Except that diverting an asteroid from hitting Earth isn't really NASA's area of expertise.
The response for such a threat would involve nuclear missiles almost certainly delivered by existing (or modifications of) ICBM rockets and infastructure.
Indeed, video posters using infa-red to detect when someone's nearby have been around for ages.
The difference here is simply that someone used the "camera" word when describing this system and that's got the tinfoil-hat crowd jumping up and down.
Indeed, this has to be one of the MOST useless summaries I've read on Slashdot.
The quoted part of the article simply describes the basics of any "cyber police force" and has nothing to do with the "remote searches" the story is supposedly about.
I mean a report that the EU's cyber police-force's aim is to "combat the growth in cyber theft and the machines used to spread spam and other malicious programs" doesn't exactly come as much of a surprise!
I would have to agree that the Oyster card has all-in-all been a success. I used to live in London in the late 90's and at peak times you would have 20-person queues at each barrier-gate as the millions of people who use the "tube" daily tried to insert their paper card in the the narrow slit.
Using the tube on recent holiday to the U.K. I noticed things certainly seemed to go smoother with the majority of people swiping a card above a sensor at much greater speed than previously.
This is an example of technology making things easier and more efficient for the end-user. Exactly what technology should do.
I've always thought the Cold War was more of a media thing than anything else. Warning about an imminent threat of nuclear war is obviously a darn good way of getting people to buy your newspaper or watch your TV news program - and not to mention getting people to vote for you (and conversely, telling people not to panic is nearly always a big vote loser).
In reality, there were some disagreements and various localized conflicts (predominantly in 3rd world countries, just like we have today) but compared to the landscape leading up to the first two world wars, it was all (comparatively) pretty trivial stuff really.
"or maybe you already know and are just a laque of the European commission..."
Although I'm not quite sure what a 'laque' is, you should know that the immediate presumption that anyone who disputes your cries of conspiracy, is involved in the conspiracy; is a common sign of paranoid skyzophrenia.
The fact remains though: ones a treay, ones a constitution. The difference is pretty obvious.
Except that the Lisbon treay is a treay and the EU constitution was a constitution. There's a pretty big difference, you know.
Treaties, like most legal documents, are always difficult to read. They have to be, as "easy to read" almost always equates to "vague" - not something you want in law!
Try reading the original Treaty of Maastricht if you want a challlenging document. That little bueaty is the source of many 2nd year law students' nightmares.
Left / Right politics is a complete falsity invented by news corps wanting to bring quick summaries of news to the largely uninformed viewer.
To imply all politics - and therefore all ideas - can be polarized into two camps is utterly absurd. Just because someone or some party has view X on say fiscal policy, in no way implies view X on foreign policy or the enviroment or adherence to any religous/cultural conventions etc.
In this country, the Republicans generally favor lower taxes/public spending along with closer adherence to Christian principles; wheras in many countries, the exact opposite is the case (i.e. the party favoring higher taxes/public spending favor conservative principles).
Further more, countries like North Korea and the USSR get highlighted as "left-wing" for no particular reason other than equating left-wing to socialism. However this makes no sense as many European countries (the Scandanavian ones in particular) have far more socialist policies in many various areas (social security, healthcare, schooling etc.) than the USSR, North Korea or China ever had, whilst have more "right wing" policies in other areas (free-market economies, private land ownership etc.).
I know it might exclude from the political process a few people who struggle to ignite enough brain cells to hold more than one idea in their head, but can we please drop the meaningless - and often very misleading - left vs right nonsense.
"Obama was hitting themes that struck a chord with Americans."
Whilst I'm one of the many he "struck a chord with", it was obvious the whole way through (even in the primaries) he was getting more favorable media coverage and I really don't think striking a chord can explain it all. In every election, one party will strike more of a chord with the public and hence that party wins (leaving the 2000 elections aside), it's bascially the definition of an election.
Never before in recent times though has almost the entire media spectrum been so one-sided in it's coverage. Clearly, there was far more than "striking a chord" going on.
As a democrat voter, I'm glad it turned out like it did, but the bias of the coverage ws pretty impossible to ignore.
"either don't care about or don't remember such things when they get to vote"
I think it's the former. The majority of the UK public generally call for more of such protections, along with increased CCTV and use of DNA evidence.
A lot of people simply disagree with the assertion that these things "reduce their freedom".
Most people are A LOT more concerned about things like the economy where Labour are doing well politically, as evidenced by their recent Scottish local election win.
"Science can't prove that god exists, or that it doesn't exist."
