They wiretapped US citizens in the US without a warrant. That's illegal and immoral, and goes against their charter and policies.
Some people may think that it is not a big deal, but really it is. First, it means (IMHO) that they think they can do anything they want. Based on the lack of political and legal fallout, apparently they are right. So, they have carte blanche to do whatever they want in terms of wiretapping, email reading, decrypting, etc. and there is nothing you can do about it. Second, even if they say they don't do X any more, you have no reason to believe that they do not do X any more.
Yes, SELinux is great, thanks, we do appreciate it, but the betrayal of the laws of the US and the lack of control on this organization overwhelms it.
Obviously, you would process the rock on the moon, and just send back He3.
And you don't need a human there to do it. Yes, having a human on the moon would make the process much easier, but the cost of getting the human there is so outrageous that it doesn't make sense if you can do it unmanned. It makes a lot more sense to spend billions of dollars in robot research and automation, and send that to the moon. What do you think one of the reasons for doing the Regolith Excavation Challenge is?
How much did Spirit and Opportunity cost? See: $820 million. Earlier in this thread someone claimed that a human on Mars could have done all the work that they have done in a couple of hours? While that might be true, that's irrelevant because the cost of getting humans to Mars is mind-numbing. It would be at least $500 billion, and with cost overruns, etc, probably a trillion or two. The ISS (in LEO, of course) cost something between $35 to $100 billion depending on how you count it.
I really, really want to go to space myself, and I want us to have a manned space program. I think that, all things considered, it makes sense to spend the money to do it. But, going to the Moon or Mars is a job for robots.
This seems to be offset by the new category of light sport aircraft and the sport pilot certification. How are they simultaneously trying to expand flying and reduce flying?
That it's not their bread and butter. They gain more by releasing it (increased use of compatible formats and tools) than they lose by releasing it. This is a purely business decision, and that fact that it (might) be good for the OS community is secondary to their decision process.
Disney knows that the make their money by carefully controlling the IP associated with their characters and their representations. You know, people seem to love Google because it releases lots of really neat stuff (and I like it too), but just try to elbow into their bread and butter (advertising) and you will be in a world of hurt.
There is a long history of US 'independence', until people are actually provided with a service. Then, and only then, the people will support it. Just think if people try to cut other socialist programs like Social Security, or welfare, or Medicaid. Social security has the nickname of 'The Third Rail of Politics' because it is political suicide to try to touch it.
Wait 5 years after it gets implemented, and people will wonder what the hell people were such in arms about. I can't wait until Fox News starts running stories about the evil democrats that are trying to touch that most American of established services, universal health care. Actually, I can wait.
I don't think that 'scam' is the correct word here. My workplace offers a wide variety of amenities. I don't think that someplace to plug in my Volt is out of the question. It would be very reasonable for it to be limited in either duration or amperage (or both) so that complete freeloading is not possible.
While visiting family in Alaska, the local Walmart had plugs at all the parking spaces so that people could plug their cars in (for the engine block heaters). It didn't destroy the economics of running the Walmart. Having some parking spaces at Walmart in the lower 48 with plugs wouldn't destroy it down here either.
And some methane hydrates, natural gas, and coal (which can be turned into liquid fuel), and oil shales, and algae-based fuels, and etc.
Yes, 'petroleum' will be 'depleted' to the point that it is no longer as economical, at which point, the price will go up and other fuels will replace or be mixed with it. There was a great Wired article a couple of years back that talked about the price points at which different fuels become economical. At $100 a barrel, a large number of different alternative fuel sources can be used, and it is not at all clear which one will win out. But, there are so many different options at that point that travel will not stop. While that's a lot of money for fuel (historically), it is still economically viable for everyday transportation. What it does do is change the economics in other areas, one of the most interesting of which is 'At what point does fuel cost change the economic value of imported goods (for example, from China)?' At that point, does even more manufacturing move (say to Mexico) where it can be shipped by rail? Or does manufacturing actually move back to the US?
If you are referring to the Clinton years. The deficits were high until the Republican takeover of Congress.
This is simply wrong. Under Clinton the deficit got consistently smaller and smaller, starting in 1992. The Republican takeover occurred in 1994. See the CBO data. Or take a look at the following graph.
