The threat from R/C planes is actually due to their small size. An R/C plane could fly unhindered through city streets, over security checkpoints, to explode a small bomb in front of the door to a government building. It can deliver the terrorist message of "we can harm you anywhere, at any time" quite clearly.
The point of terror isn't to cause actual damage with a large payload. As I recall, bin Laden said the destruction of the World Trade Center was unexpected at the time. Terrorism exploits the human bias toward paranoia - if they could hit our most secure landmarks, surely they could hit our homes and offices. This is why the government's response is an overwhelming counter-attack. We acknowledge that we are vulnerable, but the long-term cost of the attack is incredibly high. The "War on Terror" isn't meant to actually stop terror attacks, but rather to deter others (governments and individuals from supporting terror against the United States.
I mean, are we going to sit here and bitch and moan about corporate tax avoidance [slashdot.org] in our country and then freak out when the IRS investigates if Open Source groups are being abused in the same manner?
Yes. Yes, we are.
At the risk of disgust for not defending the hivemind, we Slashdotters are a bunch of mindless fools being pushed from one outrage to another. Under the banners of "freedom" and "technology", we're taught to hate the masses, the government, big business, small business, the wealthy, the poor, the crazy and the calm, all because everybody everywhere has done something worth lambasting on the front page.
Every invention is panned as a new patent on old technology, rather than an improvement on an old idea. Every lawsuit is an us-against-them fight for survival, rather than a search for justice. Every wound is a tragedy, and every windfall is a triumph, rather than just the caprices of circumstance. Every story is a new demon being unleashed upon the world.
Slashdot is just as bad as Fox News. Rather than twisting facts to fit the story, Slashdot twists the circumstances to fit the mob's hatred du jour.
That's exactly the point. That's why everybody always bitches about "the man" restricting their freedom, why police are always disparaged, and why nobody actually likes their government. Everyone is indeed a servant for everyone, and the government embodies that ruling "everyone", so it's the target for the hatred of the perceived oppression caused by servitude.
When others have to go along with what you want, it's "liberty". When you have to go along with what others want, it's "servitude".
Those licenses and permits prove that you can be trusted in some particular way not to use your liberty to unintentionally infringe someone else's liberty. Without that proof, your liberty is indeed curtailed for the good of society.
Ping time isn't nearly as important as the hop count and peer count. If someone in Texas tries to access your New York servers, they're probably going through the networks of half a dozen different companies, and that's half a dozen interface points that could go wrong. For a centrally-located server, there might only be two or three networks in the path, so the service is likely to be more consistent.
The term "tried to conclusion" means that the matter was brought to trial, and the trial has completed, as opposed to being stalled in an endless cycle of motions and counter-motions, or settling out of court, or otherwise not finishing.
Considering that some lawsuits last several decades, simply saying that he brought a particular litigation to trial isn't really enough, because it's vague as to whether the trial is still ongoing. Similarly, ozbon's proposed alteration is vague, because it leaves open the question of how the litigation was completed. It could have been laughed out of court during pre-trial.
The language used was specific, concise, and complete. Since the majority of a lawyer's work involves reading and writing legal documents that must be specific, concise, and complete, this is a good thing. Your lack of understanding is due to your assumption regarding the definition of the word "tried". If that's a significant barrier to your understanding of his website, you should probably be looking for a dictionary, not a lawyer.
This is exactly right. Sure, Brazilian laws might outlaw some kinds of wiretapping, but I'm going to need a bit more than a Google translation of a news article before I form an opinion on whether this specific action is illegal, when done by these specific agents, in this specific country, at this specific time.
I know it's cool for Slashdotters to shoehorn every kind of observation into "wiretapping", then assume that all wiretapping laws prohibit it, but that's just not the case. Then again, factual accuracy has never been one of Slashdot's strongest traits.
Of course the locals know that their neighbors are plotting to kill. The locals also know that if they stop their neighbor's plot, they'll be dead by the end of the week. They don't have body armor, helmets, tanks, bodyguards, or even so much as a solid front door. They are absolutely powerless against the people with guns, so we send in the UN troops. They're trained soldiers with all the equipment they need to do what the locals can't. That changes the game, and the locals now have to publicly pretend to hate the UN so they aren't seen as supporting the "invaders". Local chieftains are usually a more honest source of sentiment polls, because they have a bit more freedom to speak.
Of course, in turn the fear-fueled displays of animosity towards the UN troops reinforces the radicals' belief that they're acting on the will of the people, so their plots get bigger and deadlier, so the UN sends in more troops, continuing the cycle.
