The article starts: "One day, a U.S. soldier entering tense situations without the assistance of an Arabic interpreter might rely on two-way translation software in mobile computers."
The idea of occupation forces in Iraq relying on machine translations is frightening. I don't believe it will work, but that is only the start of my concerns. We're not talking about translating technical conversations, or asking where the bathrooms are. We're talking about frighteed 19 year olds who are afraid of each other. How could Americans expect a machine translation to make up for our near total ignorance of other cultures? It's hubris to imagine that a technical fix can bridge the gap between societies that have developed independently for more than *thousand years*.
On Wednesday, the Wasington Post reported that of 12,000 FBI special agents, only 33 have even limited proficiency in speaking Arabic. The FBI's screening process turns away people who have had a lot of exposure to foreigners!
We're terrible at understanding other cultures. That's the downside of growing up surrounded by oceans. A liberal arts education is supposed to help with that, but even my expensively educated friends and I don't speak other languages or spend much time abroad. How could we think we can "bring democracy" to another culture?
I know, I know, I'm ranting. It's just a dumb idea some desk jockey in the Pentagon came up with when his boss told him to "do something." But why aren't people laughing?
The rotor of the Swiss turbine must be pretty beefy. How much angular momentum does it have at 500,000 RPM? If you've ever played with a large gyroscope, or twirled a bicycle wheel while holding onto its axle, you can see the problem. If you try to change the direction of its angular momentum vector, the thing will twist around an axis perpendicular to both its angular momentum vector, and the direction of the torque you apply. If this thing is in a laptop, spinning around an axis parallel to the floor, and you walk around a corner, the laptop could flip in a very surprising way.
"A theory of gravity would explain how gravity works."
We do have such a theory - general relativity reduces gravity to geometry - and some additional (testable) theories about the geometry of spacetime.
It's very pretty: There is no such thing as "gravitational force." Freely falling objects follow geodesics, which are the paths of "extremal proper time" between events. This simple formulation wasn't possible until physicists accepted the possibility that spacetime is curved, and learned the mathematics of differential geometry.
I left out some really difficult stuff about how the distribution of momentum determines curvature... and I don't know of any "explanation" of Einstein's equations except "it's pretty mathematics, and it works."
You might argue that this explanation of gravity is more complicated than the problem it was supposed to solve, but General Relativity predicted things that were later observed.
Don't waste your time arguing with people like the AOL representative in this story.
Remove the company's authorization to make charges to your credit card, in writing. Write to your credit card company to tell them that any charges from AOL after a certain date are unauthorized. This takes 10 minutes and two stamps.
What is so surprising about the idea that breaking the law can be honorable? Ever know anybody who went to jail for a principle?
Were Thoreau and Martin Luther King stupid? How about the original Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran church?
Civil disobedience, combined with accepting the punishment, is an honorable traditional long practised by some brilliant people.
I can't tell from your comment whether you disagree with the strategy of civil disobedience, or with the people doing it today. The motives of the people doing it today aren't clear yet.
When it is the government that breaks the law, a citizen has the obligation to expose it. Maybe the leaker (in government or not) should go to jail, but it is even more important that the government officials responsible for original crime do too -- they are more dangerous because they have more power.
As for reporters who refuse to identify leakers of classified information - Jail the lawbreaking reporters! I support the role of law. But I trust their reporting more than I trust the reporting of law-abiding reporters without principles.
The quiz promotes a misunderstanding that harms a great many people - a bunch of pixels on my screen doesn't contain any information at all that helps me determine whether the programs pictured are "safe." I left all answers blank and failed the test.
I won't even go into the fact that the meaning of "safe" varies from user to user. Sometimes I am willing to trash an old computer, sometimes I am afraid to touch a server that is used for production work.
In order to assign any meaning to a bunch of bits, you have to know the source and trust the source. You can delegate some of that responsibility to somebody else: the authors of your malware scanner, or your system administrator, but the principle remains the same.
I teach computer skills as a part time job, and I tell my clients:
1) Install less software. Ask me (free) for recommendations.
2) Limit your losses by using restricted accounts when possible (runas works fine) and making backups. There is some stuff so sensitive you might not want it on your computer, especially if you are responsible for somebody else's data. I don't like having client data on my machines for any length of time.
3) Malware scanners are a "second line of defense." If they find something, it is worth understanding what went wrong and trying to avoid it in the future.
4) Accept that you can't eliminate risk, and plan accordingly.
