I had a similar experience. My girlfriend got a free HP or Canon printer (I don't remember which) with her laptop. Amusingly, her laptop came with Windows 7 and couldn't actually use the printer that came with it. We installed drivers from CD, downloaded drivers, tried troubleshooting... we couldn't get it to work. As a test, I booted an Ubuntu live CD, and it worked within 10s of boot.
Hardware support has definitely become a positive aspect of Ubuntu, no longer the pain in the ass that it used to be for generic Linux. Admittedly, if there's no hardware support, it's a mess to get it... but it seems that there's a massive amount of native support already there, including the default PDF printer which I couldn't live without.
Hah, sorry. I copied this from another QC post I made a while ago, and forgot that the newlines don't transfer (the original is paragraphed). I should've previewed before submitting. Oh well! The original post with paragraphs is below:
I took a class on Quantum computing, and studied many specific QC algorithms, so I know a little bit about them. If you don't want to RTFA, then read this:
Quantum Computers are not super-computers. On a bit-for-bit (or qubit-for-qubit) scale, they're not necessarily faster than regular computers, they just process info differently. Since information is stored in a quantum "superposition" of states, as opposed to a deterministic state like regular computers, the qubits exhibit quantum interference around other qubits. Typically, your bit starts in 50% '0' and 50% '1', and thus when you measure it, you get a 50% chance of it being one or the other (and then it assumes that state). But if you don't measure, and push it through quantum circuits allowing them to interact with other qubits, you get the quantum phases to interfere and cancel out. If you are damned smart (as I realized you have to be, to design QC algorithms), you can figure out creative ways to encode your problem into qubits, and use the interference to cancel out the information you don't want, and leave the information you do want.
For instance, some calculations will start with the 50/50 qubit above, and end with 99% '0' and 1% '1' at the end of the calculation, or vice versa, depending on the answer. Then you've got a 99% chance of getting the right answer. If you run the calculation twice, you have a 99.99% chance of measuring the correct answer.
However, the details of these circuits which perform quantum algorithms are extremely non-intuitive to most people, even those who study it. I found it to require an amazing degree of creativity, to figure out how to combine qubits to take advantage of quantum interference constructively. But what does this get us?
Well it turns out that quantum computers can run anything a classical computer can do, and such algorithms can be written identically if you really wanted to, but doing so gets the same results as the classical computer (i.e. same order of growth). But, the smart people who have been publishing papers about this for the past 20 years have been finding new ways to combine qubits, to take advantage of nature of certain problems (usually deep, pure-math concepts), to achieve better orders of growth than possible on a classical computer. For instance, factoring large numbers is difficult on classical computers, which is why RSA/PGP/GPG/PKI/SSL is secure. It's order of growth is e^( n^(1/3) ). It's not quite exponential, but it's still prohibitive. It turns out that Shor figured out how to get it to n^2 on a quantum computer (which is the same order of growth as decrypting with the private key on a classical computer!). Strangely, trying to guess someone's encryption key, normally O(n) on classical computers (where n is the number of possible keys encryption keys) it's only O(sqrt(n)) on QCs. Weird (but sqrt(n) is still usually too big).
There's a vast number of other problems for which efficient quantum algorithms have been found. Unfortunately, a lot of these problems aren't particularly useful in real life (besides to the curious pure-mathematician). A lot of them are better, but not phenomenal. Like verifying that two sparse matrices were mulitplied correctly has order of growth n^(7/3) on a classical computer, n^(5/3) on a quantum computer. You can find a pretty extensive list by googling "quantum algorithm zoo."
Unfortunately [for humanity], there is no evidence yet that quantum computers will solve NP-complete problems efficiently. Most likely, they won't. So don't get your hopes up about solving the traveling salesmen problem any time soon. But there is still a lot of cool stuff we can do with them. In fact, the theory is so far ahead of the technology, that we're anxiously waiting for breakthroughs like this, so we can start plugging problems through known algorithms.
EVERYONE MUST STOP thinking that legalizing drugs is an endorsement of the behavior. In no way is regulation an endorsement. It's an acknowledgement that making drugs illegal only makes the problem worse, and that we can address the problem by treating it as an addiction. Wide availability of treatment and drug education is what people need. Many people can't be "saved," but they're doing it despite illegality anyway. Putting them in jail with a criminal record and ruining their chance of ever getting a decent job leaves them with few incentives to stop using and/or selling. As if it's not hard enough coming out of an addiction, now try it without any hope of a future.
