...to bad the Americans only care about conquest of the middle east and ethnic cleansing of Muslims so their god will be happy.
Well, that and Mars (MER), Jupiter and its moons (New Horizons), Pluto (New Horizons), Saturn (Cassini), the Heliopause (Voyager), and incidentally the Moon (Orion), right?
They believe the events shown are every bit as real as real life until the film is over. They jump when Ripley opens a hatch and the ship's cat pops out. They cringe when Michael Myers swings an axe. They get aroused when...
You must have a very different definition "belief" than I do. It seems to me that I can have an emotional response to an image or event without believing that image or event to be a true one.
Don't look at me. I don't actually care that much about the issue. But if you're so convinced there is no difference, how about you explain why your computer is full of parts made in China, what with China being the Burmese dictatorship's major backer and arms supplier? Is there a difference, or have you convinced me that your hands are just as bloody as Fortinet's?
Actually, the government of Myanmar runs the Myanmar Wide Web. Software produced by Fortinet, but not administered, supervised or maintained by Fortinet, is used by the government of Myanmar to censor the MWW.
My rationale is that the UN may serve a valuable purpose by giving world leaders a context in which to debate their differences "peacefully", rather than on the field of battle.
On the other hand, nations big and small, regional powers to global superpowers, have long established that they can and will do whatever they please within their sphere of influence, regardless of what transpires at the UN.
If it's so wonderful, and makes so much sense, you should have no trouble at all convincing people to give you the $2.6+ billion it would cost. And the eminent domain you'd need for your easements. Let me know how your project works out.
I think the real question is... "is good journalism possible?"
The answer, of course, is "no". Sure, it's possible in theory, but in practice it isn't. The fundamental problem is that journalism is produced by people who have spent their time mastering a subject other than the one they're reporting on. Even in the rare case of the "renaissance reporter" who understands both his own trade and the subject matter he's reporting, his report is still subject to the whims of an editor, the constraints of the medium, and the demands of the market.
On the few occasions that I've been the subject of journalism, the article has gotten facts wrong. On the many occasions that I have read articles about subjects I know well, I have invariably discovered basic errors in the articles. I think it's highly unlikely that journalists are only ignorant of subjects which I know well; it's much more likely that journalists are ignorant of all subjects and that good journalism in any field is impossible.
That was the most worthless video possible. First, they waste almost half of it explaining all kinds of irrelevant things. "The robot doesn't walk like Hollywood!" Why not just show the robot walking, so we can see for ourselves? Then a whole bunch of step-by-step still imagery showing how a computer model of the robot would appear in different stages of walking. Then, finally, some footage of the computer model walking. Then a bunch of half-assed brochureware footage of the computer model in paramilitary applications. Then, a brief clip of the actual physical prototype FAILING to walk and being caught before it falls over. At the very end, the narrator indicates that NOW we're going to see footage of the physical prototype walking, except that the clip ends right at that point.
That positive feedback implies some important things for making policy. In particular, it means warming will go further than you'd expect -- CO2 production leads to more CO2 production, rising temperatures cause temperature to go up further.
So why didn't the global temperature spiral out of control and turn Earth into a second Venus, the last time this vicious cycle got started?
I think the biggest question right now is, what mysterious mechanism is powerful enough to override the CO2 amplification effect and is completely natural in orgin?
Mission Control is filmed, and streamed live over the Internet. I watched the landing of STS-118 (the latest Space Shuttle mission) this way last week. Look up "NASA TV". There's also transcripts and replays, and you can probably request copies of the video footage from NASA, either by writing to them or filing an FOIA request. You obviously have an Internet connection, and you claim to have some interest in getting information about NASA's activities. How much time have you actually spent exploring NASA's website?