It only can't prove god doesn't exist because proving a negative is extremely difficult. It's like trying to prove Superman or the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist.
That's what reading a "newspaper" like the Daily Mail will do to you. If you read tomorrow's copy you'll find out it's all 100% due to immigrants, the EU and Gordon Brown (who "according to a source", was seen carrying out the stabbings himself).
In reality though, looking at the police stats, there's actually only been a single 14 year-old (and no one younger) who's been murdered this year in the UK. There was a clump of teen stabbings in London at the start of the year but this has reversed to actually being slightly below average over the year.
The murder rate in the UK currently stands at 1.4 per 100,000 which is only about 1/4 the US murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000 (which itself is extremely low by historical standards).
So clearly the actual statistics and reality aren't coming out in the media. My problem with this is that it's pretty hard for a rational and correct solution to be engineered when everyone's being told irrational scare stories everyday by newspapers with a clear finnancially vested interest in exaggerating facts.
The underwater car, gadget 2 in TFA, was the one I always wanted. Unfortunately I do not know of such a car ever being made, there's been a few amphibious cars but I've never heard of a car which can actually turn into a mini-sub underwater.
I guess the lack of oxygen would be a slight problem for any combustion-based vehicle, maybe Bond's car was electric?
Whilst I agree with what you say (especially the last paragraph) and do also find it ironic that Mccain talks about him when - as you point out - it seems he would actually do better under Obama's tax plan, not Mccain's. But I do take issue with one point you, and many media commentators have made:
Oh, and did I mention his first name isn't even Joe?
His middle name is Joseph, so I think it's fair enough for him to call himself 'Joe'. I know lots of people who go by their middle names, there's nothing wrong with that. But I guess really that is a pretty trivial point compared to the others mentioned.
The situation isn't anywhere near as simple as "we have X resources to distribute amongst Y patients".
If a known high cancer risk for a specific type of cancer (especially rarer ones) means that that person gets regular screening then if the cancer does develop it can be treated earlier and at far lower total cost then waiting till symptoms develop which by that stage often necessitates some type of Chemotherapy/Radiotherapy and long stays in hosptial, expensive drugs, loads of paperwork etc.
Far cheaper for both individuals and society if genetic predispositions are known and treatment can be tailored spcifically. This is not compatible with our current free market healthcare system which sees us with terrible disease & cancer survival rates compared with the rest of the developed world even though we pay the highest healthcare costs in the world.
That's just the product of the completely screwed-up health system we have here.
If someone has an increased risk of a type of cancer then of course they and their healthcare provider should know about it. The person can then receive regular screening tests so if cancer does develop, it can be treated early.
Not only is this far obviously far better & safer for the patient but the total cost to the provider of treating the patient is thereby massively reduced as early intervention is almost always far, far cheaper than late intervention.
Having private companies choose on a commercial basis who to cover has created all this absurd ineffiency and often completely idiotic situations like it being better to not know if you have a high cancer risk because it will mean if you do you can't get treated.
I think it needs pointing out though that the LHC was always going to be shutdown over the next few months as a planned contigency period in-case of even bigger faults occuring then the one which did (or construction being delayed as was widely expected).
The real experiments will be occuring by mid-2009.
It's a basic "trueism" of civil engineering that when you up the scale, you inevitably up the risks. Every little component which itself has a small risk of failure often adds ontop of each other, ultimately give a far greater risk of failure (or at least construction delays/setbacks). The technology may be sound at one scale, but that doesn't mean getting it to work on a bigger scale isn't difficult and doesn't present new problems.
This area of the LHC was always a major challenge. I just hope they can overcome this problem (as appears to be the case) but more importantly that the measures taken to prevent future faults work as planned.
The Government make laws they think will keep them elected. How is Jacqui Smith going to subjugate humanity if she's not even Home Secretary in two years time? Oh, that's right, maybe the "power seekers" have already got to her and are enticing her to bring in laws she doesn't actually think will help Labour in the polls.
Wait, maybe the Home Secretary isn't even human anymore? Maybe your mind has already been transferred to some sort of virtually reality world while your body is used to generate electricity for a bunch of âoepower seekingâ robots.
Dude, paranoia just leads to unhappiness with life!
Slashdot Mirror
Except that diverting an asteroid from hitting Earth isn't really NASA's area of expertise.
The response for such a threat would involve nuclear missiles almost certainly delivered by existing (or modifications of) ICBM rockets and infastructure.
In reality, the source code for Windows 2000 is pretty widely available.
Indeed, video posters using infa-red to detect when someone's nearby have been around for ages.