There's better ways to handle it. There's a lot of different things to try. But we've been doing the exact same thing for over 50 years and it's only gotten worse. We've been burning our hand on the stove every day for decades, and still haven't learned from it.
It's really quite sad that the world learned nothing from the US' futile attempt to outlaw alcohol in the 1920's. No one is saying drugs are good. They are quite bad, but making them illegal makes them much, much worse. I wish politicians didn't care about looking "soft on crime" in dealing with the drug war, and they could actually push to try to overturn this quixotic war. Make them legal and undercut the illegal drug trade which is fueled by their artificially inflated illegal prices. We saw all the same stuff during alcohol prohibition. The extreme corruption, the gang wars, the bad moonshine that made people go permanently blind, people using/selling more potent forms because it's easier to transport. It's all avoidable, but no one will push the issue because they're instantly shot down for being "soft on drugs"
I die a little inside every time I hear a story about drug gangs basically taking over cities in Mexico and kidnapping people. Think of the people women whose husbands have been kidnapped and they receive pieces of them with ransom notes asking for money that they don't have. This is what could've happened if they kept up alcohol prohibition. Drug prohibition is just as ill-conceived. The better we do reducing supply, the higher the prices go, and the more vicious the drug gangs get in protecting their business.
It's a terrible cycle, and one that can only be broken by regulation. They need to make drugs legal through special outlets stocked with health care workers, where people can safely obtain their drugs and use the proceeds to pay for the addiction specialists and treatment centers. There's nothing we can do except address the problem of addiction, and treat such users as patients, not criminals. Is it perfect? Probably not, but it's a start.
This is called superdemocracy. And it's not a very good form of democracy. Although reality may differ, politicians are elected to be in positions to make informed decisions about potential legislation, and protect the minority from being screwed by the majority. In other words, decmocracy as we have in the US is designed to allow the people making the decisions be in positions to receive and comprehend relevant information, evidence and expert testimony (and lobbying) before making such decisions. I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the population was [theoretically] as informed as these politicians are [supposed to be]. The whole reason to elect politicians is so that the masses can promote people they trust to make such decisions. If you think politicians are stupid, look at the vast majority of people who elected them.
Superdemocracy is also remarkably bad at protecting minorities from being screwed by majorities. It only takes 51% of the population to believe that deporting Mexicans without due process is okay, and then it's the law. There's no filtering in a super-democracy.
And on top of that, how is such an online-voting system supposed to handle matters that are considered secret to the country. Again, this is where people elected politicians they trust, who will be granted access to such sensitive information and make such decisions. How are military decisions supposed to be made when we have to wait for the internet polling period to end?
I imagine that Google's actions are legally distinguishable from wiretapping laws, since they did not access hardware, they only passively recorded information that was visible from public locations. If they had communicated with and established an IP addresses with network routers, it would be a completely different story.
While it would appear to be ethically fuzzy to collect such data, it may be legally sufficient to demonstrate that such information was being transmitted over public areas, and since no "unauthorized access" was gained into any private networks, there was no legal breach. I'm not saying they should've collected the data. But if a woman prances around in her living room naked with the blinds open, my decision to view it from the street should not be subject to peeping-tom laws.
If you read about Lamo's reaction to story (Wired had an excellent article about it), you'd find it has nothing to do with "ego." And it has nothing to do with being a "snitch." He said himself that he agonized over the decision for a long time because normally he wouldn't turn someone in. And he supports Wikileaks. But in this case, Manning was completely reckless, vacuuming up any and every piece of classified information he could find, and "throwing it up in the air." This is a legitimate threat to national security. Manning wasn't identifying abuses anymore, he wanted to create anarchy. He said it himself in one of his chats.
Releasing embassy cables could reveal names of operatives, and details of secret operations that really should be kept secret. Just because it's secret doesn't mean it's unethical or some abuse of power. There's plenty of people out there collecting information for our government about real threats in the world, and those people put their lives at risk for a good cause (most of them). They haven't done anything wrong. Yet they might find themselves in a Chinese prison never to be seen again once their name is released, and for no reason than some out-of-control monkey who wanted to create "anarchy." I would've done the same.