How much have you personally contributed to this issue? Do you pay taxes? Have you advocated tax increases, so that the government could take more money from you and give it to NASA? Have you petitioned your elected representatives to allocate more of the federal budget to NASA, specifically for information archiving and distribution expenses? Have you encouraged your friends, neighbors, and other fellow citizens to petition their representatives as well? Have you done anything to encourage greater public interest in, and enthusiasm for, the information NASA has collected?
Look up "Spacecraft Films". This guy actually cares about NASA's data. He's requested all the Apollo footage. He's paid the nominal archiving fees. He's copied all the several hundred hours of Apollo mission footage onto a set of DVDs, which he now resells at a reasonable price to anybody else who cares. If you don't think it's fair that he should profit from NASA's work in this way, you're welcome to request the same originals he got, and make your own copies. Or you could request footage of other missions, if Apollo doesn't interest you. Or you could travel to the warehouses where vast repositories of hard-copy information are awaiting transfer to electronic media, and make copies to your heart's content, and distribute them as freely as you like to anybody and everybody.
NASA doesn't do this because it costs money, and NASA doesn't have a lot of money. NASA doesn't spend a lot of money on advertising its archives, because it doesn't have a lot of money to spend on advertising. If you don't like this, feel free to do something about it besides complain.
By law, everything NASA does is open to the public. The practical restrictions are typically archiving cost, distribution cost, and often agreements with sponsoring organizations. It's common for a scientific research organization such as a university to get exclusive rights for a few months to the raw data they sponsored, in order to complete their research and publish their results before the raw data is made public. Once the moratorium has passed, though, the data is made public.
All you have to do to get access to NASA information is to find out where it's being archived, and either request a copy or visit the archive and view the originals for yourself. Sometimes a small archiving fee is charged, since NASA prefers to spend the majority of its public funds on actual research. The more money it spends on free distribution of data, the less money it has available to spend on acquiring more data. If you're lucky, the data you're interested in has been uploaded to their webservers, where you can get to it without paying any extra fees at all.
It's easy to quantify/my/ productivity as a support tech (at the U of CA) in number of tickets resolved per shift. But sysadmins have a number of duties which they are performing/continuously/, so how can you quantify that?
Open and resolve a ticket once every n time intervals, describing the nature of your continuous duties.
I think we may be talking about two different things. I'm willing to stipulate that for practical purposes, American public opinion will be mostly divided between two major parties in any election.
To me, this is a separate from the issue of why parties like the Green and Libertarians fail to become one of those two parties at the national level. The typical complaint seems to be that the Greens and Libertarians can't compete at the national level because the system is broken. In contrast, my complaint is that the Greens and Libertarians can't compete at the national level because they can't (or won't compete) broadly at the local level, and so fail to build the kind of nationwide support that would allow them to make a credible showing in national elections.
For example, San Francisco has a "third-party" mayor, Green Gavin Newsom[1]. So we know it's possible in practice for a "third party" to prevail in voter's hearts and minds. Personally, I would like to see third parties work upwards from local elections like the SF mayoral contest, gaining members and votes in other local and regional elections, then in state legislative and executive elections, and finally in national House and Senate elections. If the Greens were able to convince majorities in several states to send Green Senators to Congress, they'd be much more credible Presidential contenders. I think the reason they can't do this is because their platform really isn't that appealing to majorities outside of the city of San Francisco, and that they have adopted a tactic of complaining about a broken presidential election system rather than devising a more representative campaign platform at the national level.
---------- [1]Although, since San Francisco still has strong Republican and Democratic factions, this does suggest that Duverger's Law doesn't always apply. There certainly seem to be at least 3 viable parties in play in San Francisco.
I suspect that if a third party became truly successful, it would supplant one of the two national parties at the national level.
But how many of your own local elections (mayor, city council, school board, county sherriff, etc.) break along national party lines? Why aren't the Greens and the Libertarians doing better in local elections?
With one major problem - 3rd party candidates can't get elected mostly because everyone knows that 3rd party candidates can't get elected.