I'm not *quite* a First Amendment absolutist (which part of "Congress shall make no law abridging [...] the freedom of speech" don't you understand?), but it is really, really hard to write a good law to accomplish what censors want to do.
Proposals like this amount to little more than political grandstanding. Legislators and their staffs know perfectly well what the courts have ruled on restrictions on speech. The problems caused by various forms of "offensive speech" are real (ask any parent), but government is severely limited in what it can do about it by the First Amendment:
The fact that it "merely" proposes labeling won't save it. Because of the stiff penalties, it would encourage self-censorship -- which is often the most damaging kind. The threat of prosecution under a vague law amounts to a restriction on speech.
It is a content-specific regulation of speech, and therefore courts will apply a very strict standard when testing whether it violates the First Amendment. Commercial speech receives less protection than artistic or political speech, but there will be a fight defining which web sites are covered by the law. What about Benetton ads? They are commercial, political, and artistic at the same time! (Even if you don't like them)
It needs to carefully define what is prohibited, otherwise it will challenged because nobody can tell what they are required to do. The word "obscenity" has a legal definition, in terms of local community standards (problematic on the internet), but words like "pornographic", "sexually explicit", or "harmful to minors" are not legal terms, and the law would have to define them. The most important question will be "who decides." Local communities (and juries) have a lot more leeway than the federal government - which is strictly forbidden to regulate speech.
Of course, the proposal will probably get some votes, and embarrass members of Congress who vote against it. That is the purpose of the proposal.
Privacy may be a joke in the sense that it is technically difficult to acheive, but I see this case as part of a serious power struggle within our government, one that could lead to calls for the impeachment of the president.
The president has asserted
1) that he can ignore clearly written laws.
2) that he has no duty to inform congress.
3) that no judicial review is possible.
4) that his authority for all this comes from an emergency - terrorism -
that will probably exist for ever.
Power without accountability, forever. Is that something worth fighting against?
No, the law is more complicated than that. Words spoken in public, or just plain noise do not receive any privacy rights. Slashdot comments are "spoken in public."
The government has less power than you do. You could intercept my communications on your own network under certain conditions. The goverment can not. The Constition defines *limits on the government's* powers.
You have things backwards. The Constitution says we live under a government with limited powers - it has only those powers granted by the Constitution. You don't need a law giving you a right to private communications, you have that right barring a court order.
The FISA law requires that intelligence agencies get permission for shit like this from the FISA court; they did not; they can't give ATT permission to break the law, either.
Oh, and by the way, the Constitution means what the courts say it means, and they have said since soon after the invention of the telephone that the government needs permission from the courts to intercept communications.
I'm sorry, but you are very wrong, because the article is talking about the *government* doing the evesdropping. Private parties can intercept communications on their own networks in many situations - for example there is a "safe harbor provision" that creates a legal defence for ISP's against wire tapping laws if their intent is to protect their network.
But the government is strictly forbidden to do many things that private citizens can do. Wiretapping laws apply to email. The government must get a wiretap warrant. And intelligence agencies like the NSA are forbidden by the FISA law from doing it without special approval by the FISA court.
The administration did not ask the court, in direct violation of the law. The government can not "give permission" to a private party to break the law.
ATT is guilty of wiretapping, the administration and NSA have violated the FISA law, and the President must be impeached if we are going to have any hope of preserving civil liberties.
You ask good questions, but there are differences between Google and your local, neighborhood FTP server.
1) Economics. Google has a financial incentive to abuse your privacy in various ways. The founders may be nice people, but now that they are a publically owned company, they are responsible to their shareholders.
2) Law. Google has less incentive to protect your data than you do. If supoenaed, how hard will Google fight for you?
3) Scale. The more data in one place, the more incentive for lawyers or governments to go after it.
4) You may be reponsible for other people's data - think doctors, lawyers, spouses, business partners. Do you have the right to turn that responsibility over to a third party?
[I posted this yesterday, but since it followed about 200 other comments,
I'll try again.]
For the past few days, I've been doing Google searches that look like this:
"Google, what is your data retention policy?"
and
"2037: My cookie is *still* here?"
and
"Hi to my friends at NSA"
Google would notice if enough of you do the same. I suggest doing searches on the hour: 1PM, 2PM etc., so the clustering will draw attention. Have fun.