...and I should know since I've traveled there many times and I even speak .
Thailand gets a worse name than it deserves, based on stories like this. It's actually a relatively open society and just about every development index has them at the top of "developing country" (if they could clean up their tap water, they'd probably break the threshold). Speech is only limited when it comes to the King and Buddha, both of which are highly respected, but not really "in power" (influential, but not making and enforcing laws). Of course, that doesn't make their censorship ethical, but it shouldn't be considered to be an oppressive government.
There's an an ounce of justification to the recent violence, but most of it came from the rural poor with nothing to lose, fighting for the one PM who stood up for them. Unfortunately, that politician that tried to help out the poor (Thaksin Siniwatra), accumulated no less than $2.2 billion while in office, and accused of countless corruption charges (convicted on a couple of them in absentia while he living in exile). Many poor refuse to admit he's corrupt, or say "well sure he is, all the politicians are, but at least he helps out the poor that desperately need it." The situation really is a mess, with no clean way to bridge the gap between the poor and the middle+ class. While they have some political instabilities right now, I would still consider it to be the most awesome place on Earth (where else can you go that has virtually no violent crime, you can get 1 hour Thai massage for $4 and the best Pad Thai ever for $0.50?).
I think that the monarchy will be phased out soon anyway, as the King's health is waning and the crown prince is not very well liked, despite the lese mejeste laws. But make no mistake, despite such laws, the king was justifiably considered a "benevolent dictator." He is an engineer, and used his skills to plan and update infrastructure in the country to help out both the rich and the poor. There was actually reason to like him.
When I visited Thailand, I was amazed to see that so much of the country is poor and without healthcare, yet they ALL have cellphones. In fact, Thailand has the 5th highest cellphone ownership rate in the world (1.25 cellphones per person, on average). It's crazy to go to a hill tribe village 2 hours from anywhere else, see that they probably don't even have running water, yet they're all listening to music or chatting on their cellphone. I don't even know how they charge them! I didn't think they had running electricity...
I should mention that many laws regarding wiretapping or eavesdropping require "unauthorized access" to the data stream, frequently requiring an intrusion of private property. I imagine that Google's actions are legally distinguishable from such laws, since they did not access such hardware, they only passively recorded information that was visible from public locations. If they had actually communicated directly with such people's routers, and, say, established an IP address with their network router, it would be a different story.
While it would appear to be ethically fuzzy to collect such data, it may be legally sufficient to demonstrate that such information was being transmitted over public areas, and since no "unauthorized access" was gained into any private networks, there was no legal breach.
I'm not saying they should've collected the data. But if a woman prances around in her living room naked with the blinds open, my decision to view it from the street should not be subject to peeping-tom laws.
...and I can tell you that our flight tests have demonstrated our ability to not only hit the target, but decide where to hit it. We have advanced FEA simulations that determine exactly what damage we're going to do when we hit it at a given location at a given angle, and our organization supports our current aiming techniques as "lethal." Given that we tend to aim very reliably, it sounds like the argument here simply about aiming location, which is the result of a few parameters in the software. That's a completely different story than saying the entire system is flawed.
I might be a little late to the party, but I haven't seen anyone yet do the calculation I was expecting to see... just how much volume is that 10mi x 3mi x 300 ft plume?
Well once you convert everything to meters, and observe 264 gallons per cubic meter, you get a staggering 1.8 trillion gallons of ocean water in that plume. If even 1% of that is oil, then we are totally fucked. Hopefully it's less than 0.01%.
However, if you calculate from the surface slick itself, you have 3650 sq miles of slick (as of Friday). And based on a chart of oil-thickness-to-color, you could say that the oil slick is 50 micrometers thick. This equates to 125 million gallons of pure oil just on the surface. Over the course of 25 days, that's about 5 million gallons per day just making it to the surface! Is anyone else getting concerned?
I just recently got a Nexus One at about the same time my girlfriend got an iPhone. I don't know about the Desire, but I know that Google got fed up with other companies not implementing Android well, so they made their own phone as they envisioned it, and that's the Nexus One (it's the only phone they make, www.google.com/phone). It's very similar in design to the iPhone, but has a ton of stuff that I would prefer any day over the iPhone. Intimate integration with all google services, voice recognition, and an open app market make it much better in my opinion. Most other interactions are very similar to the iPhone, but to me it seems more polished.