This perception would change the moment 3rd party candidates started getting elected... to local office. Personally, I have no problem understanding or accepting that a party whose platform is either so poorly presented or fundamentally unrepresentative that it cannot consistently get elected to offices such as Mayor, County Sheriff, School Board Chair, State Legislator, or State Governor--let alone hold a significant fraction of the House of Representatives or the Senate!--can't get elected to the highest political office in the land, representing the will of the entire citizenry, wielding the full power of the armed forces, and directing foreign policy for the nation as a whole.
Once third parties start proving their worth in local and regional offices, and stop trying to skip ahead to the presidential election, then they'll be ready to try for national office.
It's well established that when safety features are widely distributed -- like helmets for bikers, or airbags for car drivers -- injuries actually go up, because people feel free to engage in more risky behavior.
It is a mistake to compare ignorant amateurs who leap to unwarranted conclusions about bike helmets and airbags without properly research or training, to informed professionals who study and practice a complete system based on a clear understanding of the limitations of their tools and a sincere desire to follow the best course of action based on their situation and their resources.
If it gets blown up, whether by 'armed insurgents' or just some guy trying to defend his family, the next thing through the door WILL be the grenades followed by a lot of bullets. I really don't see civilian casualties dropping with these devices, and God help the grunts outside, cause they're gonna take fire as well. Do you REALLY expect the neighbors to sit there and 'just watch the light show'? Hell, no, they're going to figure they're next for a visit from the robot...
So let me get this straight: Every house on the block has enough firepower to take out an armored forced-entry bot, and all but maybe one of these houses contains a peace-loving civilian family?
Because your enemy doesn't always give you the choice of battlefields. Sometimes he'll succeed in bringing the fight to you, or forcing you to give battle in on a battlefield where his robots give him an advantage. You can't very well avoid his robots when they're the first through the door of your safe house in a SWAT raid, for example.
The nature of the authority granted to the Executive Branch by the Constitution is such that the Executive isn't actually violating the Constitution unless the Judiciary Branch says it is.
As long as neither the Legislative or Judiciary Branch exercises its own Constitutional authority to challenge the Executive on this matter, and the Judiciary ultimately concludes that the Executive is acting unconstitutionally, this Executive action is entirely Constitutional.
Don't knock them for trying, I say. It's about time a music group tried to use the internet for something new.
So let me get this straight: They're going to write some generic song, and then I'm going to come in and write a better version--doing their job for them, basically--and then, instead of getting a piece of the royalties, I'm going to pay them a couple hundred dollars to perform my version of their song?
I'm not knocking them for trying, I'm knocking them for failing.
Slashdot Mirror
According to your conspiracy theory, how can I determine that you're not the court jester who most closely supports my views?
Well, that and Mars (MER), Jupiter and its moons (New Horizons), Pluto (New Horizons), Saturn (Cassini), the Heliopause (Voyager), and incidentally the Moon (Orion), right?
Don't look at me. I don't actually care that much about the issue. But if you're so convinced there is no difference, how about you explain why your computer is full of parts made in China, what with China being the Burmese dictatorship's major backer and arms supplier? Is there a difference, or have you convinced me that your hands are just as bloody as Fortinet's?
Actually, the government of Myanmar runs the Myanmar Wide Web. Software produced by Fortinet, but not administered, supervised or maintained by Fortinet, is used by the government of Myanmar to censor the MWW.
My rationale is that the UN may serve a valuable purpose by giving world leaders a context in which to debate their differences "peacefully", rather than on the field of battle.
On the other hand, nations big and small, regional powers to global superpowers, have long established that they can and will do whatever they please within their sphere of influence, regardless of what transpires at the UN.
If it's so wonderful, and makes so much sense, you should have no trouble at all convincing people to give you the $2.6+ billion it would cost. And the eminent domain you'd need for your easements. Let me know how your project works out.
I think the real question is... "is good journalism possible?"
