This is really just a matter of practical policy ; it's impossible to police and some countries have no process for renouncing citizenship (others, such as Singapore, require you to give up your Singaporean citizenship if you ever take citizenship of another country). The only requirement the US has is that US citizens enter and leave the country on their US passport.
Tar sands and what not are all orders of magnitude more expensive
They're not, actually. Tar sand extraction becomes profitable above $40/barrel (Witness the boom currently occuring in Canada), and that's including capitalized R&D costs and infrastructure. Conventional extraction costs are, as I recall, around $18/barrel (again, including average cap costs, but that's going up now since most new field discoveries are deeper and/or smaller than before, requiring more expensive extraction processes).
Really, you might disagree with the report, but there's nothing insane or glaringly wrong with their position - and their projections for Chinese oil demands are actually pretty steep. And, I'll note, they don't actually factor in the substitution effects of what would happen if there's a sudden shift to auto fuel-cells or ethanol. You can bet that if, in 20 years time, H2 and ethanol are the major source of auto fuel in the US it'll have an impact on oil consumption.
Oh, I see. They assume our demand for oil will never increase. The developing world's demand for oil will never increase. China's demand for oil will never increase.
No, they don't assume that. You're conflating their position. They make two seperate points:
1. That if our consumption levels remain flat, there's 122 years of conventional reserves left. They make this point for illustrative purposes to counter the 'peak oil' argument. 2. That consumption will rise (the "Asian Phoenix" scenario) but that total oil output (conventional and unconventional ; tar sands, new extraction techniques, etc) will rise to cope.
They had one of the longest-running and largest beta-tests in MMORPG history. They have no excuse for not finding a scalability bug of this kind.
And their handling of the bug, in terms of how they've communicated with their userbase (including the typical 'overpromise/underachieve' statements) has been terrible.
For a company the size of Blizzard, it's a major screwup. They, of all people, should know better.
If you ever had to fill out an I-90 (Arrival/Departure Record) then you've had to give out an address you'll be staying at in the US. The same is true of the Customs Declaration that *everyone* entering the US, Citizen or otherwise *must* fill out.
The difference is these are official forms required by Customs or Homeland Security. Not blank pieces of paper given out by rentacops in a foreign land.
The people doing the pre-screening are *NOT* Government employees. In this case, the pre-screeners were *NOT* employees of the UKID, US Homeland Security or HMC&E - they were either employees of BAA (the British Airport Authority) or AA, under contract. These people (in the UK, at least) have no statutory authority to enforce laws - and no law in the UK requires you to give out names and addresses of folks in the US when you travel there.
Now, it may well be that the US is asking that all incoming flights be pre-screened by the airlines, and that they must use certain procedures to perform the pre-screen - but if that is the case, it's in one of those Secret Directives the TSA seems to be fond of, and that John Gilmore is suing over.
If you have a visa type that good for 'D/S' (Duration of Stay) like an F or K, then you don't need an outbound ticket.
If you're on a B (tourist) visa, then you do - or rather, you'll most likely get secondary inspection, and they'll want a damn good reason for why you don't aparently intend to leave.
They're not. What happened was the pre-screener was doing a check on Cory, asking him questions, looking for emotional responses. When he got the 'pissed customer' response they fell back on the TSA smokescreen and the "it's for *your* protection, friend citizen" that usually works on most folks.
Cory just happened to be one of those annoying privacy nuts who knows more than Joe Q. Public, so in the end they just dropped the matter and told him it was because he was a Plat frequent flier.
They couldn't tell him (according to their training) that it was a psychological screening process to sniff out terrorists. Because, you know, if they said that, then the terrorists would realise, and bypass this cunning check by doing exactly what Cory did! Because they're sneaky like that, see.
...except it's being run by freakin' morons, and it's not just AA doing it. Flying out of the USA from Logan on Virgin you get the same pre-checkin screening from, dare I say it, *monkeys*.
last time I flew I was asked if I had a laptop or a digital camera in my carry-on. I had both, so I said "Yes". The screener asked (no, she _snapped_) "Which is it?!" to which I replied "Both."
I expected some kind of follow-up. I mean, really, if you're going to ask about electronic goods, doesn't that mean you're going to follow up with something like..."and have you put a bomb in either one of them? Any concealed blades, guns, or pointy things in the battery compartment, etc?" but no, the screener completely failed on the follow-up, and just moved on to the next thing on her checklist.