If you want to see true Android, get a Nexus One. At least most people on Slashdot will find the feature set much more desirable than the iPhone, and it's overall price is actually slightly cheaper than the iPhone.
We have a defacto two party system only because too many Americans have been brainwashed to believe there is no third (or 4th-nth) option.
Actually we have the two-party system because of efficiency. The core beliefs of most Americans is captured in one of the two political parties. If ever there was a time that a third party had a chance because of shifting political views, the DEMs and GOPs would efficiently shift their message to encapsulate it. For this reason, there will never be a legit 3rd-party candidate, although a 3rd party candidate who generates enough interest will suddenly find themselves in one of the two major parties as those party leaders start preaching the same message.
I know you were being funny, but it's kinda sad how close your comment is to reality. Much military hardware, including the entire ships' systems that carry SM3s, are run on Windows. Win 2000 I believe. I can't imagine it being a good idea, but they've done it.
I know everyone is freaking out about how missile defense is defective by design and this proves their greatest concerns. However, go look up Aegis BMD/SM3, which is one of the other missile defense programs. It's the most successful program so far, having something like 12/15 successful flight tests. And not all the tests are hand-holding exercises, including the satellite shoot-down, which was remarkable since SM3 was not designed for that. I believe THAAD has also had some recent, successful flight tests too. In fact, I'm pretty sure GMD is the one missile defense program that hasn't had any successful tests. I don't know why we still give Boeing money.
Give me a break. I'm sure this single patent case that costs them a fraction of a billion dollars, would cause them to change their mind about a broken patent system that lets them reap multiple billions from other companies and helps them maintain their monopolistic advantage. Are you crazy?
All this talk about him being the same guy as the last one...? Just because his actions related to 4th amendment are like Bush's, doesn't mean it's a one-party system all of a sudden. Take a look at healthcare and foreign policy. I think this boils down to the fact that ANY PRESIDENT will take as much 4th amendement liberties as the can if it helps him protect the country. Is it right? No, and it's our obligation to fight it. But I'd say it's not surprising in the least. If he can avoid having a major disaster/attack during his first term, that completely makes up for any loss of support he gets for being a dick about the 4th amendment. Does it guarantee no terrorist attacks could happen? No, but I'd say the conditional probabilities work out in his favor, politically.
Again, I'm not supporting it. We need him to know that these policies are unpopular. But to say that our extremely liberal president is suddenly just like Bush because of his stance on a single issue like this, is ludicrous.
I used to think Bush was a dick for doing all this warrantless wiretapping, but now that I see Obama doing it, I'm starting to see a different perspective. They're both dicks, but I see now that despite losing popularity over it, it's worth it to them. I'd much rather have all my supporters lose 5% of their trust me in me for wiretapping, if I can avoid a major terrorist attack that would lose me 15%. It's not that clear cut, but no one can argue that terrorist attacks are good, and certainly Obama doesn't want one to happen on his watch.
If you've been watching the news, you'd know they have caught quite a few recently. I can't imagine their techniques for those were all legal. I don't agree with it, but I can sympathize with both Bush and Obama for why they did/are doing it.
The BIC lighter ban has nothing to do with starting fires in the cabin (if it was, why do they let you take matches?) It's actually because the pressure changes associated with ascent and descent of the aircraft, cause the lighter to emit a HUGE flame the first time it is used. The airlines are trying to avoid customers accidentally removing their eyebrows.
To say that this is pointless because "no one" would ever be the target of such an attack, is just silly.
99.99999% of people would never be targeted by this kind of attack. But the 0.00001% for whom it matters (CIA operatives, for instance), it's in everyone's best interest that such attacks are known about and avoided (or at least for the government who is sponsoring the operative). A million unimportant, paranoid nerds getting hacked b/c they did full-disk encryption improperly is nothing compared to a single operative being discovered in the field, and dissolving a political landscape, or a source of critical intelligence that keeps us safe.
Luckily, we have millions of paranoid nerds to find these flaws so that the people who really do need it are better prepared.
