the temperature balance would change. It could has a positive effect on the weather, or a negative effect on the weather - in a stochastic system, you'll just never know.

That being said, I believe the common wisdom (although I don't have immediate reference at hand to back it up), is that the poles will warm much faster than anywhere else, leaving the tropics mostly alone. Changing the temperature balance so that there is less difference between areas on the earth seems like it would give more mild weather, since there isn't a large temperature gradient to cause all kinds of turbulence.

In regards to your hurricane hypothesis, look at the graph you cite:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/timeline/997f3b835c1606af6f4319b88795e48c.png

The trend is nearly flat going back over 100 years.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/15/research-suggests-that-hurricane-forecasts-on-intensity-could-never-be-feasible/

"Although there has been a dramatic increase in the number of hurricanes occurring in the North Atlantic since mid-1990s when compared to the period starting in the 1970s, the distribution of hurricanes in the 1950s was similar to today’s activity level. Therefore, this increase cannot be explained solely on the basis of climate change."

...the $13Trillion in US national debt

The debt is LARGER.

The USA's national deficit in 2009 was $1.4 Trillion. The USA's total (or gross) national debt was, as of July 29, 2010, $13.2 Trillion. The post you replied to was correct.

... we had a real GDP back then.

Real GDP is a relative measure of the economic output of some predefined region in a particular year adjusted for inflation from some base year.

...we monopolize the new gold standard

There is no longer a gold standard (or fixed exchange rate of dollars and goal). When it existed in the USA, it had nothing to do with a monopoly over some good.

...we realistically traded it [gold?] for OIL we didn't have but was sold in dollars...

I don't think that I can help you on this part. I don't even know what you are trying to convey.

You started off strong, though slightly off-topic, with your true comment about people often confusing deficit with debt. But your comment degraded quickly as you continued. Thanks for letting us know that you are confused... I hope I've helped.

...the $13Trillion in US national debt

The debt is LARGER.

The USA's national deficit in 2009 was $1.4 Trillion. The USA's total (or gross) national debt was, as of July 29, 2010, $13.2 Trillion. The post you replied to was correct.

... we had a real GDP back then.

Real GDP is a relative measure of the economic output of some predefined region in a particular year adjusted for inflation from some base year.

...we monopolize the new gold standard

There is no longer a gold standard (or fixed exchange rate of dollars and goal). When it existed in the USA, it had nothing to do with a monopoly over some good.

...we realistically traded it [gold?] for OIL we didn't have but was sold in dollars...

I don't think that I can help you on this part. I don't even know what you are trying to convey.

You started off strong, though slightly off-topic, with your true comment about people often confusing deficit with debt. But your comment degraded quickly as you continued. Thanks for letting us know that you are confused... I hope I've helped.

...the $13Trillion in US national debt

The debt is LARGER.

The USA's national deficit in 2009 was $1.4 Trillion. The USA's total (or gross) national debt was, as of July 29, 2010, $13.2 Trillion. The post you replied to was correct.

... we had a real GDP back then.

Real GDP is a relative measure of the economic output of some predefined region in a particular year adjusted for inflation from some base year.

...we monopolize the new gold standard

There is no longer a gold standard (or fixed exchange rate of dollars and goal). When it existed in the USA, it had nothing to do with a monopoly over some good.

...we realistically traded it [gold?] for OIL we didn't have but was sold in dollars...

I don't think that I can help you on this part. I don't even know what you are trying to convey.

You started off strong, though slightly off-topic, with your true comment about people often confusing deficit with debt. But your comment degraded quickly as you continued. Thanks for letting us know that you are confused... I hope I've helped.

...the $13Trillion in US national debt

The debt is LARGER.

The USA's national deficit in 2009 was $1.4 Trillion. The USA's total (or gross) national debt was, as of July 29, 2010, $13.2 Trillion. The post you replied to was correct.

... we had a real GDP back then.

Real GDP is a relative measure of the economic output of some predefined region in a particular year adjusted for inflation from some base year.

...we monopolize the new gold standard

There is no longer a gold standard (or fixed exchange rate of dollars and goal). When it existed in the USA, it had nothing to do with a monopoly over some good.