There is no easy answer. Removing the UN troops leaves the radicals still armed and murderous. Adding more UN troops increases the risk, but also increases the equipment cost to the radicals for each plot. The gamble is whether the radicals run out of resources before too many innocent people die.
but now I'm not sure I'll even host it again this year.
After that guy showed up last year with his "tug-of-war robot overlord", there's really not much point to it. I mean, we could go for a bigger slab of concrete with a bigger nuclear-powered winch, but after a while it's just more work than fun.
I find it creepy that people don't understand patents. This isn't just a camera on a stick like a spy would use. It's a particular design for fitting cameras, sensors, processing gear, and other equipment into a particular form factor, solving particular engineering problems. Comparing it to WWII spy gear because it looks like a walking stick and takes pictures is like comparing a Formula 1 race car to a horse-drawn carriage, because they both drive on roads and have round wheels.
With some heavily rose-tinted glasses, Google's business plan is blatently obvious. It intends to be Umbrella Corporation. Every facet of our lives will be working with or for Google. We wake up to our Android phone's alarm clock, read the Google-supplied news feed, ride our Google-powered autonomous car to work from our Google-connected rural home, use Google Apps to do our jobs, then go out in the evenings to a nice park (whose health is monitored and managed by Google) to relax and communicate with our friends via Google's social networks. For traditional entertainment, Google's happy to provide information, buy tickets, or give directions. At the end of the day, our Google cars pick us up and take us home.
Google's motto is "Don't be evil". This doesn't necessarily apply to every day-to-day action, but rather to the overall behavior of the world-dominating mega-corporation - Umbrella was evil. Google doesn't want to be. They aren't out to build superweapons or exterminate the world's pests. They aren't really out to make money (though that is still a secondary goal). Google just aims to be helpful to every bit of daily life, and that gets them a small slice of every transaction.
This is the long-awaited future we've been reading about in sci-fi. The all-encompassing network knows what we want, and provides. The network can invade everyone's privacy, but by and large it doesn't really care about any individual. It can monitor its own health, and understand the sentiment of its users. All that this nearly-sentient network cares about is to maximize certain metrics - possibly even "happiness" and "personal freedom". As the network takes over people's lives, the need for governments (and government-supported fighting) declines, and after a few centuries of working out personal disputes, general peace will finally reign... with a familiar four-color logo.
I exaggerate Google's scope for entertainment, but not by much. Once upon a time, Microsoft's plan was "a computer on every desk and in every home", and Google's just extending that to match modern capabilities. We can have a computer on every pedestrian, in every car, and at the head of every industry. Microsoft tried to push itself into markets, and generally succeeded, but never seems to be the best in anything. Google, on the other hand, tries to make something that's the best, and hopes it will take up a market eventually. They're playing the very long game.
That's why Google kills off so many projects. If they don't actually work out to be the best, they'll just stagnate the market, and we'll be stuck with more inconvenient technology for longer. If a project isn't particularly profitable, and doesn't fit Google's ostensibly-benevolent goal, why keep it?
Of course, this is just the plan. It seems to be going well for now, under the direction of decent leaders who are okay with consuming profits for the perceived "greater good". Future profit-oriented leadership might turn "don't be evil" into "don't give away something for nothing". Intermediate measures (like complying with governments) could fetter some projects. A particular project could turn innocent civilians into zombies... The plan could take a turn for the worse, and we as a society would be royally screwed. Google may indeed be aiming to be a world-domineering overlord, but as long as it's a benevolent overlord, I'm okay with that.
As an aside, I swear I'm not a Google shill. I'm just focusing on the optimistic side in this post, because it's the side that seems to make the most sense to me.
Military pilots are, from even before astronaut training, also more likely to understand the acceleration stress of a launch, and to be reasonably comfortable when the realization hits that they're strapped to a giant rocket whose goal is to explode fast enough to hurl them into orbit, but slow enough to not kill them.
Human brains aren't evolved for this kind of treatment, so it takes a good deal of psychological training to function appropriately under the conditions of spaceflight. In addition to the rapid sequence of events, the acceleration, and the small space, there's the nagging feeling that the shaking, roaring beast is going to end in a sudden yet painful death. I imagine it to be like playing chess on a shaky roller coaster (without gluing down the pieces), but worse.
Your silly rationality means nothing to me! Nothing!