Now, compare that to the screening done right by British Midland (a gate agent, not a rentacop), who when she asked me the inital laptop question followed it up with "has it been in your possession all the time, have you had it serviced recently" and so on.
So what we're seeing here is an attempt by screeners to put the El Al pre-screening system in place... but without the necessary training. I feel safer already.
I'm the Network Administrator of a moderately-sized University, and we have a Barracuda spam appliance as our mail gateway. It tags about 75% +/- 3% of all incoming mail as spam, and has a very, very low false positive.
...and tied into the speedometer. I'd love something that made an alert tone when the car got too close to the vehicle in front (distance determined by speed, of course). Folks over here drive too close to each other at 80mph, it's no wonder that we have so many fender-benders in the fast lane of I-95.
I've seen all of Evangelion, and I'm not a raving fan, but I can see how a serious re-write could produce a very good film.
Let's face it, the anime plot goes from "oooh! neat idea!" to "my God, the writers and animators got lazy and ran out of time/money/enthusiasm". It devolves into pretentious crap. There's a lot of stuff you could cut.
Maybe you'd end up with a 2.5 hour film dealing with key elements of Evangelion - Shinji and his father, NERV and what *really* happened at Second Impact, and the Human Instrumentality Project, because it has such a cool name.:)
Nope. It's called a Hohmann transfer orbit - a minimum energy orbit that, depending on where Mars and Earth are in relation to each other, takes 6 - 12 months to get to Mars. Mars Express was launched at exactly the right time to take advantage of Mars' closest approach to Earth for a few centuries.
Hohmann transfer orbit to Mars takes 9 months each way. Given the way orbits work, you're probably looking at 18 months of travel time for 3 months on the surface. Not so bad.
There's already plans for a nuclear fission powered rocket - the JIMO project (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter). The tech's been around since the 60s, it's just never been launched. Too much concern over what a launchpad explosion would do.
You're right - it's not just a matter of money. It's a matter of will, too. We have the money, and we have the tech - do we have the will?
Do they want faculty to tell them what email platform to use, or how to configure their switches? No? Then they should shut up and let faculty do what they hell they want, and only offer an opinion if they're asked.
As say this as an IT worker at a university, who's constantly dealing with faculty who say "Why don't we use Technology X here?".
There are people out there in business who aren't complete sleazeballs, who understand that spamming (either via email or fax) is not an ethical way to grow a business, that 'human resources' means more than just hiring and firing. Find them and hire them. Listen to them, and let their ethical lead create an honest workplace.
While we're at it, resist the lure of VC funds for as long as you can. VCs are (almost-universally) ethically-suspect, not-very-smart people who have too much money and lots of friends at the golf course. As soon as they get a hook into your company, the rot will set in - even if it's only you having to BS them at board meetings.
If you have an Active Directory setup, and If you have machines that may differ in hardware but all use certain Ethernet cards, you can use SysPrep and RIS to deploy OS and Applications. It's better than Ghost in that the image is not hardware-specific - but it's harder to set up. It's also cheaper, if you already have an AD domain.:)
Bottom line : iTunes or GEAR removes vital registry keys that prevent audio CDs from playing once you've uninstalled the software. I had to manually hack my registry to restore functionality.
Yah, yah, yah. I wouldn't use Travan in a production environment, but it's fine for occasional tape backups. The tapes degrade faster over multiple read-writes than DLT, but for occasional use that's not an issue, and Travan is much cheaper than DLT.
Hence my recommendation for Travan. The poster did, after all, specify *cheap*.:)
Slashdot Mirror
There's no insistence from the US to give up your previous citizenship when you become a US citizen. The State Dept even has a page about it:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1753.html
This is really just a matter of practical policy ; it's impossible to police and some countries have no process for renouncing citizenship (others, such as Singapore, require you to give up your Singaporean citizenship if you ever take citizenship of another country). The only requirement the US has is that US citizens enter and leave the country on their US passport.
Tar sands and what not are all orders of magnitude more expensive
They're not, actually. Tar sand extraction becomes profitable above $40/barrel (Witness the boom currently occuring in Canada), and that's including capitalized R&D costs and infrastructure. Conventional extraction costs are, as I recall, around $18/barrel (again, including average cap costs, but that's going up now since most new field discoveries are deeper and/or smaller than before, requiring more expensive extraction processes).