And I would agree with those that think the gigantic spike in 2009 is really, really scary.
It's definitely not the scientists themselves. The scientists that I know would be happy to have you read their research (for free). You can get preprints, reprints, research papers, and all sorts of documents that discuss research.
The thing here though is that it's printed in a refereed journal, specifically Science, that is a really big deal to most scientists. The scientists are plenty willing to let their paper be published in a journal that costs money to have the ability to put 'Science' on their CVs (actually, they are more than 'plenty willing', they are probably willing to give their left nut for it). The prestige associated with getting published in Nature or Science is well worth losing some readership on the internet. In addition, the paper will be available to the people that really need the paper itself (other scientists) because they all have access to Science through their institutions, or they are willing to pay $15 for it. The general public is almost certainly not that interested in the details of the paper, and they can get the info through other means (popular press, reviews), or they can pony up the $15 for it.
When someone write a book, and it is discussed on Slashdot, do you complain that the book is not available on Slashdot? Why is this different?
I didn't know what the answer to the question is: what does the US export? Fortunately, the US has a (relatively) open government and the data is available. It's interesting to see how the data breaks down, though it is in part confusing. For example, we export more than twice as many vehicles to Saudi Arabia than to the UK, but then we export twice as many parts to UK than Saudi Arabia.
When someone is libeled, there are appropriate legal avenues for them. Shutting down an entire site that contains user posted comments is not one of them. It's a overwhelmingly disproportionate action in response that harms many unrelated people.
I'm looking for a car analogy, but can't find a good one. Someone says something bad about the Ford Mustang, and posts part of their sales contract, and so Ford shuts down Edmunds.com? Does that seem right to you?
Depends on the class. There's a huge difference between a Healidin and a Tankidin. But warriors and rogues are pretty much the same depending on spec. Lock's change a fair amount (direct damage to DOT to pet). Hunters and shamans suck no matter what you do.
Probably. But her reasoning for doing so is not entirely clear. Possibilities include:
o Money
o Honest outrage
o Conscious or subconscious desire to out herself
o Honest desire to prevent the outing of other people
I've never interpreted IBM's filing all those patents as a tax writeoff or 'because we can'. It's actually pretty damn expensive to pay for all those fees and pay the lawyers. IBM files all those patents so that others cannot claim patents on them. It's a protective coating that prevents them from having to pay more later when some obvious or prior-art piece of software gets a patent and then IBM has to pay out the nose for infringing.
Excellent. I'm glad they were found. Now, when, exactly, where they found? When was the press release that they were found?
And exactly how does this guy know (since he's not part of the White House currently, and presumably not part of the recovery activity or investigation) that the emails in question are the same ones that were 'found' way back when?
You see, I think that Scott Stanzel is probably lying out his ass. He is completely making this up, and doing what politicians do, which when confronted with embarrassing information, say "That's old news; we've already dealt with that".
I would love for the Biefeld-Brown effect to be real and not based on ion wind. But, it turns out that experiments indicate that it is based on ion wind and does not work in a vacuum. It turns out that the ions interact with and pass their momentum to neutral particles in the air (see this experiment. Calculations based on only the ions themselves are way off because they do not include the interaction with neutral air particles.
If the BB effect is real, and possible to do in a vacuum, it would be relatively simple to produce a repeatable, measurable demonstration. However, despite repeated trials by all sorts of people playing with 'lifters', it just doesn't work.
Actually I like the idea of sending out a plague of self replicating machines in devices like these, to bring the Word Of Dawkins to the stars and troll the inhabitants of other star systems.
The idea of sending out self-replicating devices doesn't depend on this very much. Using standard propulsion and gravity slingshots, we can get objects to about 1/1000 speed of light, and so it will just take that much longer for our self-replicating devices to get where they are going. It's not like they need to be in a hurry. And such devices should be realizable in the not-to-distant future (say, 200 years or so). Since the Milky Way is only 100,000 light years across, it would take only take 100,000,000 years for devices to make it through out the galaxy. This is a comparatively short amount of time, compared to either the life of the planet or the universe.
Actually, the (relative) ease at making these devices indicates to some people that either intelligent life is rare in our galaxy or that they think differently than we do. Assuming technology continues to improve, I can't imagine that someone eventually won't try this. And if other intelligent life has done this, then there would be space probes flying around through our solar system. Maybe we're just missing them.
