The article was poor, but the summary on/. was retarded. It didn't took a bad article, misunderstood it, spun it in a way seemingly designed to misdirect attention, and failed to convey the important information.
The bottom line is - Linus (or possibly an Australian LUG, the article wasn't entirely clear) was afraid that someone might trademark Linux and do Bad Things with it. So they initiated an attempt to trademark it for themselves, and the relevent authority told them not to be silly, the term was clearly generic.
This is great. First, it's a sign of sanity - all too rare in government bodies in charge of intellectual property protection. Second - it's ten times better for the term to be un-trademarkable than for it to be trademarked, even in the hands of someone theoretically trustworthy.
So, to sum up: 1) You can't trademark the term Linux in Australia. 2) This is a good thing.
"The average water level in this region has risen significantly over the last century, due to increased global temperatures."
...
No you idiot! The damn area is a bloody tidal delta. Water levels have risen in the region (to the extent that they have; the stupid place has been flooding since they built it) is because the bits of it that aren't bloody sinking into the bloody sea are eroding, mainly due to stupid efforts to prevent the floods. Some areas are...what, 7 feet under sea level? If global warming had caused the sea to rise 7 feet, it'd be a WEE BIT OBVIOUS.
Every year they have to build the levees up (and not by small amounts either) because they're sinking into the delta. Global warming, worst case, is causing an infintesamal fraction of that.
Hint: Venice isn't proof of global warming either.
First, a nitpick - the US president can agree all he wants (and a previous president did so), but US president has sharply limited powers. UK Prime Ministers, by contrast, have almost unlimited domestic power, so I understand how this could be confusing. In the US, Kyoto would require the agreement of both Congress and the president - and the last time anyone bothered to ask the senate, they voted unanimously against it (if memory serves, they felt it might harm the US economy, which was, it seems, unaceptable). Don't hold your breath waiting for them to change their minds.
Addressing your actual point, I'm somewhat curious as to how you think the Kyoto agreement would help. Supporters estimate that it would delay the warming by 6 years. In other words, the temperatures we would otherwise experience in 2100 would instead be felt in 2106. There is a strong theoretical link (even if the empirical data is so far pretty patchy) between a warming planet and stronger hurricanes, so we can probably assume that this means that the hurricanes we would otherwise experience in 2100 will occur in 2106 instead.
Given this...how would this help? Given just how long a timescale we're talking about, I'm not quite sure I see how an extra 6 years to build levees would really help. Sure a big construction project takes 20-30 years, but it'll be that long before the impact of Kyoto on sea temperature could even be measured (we're talking about very small fractions of a degree per year, after all).
A $100 billion dollars would certainly pay for a LOT of levees, prepositioned supplies, shelters, and transportation for people without cars. It's certainly cheaper to prepare for hurricanes than to ignore them. (It might also be cheaper to prevent hurricanes than to prepare for them, although I find this unlikely.)
The problem is to find a way to actually spend $100 billion on those sorts of things. Congress keeps trying, but somehow (really mysterious, this) the money keeps ending up getting spent on bridges to uninhabited islands and repaving the Robert C. Byrd Memorial Parking Lot (otherwise known as the state of West Virgina). I must admit to being a wee bit hazy on how one might get some effective spending (on preperation OR prevention) through Congress as things stand.
That's easy enough if you care; use a fully switched network, keep a record of "authorized" desktop MAC addresses, and use port level security so that every port will only talk to the "expected" MAC address. In other words, any given port will work with the expected desktop only, anything else is locked out. This is actually a good idea for all sorts of reasons, but would certainly solve your issue. (Of course, the user could spoof the MAC address, but this is probably far beyond the abilities of most users.) Keeping the system running smoothing would be a pain until you trained everyone to notify the network admins whenever people changed offices, but that shouldn't be too difficult.
Hmm, ideally you could do some really nifty stuff by sorting packets dynamically onto different (firewalled) networks based on MAC address. Keep a list of trusted desktops (which go onto the "real" network), semi-trusted laptops (which go onto a special firewalled network). Anything else gets locked down so all they can access is a webserver with contact details for the net admin.:-) (Wouldn't surprise me if there was an off-the-shelf solution that did this, actually, but if so I haven't heard of it.)
The lesson here? Not that producers gain pricing power when capacity is close to demand (an idea which doesn't even make sense if you think about it for a second, and for which there isn't the slightest evidence). The real lesson is that local elections matter.
The reason Shell has any pricing power at all is that state and local government has given it to them. They have done this by ensuring that refineries are a very very valuable and very very limited resource. It's been 70 years since the last refinery was built in California and 30 years since the last refinery was built in the US. Demand has increased a hell of a lot in 70 years, but the refining capacity has not. It's got so bad that the US imports about 10% of the gasoline it uses!