For the past few days, I've been doing Google searches that look like this:
"Google, what is your data retention policy?"
and
"2037: my cookie is *still* here?"
and
"Hi to my friends at NSA"
Google would notice if enough of you do the same. I suggest doing searches on the hour: 1PM, 2PM etc., so the clustering will draw attention. Have fun.
General Relativity permits a kind of time travel
on
No Time Travel, Sorry
·
· Score: 1
Standard general relativity permits a kind of time travel - but only if the universe started out with the right initial conditions. Too bad there's no evidence that it did.
There are lots of possible solutions to the equations that describe spacetime; some are flat, infinite, and empty; some have the topology assumed by standard cosmological models - each spacelike slice is a 3-sphere. But there are other solutions in which wormholes and other weird features do exist. There are some in which there are "closed time-like paths." This means there is a closed path that an observer could follow, which returns to the same *event* they started from. You could get onto such a path, travel for a long time, and get off the path near the place and time you left. Please arrive at a slightly different place to avoid hitting yourself - unless you are a cyclic creature that keeps repeating the same life. Maybe believers in karma have a name for such a thing.
No contradictions appear, and you can't change your own past.
There isn't a way to create such things. In standard general relativity, the topology of spacetime just is the way we find it.
The glowing praise in the article comes from the Integrity Research Institute, which doesn't even have its own domain name: http://users.erols.com/iri/>
The web site lists three directors:
Director 1: (also President and Chairman) Dr. Thomas Valone
Physics, engineering, and teaching background
Sounds good.
Inventer of the Photonic Rejuvenation Energizing Machine and
Immunizing Electrification Radiator
what the fuck?
Director 2: Jacqueline Panting Valone
General Manager of M.A.M.S.I., a representative of several suppliers of
microwave components and subsystems to OEM, military and commercial
companies.
Could have a solid technical background.
Ms. Valone is also a strong advocate of holistic health, including
electromagnetic medicine and is responsible for the Health programs
of our Institute.
Holistic health seems respectable. I am more than my symptoms. But "electromagnetic medicine?" Give me Maxwells Equations, not new-agey energy-fields-surround-us.
In her spare time, she volunteered for The Hospice Program of Broward
County where she assisted patients in their transition and helped family
members cope with their loss.
Very important work. She sounds like a good person.
Ms. Valone is a doctorate candidate of Naturopathy at Trinity College of
Natural Health and is certified through the College of Natural Health
Professionals, CNHP.
Never heard of them. What does this have to do with physics?
Director 3: Wendy Nicholas
EDUCATION
2001 Johns Hopkins University Rockville, MD
* Continuing Education student in Telecommunications
May be a wonderful, capable person. Why is she on the board of directors?
For the past 10 years, I've gotten *at most* two telemarketing calls per year. How did I do it? I once made a "credible threat to sue" AT&T Wireless. There's an industry wide list of people like me, and they don't call us.
I learned the technique from a colleague familiar with the industry. First, know your legal rights. Second, keep a hand-written log of occasions when you have asked to be added to the no-call list of a telemarketing firm. Be careful to have them spell out the name of the firm and the city they operate out of. Then wait for them to make a mistake. If they call you again, after the six month grace period the law allows them to update their paperwork, you've got it made.
Don't shout or be nasty; just read them the log and indicate that you are aware of your legal rights and are interested in collecting the statutory damages. They asked me to "please call this special number to be removed... " but I just said that I wasn't going to lift a finger to help them. Remember, if it went to court, the case would be decided on "the preponderance of the evidence," and a corporation has no choice but to pay for legal council at trial - they can't represent themselves. Everything is on your side, so they just add you to the list.
What bugs me about cookies is the disparity between what I can do, and what websites can do. I would feel better if the relationship were more equal.
Companies have "Customer Relationship Management Systems" and "Approved Vendor" lists. As more of my life moves online, I feel the need for a "Website Relationship Management System." There are a small number of websites that I *want* to have a continuing relationship with, and for those I want tracking and reporting exceeding what I now get.
If a site used to use SSL, but no longer does, I want an alert.
If a site used to have a privacy policy at a specific URL, but it's moved or changed, I need to know.
If a site uses 10 cookies, but only one benefits me, I want to permit just the one useful cookie.
If a new tracking system gains popularity, I want to understand it so I can make a rational decision about whether to cooperate with it.
Computers should be the Great Equalizer, but we (programmers) don't have our act together yet -- any ideas about how this can be changed?
Thanks for your reply. We can continue by email at anyname AT tincansandstring.net if you wish.