Cops are only allowed to use evidence I give them willingly, and they can't think, and they can't do any sort of investigation unless I tell them to! I am an American, so I have the inherent right to do absolutely anything, and say absolutely anything, to absolutely anyone, and anyone who opposes me is clearly an agent of the oppressive Enemy!
(if the sarcasm here isn't quite thick enough to notice, at least my signature is sincere)
It just means a small group made a big enough noise to be heard.
Ah, right... the silent majority opposes all those crazy politicians, but still keep voting 'em right back into office.
Your statement is as incorrect as saying that society as a whole has determined that marijuana should be illegal
Why yes, it is, which is to say it's not incorrect at all. Marijuana's criminalization started when it was identified as a "poison" because of its psychoactive properties, so it got lumped in with narcotics. That gave it a mildly bad reputation that continued to decline as propaganda swayed public opinion. By 1937, when it was pretty fully criminalized, the public didn't really oppose it.
but in fact that's wrong and many polls show a majority of people favoring its legalization.
Now it is, yes. Slowly, politicians are recognizing that, and will continue to do so. This doesn't mean that representatives are independent of their constituents, but rather it illustrates that there is an obvious delay between a change in public opinion and political action.
The will of the people isn't always reflected in our laws.
Nope. Often this is a good thing, because on the whole, people are stupid and short-sighted. When it comes to a personal issue, like "I don't want to pay for an archaeologist", they choose one way. When the issue is phrased differently, like "I want my children to know about the native culture in this area", they choose differently. It's the job of government to figure out what specific policies lead to the greater good. The people, by vote or by petition, simply set that long-term target.
When they are out of whack, people feel morally justified in breaking those laws.
People feel morally justified in everything they do, because people are very strongly biased, regardless of laws or any fixed morality.
Based on the responses here, aside from a few stick-in-the-mud types who sound like complete douchebags, I'd guess your average citizen would say "No that's stupid, this couple shouldn't have to pay."
Whether the couple should or should not have to pay is not actually the issue at hand, despite the muckrakers' drivel. As far as I can tell, nobody actually involved in the case is saying that the landowners should pay. Rather, the default state for the law is that the landowner gets the bill for legally-mandated work, just like they have to pay for their own smoke detectors, circuit breakers, sanitation, structural repairs, fireman access, et cetera. If the expense is unreasonable in the circumstances (as this appears to be), the government can assist, for the benefit of society, but that decision hasn't been made yet.
All we have here is a half-baked story about something unusual happening, but not yet concluded. Since it's at a stage where it's easy to get commenters riled up in a nice Two Minutes' Hate against the government, it gets wide media attention.
Somebody has to pay for society. I'm not particularly keen on it being the landowner, but if the government pays as a matter of course, the door's wide open for exploitation. A reasonable system (in my opinion) would be to have the government pay for major expenses, and private entities pay for minor things, where the definitions of "major" and "minor" are determined by an appropriately-uninterested third party.
That sounds pretty similar to what's happening here:
Bob Bailey, the MPP for the area, saw her story in the local newspaper and his staff did some research into the couple’s predicament. He found out that Sauve can make a request to the Registrar of Cemeteries to determine if paying for the excavation would be considered an “undue financial burden.” The registrar will then either reimburse her or pay the bill directly.
Bailey said he has spoken to the minister of consumer services (the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act falls under her purview) and her staff, and intends to make sure Sauve won’t have to pay.
An unexpected $5000 bill to a residential homeowner is pretty likely to be undue, but it's up to the registrar to decide. We could of course wait and see, but since this is Slashdot, we're never going to get the resolution. Even if the registrar pays the whole bill, Slashdot won't report on it. Instead, the next anti-government story that can be spun into a revolutionary frenzy will make the front page.
If I dig up inuit bones, it's meaningless to me. If the inuit feel what I find is valuable, THEY can flippin' pay for it. If it's not worth them sinking $5000 into the 'site evaluation' plus whatever I want to charge for the inconvenience of delaying my project, then screw them and grind it to dust.
And this is why we have government in the first place. Society as a whole has determined that the cultural and scientific value of the bones is worth more than any "inconvenience" to you, so society's government has declared it illegal to knowingly (or negligently) "grind it to dust". If you're building a new multi-million-dollar complex, and your preliminary survey encounters some artifacts, the few thousand dollars extra it costs you to comply with the law is an insignificant price. In the colonial cities on the United States' east coast, this is a routine occurrence, and there are grant programs available specifically to pay for such things.