Does a demonstration of the Casimir effect produce energy? If not, based on your reasoning above, why not? It would seem to me that having the plates really close to each other, so that only certain wavelengths could exist in the space between them would result in non-uniform or changed virtual particles, so that something would be left over.
Well, they are not entirely helpful. For example, the 6th down on the left is a giant turtle, with 4 elephants on it's back, with a giant disc, and the sun above it. Unless you are a Terry Pratchett fan, and I am, you probably won't get it, and the tooltip won't help. It is Discworld, and in Pratchett's book, the Disc is flying though space in such a configuration.
The cosmology of the Disc is loosely related to several other cosmology myths, including the Native American and Hindu ones about the world being on a turtle's or elephant's back, and the cute Turtles All the Way Down story.
No, there are other factors in what affects the short-term (year to decade) noisy observed temperature, for example, El Nino.
We observe the temperature (and other measurements) and fluctuations occur, making the data noisy. One of the causes of fluctuations is El Nino. A long term (many years / multiple decades) cause affecting temperature is climate change caused by human-caused CO2 production.
Wow, that's an amazing set of incorrect information in such a small package. First, the Global Ice Age was supposedly due to cooling and the 'Nuclear Winter' and had nothing to do with CFC. Second, CFC's really did reduce the ozone layer, and the evidence since phasing CFC's out has been wonderfully along the lines of the estimates of the effect of removing them, thank you very much. Third, weather and climate are different. Fourth, we're getting pretty good at predicting weather a week in advance and for both weather and hurricane tracks we know why we can't predict them very well. Fifth, models give a pretty good idea of what climate is going to do (though plenty of error) even if we can't predict the weather very far into the future. I can't tell you which women around me are going to have babies in the next couple of years, but the model of global population is pretty good.
Slashdot Mirror
They wiretapped US citizens in the US without a warrant. That's illegal and immoral, and goes against their charter and policies.
Some people may think that it is not a big deal, but really it is. First, it means (IMHO) that they think they can do anything they want. Based on the lack of political and legal fallout, apparently they are right. So, they have carte blanche to do whatever they want in terms of wiretapping, email reading, decrypting, etc. and there is nothing you can do about it. Second, even if they say they don't do X any more, you have no reason to believe that they do not do X any more.
Yes, SELinux is great, thanks, we do appreciate it, but the betrayal of the laws of the US and the lack of control on this organization overwhelms it.
Obviously, you would process the rock on the moon, and just send back He3.
And you don't need a human there to do it. Yes, having a human on the moon would make the process much easier, but the cost of getting the human there is so outrageous that it doesn't make sense if you can do it unmanned. It makes a lot more sense to spend billions of dollars in robot research and automation, and send that to the moon. What do you think one of the reasons for doing the Regolith Excavation Challenge is?
How much did Spirit and Opportunity cost? See: $820 million. Earlier in this thread someone claimed that a human on Mars could have done all the work that they have done in a couple of hours? While that might be true, that's irrelevant because the cost of getting humans to Mars is mind-numbing. It would be at least $500 billion, and with cost overruns, etc, probably a trillion or two. The ISS (in LEO, of course) cost something between $35 to $100 billion depending on how you count it.
I really, really want to go to space myself, and I want us to have a manned space program. I think that, all things considered, it makes sense to spend the money to do it. But, going to the Moon or Mars is a job for robots.
National Highway Express??
Neonatal Health Expenses??
Neohumanist Education??
I'm so confused. What does NHE stand for?
This seems to be offset by the new category of light sport aircraft and the sport pilot certification. How are they simultaneously trying to expand flying and reduce flying?
That it's not their bread and butter. They gain more by releasing it (increased use of compatible formats and tools) than they lose by releasing it. This is a purely business decision, and that fact that it (might) be good for the OS community is secondary to their decision process.
Disney knows that the make their money by carefully controlling the IP associated with their characters and their representations. You know, people seem to love Google because it releases lots of really neat stuff (and I like it too), but just try to elbow into their bread and butter (advertising) and you will be in a world of hurt.