Slashdot Mirror
Because people always get it wrong every time a QC article hits slashdot, here's a link to my previous, highly-modded (upwards) post on QC:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1285849&cid=28520061
Quantum computers can do some cool things, but mostly solve problems no one cares much about (except a few of us mathematicians)
I had a similar experience. My girlfriend got a free HP or Canon printer (I don't remember which) with her laptop. Amusingly, her laptop came with Windows 7 and couldn't actually use the printer that came with it. We installed drivers from CD, downloaded drivers, tried troubleshooting... we couldn't get it to work. As a test, I booted an Ubuntu live CD, and it worked within 10s of boot.
Hardware support has definitely become a positive aspect of Ubuntu, no longer the pain in the ass that it used to be for generic Linux. Admittedly, if there's no hardware support, it's a mess to get it... but it seems that there's a massive amount of native support already there, including the default PDF printer which I couldn't live without.
Hah, sorry. I copied this from another QC post I made a while ago, and forgot that the newlines don't transfer (the original is paragraphed). I should've previewed before submitting. Oh well! The original post with paragraphs is below:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1285849&cid=28520061
I took a class on Quantum computing, and studied many specific QC algorithms, so I know a little bit about them. If you don't want to RTFA, then read this: Quantum Computers are not super-computers. On a bit-for-bit (or qubit-for-qubit) scale, they're not necessarily faster than regular computers, they just process info differently. Since information is stored in a quantum "superposition" of states, as opposed to a deterministic state like regular computers, the qubits exhibit quantum interference around other qubits. Typically, your bit starts in 50% '0' and 50% '1', and thus when you measure it, you get a 50% chance of it being one or the other (and then it assumes that state). But if you don't measure, and push it through quantum circuits allowing them to interact with other qubits, you get the quantum phases to interfere and cancel out. If you are damned smart (as I realized you have to be, to design QC algorithms), you can figure out creative ways to encode your problem into qubits, and use the interference to cancel out the information you don't want, and leave the information you do want. For instance, some calculations will start with the 50/50 qubit above, and end with 99% '0' and 1% '1' at the end of the calculation, or vice versa, depending on the answer. Then you've got a 99% chance of getting the right answer. If you run the calculation twice, you have a 99.99% chance of measuring the correct answer. However, the details of these circuits which perform quantum algorithms are extremely non-intuitive to most people, even those who study it. I found it to require an amazing degree of creativity, to figure out how to combine qubits to take advantage of quantum interference constructively. But what does this get us? Well it turns out that quantum computers can run anything a classical computer can do, and such algorithms can be written identically if you really wanted to, but doing so gets the same results as the classical computer (i.e. same order of growth). But, the smart people who have been publishing papers about this for the past 20 years have been finding new ways to combine qubits, to take advantage of nature of certain problems (usually deep, pure-math concepts), to achieve better orders of growth than possible on a classical computer. For instance, factoring large numbers is difficult on classical computers, which is why RSA/PGP/GPG/PKI/SSL is secure. It's order of growth is e^( n^(1/3) ). It's not quite exponential, but it's still prohibitive. It turns out that Shor figured out how to get it to n^2 on a quantum computer (which is the same order of growth as decrypting with the private key on a classical computer!). Strangely, trying to guess someone's encryption key, normally O(n) on classical computers (where n is the number of possible keys encryption keys) it's only O(sqrt(n)) on QCs. Weird (but sqrt(n) is still usually too big). There's a vast number of other problems for which efficient quantum algorithms have been found. Unfortunately, a lot of these problems aren't particularly useful in real life (besides to the curious pure-mathematician). A lot of them are better, but not phenomenal. Like verifying that two sparse matrices were mulitplied correctly has order of growth n^(7/3) on a classical computer, n^(5/3) on a quantum computer. You can find a pretty extensive list by googling "quantum algorithm zoo." Unfortunately [for humanity], there is no evidence yet that quantum computers will solve NP-complete problems efficiently. Most likely, they won't. So don't get your hopes up about solving the traveling salesmen problem any time soon. But there is still a lot of cool stuff we can do with them. In fact, the theory is so far ahead of the technology, that we're anxiously waiting for breakthroughs like this, so we can start plugging problems through known algorithms.
EVERYONE MUST STOP thinking that legalizing drugs is an endorsement of the behavior. In no way is regulation an endorsement. It's an acknowledgement that making drugs illegal only makes the problem worse, and that we can address the problem by treating it as an addiction. Wide availability of treatment and drug education is what people need. Many people can't be "saved," but they're doing it despite illegality anyway. Putting them in jail with a criminal record and ruining their chance of ever getting a decent job leaves them with few incentives to stop using and/or selling. As if it's not hard enough coming out of an addiction, now try it without any hope of a future.