Even scarier than the unexpected bills to citizens is the opportunity for fraud against the government. If the government's policy is to simply pay all excavation and exploration bills, anybody with a few old bones can drop them on a planned construction site, and have the cost of construction subsidized by the taxpayers. If the government's also required to pay for "inconvenience", the fraud can set whatever price he wants, and effectively hold history for ransom. Through the indirect process of representative government, society has said they'd rather have occasional unexpected bills.
Many fields are so well-developed that in order to stay competitive, researchers must be highly specialized, ignoring all other branches of their discipline for their one specific area of expertise. Time spent learning those other branches is time not spent on the all-important publications. Even though learning about other areas might be better in the long run, the immediate goal of keeping one's job must be met first.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a natural consequence of a system where "breaking even" requires ever-increasing effort. Since we haven't had our BitCoin story yet today, I'll bring them up. Consider how the effort to mine one coin increases exponentially. Very rapidly, the technology required to be a viable miner has gone from just a spare videocard to specialized (and expensive) hashing hardware. Just as in academia, only the people who specialize can hope to keep up with the others who specialize. There just isn't time for anything else.
The solution to this is to base rewards on something that doesn't require increasing effort, but that's rather difficult in academia. Research itself gets more difficult as more discoveries are made.
I don't know about it being a hipster fad, but setting up your own darkroom is pretty simple. If you don't want to, there are still a good number of labs out there that will process film. You might have to send your film out somewhere rather than ride your fixed-gear bike down to the local Walgreens, but it can be done.
So in other words, we need to do absolutely nothing. The reality is the NSA already has more data than they can act on. Sure, they can analyze your phone calls and emails and figure out that you're the sort of person who is influential among your friends*... you could be a terrorist leader, or you could be a town gossip. It's far more likely to be the latter, so without more evidence, there's little point in pursuing you.
On the other hand, once you do do something that arouses suspicion, they can use your phone calls and emails to determine who may have conspired with you, and from there figure out what groups may be planning future attacks. By having that information available and already analyzed, they can pull up connections within minutes of a (preferably court-approved) request.
Rampant surveillance isn't what's really scary about what the NSA et al. are doing. Rather, what's worrying is that our government continues to rely on hindsight as a means to future security. We really ought to be more careful with our foreign policy, domestic welfare, and generally be more concerned with what people want to do to us, rather than what they can do to us. That would be a perfect world.
* I did this in grad school. It turns out analyzing call patterns is pretty simple, but the insight is practically useless. Most calling patterns are small rings with spokes.
Thanks to quantum mechanics, it's also fully possible for my entire body to randomly disintegrate over here, and reintegrate perfectly intact in your closet. That does not mean that someone who produces a machine for that should be denied patent protection... Unless, of course, the invention consists of a box holding a leprechaun, who have had the natural ability to teleport for thousands of years.
A "natural" gene would have been found in nature and isolated. The researchers don't really need to know how or why the gene does what it does - they just put it in a box. On the other hand, they can take a look at the gene, figure out what makes it work, and synthesize a cDNA sequence that does the job effectively - Building a leprechaun-like machine.
Wait, you mean the stock market is a complex system that isn't accurately described by a single "good news/bad news" model? But Slashdot has taught me that the easy and simplistic solution is always right!
Next you'll be telling me that a gold standard won't actually fix economic problems, or that Linux won't immediately replace Windows everywhere once it has $FEATURE... What madness is this?
The straight lines are straight, and lines on different letters have different apparent thickness.The kerning's a little distinctive as well, making the letters each look a little different. All together, this means that after a few minutes of reading text, your eyes will still be able to read the text! This encourages a computer user to actually use their computer, resulting in a higher risk for repetitive-strain injuries like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
In contrast, consider the Segoe font Microsoft has chosen for Windows 8 and Office 2013. Its lines are curved, its corners indistinct, and every letter looks identical apart from its shape. The pristine perfection of each glyph allows the brain to properly tangle the shapes together, interrupting the reading process. In my own experience, I've found that after only a few minutes of reading labels in the course of my work, the discomfort in reading is a subtle reminder to get up and look away from the computer for a few more minutes.
From the many interruptions, I'm sure my health has improved, and the total effect on my productivity has been quite noticeable.
Slashdot Mirror
The threat from R/C planes is actually due to their small size. An R/C plane could fly unhindered through city streets, over security checkpoints, to explode a small bomb in front of the door to a government building. It can deliver the terrorist message of "we can harm you anywhere, at any time" quite clearly.
