That one is not linear, but circular. That is to say are linear accelerators at CERN, but afaik they're far shorter than at Fermilab. The new large hadron collider should come on line next year.
Maybe people should be required to get an internet license before being allowed on the internet? (just like a drivers license but for the internet)
On a similar note, I think candidate politicians should pass some exam that tests their ability to function in stressful situations as well as their ability to conduct long term planning in spite of the pressure of the next elections, before being allowed to become a candidate. Other things which would be suitable to test include corruptability, taking responsibility, and how easy they let their sexual urges take over.
Watching Pim Fortuyn being murdered after he called Islam a "backward religion" for its treatment of women and gays, changes you.
Your suggesting here that he was murdered for his statements regarding Islam, which is misleading. He was murdered by an (obviously not too sane) animal rights activist for supporting mistreatment of animals for the production of meat and/or fur. I don't remember exactly, but I guess googling and/or wikipedianing can help for better information.
Most of those seem to be government organisations, but indeed not necessarily the fedreal government. To what extent does freedom of speech extent to "lower" levels of government? Such as state government, city government, neighbourhood government, etc? (As I'm not from the USA, and have never been there I'm allowed to be ignorant of the rules applying there)
I don't see what communism has to do with it. I'm aware that a lot of people do call China communist, but it's a misnomer, there is no equidistribution of power in China, so it's not communist.
Removing their crap isn't as easy as you mention. It's a virus all by itself, possible, but very hard (or at least a lot of work) to remove completely. Of course at the same time, I would not want a virus to remove my anti-virus-software easily, so that might be the explanation.
You're correct, but IE will only run on windows natively, so you have to buy the OS in order to use the browser. In other words, it's not really free (as in free beer) since you're not free to use it on a free OS (not counting WINE and such)
As far as I remember, FF asks during installation whether you want to enable automatic updating. I might be wrong though.
Anyway, I do think the default installation for browsers should be different. Both Opera and Firefox give the option of turning off specific malicious options for javascript, but by default part (if not all) of them are turned on. Internet Explorer only gives one global option of turning javascript on or off and there it's also turned on by default.
I assume most people do check all the options after installing, but for quite a few that might be after they got infected. In addition, in the case of Internet Explorer and to a far lesser extent Firefox, the information given about all those options is non-existent (inside the browser).
I did not muck around inside a television just after unplugging, but I did open a computer psu just after unplugging. I'd used that psu for years, and just discovered that it was faulty after moving and seeing that the electricity would shut itself down (previously I lived in places without an earth-connector in most sockets). I did see the warning labels about not opening it, and thought that they put warning labels on everything, just to be on the safe side. I did not manage to discover anything clearly wrong inside, nor did I get any electricity shock whatsoever. Only later, when I read why they put those warning labels up, did I discover that what I did should have meant instant-death. I guess that the capacitors (or at least some of them) were connected to something outside (essentially earthed), causing them to discharge quickly.
In short I'd rather have people driving around with something like this. Apparently this is a relatively safe storage of very dangerous radioactive materials, so one would not even have to be very worried about material being released by crashes.
"Nature's given us pretty much the most powerful and reliable early warning center out there," said Bill Lawler, co-founder of Intelligent Automation Corporation, a Southern California company that makes and sells the geek monitoring system. "There's no known manmade sensor that can do the same job as the computer nerd."
Isn't the computer nerd a manmade sensor?
I'm sorry, but what you write is mostly BS. Yes it's true that the whole world would be involved in paying, but pollution is a global, not a local problem. The part of the rest of the world that uses cars is also responsible for the pollution, so there is nothing bad about them being `punished' in one go. And I write `punished' and not punished, since anyone polluting is denying others the right to live, murdering them as well as commiting suicide. With the latter part I have no problem, since I think it's a fundamental human right to decide on your own life, but just because of that I have a moral problem with murder, and especially the mass-murder as involved here.
An argument often used against outlawing mass-murder in the form of pollution is that it would damage the economy or infringe on the freedom of the individual. With regards to the first, what use is the economy when there is no one left to suffer or gain from it? As to the second, the most fundamental freedom is the freedom to decide on your own life, so outlawing mass-murder does not infringe on any freedom.