I am familiar with Tardive Dyskinesia: it is associated with neuroleptics, which are not the drugs we are discussing. I am discussing the anti-depressant drugs I named.
I am also a patient advocate, possibly in a less formal way than you, but I interpret accounts of adverse effects differently than you do. I also consider the severity of the illness and the available alternatives.
I've read sections of the PDR on these drugs. I agree that the use of these drugs in children is questionable. But you dismissed them all without qualification, and I felt that was a disservice to the public.
Excuse me, you seem to making extreme, unsupported statements. As an RN, you have an obligation to the public to prosent well-supported medical information.
What "debilitating neurological damage" is caused by MAO-inhibitors (or tricyclics, or SSRIs or...)? Are you actually referring to the possible consequences (high blood pressure, possibly causing stroke) caused by the interaction between MAO inhibitors and certain foods? If so, the readers need to know they are easy to avoid. If not, what are you talking about?
What "homicidal or suicidal" behaviour are you attributing to Prozac? Do you mean the elevated rate of suicide in children that has been reported? Do you have any idea whether the risk is high or low? Have you considered that depression itself can be a fatal illness, so a treatment with risks may be acceptable, with proper monitoring?
I read through many replies to this article (but not all) and was saddened by what I saw. Nobody here seems to understand that depression comes in different severities: from a mild disturbance in mood that passes on its own to a disabling, often fatal disease. It can be so severe that doctors sometimes misdiagnose it as some form of brain injury like a stroke.
I chalk it up both to your ignorance, and the unwillingness of the public to discuss mental illness. Chances are, somebody in your family has suffered a serious mental illness, even if you don't recognize it or call it that. Talk to people; you'll be surprised by what you hear.
The argument that mailing tapes is too slow because you have to copy from disk to tape to disk is partially true, but there is a simple solution.
Just mail a disk!
A further improvement comes from using an old networking observation: It's easier to detect errors and retransmit than to prevent errors. So use really cheap IDE drives and don't bother packing the disks carefully. Just remail the ones that get damaged.
I remember hearing that some physics projects already do this.
Slashdot Mirror
The article starts:
"One day, a U.S. soldier entering tense situations without the assistance of an Arabic interpreter might rely on two-way translation software in mobile computers."
The idea of occupation forces in Iraq relying on machine translations is frightening. I don't believe it will work, but that is only the start of my concerns. We're not talking about translating technical conversations, or asking where the bathrooms are. We're talking about frighteed 19 year olds who are afraid of each other. How could Americans expect a machine translation to make up for our near total ignorance of other cultures? It's hubris to imagine that a technical fix can bridge the gap between societies that have developed independently for more than *thousand years*.
On Wednesday, the Wasington Post reported that of 12,000 FBI special agents, only 33 have even limited proficiency in speaking Arabic. The FBI's screening process turns away people who have had a lot of exposure to foreigners!
We're terrible at understanding other cultures. That's the downside of growing up surrounded by oceans. A liberal arts education is supposed to help with that, but even my expensively educated friends and I don't speak other languages or spend much time abroad. How could we think we can "bring democracy" to another culture?
I know, I know, I'm ranting. It's just a dumb idea some desk jockey in the Pentagon came up with when his boss told him to "do something." But why aren't people laughing?
The rotor of the Swiss turbine must be pretty beefy. How much angular momentum does it have at 500,000 RPM? If you've ever played with a large gyroscope, or twirled a bicycle wheel while holding onto its axle, you can see the problem. If you try to change the direction of its angular momentum vector, the thing will twist around an axis perpendicular to both its angular momentum vector, and the direction of the torque you apply. If this thing is in a laptop, spinning around an axis parallel to the floor, and you walk around a corner, the laptop could flip in a very surprising way.
"A theory of gravity would explain how gravity works."
... and I don't know of any "explanation" of Einstein's equations except "it's pretty mathematics, and it works."
We do have such a theory - general relativity reduces gravity to
geometry - and some additional (testable) theories about the geometry of spacetime.
It's very pretty: There is no such thing as "gravitational force." Freely falling objects follow geodesics, which are the paths of "extremal proper time" between events. This simple formulation wasn't possible until physicists accepted the possibility that spacetime is curved, and learned the mathematics of differential geometry.
I left out some really difficult stuff about how the distribution of momentum determines curvature
You might argue that this explanation of gravity is more complicated than the problem it was supposed to solve, but General Relativity predicted things that were later observed.