There's better ways to handle it. There's a lot of different things to try. But we've been doing the exact same thing for over 50 years and it's only gotten worse. We've been burning our hand on the stove every day for decades, and still haven't learned from it.
It's really quite sad that the world learned nothing from the US' futile attempt to outlaw alcohol in the 1920's. No one is saying drugs are good. They are quite bad, but making them illegal makes them much, much worse. I wish politicians didn't care about looking "soft on crime" in dealing with the drug war, and they could actually push to try to overturn this quixotic war. Make them legal and undercut the illegal drug trade which is fueled by their artificially inflated illegal prices. We saw all the same stuff during alcohol prohibition. The extreme corruption, the gang wars, the bad moonshine that made people go permanently blind, people using/selling more potent forms because it's easier to transport. It's all avoidable, but no one will push the issue because they're instantly shot down for being "soft on drugs"
I die a little inside every time I hear a story about drug gangs basically taking over cities in Mexico and kidnapping people. Think of the people women whose husbands have been kidnapped and they receive pieces of them with ransom notes asking for money that they don't have. This is what could've happened if they kept up alcohol prohibition. Drug prohibition is just as ill-conceived. The better we do reducing supply, the higher the prices go, and the more vicious the drug gangs get in protecting their business.
It's a terrible cycle, and one that can only be broken by regulation. They need to make drugs legal through special outlets stocked with health care workers, where people can safely obtain their drugs and use the proceeds to pay for the addiction specialists and treatment centers. There's nothing we can do except address the problem of addiction, and treat such users as patients, not criminals. Is it perfect? Probably not, but it's a start.
I, for one, welcome our new radioactive grass-eating overlords
This is called superdemocracy. And it's not a very good form of democracy. Although reality may differ, politicians are elected to be in positions to make informed decisions about potential legislation, and protect the minority from being screwed by the majority. In other words, decmocracy as we have in the US is designed to allow the people making the decisions be in positions to receive and comprehend relevant information, evidence and expert testimony (and lobbying) before making such decisions. I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the population was [theoretically] as informed as these politicians are [supposed to be]. The whole reason to elect politicians is so that the masses can promote people they trust to make such decisions. If you think politicians are stupid, look at the vast majority of people who elected them.
Superdemocracy is also remarkably bad at protecting minorities from being screwed by majorities. It only takes 51% of the population to believe that deporting Mexicans without due process is okay, and then it's the law. There's no filtering in a super-democracy.
And on top of that, how is such an online-voting system supposed to handle matters that are considered secret to the country. Again, this is where people elected politicians they trust, who will be granted access to such sensitive information and make such decisions. How are military decisions supposed to be made when we have to wait for the internet polling period to end?
I imagine that Google's actions are legally distinguishable from wiretapping laws, since they did not access hardware, they only passively recorded information that was visible from public locations. If they had communicated with and established an IP addresses with network routers, it would be a completely different story.
While it would appear to be ethically fuzzy to collect such data, it may be legally sufficient to demonstrate that such information was being transmitted over public areas, and since no "unauthorized access" was gained into any private networks, there was no legal breach. I'm not saying they should've collected the data. But if a woman prances around in her living room naked with the blinds open, my decision to view it from the street should not be subject to peeping-tom laws.
If you read about Lamo's reaction to story (Wired had an excellent article about it), you'd find it has nothing to do with "ego." And it has nothing to do with being a "snitch." He said himself that he agonized over the decision for a long time because normally he wouldn't turn someone in. And he supports Wikileaks. But in this case, Manning was completely reckless, vacuuming up any and every piece of classified information he could find, and "throwing it up in the air." This is a legitimate threat to national security. Manning wasn't identifying abuses anymore, he wanted to create anarchy. He said it himself in one of his chats.
Releasing embassy cables could reveal names of operatives, and details of secret operations that really should be kept secret. Just because it's secret doesn't mean it's unethical or some abuse of power. There's plenty of people out there collecting information for our government about real threats in the world, and those people put their lives at risk for a good cause (most of them). They haven't done anything wrong. Yet they might find themselves in a Chinese prison never to be seen again once their name is released, and for no reason than some out-of-control monkey who wanted to create "anarchy." I would've done the same.