Really, you might disagree with the report, but there's nothing insane or glaringly wrong with their position - and their projections for Chinese oil demands are actually pretty steep. And, I'll note, they don't actually factor in the substitution effects of what would happen if there's a sudden shift to auto fuel-cells or ethanol. You can bet that if, in 20 years time, H2 and ethanol are the major source of auto fuel in the US it'll have an impact on oil consumption.
And, if our demand for oil increases?
Production will cope. It's in the report.
Oh, I see. They assume our demand for oil will never increase. The developing world's demand for oil will never increase. China's demand for oil will never increase.
No, they don't assume that. You're conflating their position. They make two seperate points:
1. That if our consumption levels remain flat, there's 122 years of conventional reserves left. They make this point for illustrative purposes to counter the 'peak oil' argument.
2. That consumption will rise (the "Asian Phoenix" scenario) but that total oil output (conventional and unconventional ; tar sands, new extraction techniques, etc) will rise to cope.
They're not idiots.
Congratulations, Yvan, I think you found one of those Intertube Crazies we hear so much about on the talking boxes. ;-p
...and wish to subscribe to your newsletter! /Homer
Seriously - I don't like how my first encounter with your site is when it tries to set a passel of cookies. Get on that, would ya?
...no.
They had one of the longest-running and largest beta-tests in MMORPG history. They have no excuse for not finding a scalability bug of this kind.
And their handling of the bug, in terms of how they've communicated with their userbase (including the typical 'overpromise/underachieve' statements) has been terrible.
For a company the size of Blizzard, it's a major screwup. They, of all people, should know better.
If you ever had to fill out an I-90 (Arrival/Departure Record) then you've had to give out an address you'll be staying at in the US. The same is true of the Customs Declaration that *everyone* entering the US, Citizen or otherwise *must* fill out.
The difference is these are official forms required by Customs or Homeland Security. Not blank pieces of paper given out by rentacops in a foreign land.
It's a pre-checkin screen.
The people doing the pre-screening are *NOT* Government employees. In this case, the pre-screeners were *NOT* employees of the UKID, US Homeland Security or HMC&E - they were either employees of BAA (the British Airport Authority) or AA, under contract. These people (in the UK, at least) have no statutory authority to enforce laws - and no law in the UK requires you to give out names and addresses of folks in the US when you travel there.
Now, it may well be that the US is asking that all incoming flights be pre-screened by the airlines, and that they must use certain procedures to perform the pre-screen - but if that is the case, it's in one of those Secret Directives the TSA seems to be fond of, and that John Gilmore is suing over.
If you have a visa type that good for 'D/S' (Duration of Stay) like an F or K, then you don't need an outbound ticket.
If you're on a B (tourist) visa, then you do - or rather, you'll most likely get secondary inspection, and they'll want a damn good reason for why you don't aparently intend to leave.
They're not. What happened was the pre-screener was doing a check on Cory, asking him questions, looking for emotional responses. When he got the 'pissed customer' response they fell back on the TSA smokescreen and the "it's for *your* protection, friend citizen" that usually works on most folks.
Cory just happened to be one of those annoying privacy nuts who knows more than Joe Q. Public, so in the end they just dropped the matter and told him it was because he was a Plat frequent flier.
They couldn't tell him (according to their training) that it was a psychological screening process to sniff out terrorists. Because, you know, if they said that, then the terrorists would realise, and bypass this cunning check by doing exactly what Cory did! Because they're sneaky like that, see.
...except it's being run by freakin' morons, and it's not just AA doing it. Flying out of the USA from Logan on Virgin you get the same pre-checkin screening from, dare I say it, *monkeys*.
..."and have you put a bomb in either one of them? Any concealed blades, guns, or pointy things in the battery compartment, etc?" but no, the screener completely failed on the follow-up, and just moved on to the next thing on her checklist.
... but without the necessary training. I feel safer already.
last time I flew I was asked if I had a laptop or a digital camera in my carry-on. I had both, so I said "Yes". The screener asked (no, she _snapped_) "Which is it?!" to which I replied "Both."
