Zarking fardwarks... it's threads like this that make me despair for humankind and indeed the rest of life on this planet. Personally, I'm relying on a bottle of champagne and a couple of spliffs for a few huors' happinesss. Well, hopefully I'll be able to forget there are otherwise rational intelligent people who persist in believing in fairies.
Hell i'd take a 10% chance of not surviving the trip home.
Of course the devil's in the details - how do you accurately calculate the odds ahead of time? Given the very small sample size (the most-launched vehicle is probably the Russian Soyuz booster & capsule, which has had... what... a thousand launches, in total, for all variants over the last 40 years?) NASA asserted that the shuttle was supposed to have a 1/1000 failure rate until Challenger, IIRC Professor Richard Feynmann was involved in reassessing that to something like 1:25 (or 1:50?) At any rate, the Columbia accident was well within that broad range. The point is not that pre-Challenger NASA was recklessly over-confident and incompetent - there were certainly failings, but there's no real substitute for repeating the experiment, launching again, and counting the successes and failures. The same goes for all the STS systems, the TPS is a good example - with many thousands of tile damage incident data over 25 years, the model for the physical properties of the tiles is very reliable. One reason for the Columbia accident was that the computer program used to analyse the effects of a foam impact on and RCC panel was badly out of date, partly because there wasn't much data on RCC damage from previous flights - because it didn't happen very often. Hence the astonishment after the last test-firing of a chunk of foam at an RCC panel which punched a neat 16" hole in the leading edge.
So I, too, would probably take a chance on a 1:10 chance of surviving a round trip to Mars, *if* there were hundreds or thousands of previous missions by which to judge the reliability of the stats. As manned flights to Mars are unlikely to reach double figuers this century (I reckon), you'd be strapping yourself into a system knowing it was untested and highly dangerous. No, thanks.
TFA article says that 10% would get fatal cancer sometime in their lives.
If so, TFA is wrong, unless of course they're controlling for lifestyle (I'd guess none of the astronauts are likely to be smokers or heavy drinkers, for instance, which improves the odds somewhat.) But if they're pulling those figures from the general population, the real figure (in Western Europe anyway - I dunno about the US) is about 35% (abuot one third of all deaths result from cancer.)
Now I personally am an atheiest of the Dawkins type, but sometimes teh King James' language is too good a fit not to use:
I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. 8 Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? 9 And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. 10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.
Hacker 'outs' news of the 10th planet of our solar system
July 31, 2005
br>
By Alicia Chang
Los Angeles - It's icy, rocky and bigger than Pluto and, according to scientists who found it orbiting the Sun, it's the newest planet in our solar system.
Wow, you know, I have to wonder how I missed this event! Anyone know what caused it - Hollywood special effect run amok? mega-volcano? Explosion of methane built up from the decomposing, rotting wreckage of the copyright mafia's business models, honesty and decency?
Actually, strictly speaking neither are 'defamatory' as neither word 'damage(s) the reputation, character' of the subject. Either, however, may be used as a term of opprobium. (One of the few advantages of being English is knowing how to speak and write the language correctly;p )
That said, you've succeeded in makign me realise that using 'texan' as a term of abuse is as dodgy as if it were 'pakistani' (or 'chetnick' or 'shipka' or 'forester' as it may be.) I don't even remember if that WAS how I used it, but if so, sorry, and I'll try to remember to not do that in future.
Sorry to say I have no clue what the rest means; I googled for 'keen is your blade' and 'when the wolves...loose' with no results (none, zero)... so cluestick away...
*sigh* well I'm not going to convince you & I'm tired & it's late so this is a crap list OTTOMH.
Pragmatically: game theory (prisoner's dilemma) suggests that optimum strategy for maximising benefits is proactive co-operation. A somewhat concrete example - most persons have living friends and/or relatives who are likely to be more, not less, likely to resort to violence, destructive actions etc if their f/f are dead than not. This is why occupying armies generally try not to kill civilians unless they're deliberately trying to ruthlessly subjugate the occupied population. It doesn't work: look at the history of the resistance in occupied Europe during WW2 for instance.