And note, I don't claim innocence of mass-murder, although of course I do not drive. Of course there is also a thin line between murder and killing (without intent), in the past, when many forms of pollution were not yet recognized as such, the pollution was merely mass-killing, not mass-murder. In the case of the burning of fossile fuels, that thin line was passed by world war I (if not earlier). Although the associated greenhouse effect was only discovered much later (during the 1960's?), only after that was discovered became all the use of non-renewable energy sources releasing `greenhouse gasses' mass-murder. The only thing is that mass-murder that releases substances that deny the right to decide on ones own life not only to the present, but also to the future ranks of course a bit more evil than mass-murder limited to the present.
At the same time, I recognize that people are often practically forced by circumstances to engage in mass-murder, so even if a government did not by itself pollute, the fact that they force - for example by failing to provide adequate public transportation in certain areas during certain times - at least some of the population to use cars at times. This means that the government is complicit to the crimes. On the other hand, in the case of a chosen government the people who vote for such a government are also responsible for the continuation of this practice. Since chosen governments usually don't look further than the next election, and most people don't look further than the next week, resulting in chosen governments not taking long term problems seriously, the chosen government is clearly failing in its responsibility to protect the people (in this case from themselves and/or most of the rest of the population). I've seriously started to wonder whether a global dictatorship might not be the only solution to the most serious problem we have at the moment, global warming (with a positive feedback effect).
If you actually need to know what the program will do with your input, then all WYSINWYG (what you see is not what you get) programs are off. I became frustrated with wordprocessors because of the inability to do many things with them which I viewed as essential, and as a result switched to LaTeX. Although it might look daunting to the beginner, I found that it was easy to learn, and as opposed to wordprocessors actually gives you decent looking output. I've tried working with LyX as well, but it has the same problems as other wordprocessors, although the documentation is better.
Nowadays I only use Open Office for viewing files others send me that require the use of such things such as a wordprocessor etcetera. The only exception might be Calc, but still, in general there is something amiss with the functionality of spreadsheets. Something just does not work right when trying to enter data, and Open Office is no different from Excel in this regard. Also, again, this applies to both, I do find that it's very hard to discover how to use certain tricks, for example, locking in view the first column or row. This is of course no problem for people who use it at a daily base, but if you use it actively once every three months like I do it's problematic.
The documentation is also on par with Micro$oft's, and thus it's far easier to use some core utils since, even when I don't remember anything about the use, which happens often since I don't use those on a daily base either, at least the documentation is such that it's possible to find out how to do it.
Maybe slightly OT, but since when is it forbidden to take any liquids on an airplane? I know that the UK banned many things, among them most liquids, after the foiled terrorist plot some weeks/months (already forgotten the timescale) ago, but I assumed that emergency measure had been cancelled by now. Are there any other places that do ban all liquids? The last time I was on an airplane, nearly a year ago, there was no problem at all taking liquids aboard.
Still, the exhaust gasses might mean that you won't be allowed to use such a device on an airplane. But how much fuel does such a device use? What does it use as fuel? I did read the article, but I did not see anything about the type of fuel used.
No, the time when greenhouse gasses were at a peak was just before an ice age. At the moment, the peak is however much higher than the peaks at the beginning of the ice ages. IANAGNACNAB (I am not a geologist nor a climatologist nor a biologist), but as far as I know, the relationship between a peak in greenhouse gasses and the following ice age is unknown. What is known however is that those peaks and the accompanying ice ages return regularly, and that those peaks were all lower than the current peak.
This is just guessing, but it might be that global warming led to the extinction (or at least dramatic reduction of the population) of many species, which in turn resulted into a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gasses and thus global cooling and an ice age. In short there was a negative feedback effect resulting in a periodic strengthening and lessening of the global temperature. Now however, we do already face a positive feedback effect from releases of carbondioxide and methane deposits from the permafrost. Deposits that likely have not been released during previous steam ages (steam age as opposed to ice age). Still, it might be that again the global warming will result in a population loss followed by such a drop in temperature that we do get back into the cycle. The other option is that the population loss won't be fast enough to stop global warming and that eventually another periodic cycle will appear, most likely at a much higher temperature (think Venus).