Now, who benefits from this? You? Bzzzz. Not unless you get a warm and tingly feeling from paying higher than normal prices due to a collusive olligopoly. Shell? Bingo! Owners of refineries (of which there are a remarkably small number) are quite happy with laws which (for the best of reasons, protecting the environment, thinking of the children, etc.) make their refineries rarer and more valuable. For a somewhat/.ish analogy, it's a lot like Microsoft's opinion of software pirates. Microsoft is a very strong supporter of intellectual property laws, because they benefit hugely from them. Shell (surprise!) has been a big backer of environmental regulations in recent years. Especially those sorts of regulations which make their infrastructure more valuable, limit competitors, and otherwise keep the industry a nice quiet cosy olligopoly.
And, let's see, if we google around, what do we see? The consumer advocacy group (Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights) currently fighting the oil refiners notes that "...much of the hardships created by California's refinery rules came at the urging of the major oil companies, not the environmental groups blamed by the industry."
Shocking. Next you'll tell me that the Mickey Mouse Protection Act....er, sorry, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act actually was the brainchild of the RIAA, Disney Corporation, and the entertainment industry, and not, as I've been led to believe, an sterling example of our congressmen acting to protect consumers!
Of course, unlike copyright law, a good chunk of the laws protection Shell from competition are passed at the local level - which means you actually have a chance of helping get Shell some competition. Small, I know, but the FTCR guys kept the refinery open. Why not try and get a new one open?
(Note to mods - yeah, I know, this is offtopic. Bite me, this is a lot closer to "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters" then a poorly-researched sob story about the falling stock price of one online poker operator.)
Don't forget, the official (the ONLY official) way to get patches for World of Warcraft is via BitTorrent.
BitTorrent has significant legitimate real-world applications (unlike pretty much all the other p2p technologies, where such applications tended to be theoretical).
You are quite correct that the social conservative wing of the Republicans are profoundly not classically liberal, but neither are the Democrats. To pick an example:
The more "conservative" Republicans wish to ammend the constitution to make same-sex marriage illegal.
The more "liberal" Democrats wish to ammend to constitution to make same-sex marriage legal.
The true classical liberals wonder why the government is getting involved in religion at all. What next, FDA rules requiring everyone to follow (or not follow) the dietary requirements of certain religions?
To put it more generally, I think the problem is your trying to make sense of politics in terms of a single left/right axis. If you assume that the oppositite of "conservative" is "liberal", and that the Republicans are "conservative", then if the Democratis oppose a Republican policy, then this must make them "liberal". The problem is that this isn't really so. Politics isn't a small narrow strip of land, but a vast territory.
Incidentally, several countries in Europe have banned the display of religious symbols, such as crosses, stars of David, or headscarves. Would you deem this policy "liberal", "conservative", or something else? For my money, it's deeply illiberal, but by no stretch of the imagination would I deem it conservative.
John Stuart Mill said that "If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind." That, in my view, is a core value of liberalism. He also said that "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant." - also, in my view, a core value.
However, looking around at both the Republicans and Democrats, neither seems to be very serious about free speech, the Democrats wish to excersise government power for people's own physical good, and the Republicans wish to excersise government power for people's own moral good. Therefore, whatever philosiphy either party may claim to champion, it isn't liberalism (or, at a minimum, isn't classical liberalism).
Actually, I agree completely. "Liberal" (much like "conservative"), isn't really a political term at all, but a philisophical one. By contrast, "left wing" and "right wing" are political terms. The confusion comes when people use philisophical terms to refer to whatever misbegoten stew of policies their political party of choice is serving up at the moment. It tends to flatter the policies of the party, but it makes it rather more difficult to have meaningful discussions about them...
No i think liberal means the same thing pretty much everywhere..
You sadden me. There are two (2) diverging branches of liberalism. In most of Europe and Britain, the term "liberal" is usually assumed to refer to the original branch (usually called "classical liberals"), in most of the US, the term "liberal" is usually assumed to refer to the much more recent "social liberalism" branch).
All "serious" US parties have at least a tiny amount of "classical liberal" in their genetic makeup, but the Greens have almost none, the Democrats only a small amount, the Republicans a fair bit (particularly on economic matters), and the Libertarians are almost pure classical liberals.
The order is reversed if we look at "social liberal" principles - the Libertarians have almost none, and the Greens think about little else.