The answer, of course, is "no". Sure, it's possible in theory, but in practice it isn't. The fundamental problem is that journalism is produced by people who have spent their time mastering a subject other than the one they're reporting on. Even in the rare case of the "renaissance reporter" who understands both his own trade and the subject matter he's reporting, his report is still subject to the whims of an editor, the constraints of the medium, and the demands of the market.
On the few occasions that I've been the subject of journalism, the article has gotten facts wrong. On the many occasions that I have read articles about subjects I know well, I have invariably discovered basic errors in the articles. I think it's highly unlikely that journalists are only ignorant of subjects which I know well; it's much more likely that journalists are ignorant of all subjects and that good journalism in any field is impossible.
That was the most worthless video possible. First, they waste almost half of it explaining all kinds of irrelevant things. "The robot doesn't walk like Hollywood!" Why not just show the robot walking, so we can see for ourselves? Then a whole bunch of step-by-step still imagery showing how a computer model of the robot would appear in different stages of walking. Then, finally, some footage of the computer model walking. Then a bunch of half-assed brochureware footage of the computer model in paramilitary applications. Then, a brief clip of the actual physical prototype FAILING to walk and being caught before it falls over. At the very end, the narrator indicates that NOW we're going to see footage of the physical prototype walking, except that the clip ends right at that point.
So why didn't the global temperature spiral out of control and turn Earth into a second Venus, the last time this vicious cycle got started?
I think the biggest question right now is, what mysterious mechanism is powerful enough to override the CO2 amplification effect and is completely natural in orgin?
Yo, what's up?
Don't link to sites you don't control.
Mission Control is filmed, and streamed live over the Internet. I watched the landing of STS-118 (the latest Space Shuttle mission) this way last week. Look up "NASA TV". There's also transcripts and replays, and you can probably request copies of the video footage from NASA, either by writing to them or filing an FOIA request. You obviously have an Internet connection, and you claim to have some interest in getting information about NASA's activities. How much time have you actually spent exploring NASA's website?
How much have you personally contributed to this issue? Do you pay taxes? Have you advocated tax increases, so that the government could take more money from you and give it to NASA? Have you petitioned your elected representatives to allocate more of the federal budget to NASA, specifically for information archiving and distribution expenses? Have you encouraged your friends, neighbors, and other fellow citizens to petition their representatives as well? Have you done anything to encourage greater public interest in, and enthusiasm for, the information NASA has collected?
Look up "Spacecraft Films". This guy actually cares about NASA's data. He's requested all the Apollo footage. He's paid the nominal archiving fees. He's copied all the several hundred hours of Apollo mission footage onto a set of DVDs, which he now resells at a reasonable price to anybody else who cares. If you don't think it's fair that he should profit from NASA's work in this way, you're welcome to request the same originals he got, and make your own copies. Or you could request footage of other missions, if Apollo doesn't interest you. Or you could travel to the warehouses where vast repositories of hard-copy information are awaiting transfer to electronic media, and make copies to your heart's content, and distribute them as freely as you like to anybody and everybody.
NASA doesn't do this because it costs money, and NASA doesn't have a lot of money. NASA doesn't spend a lot of money on advertising its archives, because it doesn't have a lot of money to spend on advertising. If you don't like this, feel free to do something about it besides complain.
By law, everything NASA does is open to the public. The practical restrictions are typically archiving cost, distribution cost, and often agreements with sponsoring organizations. It's common for a scientific research organization such as a university to get exclusive rights for a few months to the raw data they sponsored, in order to complete their research and publish their results before the raw data is made public. Once the moratorium has passed, though, the data is made public.
All you have to do to get access to NASA information is to find out where it's being archived, and either request a copy or visit the archive and view the originals for yourself. Sometimes a small archiving fee is charged, since NASA prefers to spend the majority of its public funds on actual research. The more money it spends on free distribution of data, the less money it has available to spend on acquiring more data. If you're lucky, the data you're interested in has been uploaded to their webservers, where you can get to it without paying any extra fees at all.