Slashdot Mirror
That one is not linear, but circular. That is to say are linear accelerators at CERN, but afaik they're far shorter than at Fermilab. The new large hadron collider should come on line next year.
Maybe people should be required to get an internet license before being allowed on the internet? (just like a drivers license but for the internet)
On a similar note, I think candidate politicians should pass some exam that tests their ability to function in stressful situations as well as their ability to conduct long term planning in spite of the pressure of the next elections, before being allowed to become a candidate. Other things which would be suitable to test include corruptability, taking responsibility, and how easy they let their sexual urges take over.
Watching Pim Fortuyn being murdered after he called Islam a "backward religion" for its treatment of women and gays, changes you.
Your suggesting here that he was murdered for his statements regarding Islam, which is misleading. He was murdered by an (obviously not too sane) animal rights activist for supporting mistreatment of animals for the production of meat and/or fur. I don't remember exactly, but I guess googling and/or wikipedianing can help for better information.
Most of those seem to be government organisations, but indeed not necessarily the fedreal government. To what extent does freedom of speech extent to "lower" levels of government? Such as state government, city government, neighbourhood government, etc? (As I'm not from the USA, and have never been there I'm allowed to be ignorant of the rules applying there)
I don't see what communism has to do with it. I'm aware that a lot of people do call China communist, but it's a misnomer, there is no equidistribution of power in China, so it's not communist.
Removing their crap isn't as easy as you mention. It's a virus all by itself, possible, but very hard (or at least a lot of work) to remove completely. Of course at the same time, I would not want a virus to remove my anti-virus-software easily, so that might be the explanation.
You're correct, but IE will only run on windows natively, so you have to buy the OS in order to use the browser. In other words, it's not really free (as in free beer) since you're not free to use it on a free OS (not counting WINE and such)
As far as I remember, FF asks during installation whether you want to enable automatic updating. I might be wrong though.
Anyway, I do think the default installation for browsers should be different. Both Opera and Firefox give the option of turning off specific malicious options for javascript, but by default part (if not all) of them are turned on. Internet Explorer only gives one global option of turning javascript on or off and there it's also turned on by default.
I assume most people do check all the options after installing, but for quite a few that might be after they got infected. In addition, in the case of Internet Explorer and to a far lesser extent Firefox, the information given about all those options is non-existent (inside the browser).
I did not muck around inside a television just after unplugging, but I did open a computer psu just after unplugging. I'd used that psu for years, and just discovered that it was faulty after moving and seeing that the electricity would shut itself down (previously I lived in places without an earth-connector in most sockets). I did see the warning labels about not opening it, and thought that they put warning labels on everything, just to be on the safe side. I did not manage to discover anything clearly wrong inside, nor did I get any electricity shock whatsoever. Only later, when I read why they put those warning labels up, did I discover that what I did should have meant instant-death. I guess that the capacitors (or at least some of them) were connected to something outside (essentially earthed), causing them to discharge quickly.
In short I'd rather have people driving around with something like this. Apparently this is a relatively safe storage of very dangerous radioactive materials, so one would not even have to be very worried about material being released by crashes.
"Nature's given us pretty much the most powerful and reliable early warning center out there," said Bill Lawler, co-founder of Intelligent Automation Corporation, a Southern California company that makes and sells the geek monitoring system. "There's no known manmade sensor that can do the same job as the computer nerd." Isn't the computer nerd a manmade sensor?