The difference here is simply that someone used the "camera" word when describing this system and that's got the tinfoil-hat crowd jumping up and down.
Of course!
Such billboards are in that movie Minority Report!
So if the billboards from that movie come true, everything else from it must also come true! ...regardless of how many laws of physics the movie broke.
Please keep in mind that movies aren't prophecies spat out by burning bushes, they are just entertaining works of fiction.
With its ridiculously high crime and murder rates, I'm so very glad I don't live in the USA either.
Indeed, this has to be one of the MOST useless summaries I've read on Slashdot.
The quoted part of the article simply describes the basics of any "cyber police force" and has nothing to do with the "remote searches" the story is supposedly about.
I mean a report that the EU's cyber police-force's aim is to "combat the growth in cyber theft and the machines used to spread spam and other malicious programs" doesn't exactly come as much of a surprise!
I would have to agree that the Oyster card has all-in-all been a success. I used to live in London in the late 90's and at peak times you would have 20-person queues at each barrier-gate as the millions of people who use the "tube" daily tried to insert their paper card in the the narrow slit.
Using the tube on recent holiday to the U.K. I noticed things certainly seemed to go smoother with the majority of people swiping a card above a sensor at much greater speed than previously.
This is an example of technology making things easier and more efficient for the end-user. Exactly what technology should do.
I've always thought the Cold War was more of a media thing than anything else. Warning about an imminent threat of nuclear war is obviously a darn good way of getting people to buy your newspaper or watch your TV news program - and not to mention getting people to vote for you (and conversely, telling people not to panic is nearly always a big vote loser).
In reality, there were some disagreements and various localized conflicts (predominantly in 3rd world countries, just like we have today) but compared to the landscape leading up to the first two world wars, it was all (comparatively) pretty trivial stuff really.
"or maybe you already know and are just a laque of the European commission..."
Although I'm not quite sure what a 'laque' is, you should know that the immediate presumption that anyone who disputes your cries of conspiracy, is involved in the conspiracy; is a common sign of paranoid skyzophrenia.
The fact remains though: ones a treay, ones a constitution. The difference is pretty obvious.
Except that the Lisbon treay is a treay and the EU constitution was a constitution. There's a pretty big difference, you know.
Treaties, like most legal documents, are always difficult to read. They have to be, as "easy to read" almost always equates to "vague" - not something you want in law!
Try reading the original Treaty of Maastricht if you want a challlenging document. That little bueaty is the source of many 2nd year law students' nightmares.
Left / Right politics is a complete falsity invented by news corps wanting to bring quick summaries of news to the largely uninformed viewer.
To imply all politics - and therefore all ideas - can be polarized into two camps is utterly absurd. Just because someone or some party has view X on say fiscal policy, in no way implies view X on foreign policy or the enviroment or adherence to any religous/cultural conventions etc.
In this country, the Republicans generally favor lower taxes/public spending along with closer adherence to Christian principles; wheras in many countries, the exact opposite is the case (i.e. the party favoring higher taxes/public spending favor conservative principles).
Further more, countries like North Korea and the USSR get highlighted as "left-wing" for no particular reason other than equating left-wing to socialism. However this makes no sense as many European countries (the Scandanavian ones in particular) have far more socialist policies in many various areas (social security, healthcare, schooling etc.) than the USSR, North Korea or China ever had, whilst have more "right wing" policies in other areas (free-market economies, private land ownership etc.).
I know it might exclude from the political process a few people who struggle to ignite enough brain cells to hold more than one idea in their head, but can we please drop the meaningless - and often very misleading - left vs right nonsense.
"Obama was hitting themes that struck a chord with Americans."
Whilst I'm one of the many he "struck a chord with", it was obvious the whole way through (even in the primaries) he was getting more favorable media coverage and I really don't think striking a chord can explain it all. In every election, one party will strike more of a chord with the public and hence that party wins (leaving the 2000 elections aside), it's bascially the definition of an election.
Never before in recent times though has almost the entire media spectrum been so one-sided in it's coverage. Clearly, there was far more than "striking a chord" going on.
As a democrat voter, I'm glad it turned out like it did, but the bias of the coverage ws pretty impossible to ignore.
"either don't care about or don't remember such things when they get to vote"
I think it's the former. The majority of the UK public generally call for more of such protections, along with increased CCTV and use of DNA evidence.
A lot of people simply disagree with the assertion that these things "reduce their freedom".
Most people are A LOT more concerned about things like the economy where Labour are doing well politically, as evidenced by their recent Scottish local election win.
"Science can't prove that god exists, or that it doesn't exist."