What, exactly, is the difference between an e-book that is able to run flash apps and surf the web, and a tablet pc?
The lines are definitely being blurred here.
There is a long history of US 'independence', until people are actually provided with a service. Then, and only then, the people will support it. Just think if people try to cut other socialist programs like Social Security, or welfare, or Medicaid. Social security has the nickname of 'The Third Rail of Politics' because it is political suicide to try to touch it.
Wait 5 years after it gets implemented, and people will wonder what the hell people were such in arms about. I can't wait until Fox News starts running stories about the evil democrats that are trying to touch that most American of established services, universal health care. Actually, I can wait.
I don't think that 'scam' is the correct word here. My workplace offers a wide variety of amenities. I don't think that someplace to plug in my Volt is out of the question. It would be very reasonable for it to be limited in either duration or amperage (or both) so that complete freeloading is not possible.
While visiting family in Alaska, the local Walmart had plugs at all the parking spaces so that people could plug their cars in (for the engine block heaters). It didn't destroy the economics of running the Walmart. Having some parking spaces at Walmart in the lower 48 with plugs wouldn't destroy it down here either.
And some methane hydrates, natural gas, and coal (which can be turned into liquid fuel), and oil shales, and algae-based fuels, and etc.
Yes, 'petroleum' will be 'depleted' to the point that it is no longer as economical, at which point, the price will go up and other fuels will replace or be mixed with it. There was a great Wired article a couple of years back that talked about the price points at which different fuels become economical. At $100 a barrel, a large number of different alternative fuel sources can be used, and it is not at all clear which one will win out. But, there are so many different options at that point that travel will not stop. While that's a lot of money for fuel (historically), it is still economically viable for everyday transportation. What it does do is change the economics in other areas, one of the most interesting of which is 'At what point does fuel cost change the economic value of imported goods (for example, from China)?' At that point, does even more manufacturing move (say to Mexico) where it can be shipped by rail? Or does manufacturing actually move back to the US?
A better site is Death and Taxes where you can zoom in and see what it really looks like.
If you are referring to the Clinton years. The deficits were high until the Republican takeover of Congress.
This is simply wrong. Under Clinton the deficit got consistently smaller and smaller, starting in 1992. The Republican takeover occurred in 1994. See the CBO data. Or take a look at the following graph.
And I would agree with those that think the gigantic spike in 2009 is really, really scary.
The US military disagrees with you. See, for example, this CNA report.
It's definitely not the scientists themselves. The scientists that I know would be happy to have you read their research (for free). You can get preprints, reprints, research papers, and all sorts of documents that discuss research.
The thing here though is that it's printed in a refereed journal, specifically Science, that is a really big deal to most scientists. The scientists are plenty willing to let their paper be published in a journal that costs money to have the ability to put 'Science' on their CVs (actually, they are more than 'plenty willing', they are probably willing to give their left nut for it). The prestige associated with getting published in Nature or Science is well worth losing some readership on the internet. In addition, the paper will be available to the people that really need the paper itself (other scientists) because they all have access to Science through their institutions, or they are willing to pay $15 for it. The general public is almost certainly not that interested in the details of the paper, and they can get the info through other means (popular press, reviews), or they can pony up the $15 for it.
When someone write a book, and it is discussed on Slashdot, do you complain that the book is not available on Slashdot? Why is this different?
I didn't know what the answer to the question is: what does the US export? Fortunately, the US has a (relatively) open government and the data is available. It's interesting to see how the data breaks down, though it is in part confusing. For example, we export more than twice as many vehicles to Saudi Arabia than to the UK, but then we export twice as many parts to UK than Saudi Arabia.
When someone is libeled, there are appropriate legal avenues for them. Shutting down an entire site that contains user posted comments is not one of them. It's a overwhelmingly disproportionate action in response that harms many unrelated people.
I'm looking for a car analogy, but can't find a good one. Someone says something bad about the Ford Mustang, and posts part of their sales contract, and so Ford shuts down Edmunds.com? Does that seem right to you?
Depends on the class. There's a huge difference between a Healidin and a Tankidin. But warriors and rogues are pretty much the same depending on spec. Lock's change a fair amount (direct damage to DOT to pet). Hunters and shamans suck no matter what you do.