The point of terror isn't to cause actual damage with a large payload. As I recall, bin Laden said the destruction of the World Trade Center was unexpected at the time. Terrorism exploits the human bias toward paranoia - if they could hit our most secure landmarks, surely they could hit our homes and offices. This is why the government's response is an overwhelming counter-attack. We acknowledge that we are vulnerable, but the long-term cost of the attack is incredibly high. The "War on Terror" isn't meant to actually stop terror attacks, but rather to deter others (governments and individuals from supporting terror against the United States.
I mean, are we going to sit here and bitch and moan about corporate tax avoidance [slashdot.org] in our country and then freak out when the IRS investigates if Open Source groups are being abused in the same manner?
Yes. Yes, we are.
At the risk of disgust for not defending the hivemind, we Slashdotters are a bunch of mindless fools being pushed from one outrage to another. Under the banners of "freedom" and "technology", we're taught to hate the masses, the government, big business, small business, the wealthy, the poor, the crazy and the calm, all because everybody everywhere has done something worth lambasting on the front page.
Every invention is panned as a new patent on old technology, rather than an improvement on an old idea. Every lawsuit is an us-against-them fight for survival, rather than a search for justice. Every wound is a tragedy, and every windfall is a triumph, rather than just the caprices of circumstance. Every story is a new demon being unleashed upon the world.
Slashdot is just as bad as Fox News. Rather than twisting facts to fit the story, Slashdot twists the circumstances to fit the mob's hatred du jour.
*slow clap*
That's exactly the point. That's why everybody always bitches about "the man" restricting their freedom, why police are always disparaged, and why nobody actually likes their government. Everyone is indeed a servant for everyone, and the government embodies that ruling "everyone", so it's the target for the hatred of the perceived oppression caused by servitude.
When others have to go along with what you want, it's "liberty". When you have to go along with what others want, it's "servitude".
Those licenses and permits prove that you can be trusted in some particular way not to use your liberty to unintentionally infringe someone else's liberty. Without that proof, your liberty is indeed curtailed for the good of society.
Ping time isn't nearly as important as the hop count and peer count. If someone in Texas tries to access your New York servers, they're probably going through the networks of half a dozen different companies, and that's half a dozen interface points that could go wrong. For a centrally-located server, there might only be two or three networks in the path, so the service is likely to be more consistent.
Left-to-the-imagination off?
That doesn't make much sense.
Yes, that's exactly what it's saying.
The term "tried to conclusion" means that the matter was brought to trial, and the trial has completed, as opposed to being stalled in an endless cycle of motions and counter-motions, or settling out of court, or otherwise not finishing.
Considering that some lawsuits last several decades, simply saying that he brought a particular litigation to trial isn't really enough, because it's vague as to whether the trial is still ongoing. Similarly, ozbon's proposed alteration is vague, because it leaves open the question of how the litigation was completed. It could have been laughed out of court during pre-trial.
The language used was specific, concise, and complete. Since the majority of a lawyer's work involves reading and writing legal documents that must be specific, concise, and complete, this is a good thing. Your lack of understanding is due to your assumption regarding the definition of the word "tried". If that's a significant barrier to your understanding of his website, you should probably be looking for a dictionary, not a lawyer.
My kingdom for mod points...
This is exactly right. Sure, Brazilian laws might outlaw some kinds of wiretapping, but I'm going to need a bit more than a Google translation of a news article before I form an opinion on whether this specific action is illegal, when done by these specific agents, in this specific country, at this specific time.
I know it's cool for Slashdotters to shoehorn every kind of observation into "wiretapping", then assume that all wiretapping laws prohibit it, but that's just not the case. Then again, factual accuracy has never been one of Slashdot's strongest traits.
Of course the locals know that their neighbors are plotting to kill. The locals also know that if they stop their neighbor's plot, they'll be dead by the end of the week. They don't have body armor, helmets, tanks, bodyguards, or even so much as a solid front door. They are absolutely powerless against the people with guns, so we send in the UN troops. They're trained soldiers with all the equipment they need to do what the locals can't. That changes the game, and the locals now have to publicly pretend to hate the UN so they aren't seen as supporting the "invaders". Local chieftains are usually a more honest source of sentiment polls, because they have a bit more freedom to speak.
Of course, in turn the fear-fueled displays of animosity towards the UN troops reinforces the radicals' belief that they're acting on the will of the people, so their plots get bigger and deadlier, so the UN sends in more troops, continuing the cycle.