It only can't prove god doesn't exist because proving a negative is extremely difficult. It's like trying to prove Superman or the Tooth Fairy doesn't exist.
That's what reading a "newspaper" like the Daily Mail will do to you. If you read tomorrow's copy you'll find out it's all 100% due to immigrants, the EU and Gordon Brown (who "according to a source", was seen carrying out the stabbings himself).
In reality though, looking at the police stats, there's actually only been a single 14 year-old (and no one younger) who's been murdered this year in the UK. There was a clump of teen stabbings in London at the start of the year but this has reversed to actually being slightly below average over the year.
The murder rate in the UK currently stands at 1.4 per 100,000 which is only about 1/4 the US murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000 (which itself is extremely low by historical standards).
So clearly the actual statistics and reality aren't coming out in the media. My problem with this is that it's pretty hard for a rational and correct solution to be engineered when everyone's being told irrational scare stories everyday by newspapers with a clear finnancially vested interest in exaggerating facts.
That car is crazy!
The underwater car, gadget 2 in TFA, was the one I always wanted. Unfortunately I do not know of such a car ever being made, there's been a few amphibious cars but I've never heard of a car which can actually turn into a mini-sub underwater.
I guess the lack of oxygen would be a slight problem for any combustion-based vehicle, maybe Bond's car was electric?
Whilst I agree with what you say (especially the last paragraph) and do also find it ironic that Mccain talks about him when - as you point out - it seems he would actually do better under Obama's tax plan, not Mccain's. But I do take issue with one point you, and many media commentators have made:
His middle name is Joseph, so I think it's fair enough for him to call himself 'Joe'. I know lots of people who go by their middle names, there's nothing wrong with that. But I guess really that is a pretty trivial point compared to the others mentioned.
The situation isn't anywhere near as simple as "we have X resources to distribute amongst Y patients".
If a known high cancer risk for a specific type of cancer (especially rarer ones) means that that person gets regular screening then if the cancer does develop it can be treated earlier and at far lower total cost then waiting till symptoms develop which by that stage often necessitates some type of Chemotherapy/Radiotherapy and long stays in hosptial, expensive drugs, loads of paperwork etc.
Far cheaper for both individuals and society if genetic predispositions are known and treatment can be tailored spcifically. This is not compatible with our current free market healthcare system which sees us with terrible disease & cancer survival rates compared with the rest of the developed world even though we pay the highest healthcare costs in the world.
That's just the product of the completely screwed-up health system we have here.
If someone has an increased risk of a type of cancer then of course they and their healthcare provider should know about it. The person can then receive regular screening tests so if cancer does develop, it can be treated early.
Not only is this far obviously far better & safer for the patient but the total cost to the provider of treating the patient is thereby massively reduced as early intervention is almost always far, far cheaper than late intervention.
Having private companies choose on a commercial basis who to cover has created all this absurd ineffiency and often completely idiotic situations like it being better to not know if you have a high cancer risk because it will mean if you do you can't get treated.
Nah, Heat have all the exclusive photos for this collision.
"to stall for 6 months"
I think it needs pointing out though that the LHC was always going to be shutdown over the next few months as a planned contigency period in-case of even bigger faults occuring then the one which did (or construction being delayed as was widely expected).
The real experiments will be occuring by mid-2009.
It's a basic "trueism" of civil engineering that when you up the scale, you inevitably up the risks. Every little component which itself has a small risk of failure often adds ontop of each other, ultimately give a far greater risk of failure (or at least construction delays/setbacks). The technology may be sound at one scale, but that doesn't mean getting it to work on a bigger scale isn't difficult and doesn't present new problems.
This area of the LHC was always a major challenge. I just hope they can overcome this problem (as appears to be the case) but more importantly that the measures taken to prevent future faults work as planned.
You should put the spliff down mate, I think you've had enough.
What a load of vague, existential rubbish. Come on dude, step back into the real world and leave the whole "evil cliché â(TM)power seekerâ(TM) villains are trying to secretly takeover the world and enslave everyone" theme for movies.
The Government make laws they think will keep them elected. How is Jacqui Smith going to subjugate humanity if she's not even Home Secretary in two years time? Oh, that's right, maybe the "power seekers" have already got to her and are enticing her to bring in laws she doesn't actually think will help Labour in the polls.
Wait, maybe the Home Secretary isn't even human anymore? Maybe your mind has already been transferred to some sort of virtually reality world while your body is used to generate electricity for a bunch of âoepower seekingâ robots.
Dude, paranoia just leads to unhappiness with life!