Open and resolve a ticket once every n time intervals, describing the nature of your continuous duties.
I think we may be talking about two different things. I'm willing to stipulate that for practical purposes, American public opinion will be mostly divided between two major parties in any election.
To me, this is a separate from the issue of why parties like the Green and Libertarians fail to become one of those two parties at the national level. The typical complaint seems to be that the Greens and Libertarians can't compete at the national level because the system is broken. In contrast, my complaint is that the Greens and Libertarians can't compete at the national level because they can't (or won't compete) broadly at the local level, and so fail to build the kind of nationwide support that would allow them to make a credible showing in national elections.
For example, San Francisco has a "third-party" mayor, Green Gavin Newsom[1]. So we know it's possible in practice for a "third party" to prevail in voter's hearts and minds. Personally, I would like to see third parties work upwards from local elections like the SF mayoral contest, gaining members and votes in other local and regional elections, then in state legislative and executive elections, and finally in national House and Senate elections. If the Greens were able to convince majorities in several states to send Green Senators to Congress, they'd be much more credible Presidential contenders. I think the reason they can't do this is because their platform really isn't that appealing to majorities outside of the city of San Francisco, and that they have adopted a tactic of complaining about a broken presidential election system rather than devising a more representative campaign platform at the national level.
----------
[1]Although, since San Francisco still has strong Republican and Democratic factions, this does suggest that Duverger's Law doesn't always apply. There certainly seem to be at least 3 viable parties in play in San Francisco.
I suspect that if a third party became truly successful, it would supplant one of the two national parties at the national level.
But how many of your own local elections (mayor, city council, school board, county sherriff, etc.) break along national party lines? Why aren't the Greens and the Libertarians doing better in local elections?
This perception would change the moment 3rd party candidates started getting elected... to local office. Personally, I have no problem understanding or accepting that a party whose platform is either so poorly presented or fundamentally unrepresentative that it cannot consistently get elected to offices such as Mayor, County Sheriff, School Board Chair, State Legislator, or State Governor--let alone hold a significant fraction of the House of Representatives or the Senate!--can't get elected to the highest political office in the land, representing the will of the entire citizenry, wielding the full power of the armed forces, and directing foreign policy for the nation as a whole.
Once third parties start proving their worth in local and regional offices, and stop trying to skip ahead to the presidential election, then they'll be ready to try for national office.
It is a mistake to compare ignorant amateurs who leap to unwarranted conclusions about bike helmets and airbags without properly research or training, to informed professionals who study and practice a complete system based on a clear understanding of the limitations of their tools and a sincere desire to follow the best course of action based on their situation and their resources.
So let me get this straight: Every house on the block has enough firepower to take out an armored forced-entry bot, and all but maybe one of these houses contains a peace-loving civilian family?
Because your enemy doesn't always give you the choice of battlefields. Sometimes he'll succeed in bringing the fight to you, or forcing you to give battle in on a battlefield where his robots give him an advantage. You can't very well avoid his robots when they're the first through the door of your safe house in a SWAT raid, for example.
The nature of the authority granted to the Executive Branch by the Constitution is such that the Executive isn't actually violating the Constitution unless the Judiciary Branch says it is.
As long as neither the Legislative or Judiciary Branch exercises its own Constitutional authority to challenge the Executive on this matter, and the Judiciary ultimately concludes that the Executive is acting unconstitutionally, this Executive action is entirely Constitutional.
So let me get this straight: They're going to write some generic song, and then I'm going to come in and write a better version--doing their job for them, basically--and then, instead of getting a piece of the royalties, I'm going to pay them a couple hundred dollars to perform my version of their song?
I'm not knocking them for trying, I'm knocking them for failing.
A NASA-operated prototype has already been used to do exactly that. Less than a day after it completed a test flight, too!
I kinda thought maybe you had a good point, until this last line. Do you have any evidence for this claim?