I expected some kind of follow-up. I mean, really, if you're going to ask about electronic goods, doesn't that mean you're going to follow up with something like
Now, compare that to the screening done right by British Midland (a gate agent, not a rentacop), who when she asked me the inital laptop question followed it up with "has it been in your possession all the time, have you had it serviced recently" and so on.
So what we're seeing here is an attempt by screeners to put the El Al pre-screening system in place
my god, I remember those! Days without Katz ... how did I survive?!
Bush just appointed Internap's CEO to his National Infrastructure Advisory Council, yet the man can't keep a co-lo facility switched on.
I'm not sure what that says of Bush or of Interap. And it certainly doesn't seem to have anything to do with SixApart.
I'm the Network Administrator of a moderately-sized University, and we have a Barracuda spam appliance as our mail gateway. It tags about 75% +/- 3% of all incoming mail as spam, and has a very, very low false positive.
Yes, spam volume really is that bad.
...and tied into the speedometer. I'd love something that made an alert tone when the car got too close to the vehicle in front (distance determined by speed, of course). Folks over here drive too close to each other at 80mph, it's no wonder that we have so many fender-benders in the fast lane of I-95.
Well, it depends.
:)
I've seen all of Evangelion, and I'm not a raving fan, but I can see how a serious re-write could produce a very good film.
Let's face it, the anime plot goes from "oooh! neat idea!" to "my God, the writers and animators got lazy and ran out of time/money/enthusiasm". It devolves into pretentious crap. There's a lot of stuff you could cut.
Maybe you'd end up with a 2.5 hour film dealing with key elements of Evangelion - Shinji and his father, NERV and what *really* happened at Second Impact, and the Human Instrumentality Project, because it has such a cool name.
Nope. It's called a Hohmann transfer orbit - a minimum energy orbit that, depending on where Mars and Earth are in relation to each other, takes 6 - 12 months to get to Mars. Mars Express was launched at exactly the right time to take advantage of Mars' closest approach to Earth for a few centuries.
Hohmann transfer orbit to Mars takes 9 months each way. Given the way orbits work, you're probably looking at 18 months of travel time for 3 months on the surface. Not so bad.
There's already plans for a nuclear fission powered rocket - the JIMO project (Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter). The tech's been around since the 60s, it's just never been launched. Too much concern over what a launchpad explosion would do.
You're right - it's not just a matter of money. It's a matter of will, too. We have the money, and we have the tech - do we have the will?
No, no, it's "bint", as in a derogatory term for a woman. I'm not sure if 'bink' has a place in English vernacular....
Do they want faculty to tell them what email platform to use, or how to configure their switches? No? Then they should shut up and let faculty do what they hell they want, and only offer an opinion if they're asked.
As say this as an IT worker at a university, who's constantly dealing with faculty who say "Why don't we use Technology X here?".
There are people out there in business who aren't complete sleazeballs, who understand that spamming (either via email or fax) is not an ethical way to grow a business, that 'human resources' means more than just hiring and firing. Find them and hire them. Listen to them, and let their ethical lead create an honest workplace.
While we're at it, resist the lure of VC funds for as long as you can. VCs are (almost-universally) ethically-suspect, not-very-smart people who have too much money and lots of friends at the golf course. As soon as they get a hook into your company, the rot will set in - even if it's only you having to BS them at board meetings.
If you have an Active Directory setup, and If you have machines that may differ in hardware but all use certain Ethernet cards, you can use SysPrep and RIS to deploy OS and Applications. It's better than Ghost in that the image is not hardware-specific - but it's harder to set up. It's also cheaper, if you already have an AD domain. :)
Doesn't have the problem (no CD audio through any other progam), or doesn't have the screwed up registry key / 'Unknown' listing in Device Manager? :)
See this discussion over at Ars Technica for more details.
Bottom line : iTunes or GEAR removes vital registry keys that prevent audio CDs from playing once you've uninstalled the software. I had to manually hack my registry to restore functionality.
Bad Apple. No Cookie.
Yah, yah, yah. I wouldn't use Travan in a production environment, but it's fine for occasional tape backups. The tapes degrade faster over multiple read-writes than DLT, but for occasional use that's not an issue, and Travan is much cheaper than DLT.
:)
Hence my recommendation for Travan. The poster did, after all, specify *cheap*.