...we realistically traded it [gold?] for OIL we didn't have but was sold in dollars...

I don't think that I can help you on this part. I don't even know what you are trying to convey.

You started off strong, though slightly off-topic, with your true comment about people often confusing deficit with debt. But your comment degraded quickly as you continued. Thanks for letting us know that you are confused... I hope I've helped.

Or even better, use a cryptographically secure secret sharing scheme, and use the shared secret as a symmetric key to encrypt whatever other data if necessary. Then (if I'm interpreting your post correctly) you wouldn't have to worry about which parties got which segment of the key. In fact, I believe that's just what they're doing. Bruce Schneier had a post on it the other day.

No, if they say 4 of 7, then they probably really in fact mean 4 of 7. You are right that having just 2 pieces and distributing copies of them would get the situation you describe (well, actually, it would require 5 of 7 as 4 people would have one half and 3 would have the other half), but algorithms exist to split a key into any number of a pieces and require any number of those pieces to get a full key. Basically, just make a PAR of the key with the desired amount of redundancy and hand out equal sized chunks of the file. This is probably not exactly what they do, but it would work similarly.

You watch a lot of Top Gear, don't you.

I do too, because it's about the least shit thing on TV! Apart from Buzzcocks, of course.

But yeah, the air resistance is the problem. IIRC, drag increases proportional to the square of velocity.... yeap, it does: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Drag_equation. So you need more and more power just to go faster at a linear rate.

That Top Gear with the Veyron Super Sport was dumbed down so much that they didn't even acknowledge maths exists :(

I'm sorry, Warren G doesn't live in China...

And heck, if we look back even further with million-year timescales, we see that the Earth was significantly warmer for long geologic periods of time: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/Five_Myr_Climate_Change.png [wikimedia.org] There's just no logical reason to ascribe a majority of current climate change to anthropogenic causes.

The main change we see here is due rise of the Himilayas. As well as increased albedo, there was a nice new co2 sink caused by the monsoons and freshly broken rock.

Please get an education before spouting stupidity.

It is so bizarre that anyone would advocate doing nothing to reduce the expensive effects of global warming.

Right, so this means that the IT department in the summary could buy a new storage system every month, since they are charging $30/GB per month.

Actually, no it doesn't.

They have already paid over $25 dollars for every GB that they offer to the rest of the company.

Now, if you want to reduce these costs, you have to do a risk assessment. Under the model described in AUD above, there are at least 5 copies of a given set of data. Do you NEED the two DR copies ? Depending on the processing model, some intermediate files don't need to have any more than a single copy. In other words, storage space CAN cost $25 - $30 / GB, but thats for the rolls royce version.

Just make sure that if you ask for the Trabant version, that's really all you need.

Grandparent: There is a pretty big difference between CC and subtitles. The former can be manipulated in format, font, etc and often include details like "Phone Ringing" that are left out of subtitles. Even subtitles that are supposedly for the deaf and hard of hearing often lack these audible descriptors. Subtitles also don't move based on the scene.. For example, text for edited CC is often positioned from side to side to match two people bantering or italicized for an off screen speaker (example). Real-time CC, which is not typical in movies, is the stuff you see scrolling at the top or bottom of screens in bars during sports and news. That's closer to subtitles due to the time pressure the captioner is under.

Parent: There is a digital CC spec but, like line21, it basically gets hosed by HDMI.

Unfortunately Wikimedia Commons, the source for all the images on Wikipedia, does not guarantee that all the images it hosts can be redistributed

It doesn't? That seems like the exact opposite of what their license page says

Though perhaps you are referring to country-specific copyright expiry or non-copyright restrictions?

Well clearly you didn't teach him to cock his head at the right angle.

That's not a right angle. It's clearly obtuse.

A 'better planet for life' is not necessarily a better planet for human beings and human society. We are entering a period of warming that will bring average temperatures not seen for the last 120,000 years. Are you suggesting that modern, overcrowded industrial society will always flourish under the conditions that suited tribal hunter/gatherers?