Strategically: if you are a member of a group facing the risk of death (be it burglars in a 'gun-rich' society, or bank robbers, or uniformed armed forces on active service) one rational response to the threat is to get your retaliation in first. The same applies to the opponent and you end up with a death-spiral arms race.
Rather than me having to find reasons why it's NOT ok to kill people, how about you finding reasons why it IS OK?
Morally - 'do unto others as you would be done to' is a good (efficient, pragmatic) ethical policy.
Religious reasons... I'm an athiest myself, so I don't believe there's any specifically religious reasons why killing people is bad. But insofar as I am capable of empathy (that is to say, I can put myself in other's positions and try to imagine the subjective experience), I suspect that most people who get killed would prefer, if given the option, *not* to be killed. I personally don't want to be responsible for ending another... er (gotta pick my word carefully here!) consciousness? sentient being?
If I'm prepared to do it to others, I lose the right to be surprised or upset if other people are prepared to do it to me. (Other people are prepared to do it to me at the moment, along with lots of other Londoners. I'm not surprised, but I *am* upset about it and I am pissed off about it. I was also pissed off that UK soldiers are participating in what I think is an illegal and immoral war on behalf of George Bush and the oil industry. If I think it's OK for bombs _I_ have helped to pay for (with my taxes) to incinerate, eviscerate, maim and mutilate civilians in Iraq, what right do I have to be pissed off that other people are trying to do it to me?
(I don't really want to bring bloody politics into it, and yes I realise I'm in pretty small minority in thinking this way.)
I'm sure there's something on wikipedia or somewhere summing up all the arguments on both sides of this debate anyway.
> >>Violence against anyone is wrong...
>
>No, it's not.
Yes, it is. You can beat me to death if you like (though I'd much rather you didn't), but you'll still be wrong.
As someone I have an awful lot of respect for once said: "Resist the cycle of violence and hate." (Google is your friend, if you care who.) I believe someone was nailed to a tree somewhere for saying something similar... as did Buddha, though he apparently died fat, old and happy;)
Assuming you're in the UK based on the URL in your profile...
I'm pretty sure I'd beat up any one who decided to start walking around my house, wouldn't you?
I am (tho that's a very old URL, hmmm... must change that). But god, no, of _course_ I wouldn't beat anyone up, I'm rather surprised & a little horrified that anyone else in the UK would, either. Apart from not being physically capable of it I see no possible reason to do so. I did once catch a burglar red-handed, he legged it before I could trap him, I chased him & had I caught him I would definitely have attempted a citizen's arrest - and 'reasonable force' is OK in that situation, even if you've chased them into a public space (tho' it's not cut and dried...) but why the fuck would I want to beat him up if I'd caught him?? (This is all ignoring the obvious answer that 9,999 times out of 10,000 that I've encountered unexpected people in my house, there's been a legitimate reason for them to be there.)
Yes, I am in the UK. I've worked as a multi-stop delivery driver in the past, and frequently arrived at a customer's house to find them out or not answering the door. Standard practice was to pop the delivery over the garden gate or round the corner of a porch. Now I think of it, when the other residents of the house are away, I often get up and wander into the kitchen to find the postie's left the post on a worksurface, especially if there are parcels. That's one of the reasons we leave our door unlocked most of the time. Come to think of it, deliveries for the neighbouring properties (we face each other over a shared courtyard) are often left in our kitchen. I once found a set of builder's ladders lying on the back lawn...
Finally, has it occured to you that if you (quote) 'beat the crap out of' someone you find in your house, you are guilty of a number of criminal offences, starting with 'assault' and possibly ABH or GBH. Obviously not.
In most parts of the world, just walking into someone's house and looking around without the owner's permission would get you beaten or killed by the owner.
Jesus Christ, are you serious? If so, you have aseriously fucked up view of the world.