Don't waste your time arguing with people like the AOL representative in this story.
Remove the company's authorization to make charges to your credit card, in writing. Write to your credit card company to tell them that any charges from AOL after a certain date are unauthorized. This takes 10 minutes and two stamps.
Public displays of outrage are important.
Here's another mirror.
What is so surprising about the idea that breaking the law can
be honorable? Ever know anybody who went to jail for a principle?
Were Thoreau and Martin Luther King stupid?
How about the original Martin Luther, founder of the Lutheran church?
Civil disobedience, combined with accepting the punishment,
is an honorable traditional long practised by some brilliant
people.
I can't tell from your comment whether you disagree with the strategy
of civil disobedience, or with the people doing it today. The motives
of the people doing it today aren't clear yet.
When it is the government that breaks the law, a citizen has the obligation to expose it. Maybe the leaker (in government or not) should go to jail, but it is even more important that the government officials responsible for original crime do too -- they are more dangerous because they have more power.
As for reporters who refuse to identify leakers of classified information - Jail the lawbreaking reporters! I support the role of law. But I trust their reporting more than I trust the reporting of law-abiding reporters without principles.
"law-breaker" does not equal "untrustworthy"
The quiz promotes a misunderstanding that harms a great many people - a bunch of pixels on my screen doesn't contain any information at all that helps me determine whether the programs pictured are "safe." I left all answers blank and failed the test.
I won't even go into the fact that the meaning of "safe" varies from user to user. Sometimes I am willing to trash an old computer, sometimes I am afraid to touch a server that is used for production work.
In order to assign any meaning to a bunch of bits, you have to know the source and trust the source. You can delegate some of that responsibility to somebody else: the authors of your malware scanner, or your system administrator, but the principle remains the same.
I teach computer skills as a part time job, and I tell my clients:
1) Install less software. Ask me (free) for recommendations.
2) Limit your losses by using restricted accounts when possible (runas works fine) and making backups. There is some stuff so sensitive you might not want it on your computer, especially if you are responsible for somebody else's data. I don't like having client data on my machines for any length of time.
3) Malware scanners are a "second line of defense." If they find something, it is worth understanding what went wrong and trying to avoid it in the future.
4) Accept that you can't eliminate risk, and plan accordingly.
I'm not *quite* a First Amendment absolutist (which part of "Congress shall make no law abridging [...] the freedom of speech" don't you understand?), but it is really, really hard to write a good law to accomplish what censors want to do.
Proposals like this amount to little more than political grandstanding. Legislators and their staffs know perfectly well what the courts have ruled on restrictions on speech. The problems caused by various forms of "offensive speech" are real (ask any parent), but government is severely limited in what it can do about it by the First Amendment:
The fact that it "merely" proposes labeling won't save it. Because of the stiff penalties, it would encourage self-censorship -- which is often the most damaging kind. The threat of prosecution under a vague law amounts to a restriction on speech.
It is a content-specific regulation of speech, and therefore courts will apply a very strict standard when testing whether it violates the First Amendment. Commercial speech receives less protection than artistic or political speech, but there will be a fight defining which web sites are covered by the law.
What about Benetton ads? They are commercial, political, and artistic at the same time! (Even if you don't like them)
It needs to carefully define what is prohibited, otherwise it will challenged because nobody can tell what they are required to do. The word "obscenity" has a legal definition, in terms of local community standards (problematic on the internet), but words like "pornographic", "sexually explicit", or "harmful to minors" are not legal terms, and the law would have to define them. The most important question will be "who decides." Local communities (and juries) have a lot more leeway than the federal government - which is strictly forbidden to regulate speech.
Of course, the proposal will probably get some votes, and embarrass members of Congress who vote against it. That is the purpose of the proposal.
I'm not at all worried, but then I'm a bacterium. We always pull through.
Privacy may be a joke in the sense that it is technically difficult to acheive, but I see this case as part of a serious power struggle within our government,
one that could lead to calls for the impeachment of the president.
The president has asserted
1) that he can ignore clearly written laws.
2) that he has no duty to inform congress.
3) that no judicial review is possible.
4) that his authority for all this comes from an emergency - terrorism -
that will probably exist for ever.
Power without accountability, forever. Is that something worth fighting against?
No, the law is more complicated than that. Words spoken in public, or just plain noise do not receive any privacy rights. Slashdot comments are "spoken in public."