...and I should know since I've traveled there many times and I even speak .
Thailand gets a worse name than it deserves, based on stories like this. It's actually a relatively open society and just about every development index has them at the top of "developing country" (if they could clean up their tap water, they'd probably break the threshold). Speech is only limited when it comes to the King and Buddha, both of which are highly respected, but not really "in power" (influential, but not making and enforcing laws). Of course, that doesn't make their censorship ethical, but it shouldn't be considered to be an oppressive government.
There's an an ounce of justification to the recent violence, but most of it came from the rural poor with nothing to lose, fighting for the one PM who stood up for them. Unfortunately, that politician that tried to help out the poor (Thaksin Siniwatra), accumulated no less than $2.2 billion while in office, and accused of countless corruption charges (convicted on a couple of them in absentia while he living in exile). Many poor refuse to admit he's corrupt, or say "well sure he is, all the politicians are, but at least he helps out the poor that desperately need it." The situation really is a mess, with no clean way to bridge the gap between the poor and the middle+ class. While they have some political instabilities right now, I would still consider it to be the most awesome place on Earth (where else can you go that has virtually no violent crime, you can get 1 hour Thai massage for $4 and the best Pad Thai ever for $0.50?).
I think that the monarchy will be phased out soon anyway, as the King's health is waning and the crown prince is not very well liked, despite the lese mejeste laws. But make no mistake, despite such laws, the king was justifiably considered a "benevolent dictator." He is an engineer, and used his skills to plan and update infrastructure in the country to help out both the rich and the poor. There was actually reason to like him.
When I visited Thailand, I was amazed to see that so much of the country is poor and without healthcare, yet they ALL have cellphones. In fact, Thailand has the 5th highest cellphone ownership rate in the world (1.25 cellphones per person, on average). It's crazy to go to a hill tribe village 2 hours from anywhere else, see that they probably don't even have running water, yet they're all listening to music or chatting on their cellphone. I don't even know how they charge them! I didn't think they had running electricity...
I should mention that many laws regarding wiretapping or eavesdropping require "unauthorized access" to the data stream, frequently requiring an intrusion of private property. I imagine that Google's actions are legally distinguishable from such laws, since they did not access such hardware, they only passively recorded information that was visible from public locations. If they had actually communicated directly with such people's routers, and, say, established an IP address with their network router, it would be a different story.
While it would appear to be ethically fuzzy to collect such data, it may be legally sufficient to demonstrate that such information was being transmitted over public areas, and since no "unauthorized access" was gained into any private networks, there was no legal breach.
I'm not saying they should've collected the data. But if a woman prances around in her living room naked with the blinds open, my decision to view it from the street should not be subject to peeping-tom laws.
...and I can tell you that our flight tests have demonstrated our ability to not only hit the target, but decide where to hit it. We have advanced FEA simulations that determine exactly what damage we're going to do when we hit it at a given location at a given angle, and our organization supports our current aiming techniques as "lethal." Given that we tend to aim very reliably, it sounds like the argument here simply about aiming location, which is the result of a few parameters in the software. That's a completely different story than saying the entire system is flawed.
Multiply 3650 by 1609^2 to convert from square miles to square meters. Then you'll see 125 million gallons on the surface.
I might be a little late to the party, but I haven't seen anyone yet do the calculation I was expecting to see... just how much volume is that 10mi x 3mi x 300 ft plume?
Well once you convert everything to meters, and observe 264 gallons per cubic meter, you get a staggering 1.8 trillion gallons of ocean water in that plume. If even 1% of that is oil, then we are totally fucked. Hopefully it's less than 0.01%.
However, if you calculate from the surface slick itself, you have 3650 sq miles of slick (as of Friday). And based on a chart of oil-thickness-to-color, you could say that the oil slick is 50 micrometers thick. This equates to 125 million gallons of pure oil just on the surface. Over the course of 25 days, that's about 5 million gallons per day just making it to the surface! Is anyone else getting concerned?