I remember reading a description of this somewhere before; the journalist ended by saying "this is intended for non-lethal crowd dispersion, and as such is likely to be very effective. Personally, if I was on a demo and noticed the faces of people around me starting to bubble like toasted cheese, I think I'd disperse pretty damn quick, too."
who are jeering about having too much time on your hands... son, if _you_ lived in Reading, you too would end up constructing novelty furnishings and home equipment in the form of spacecraft from 1970s movies. Indeed, my 'Dark Star' security light is particularly effective at making burglars wonder how they can know they exist...
Well, of course corporations can influence legislation everywhere - modulo a few implementation details concerning how under-the-counter or open the lobbying process is, which differ from country to country - but my point is there are a lot more corps that have no vested interest in making Free OSes illegal, than there are corps that do. (Ha, try parsing that after a couple of [bottles of] Bishop's Finger! *)
Incidentally, nothing in my earlier comments should be taken as any sort of attack on stoners, teenagers, or paranoid conspiracy theorists. They all have their uses;)
And yes, businesses who use Linux will fight back. How long and hard will they be able to fight while the rules of the game are changed to be stacked against them?
I realise things are different in the US, but out here in the rest of the world there are more companies benefiting from using Linux (a LOT more) than there are companies trying to push DRM. What on earth makes you think that a small group of admittedly rich corps will be able to outlaw something that everyone else is using? The idea is obviously ludicrous, hence my scorn at those peddling such tripe as stoner teenagers.
In ten years, through the DMCA, it will be illegal to have an operating system that does not enforce DRM. Anything that does not enforce DRM will be considered a circumvention.
What bollocks. Do you really think that those millions of businesses using Linux and BSD will allow them to be legislated out of existence?
You seem to think that an inability to play the latest Hollywood blockbuster movie is essential to an operating system. Well personally I don't watch Hollywood films in cinemas, or at home on TV, so I sure as hell aren't going to start watching them on my Linux computers.
Of course, society should tell the purveyors of the foul, vile, festering pus-swamp that is 'DRM' to shove it where the sun don't shine. That doesn't mean Linux is going to be illegal. It's comments like that getting modded to +5 insightful that leads to the popular perception that Slashdot's full of paranoid stoner teenagers.
Because I have this statement, I can hold my employees accountable to it.
Wow, American churches are different from British churches... you have employees?!
My parents 'have' a church - they[we*] happen to live next door to a nice old 11th century village church, and as my mother's one of the small handful of people who turn up each week, she ended up nominated as church-warden. My Dad has an ancient old manuscript-format book, with entries starting in the early 60s in fountain pen, containing the accounts. We just scraped up a couple of thousand quid to get the clock-face repainted, and the clock mechanism itself just had it's 25-year service a few years back. The man who cut the grass in the churchyard had to stop recently due to age. I say 'we' because although I'm a pretty devout athiest, I feel a small nagging sense of responsibility to help look after the place. OK, I'm rambling now:) & I'm not sure where this was going except that the thought has vaguely occured to me that it might be interesting to think about Americans, tourism, webcams or some combo of that sort of thing as an idea to help raise some cash to help maintain the building; and it's not often I encounter a self-confessed pastor socially;)
Nice mission statement, BTW:)
[*I recently moved back to the village at the age of 36 after 18 years painting the town paisley... why yes, as it happens I _do_ have a Linux machine in my bedroom, why do you ask?) ]
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I'm beginning to suspect you're not taking this entirely seriously! (Unless you're referring to the Time Cube...)
By that definition, several satellites of Jupiter and Saturn are planets.