For most Europeans, the only true, solid "liberal" party in the US is the Libertarians, Britain has no "liberal" party, Germany has the Free Democrats, New Zealand has the ACT, and so on. (Note, incidentally, that all those parties are rabidly free-market, and usually favor a flat income tax - core ideas for classical liberals, heresy to US-style "liberals".)
For most Americans, the only true, solid "liberal" party in the US is the Greens, Labor in Britain, or any of several parties in Germany or Britain.
If you're interested in classical liberalism, check out John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" - a great book which pretty much defines classical liberalism, but has very little to do with the modern Democratic party - because the modern Democratic party simply isn't classically liberal. Also check out this page for a decent discussion and more background.
(Mind you, I think both threads could probably agree that Putin is bad, but if the original author was European, he was probably thinking of views that in the US are popularly called libertarian.)
Must not respond to the trolls, must not...oh what the hell.
With the OSI approving Sun's non-free licenses; it sure seems like they're little more than a shill of businesses trying to divide and conqer the open source community.
You do realize that FSF itself calls the Sun license free?
In fact, most scientific work is what Thomas Kuhn calls "normal science"
Of course - most science is normal science. But the important bits, in my view, are not normal science at all.
Oddly enough, I almost cited Thomas Kuhn in support of my point in my last post. His concept of paradigm shifts is exactly what I was talking about. I'm a little bit surprised that you'd cite him. Not everyone agrees with Kuhn; I had assumed you to be one of them.:-)
Of course, I don't think we disagree by much - more a question of tradeoffs. The only thing I'd really disagree with is your opinion of citation counts, which I don't really think a lot of. They're particularly awful in the social sciences and humanities where some refereed journals will publish almost anything, the peer review process is a joke, and cults of personality are omnipresent. Further, since there's little way of measuring objective truth in those disciplines, they tend to be given a lot of weight. In the harder sciences, they aren't so bad. The peer review process is still badly broken though - Nature has been burnt a couple times recently over politically correct papers which shouldn't have passed peer review, if I recall correctly.
Hmm. Maybe if journalists would just get in the habit of always tacking on some form of citation count every time they mention a scientists name (a lot like they do now with politicians and their party and state)? Couldn't hurt, might help. (Of course, no chance of it happening, I fear.)
Actually, it doesn't take any special expertise. It's not hard to survey scientific opinion, because good scientists publish, and get cited by other scientists. The best scientists get cited a lot.
Your right that this isn't hard to do this - but your missing the point that science isn't about consensus, and truth has nothing to do with popularity contests.
Pretty much everything which is scientifically orthodox today was, at one time, a heretical afront to established wisdom (and established wisdom is exactly what a citation count will give you). Now, here's a question for you - how much of what is today orthodox will be laughed at in 20 years? And by how many years will that happy day be delayed if no view which is not orthodox can gain attention?
In university research labs, there is already a major problem in that the orthodox views get the funding, and the unorthodox views get mocked and excluded. Most (hell, almost every time) the "lunatic" with a "crackpot" theory is, in fact...a lunatic with a crackpot theory. Sometimes, rarerly...he isn't. Ink is cheap, getting the view of all sides won't hurt - and if the view really is nuts, it's very helpful to publicize the view so it can be laughed at (or if its nuts enough, looked at it horror). Example - please fill in the following as appropriate:
The [Democrats|Republicans] have some associated fringe groups whose views would horrify all [god-fearing people|progressive people] to such an extent that had they received more publicity, the last election would have gone to [Bush|Kerry] by a 20 point margin! If they would just get more airtime, nobody would vote for those dirty [Commies|Rednecks]!
(Note for humor impaired - joke!)
On a more serious note, others in this debate have already pointed towards Crichton's attack on consensus science. I prefer John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Both make similar points, and have relevance, I think, regardless of which side of the various debates you fall on.
A lot of people seem to be missing the real problem here. Let's say journalists only report one side - which would, of course, be the "right" side. Except...right according to whom? The journalist who is NOT trained in the field (or they'd be working in a lab, not a newsroom)? The large corporation whom the journalist works for? An opinion poll of some group? The say-so of a government agency (and isn't THAT a scary thought!)? Who?
When people complain about a journalist presenting two sides of a debate, what they want is for the journalist to pick just one side, AND for it to be the side they agree with. This just isn't always going to happen.
Having a journalist give equal weight to some fringe view is frustrating, but if it annoys you, just remember - it's pretty much a given that something you believe very strongly is a fringe view to someone. (Such as open source/free software, which outside of/. isn't exactly mainstream, you know...)