Probably. But her reasoning for doing so is not entirely clear. Possibilities include:
o Money
o Honest outrage
o Conscious or subconscious desire to out herself
o Honest desire to prevent the outing of other people
I've never interpreted IBM's filing all those patents as a tax writeoff or 'because we can'. It's actually pretty damn expensive to pay for all those fees and pay the lawyers. IBM files all those patents so that others cannot claim patents on them. It's a protective coating that prevents them from having to pay more later when some obvious or prior-art piece of software gets a patent and then IBM has to pay out the nose for infringing.
Excellent. I'm glad they were found. Now, when, exactly, where they found? When was the press release that they were found?
And exactly how does this guy know (since he's not part of the White House currently, and presumably not part of the recovery activity or investigation) that the emails in question are the same ones that were 'found' way back when?
You see, I think that Scott Stanzel is probably lying out his ass. He is completely making this up, and doing what politicians do, which when confronted with embarrassing information, say "That's old news; we've already dealt with that".
I would love for the Biefeld-Brown effect to be real and not based on ion wind. But, it turns out that experiments indicate that it is based on ion wind and does not work in a vacuum. It turns out that the ions interact with and pass their momentum to neutral particles in the air (see this experiment. Calculations based on only the ions themselves are way off because they do not include the interaction with neutral air particles.
If the BB effect is real, and possible to do in a vacuum, it would be relatively simple to produce a repeatable, measurable demonstration. However, despite repeated trials by all sorts of people playing with 'lifters', it just doesn't work.
Actually I like the idea of sending out a plague of self replicating machines in devices like these, to bring the Word Of Dawkins to the stars and troll the inhabitants of other star systems.
The idea of sending out self-replicating devices doesn't depend on this very much. Using standard propulsion and gravity slingshots, we can get objects to about 1/1000 speed of light, and so it will just take that much longer for our self-replicating devices to get where they are going. It's not like they need to be in a hurry. And such devices should be realizable in the not-to-distant future (say, 200 years or so). Since the Milky Way is only 100,000 light years across, it would take only take 100,000,000 years for devices to make it through out the galaxy. This is a comparatively short amount of time, compared to either the life of the planet or the universe.
Actually, the (relative) ease at making these devices indicates to some people that either intelligent life is rare in our galaxy or that they think differently than we do. Assuming technology continues to improve, I can't imagine that someone eventually won't try this. And if other intelligent life has done this, then there would be space probes flying around through our solar system. Maybe we're just missing them.
Does a demonstration of the Casimir effect produce energy? If not, based on your reasoning above, why not? It would seem to me that having the plates really close to each other, so that only certain wavelengths could exist in the space between them would result in non-uniform or changed virtual particles, so that something would be left over.
Well, they are not entirely helpful. For example, the 6th down on the left is a giant turtle, with 4 elephants on it's back, with a giant disc, and the sun above it. Unless you are a Terry Pratchett fan, and I am, you probably won't get it, and the tooltip won't help. It is Discworld, and in Pratchett's book, the Disc is flying though space in such a configuration.
The cosmology of the Disc is loosely related to several other cosmology myths, including the Native American and Hindu ones about the world being on a turtle's or elephant's back, and the cute Turtles All the Way Down story.
No, there are other factors in what affects the short-term (year to decade) noisy observed temperature, for example, El Nino.
We observe the temperature (and other measurements) and fluctuations occur, making the data noisy. One of the causes of fluctuations is El Nino. A long term (many years / multiple decades) cause affecting temperature is climate change caused by human-caused CO2 production.
Wow, that's an amazing set of incorrect information in such a small package. First, the Global Ice Age was supposedly due to cooling and the 'Nuclear Winter' and had nothing to do with CFC. Second, CFC's really did reduce the ozone layer, and the evidence since phasing CFC's out has been wonderfully along the lines of the estimates of the effect of removing them, thank you very much. Third, weather and climate are different. Fourth, we're getting pretty good at predicting weather a week in advance and for both weather and hurricane tracks we know why we can't predict them very well. Fifth, models give a pretty good idea of what climate is going to do (though plenty of error) even if we can't predict the weather very far into the future. I can't tell you which women around me are going to have babies in the next couple of years, but the model of global population is pretty good.