There is no easy answer. Removing the UN troops leaves the radicals still armed and murderous. Adding more UN troops increases the risk, but also increases the equipment cost to the radicals for each plot. The gamble is whether the radicals run out of resources before too many innocent people die.
but now I'm not sure I'll even host it again this year.
After that guy showed up last year with his "tug-of-war robot overlord", there's really not much point to it. I mean, we could go for a bigger slab of concrete with a bigger nuclear-powered winch, but after a while it's just more work than fun.
I find it creepy that people don't understand patents. This isn't just a camera on a stick like a spy would use. It's a particular design for fitting cameras, sensors, processing gear, and other equipment into a particular form factor, solving particular engineering problems. Comparing it to WWII spy gear because it looks like a walking stick and takes pictures is like comparing a Formula 1 race car to a horse-drawn carriage, because they both drive on roads and have round wheels.
Why the hell is this not +5?
With some heavily rose-tinted glasses, Google's business plan is blatently obvious. It intends to be Umbrella Corporation. Every facet of our lives will be working with or for Google. We wake up to our Android phone's alarm clock, read the Google-supplied news feed, ride our Google-powered autonomous car to work from our Google-connected rural home, use Google Apps to do our jobs, then go out in the evenings to a nice park (whose health is monitored and managed by Google) to relax and communicate with our friends via Google's social networks. For traditional entertainment, Google's happy to provide information, buy tickets, or give directions. At the end of the day, our Google cars pick us up and take us home.
Google's motto is "Don't be evil". This doesn't necessarily apply to every day-to-day action, but rather to the overall behavior of the world-dominating mega-corporation - Umbrella was evil. Google doesn't want to be. They aren't out to build superweapons or exterminate the world's pests. They aren't really out to make money (though that is still a secondary goal). Google just aims to be helpful to every bit of daily life, and that gets them a small slice of every transaction.
This is the long-awaited future we've been reading about in sci-fi. The all-encompassing network knows what we want, and provides. The network can invade everyone's privacy, but by and large it doesn't really care about any individual. It can monitor its own health, and understand the sentiment of its users. All that this nearly-sentient network cares about is to maximize certain metrics - possibly even "happiness" and "personal freedom". As the network takes over people's lives, the need for governments (and government-supported fighting) declines, and after a few centuries of working out personal disputes, general peace will finally reign... with a familiar four-color logo.
I exaggerate Google's scope for entertainment, but not by much. Once upon a time, Microsoft's plan was "a computer on every desk and in every home", and Google's just extending that to match modern capabilities. We can have a computer on every pedestrian, in every car, and at the head of every industry. Microsoft tried to push itself into markets, and generally succeeded, but never seems to be the best in anything. Google, on the other hand, tries to make something that's the best, and hopes it will take up a market eventually. They're playing the very long game.
That's why Google kills off so many projects. If they don't actually work out to be the best, they'll just stagnate the market, and we'll be stuck with more inconvenient technology for longer. If a project isn't particularly profitable, and doesn't fit Google's ostensibly-benevolent goal, why keep it?
Of course, this is just the plan. It seems to be going well for now, under the direction of decent leaders who are okay with consuming profits for the perceived "greater good". Future profit-oriented leadership might turn "don't be evil" into "don't give away something for nothing". Intermediate measures (like complying with governments) could fetter some projects. A particular project could turn innocent civilians into zombies... The plan could take a turn for the worse, and we as a society would be royally screwed. Google may indeed be aiming to be a world-domineering overlord, but as long as it's a benevolent overlord, I'm okay with that.
As an aside, I swear I'm not a Google shill. I'm just focusing on the optimistic side in this post, because it's the side that seems to make the most sense to me.
Military pilots are, from even before astronaut training, also more likely to understand the acceleration stress of a launch, and to be reasonably comfortable when the realization hits that they're strapped to a giant rocket whose goal is to explode fast enough to hurl them into orbit, but slow enough to not kill them.
Human brains aren't evolved for this kind of treatment, so it takes a good deal of psychological training to function appropriately under the conditions of spaceflight. In addition to the rapid sequence of events, the acceleration, and the small space, there's the nagging feeling that the shaking, roaring beast is going to end in a sudden yet painful death. I imagine it to be like playing chess on a shaky roller coaster (without gluing down the pieces), but worse.
I'm going to drop this here.
It's a wonderful introduction to the issues at play, simplified enough to be easily understood, but not so simple as to be irrelevant.
Your silly rationality means nothing to me! Nothing!