The government has less power than you do. You could intercept my communications on your own network under certain conditions. The goverment can not. The Constition defines *limits on the government's* powers.
You have things backwards. The Constitution says we live under a government with limited powers - it has only those powers granted by the Constitution. You don't need a law giving you a right to private communications, you have that right barring a court order.
The FISA law requires that intelligence agencies get permission for shit like this from the FISA court; they did not; they can't give ATT permission to break the law, either.
Oh, and by the way, the Constitution means what the courts say it means, and they have said since soon after the invention of the telephone that the government needs permission from the courts to intercept communications.
I'm sorry, but you are very wrong, because the article
is talking about the *government* doing the evesdropping. Private
parties can intercept communications on their own networks in many
situations - for example there is a "safe harbor provision" that
creates a legal defence for ISP's against wire tapping laws if their
intent is to protect their network.
But the government is strictly forbidden to do many things that private
citizens can do. Wiretapping laws apply to email. The government must
get a wiretap warrant. And intelligence agencies like the NSA are forbidden
by the FISA law from doing it without special approval by the FISA court.
The administration did not ask the court, in direct violation of the law.
The government can not "give permission" to a private party to break the
law.
ATT is guilty of wiretapping, the administration and NSA have violated
the FISA law, and the President must be impeached if we are going to
have any hope of preserving civil liberties.
You ask good questions, but there are differences between Google and your local, neighborhood FTP server.
1) Economics. Google has a financial incentive to abuse your privacy in various ways. The founders may be nice people, but now that they are a publically owned company, they are responsible to their shareholders.
2) Law. Google has less incentive to protect your data than you do. If supoenaed, how hard will Google fight for you?
3) Scale. The more data in one place, the more incentive for lawyers or governments to go after it.
4) You may be reponsible for other people's data - think doctors, lawyers, spouses, business partners. Do you have the right to turn that responsibility over to a third party?
[I posted this yesterday, but since it followed about 200 other comments,
I'll try again.]
For the past few days, I've been doing Google searches that look like this:
"Google, what is your data retention policy?"
and
"2037: My cookie is *still* here?"
and
"Hi to my friends at NSA"
Google would notice if enough of you do the same.
I suggest doing searches on the hour: 1PM, 2PM etc., so the clustering
will draw attention. Have fun.
For the past few days, I've been doing Google searches that look like this:
"Google, what is your data retention policy?"
and
"2037: my cookie is *still* here?"
and
"Hi to my friends at NSA"
Google would notice if enough of you do the same.
I suggest doing searches on the hour: 1PM, 2PM etc., so the clustering
will draw attention. Have fun.
Standard general relativity permits a kind of time travel - but only if the universe started out with the right initial conditions. Too bad there's no evidence that it did.
There are lots of possible solutions to the equations that describe spacetime; some are flat, infinite, and empty; some have the topology assumed by standard cosmological models - each spacelike slice is a 3-sphere. But there are other solutions in which wormholes and other weird features do exist. There are some in which there are "closed time-like paths." This means there is a closed path that an observer could follow, which returns to the same *event* they started from. You could get onto such a path, travel for a long time, and get off the path near the place and time you left. Please arrive at a slightly different place to avoid hitting yourself - unless you are a cyclic creature that keeps repeating the same life. Maybe believers in karma have a name for such a thing.
No contradictions appear, and you can't change your own past.
There isn't a way to create such things. In standard general relativity, the topology of spacetime just is the way we find it.
A teeny bit of fact checking is in order.
The glowing praise in the article comes from the Integrity Research Institute,
which doesn't even have its own domain name: http://users.erols.com/iri/>
The web site lists three directors:
Director 1: (also President and Chairman) Dr. Thomas Valone
Physics, engineering, and teaching background
Sounds good.
Inventer of the Photonic Rejuvenation Energizing Machine and
Immunizing Electrification Radiator
what the fuck?
Director 2: Jacqueline Panting Valone
General Manager of M.A.M.S.I., a representative of several suppliers of
microwave components and subsystems to OEM, military and commercial
companies.
Could have a solid technical background.
Ms. Valone is also a strong advocate of holistic health, including
electromagnetic medicine and is responsible for the Health programs
of our Institute.
Holistic health seems respectable. I am more than my symptoms.
But "electromagnetic medicine?" Give me Maxwells Equations,
not new-agey energy-fields-surround-us.
In her spare time, she volunteered for The Hospice Program of Broward
County where she assisted patients in their transition and helped family
members cope with their loss.