Of course the devil's in the details - how do you accurately calculate the odds ahead of time? Given the very small sample size (the most-launched vehicle is probably the Russian Soyuz booster & capsule, which has had... what... a thousand launches, in total, for all variants over the last 40 years?) NASA asserted that the shuttle was supposed to have a 1/1000 failure rate until Challenger, IIRC Professor Richard Feynmann was involved in reassessing that to something like 1:25 (or 1:50?) At any rate, the Columbia accident was well within that broad range. The point is not that pre-Challenger NASA was recklessly over-confident and incompetent - there were certainly failings, but there's no real substitute for repeating the experiment, launching again, and counting the successes and failures. The same goes for all the STS systems, the TPS is a good example - with many thousands of tile damage incident data over 25 years, the model for the physical properties of the tiles is very reliable. One reason for the Columbia accident was that the computer program used to analyse the effects of a foam impact on and RCC panel was badly out of date, partly because there wasn't much data on RCC damage from previous flights - because it didn't happen very often. Hence the astonishment after the last test-firing of a chunk of foam at an RCC panel which punched a neat 16" hole in the leading edge.
So I, too, would probably take a chance on a 1:10 chance of surviving a round trip to Mars, *if* there were hundreds or thousands of previous missions by which to judge the reliability of the stats. As manned flights to Mars are unlikely to reach double figuers this century (I reckon), you'd be strapping yourself into a system knowing it was untested and highly dangerous. No, thanks.
If so, TFA is wrong, unless of course they're controlling for lifestyle (I'd guess none of the astronauts are likely to be smokers or heavy drinkers, for instance, which improves the odds somewhat.) But if they're pulling those figures from the general population, the real figure (in Western Europe anyway - I dunno about the US) is about 35% (abuot one third of all deaths result from cancer.)
The thing is I can't tell what's satire and what's real any more.
Wow, you know, I have to wonder how I missed this event! Anyone know what caused it - Hollywood special effect run amok? mega-volcano? Explosion of methane built up from the decomposing, rotting wreckage of the copyright mafia's business models, honesty and decency?
That said, you've succeeded in makign me realise that using 'texan' as a term of abuse is as dodgy as if it were 'pakistani' (or 'chetnick' or 'shipka' or 'forester' as it may be.) I don't even remember if that WAS how I used it, but if so, sorry, and I'll try to remember to not do that in future.
Sorry to say I have no clue what the rest means; I googled for 'keen is your blade' and 'when the wolves...loose' with no results (none, zero)... so cluestick away...
No idea, why, who said that? Whoever he was it's not what he's famous for, is it. Outside of Texas, anyway.
"I've learned something today" cheers for that m8
Pragmatically: game theory (prisoner's dilemma) suggests that optimum strategy for maximising benefits is proactive co-operation. A somewhat concrete example - most persons have living friends and/or relatives who are likely to be more, not less, likely to resort to violence, destructive actions etc if their f/f are dead than not. This is why occupying armies generally try not to kill civilians unless they're deliberately trying to ruthlessly subjugate the occupied population. It doesn't work: look at the history of the resistance in occupied Europe during WW2 for instance.
Strategically: if you are a member of a group facing the risk of death (be it burglars in a 'gun-rich' society, or bank robbers, or uniformed armed forces on active service) one rational response to the threat is to get your retaliation in first. The same applies to the opponent and you end up with a death-spiral arms race.
Rather than me having to find reasons why it's NOT ok to kill people, how about you finding reasons why it IS OK?
Morally - 'do unto others as you would be done to' is a good (efficient, pragmatic) ethical policy.
Religious reasons... I'm an athiest myself, so I don't believe there's any specifically religious reasons why killing people is bad. But insofar as I am capable of empathy (that is to say, I can put myself in other's positions and try to imagine the subjective experience), I suspect that most people who get killed would prefer, if given the option, *not* to be killed. I personally don't want to be responsible for ending another... er (gotta pick my word carefully here!) consciousness? sentient being?
If I'm prepared to do it to others, I lose the right to be surprised or upset if other people are prepared to do it to me. (Other people are prepared to do it to me at the moment, along with lots of other Londoners. I'm not surprised, but I *am* upset about it and I am pissed off about it. I was also pissed off that UK soldiers are participating in what I think is an illegal and immoral war on behalf of George Bush and the oil industry. If I think it's OK for bombs _I_ have helped to pay for (with my taxes) to incinerate, eviscerate, maim and mutilate civilians in Iraq, what right do I have to be pissed off that other people are trying to do it to me? (I don't really want to bring bloody politics into it, and yes I realise I'm in pretty small minority in thinking this way.)