Cops are only allowed to use evidence I give them willingly, and they can't think, and they can't do any sort of investigation unless I tell them to! I am an American, so I have the inherent right to do absolutely anything, and say absolutely anything, to absolutely anyone, and anyone who opposes me is clearly an agent of the oppressive Enemy!
(if the sarcasm here isn't quite thick enough to notice, at least my signature is sincere)
It just means a small group made a big enough noise to be heard.
Ah, right... the silent majority opposes all those crazy politicians, but still keep voting 'em right back into office.
Your statement is as incorrect as saying that society as a whole has determined that marijuana should be illegal
Why yes, it is, which is to say it's not incorrect at all. Marijuana's criminalization started when it was identified as a "poison" because of its psychoactive properties, so it got lumped in with narcotics. That gave it a mildly bad reputation that continued to decline as propaganda swayed public opinion. By 1937, when it was pretty fully criminalized, the public didn't really oppose it.
but in fact that's wrong and many polls show a majority of people favoring its legalization.
Now it is, yes. Slowly, politicians are recognizing that, and will continue to do so. This doesn't mean that representatives are independent of their constituents, but rather it illustrates that there is an obvious delay between a change in public opinion and political action.
The will of the people isn't always reflected in our laws.
Nope. Often this is a good thing, because on the whole, people are stupid and short-sighted. When it comes to a personal issue, like "I don't want to pay for an archaeologist", they choose one way. When the issue is phrased differently, like "I want my children to know about the native culture in this area", they choose differently. It's the job of government to figure out what specific policies lead to the greater good. The people, by vote or by petition, simply set that long-term target.
When they are out of whack, people feel morally justified in breaking those laws.
People feel morally justified in everything they do, because people are very strongly biased, regardless of laws or any fixed morality.
Based on the responses here, aside from a few stick-in-the-mud types who sound like complete douchebags, I'd guess your average citizen would say "No that's stupid, this couple shouldn't have to pay."
Whether the couple should or should not have to pay is not actually the issue at hand, despite the muckrakers' drivel. As far as I can tell, nobody actually involved in the case is saying that the landowners should pay. Rather, the default state for the law is that the landowner gets the bill for legally-mandated work, just like they have to pay for their own smoke detectors, circuit breakers, sanitation, structural repairs, fireman access, et cetera. If the expense is unreasonable in the circumstances (as this appears to be), the government can assist, for the benefit of society, but that decision hasn't been made yet.
All we have here is a half-baked story about something unusual happening, but not yet concluded. Since it's at a stage where it's easy to get commenters riled up in a nice Two Minutes' Hate against the government, it gets wide media attention.
Somebody has to pay for society. I'm not particularly keen on it being the landowner, but if the government pays as a matter of course, the door's wide open for exploitation. A reasonable system (in my opinion) would be to have the government pay for major expenses, and private entities pay for minor things, where the definitions of "major" and "minor" are determined by an appropriately-uninterested third party.
That sounds pretty similar to what's happening here:
Bob Bailey, the MPP for the area, saw her story in the local newspaper and his staff did some research into the couple’s predicament. He found out that Sauve can make a request to the Registrar of Cemeteries to determine if paying for the excavation would be considered an “undue financial burden.” The registrar will then either reimburse her or pay the bill directly.
Bailey said he has spoken to the minister of consumer services (the Funeral, Burial and Cremation Services Act falls under her purview) and her staff, and intends to make sure Sauve won’t have to pay.
An unexpected $5000 bill to a residential homeowner is pretty likely to be undue, but it's up to the registrar to decide. We could of course wait and see, but since this is Slashdot, we're never going to get the resolution. Even if the registrar pays the whole bill, Slashdot won't report on it. Instead, the next anti-government story that can be spun into a revolutionary frenzy will make the front page.
If I dig up inuit bones, it's meaningless to me. If the inuit feel what I find is valuable, THEY can flippin' pay for it. If it's not worth them sinking $5000 into the 'site evaluation' plus whatever I want to charge for the inconvenience of delaying my project, then screw them and grind it to dust.
And this is why we have government in the first place. Society as a whole has determined that the cultural and scientific value of the bones is worth more than any "inconvenience" to you, so society's government has declared it illegal to knowingly (or negligently) "grind it to dust". If you're building a new multi-million-dollar complex, and your preliminary survey encounters some artifacts, the few thousand dollars extra it costs you to comply with the law is an insignificant price. In the colonial cities on the United States' east coast, this is a routine occurrence, and there are grant programs available specifically to pay for such things.