Very important work. She sounds like a good person.
Ms. Valone is a doctorate candidate of Naturopathy at Trinity College of
Natural Health and is certified through the College of Natural Health
Professionals, CNHP.
Never heard of them. What does this have to do with physics?
Director 3: Wendy Nicholas
EDUCATION
2001 Johns Hopkins University Rockville, MD
* Continuing Education student in Telecommunications
May be a wonderful, capable person. Why is she on the board of directors?
For the past 10 years, I've gotten *at most* two telemarketing calls per year. How did I do it? I once made a "credible threat to sue" AT&T Wireless. There's an industry wide list of people like me, and they don't call us.
... " but I just said that I wasn't going to lift a finger to help them. Remember, if it went to court, the case would be decided on "the preponderance of the evidence," and a corporation has no choice but to pay for legal council at trial - they can't represent themselves. Everything is on your side, so they just add you to the list.
I learned the technique from a colleague familiar with the industry. First, know your legal rights. Second, keep a hand-written log of occasions when you have asked to be added to the no-call list of a telemarketing firm. Be careful to have them spell out the name of the firm and the city they operate out of. Then wait for them to make a mistake. If they call you again, after the six month grace period the law allows them to update their paperwork, you've got it made.
Don't shout or be nasty; just read them the log and indicate that you are aware of your legal rights and are interested in collecting the statutory damages. They asked me to "please call this special number to be removed
Enjoy.
What bugs me about cookies is the disparity between what I can do, and what websites can do. I would feel better if the relationship were more equal.
Companies have "Customer Relationship Management Systems" and "Approved Vendor" lists. As more of my life moves online, I feel the need for a "Website Relationship Management System." There are a small number of websites that I *want* to have a continuing relationship with, and for those I want tracking and reporting exceeding what I now get.
If a site used to use SSL, but no longer does, I want an alert.
If a site used to have a privacy policy at a specific URL, but it's moved or changed, I need to know.
If a site uses 10 cookies, but only one benefits me, I want to permit just the one useful cookie.
If a new tracking system gains popularity, I want to understand it so I can make a rational decision about whether to cooperate with it.
Computers should be the Great Equalizer, but we (programmers) don't have our act together yet -- any ideas about how this can be changed?
Thanks for your reply. We can continue by email at anyname AT tincansandstring.net if you wish.
I am familiar with Tardive Dyskinesia: it is associated with neuroleptics, which are not the drugs we are discussing. I am discussing the anti-depressant drugs I named.
I am also a patient advocate, possibly in a less formal way than you, but I interpret accounts of adverse effects differently than you do. I also consider the severity of the illness and the available alternatives.
I've read sections of the PDR on these drugs. I agree that the use of these drugs in children is questionable. But you dismissed them all without qualification, and I felt that was a disservice to the public.
Excuse me, you seem to making extreme, unsupported statements. As an RN, you have an obligation to the public to prosent well-supported medical information.
...)? Are you actually referring to the possible consequences (high blood pressure, possibly causing stroke) caused by the interaction between MAO inhibitors and certain foods? If so, the readers need to know they are easy to avoid. If not, what are you talking about?
What "debilitating neurological damage" is caused by MAO-inhibitors (or tricyclics, or SSRIs or
What "homicidal or suicidal" behaviour are you attributing to Prozac? Do you mean the elevated rate of suicide in children that has been reported? Do you have any idea whether the risk is high or low? Have you considered that depression itself can be a fatal illness, so a treatment with risks may be acceptable, with proper monitoring?
I read through many replies to this article (but not all) and was saddened by what I saw. Nobody here seems to understand that depression comes in different severities: from a mild disturbance in mood that passes on its own to a disabling, often fatal disease. It can be so severe that doctors sometimes misdiagnose it as some form of brain injury like a stroke.
I chalk it up both to your ignorance, and the unwillingness of the public to discuss mental illness. Chances are, somebody in your family has suffered a serious mental illness, even if you don't recognize it or call it that. Talk to people; you'll be surprised by what you hear.
The argument that mailing tapes is too slow because you have to copy from disk to tape to disk is partially true, but there is a simple solution.
Just mail a disk!
A further improvement comes from using an old networking observation: It's easier to detect errors and retransmit than to prevent errors. So use really cheap IDE drives and don't bother packing the disks carefully. Just remail the ones that get damaged.
I remember hearing that some physics projects already do this.