I just recently got a Nexus One at about the same time my girlfriend got an iPhone. I don't know about the Desire, but I know that Google got fed up with other companies not implementing Android well, so they made their own phone as they envisioned it, and that's the Nexus One (it's the only phone they make, www.google.com/phone). It's very similar in design to the iPhone, but has a ton of stuff that I would prefer any day over the iPhone. Intimate integration with all google services, voice recognition, and an open app market make it much better in my opinion. Most other interactions are very similar to the iPhone, but to me it seems more polished.
If you want to see true Android, get a Nexus One. At least most people on Slashdot will find the feature set much more desirable than the iPhone, and it's overall price is actually slightly cheaper than the iPhone.
We have a defacto two party system only because too many Americans have been brainwashed to believe there is no third (or 4th-nth) option.
Actually we have the two-party system because of efficiency. The core beliefs of most Americans is captured in one of the two political parties. If ever there was a time that a third party had a chance because of shifting political views, the DEMs and GOPs would efficiently shift their message to encapsulate it. For this reason, there will never be a legit 3rd-party candidate, although a 3rd party candidate who generates enough interest will suddenly find themselves in one of the two major parties as those party leaders start preaching the same message.
I know you were being funny, but it's kinda sad how close your comment is to reality. Much military hardware, including the entire ships' systems that carry SM3s, are run on Windows. Win 2000 I believe. I can't imagine it being a good idea, but they've done it.
I know everyone is freaking out about how missile defense is defective by design and this proves their greatest concerns. However, go look up Aegis BMD/SM3, which is one of the other missile defense programs. It's the most successful program so far, having something like 12/15 successful flight tests. And not all the tests are hand-holding exercises, including the satellite shoot-down, which was remarkable since SM3 was not designed for that. I believe THAAD has also had some recent, successful flight tests too. In fact, I'm pretty sure GMD is the one missile defense program that hasn't had any successful tests. I don't know why we still give Boeing money.
Give me a break. I'm sure this single patent case that costs them a fraction of a billion dollars, would cause them to change their mind about a broken patent system that lets them reap multiple billions from other companies and helps them maintain their monopolistic advantage. Are you crazy?
All this talk about him being the same guy as the last one...? Just because his actions related to 4th amendment are like Bush's, doesn't mean it's a one-party system all of a sudden. Take a look at healthcare and foreign policy. I think this boils down to the fact that ANY PRESIDENT will take as much 4th amendement liberties as the can if it helps him protect the country. Is it right? No, and it's our obligation to fight it. But I'd say it's not surprising in the least. If he can avoid having a major disaster/attack during his first term, that completely makes up for any loss of support he gets for being a dick about the 4th amendment. Does it guarantee no terrorist attacks could happen? No, but I'd say the conditional probabilities work out in his favor, politically.
Again, I'm not supporting it. We need him to know that these policies are unpopular. But to say that our extremely liberal president is suddenly just like Bush because of his stance on a single issue like this, is ludicrous.
I used to think Bush was a dick for doing all this warrantless wiretapping, but now that I see Obama doing it, I'm starting to see a different perspective. They're both dicks, but I see now that despite losing popularity over it, it's worth it to them. I'd much rather have all my supporters lose 5% of their trust me in me for wiretapping, if I can avoid a major terrorist attack that would lose me 15%. It's not that clear cut, but no one can argue that terrorist attacks are good, and certainly Obama doesn't want one to happen on his watch.
If you've been watching the news, you'd know they have caught quite a few recently. I can't imagine their techniques for those were all legal. I don't agree with it, but I can sympathize with both Bush and Obama for why they did/are doing it.
The BIC lighter ban has nothing to do with starting fires in the cabin (if it was, why do they let you take matches?) It's actually because the pressure changes associated with ascent and descent of the aircraft, cause the lighter to emit a HUGE flame the first time it is used. The airlines are trying to avoid customers accidentally removing their eyebrows.
To say that this is pointless because "no one" would ever be the target of such an attack, is just silly.
99.99999% of people would never be targeted by this kind of attack. But the 0.00001% for whom it matters (CIA operatives, for instance), it's in everyone's best interest that such attacks are known about and avoided (or at least for the government who is sponsoring the operative). A million unimportant, paranoid nerds getting hacked b/c they did full-disk encryption improperly is nothing compared to a single operative being discovered in the field, and dissolving a political landscape, or a source of critical intelligence that keeps us safe.
Luckily, we have millions of paranoid nerds to find these flaws so that the people who really do need it are better prepared.