I'm sorry, but what you write is mostly BS. Yes it's true that the whole world would be involved in paying, but pollution is a global, not a local problem. The part of the rest of the world that uses cars is also responsible for the pollution, so there is nothing bad about them being `punished' in one go. And I write `punished' and not punished, since anyone polluting is denying others the right to live, murdering them as well as commiting suicide. With the latter part I have no problem, since I think it's a fundamental human right to decide on your own life, but just because of that I have a moral problem with murder, and especially the mass-murder as involved here. An argument often used against outlawing mass-murder in the form of pollution is that it would damage the economy or infringe on the freedom of the individual. With regards to the first, what use is the economy when there is no one left to suffer or gain from it? As to the second, the most fundamental freedom is the freedom to decide on your own life, so outlawing mass-murder does not infringe on any freedom. And note, I don't claim innocence of mass-murder, although of course I do not drive. Of course there is also a thin line between murder and killing (without intent), in the past, when many forms of pollution were not yet recognized as such, the pollution was merely mass-killing, not mass-murder. In the case of the burning of fossile fuels, that thin line was passed by world war I (if not earlier). Although the associated greenhouse effect was only discovered much later (during the 1960's?), only after that was discovered became all the use of non-renewable energy sources releasing `greenhouse gasses' mass-murder. The only thing is that mass-murder that releases substances that deny the right to decide on ones own life not only to the present, but also to the future ranks of course a bit more evil than mass-murder limited to the present. At the same time, I recognize that people are often practically forced by circumstances to engage in mass-murder, so even if a government did not by itself pollute, the fact that they force - for example by failing to provide adequate public transportation in certain areas during certain times - at least some of the population to use cars at times. This means that the government is complicit to the crimes. On the other hand, in the case of a chosen government the people who vote for such a government are also responsible for the continuation of this practice. Since chosen governments usually don't look further than the next election, and most people don't look further than the next week, resulting in chosen governments not taking long term problems seriously, the chosen government is clearly failing in its responsibility to protect the people (in this case from themselves and/or most of the rest of the population). I've seriously started to wonder whether a global dictatorship might not be the only solution to the most serious problem we have at the moment, global warming (with a positive feedback effect).
If you actually need to know what the program will do with your input, then all WYSINWYG (what you see is not what you get) programs are off. I became frustrated with wordprocessors because of the inability to do many things with them which I viewed as essential, and as a result switched to LaTeX. Although it might look daunting to the beginner, I found that it was easy to learn, and as opposed to wordprocessors actually gives you decent looking output. I've tried working with LyX as well, but it has the same problems as other wordprocessors, although the documentation is better. Nowadays I only use Open Office for viewing files others send me that require the use of such things such as a wordprocessor etcetera. The only exception might be Calc, but still, in general there is something amiss with the functionality of spreadsheets. Something just does not work right when trying to enter data, and Open Office is no different from Excel in this regard. Also, again, this applies to both, I do find that it's very hard to discover how to use certain tricks, for example, locking in view the first column or row. This is of course no problem for people who use it at a daily base, but if you use it actively once every three months like I do it's problematic. The documentation is also on par with Micro$oft's, and thus it's far easier to use some core utils since, even when I don't remember anything about the use, which happens often since I don't use those on a daily base either, at least the documentation is such that it's possible to find out how to do it.
Maybe slightly OT, but since when is it forbidden to take any liquids on an airplane? I know that the UK banned many things, among them most liquids, after the foiled terrorist plot some weeks/months (already forgotten the timescale) ago, but I assumed that emergency measure had been cancelled by now. Are there any other places that do ban all liquids? The last time I was on an airplane, nearly a year ago, there was no problem at all taking liquids aboard. Still, the exhaust gasses might mean that you won't be allowed to use such a device on an airplane. But how much fuel does such a device use? What does it use as fuel? I did read the article, but I did not see anything about the type of fuel used.
No, the time when greenhouse gasses were at a peak was just before an ice age. At the moment, the peak is however much higher than the peaks at the beginning of the ice ages. IANAGNACNAB (I am not a geologist nor a climatologist nor a biologist), but as far as I know, the relationship between a peak in greenhouse gasses and the following ice age is unknown. What is known however is that those peaks and the accompanying ice ages return regularly, and that those peaks were all lower than the current peak. This is just guessing, but it might be that global warming led to the extinction (or at least dramatic reduction of the population) of many species, which in turn resulted into a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gasses and thus global cooling and an ice age. In short there was a negative feedback effect resulting in a periodic strengthening and lessening of the global temperature. Now however, we do already face a positive feedback effect from releases of carbondioxide and methane deposits from the permafrost. Deposits that likely have not been released during previous steam ages (steam age as opposed to ice age). Still, it might be that again the global warming will result in a population loss followed by such a drop in temperature that we do get back into the cycle. The other option is that the population loss won't be fast enough to stop global warming and that eventually another periodic cycle will appear, most likely at a much higher temperature (think Venus).