Even scarier than the unexpected bills to citizens is the opportunity for fraud against the government. If the government's policy is to simply pay all excavation and exploration bills, anybody with a few old bones can drop them on a planned construction site, and have the cost of construction subsidized by the taxpayers. If the government's also required to pay for "inconvenience", the fraud can set whatever price he wants, and effectively hold history for ransom. Through the indirect process of representative government, society has said they'd rather have occasional unexpected bills.
The Star is just ginning this up as their usual "GOVERNMENT BAD" drivel.
And Slashdot's happy to repeat it.
Yeah, I could see that statement as being true.
Many fields are so well-developed that in order to stay competitive, researchers must be highly specialized, ignoring all other branches of their discipline for their one specific area of expertise. Time spent learning those other branches is time not spent on the all-important publications. Even though learning about other areas might be better in the long run, the immediate goal of keeping one's job must be met first.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a natural consequence of a system where "breaking even" requires ever-increasing effort. Since we haven't had our BitCoin story yet today, I'll bring them up. Consider how the effort to mine one coin increases exponentially. Very rapidly, the technology required to be a viable miner has gone from just a spare videocard to specialized (and expensive) hashing hardware. Just as in academia, only the people who specialize can hope to keep up with the others who specialize. There just isn't time for anything else.
The solution to this is to base rewards on something that doesn't require increasing effort, but that's rather difficult in academia. Research itself gets more difficult as more discoveries are made.
I don't know about it being a hipster fad, but setting up your own darkroom is pretty simple. If you don't want to, there are still a good number of labs out there that will process film. You might have to send your film out somewhere rather than ride your fixed-gear bike down to the local Walgreens, but it can be done.
So in other words, we need to do absolutely nothing. The reality is the NSA already has more data than they can act on. Sure, they can analyze your phone calls and emails and figure out that you're the sort of person who is influential among your friends*... you could be a terrorist leader, or you could be a town gossip. It's far more likely to be the latter, so without more evidence, there's little point in pursuing you.
On the other hand, once you do do something that arouses suspicion, they can use your phone calls and emails to determine who may have conspired with you, and from there figure out what groups may be planning future attacks. By having that information available and already analyzed, they can pull up connections within minutes of a (preferably court-approved) request.
Rampant surveillance isn't what's really scary about what the NSA et al. are doing. Rather, what's worrying is that our government continues to rely on hindsight as a means to future security. We really ought to be more careful with our foreign policy, domestic welfare, and generally be more concerned with what people want to do to us, rather than what they can do to us. That would be a perfect world.
* I did this in grad school. It turns out analyzing call patterns is pretty simple, but the insight is practically useless. Most calling patterns are small rings with spokes.
Thanks to quantum mechanics, it's also fully possible for my entire body to randomly disintegrate over here, and reintegrate perfectly intact in your closet. That does not mean that someone who produces a machine for that should be denied patent protection... Unless, of course, the invention consists of a box holding a leprechaun, who have had the natural ability to teleport for thousands of years.
A "natural" gene would have been found in nature and isolated. The researchers don't really need to know how or why the gene does what it does - they just put it in a box. On the other hand, they can take a look at the gene, figure out what makes it work, and synthesize a cDNA sequence that does the job effectively - Building a leprechaun-like machine.
Wait, you mean the stock market is a complex system that isn't accurately described by a single "good news/bad news" model? But Slashdot has taught me that the easy and simplistic solution is always right!
Next you'll be telling me that a gold standard won't actually fix economic problems, or that Linux won't immediately replace Windows everywhere once it has $FEATURE... What madness is this?
[serious comment which TL,DR]
If you thought my comment was serious, you clearly didn't read it.
The straight lines are straight, and lines on different letters have different apparent thickness.The kerning's a little distinctive as well, making the letters each look a little different. All together, this means that after a few minutes of reading text, your eyes will still be able to read the text! This encourages a computer user to actually use their computer, resulting in a higher risk for repetitive-strain injuries like Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
In contrast, consider the Segoe font Microsoft has chosen for Windows 8 and Office 2013. Its lines are curved, its corners indistinct, and every letter looks identical apart from its shape. The pristine perfection of each glyph allows the brain to properly tangle the shapes together, interrupting the reading process. In my own experience, I've found that after only a few minutes of reading labels in the course of my work, the discomfort in reading is a subtle reminder to get up and look away from the computer for a few more minutes.
From the many interruptions, I'm sure my health has improved, and the total effect on my productivity has been quite noticeable.