I'm sure there's something on wikipedia or somewhere summing up all the arguments on both sides of this debate anyway.
really?! I'm not saying it's not so, but I'd be interested to see a reference ;)
>
>No, it's not.
Yes, it is. You can beat me to death if you like (though I'd much rather you didn't), but you'll still be wrong.
As someone I have an awful lot of respect for once said: "Resist the cycle of violence and hate." (Google is your friend, if you care who.) I believe someone was nailed to a tree somewhere for saying something similar... as did Buddha, though he apparently died fat, old and happy ;)
m
I am (tho that's a very old URL, hmmm... must change that). But god, no, of _course_ I wouldn't beat anyone up, I'm rather surprised & a little horrified that anyone else in the UK would, either. Apart from not being physically capable of it I see no possible reason to do so. I did once catch a burglar red-handed, he legged it before I could trap him, I chased him & had I caught him I would definitely have attempted a citizen's arrest - and 'reasonable force' is OK in that situation, even if you've chased them into a public space (tho' it's not cut and dried...) but why the fuck would I want to beat him up if I'd caught him?? (This is all ignoring the obvious answer that 9,999 times out of 10,000 that I've encountered unexpected people in my house, there's been a legitimate reason for them to be there.)
Finally, has it occured to you that if you (quote) 'beat the crap out of' someone you find in your house, you are guilty of a number of criminal offences, starting with 'assault' and possibly ABH or GBH. Obviously not.
I remember reading a description of this somewhere before; the journalist ended by saying "this is intended for non-lethal crowd dispersion, and as such is likely to be very effective. Personally, if I was on a demo and noticed the faces of people around me starting to bubble like toasted cheese, I think I'd disperse pretty damn quick, too."
who are jeering about having too much time on your hands... son, if _you_ lived in Reading, you too would end up constructing novelty furnishings and home equipment in the form of spacecraft from 1970s movies. Indeed, my 'Dark Star' security light is particularly effective at making burglars wonder how they can know they exist...
Incidentally, nothing in my earlier comments should be taken as any sort of attack on stoners, teenagers, or paranoid conspiracy theorists. They all have their uses ;)
What bollocks. Do you really think that those millions of businesses using Linux and BSD will allow them to be legislated out of existence?
You seem to think that an inability to play the latest Hollywood blockbuster movie is essential to an operating system. Well personally I don't watch Hollywood films in cinemas, or at home on TV, so I sure as hell aren't going to start watching them on my Linux computers.
Of course, society should tell the purveyors of the foul, vile, festering pus-swamp that is 'DRM' to shove it where the sun don't shine. That doesn't mean Linux is going to be illegal. It's comments like that getting modded to +5 insightful that leads to the popular perception that Slashdot's full of paranoid stoner teenagers.
-Dennis Potter
My parents 'have' a church - they[we*] happen to live next door to a nice old 11th century village church, and as my mother's one of the small handful of people who turn up each week, she ended up nominated as church-warden. My Dad has an ancient old manuscript-format book, with entries starting in the early 60s in fountain pen, containing the accounts. We just scraped up a couple of thousand quid to get the clock-face repainted, and the clock mechanism itself just had it's 25-year service a few years back. The man who cut the grass in the churchyard had to stop recently due to age. I say 'we' because although I'm a pretty devout athiest, I feel a small nagging sense of responsibility to help look after the place. OK, I'm rambling now :) & I'm not sure where this was going except that the thought has vaguely occured to me that it might be interesting to think about Americans, tourism, webcams or some combo of that sort of thing as an idea to help raise some cash to help maintain the building; and it's not often I encounter a self-confessed pastor socially ;)
Nice mission statement, BTW :)
[*I recently moved back to the village at the age of 36 after 18 years painting the town paisley... why yes, as it happens I _do_ have a Linux machine in my bedroom, why do you ask?) ]