Still not convinced? Okay, imagine that a journalist does an article on something you have no real clue about. Maybe something about the economy, or south american politics, or chinese military power, or whatever. Assume they report one view. Quick! Is that a mainstream view, or is the reporter feeding you some fringe view? How could you possibly know? If the reporter gives two opposing views, well, you still don't know which is "mainstream" (whatever the hell that means), but at least you know that debate exists, you can go look the details up, and then wonder why the reporter even included one of those views. It's not perfect, but it's better than getting a monoculture rammed down your throat.
Speaking of which - Fox tends to have a pretty poor reputation around here, at least partly because they don't bother with the "he said/she said" school as much as other broadcasters do. Instead, they present what they thing is "right". Which is fine - but...doesn't look so nifty when you don't agree with the reporters definition of "right", does it?
Just what the world needed, another programming language.
Also...assuming you do feel that the VB.NET syntax is awful (and it's really pretty decent), and so aren't satisfied with current mono efforts to port VB.NET, I still don't see why you wouldn't have your new language compile to the mono runtime. The benefits would be substantial, and I don't see a drawback. It's free, opensource, and you can leverage a BIG chunk of pre-existing code and infrastructure. But if I read the FAQ right, not only is Gambas not based on mono, the author says it will never be. Why not?
On the other hand, hey, it's his project, he can write what he wants, and maybe he just wanted to do the whole thing from scratch. That being said, I'm just not seeing a compelling incentive here for anyone to use it. Anyone want to point out something I'm missing? The world is hardly short of languages right now.
I mean, even if I had some powerful urge to use a basic syntax on linux (which seems pretty deviant, frankly), I'd just hold out for the mono port of vb.net to get to a usable level.:-)
'course, regardless of the fact that I have no use for it, and I doubt very many other people will...dude! He wrote a programming language! Mad props.
Until and unless we have universal ID numbers (and I hope we never do have them, for various reasons), we use names to identify people. Now, the problem with names is that they're not a 1:1 mapping. John Smith may have other names - and more to the point, there are many John Smiths in the US.
Now, the point of the watch list is that you put the name of someone your looking for on it. This will allow you to find the person your looking for, should they travel, but it also will match everyone else with the same name when they travel. The system gets false-positives by design.
Everyone involved knows perfectly well that when you add the name John Smith (or T Kennedy, as the case may be), you're effectively flagging hundreds of perfectly innocent people along with the one person your actually interested in. That's a given from the moment you put the name on the list.
Now, if an innocent John Smith flies, and is flagged, and then complains, that isn't in any way, shape, or form a reason to take John Smith off the list. You knew when you put the name on there that there were innocent people with the same name. Equally, the fact that one of those innocent people has now complained adds zero new bits of data about whether the name should or should not be on the list.
The fact that Lewis's name is on the list doesn't mean that anyone thinks Representitive Lewis may be a security risk - and the fact that he is, presumably, not a security risk does not mean that the name shouldn't be on the list.
If your going to have watch lists at all (and I question whether they're really useful), then removing a name because someone who shares it complains is a profoundly stupid idea. If you're willing to remove the name without uncovering any new data, you should never have put the name on the list to start with.
Now, if we had universal unqiue ID numbers, the situation would be different. We'd no longer get any false positives unless the info was wrong, and if your ID number did get on the list, and you wearn't a threat, then of course it should be removed. But when we use names, that is NOT the case, and I find it most annoying to see our elected representitives attempting to pull strings in a fashion which decreases security. Well, decreases security if you accept the premise of watch lists at all. But if you don't think they add to security, the correct response isn't to try and pull strings to get your name off, its to legislate a better solution.
Of course, if you'd actually read the article, you'd see that it argues that spectrum should NOT be auctioned off, and that while RF may be a limited resource, it is not a scarce resource.
But hey, this is slashdot - why would anyone assume a poster had read the article?
Oh, BTW - electricity markets actually work pretty well. Your probably thinking of California's problems, which had nothing to do with "electricity auctions", and very little to do with "markets", in any meaningful sense of the word.
In any case, electricity is a vastly different sort of good than spectrum (it's just a wee bit tricky to store, transport, or generate spectrum), and if you're looking for a reason to avoid spectrum auctions, you don't have to go any further afield than...spectrum auctions! Recent auctions have been quite messy enough to justify looking for saner solutions than privitization - which, of course, the article does.
But then, you already know that, since you read the article...
Gee, another moron on Slashdot who didn't read the actual article? What a surprise! Let me guess, you were too busy "reading between the lines" to actually, you know, read the lines?
Reality check - The Economist explicitly argues AGAINST privatisation as a solution. My, how "fundamentalist"...
Kilograms are a measure of mass. There's various ways of defining the concept of mass, but you might say that it's the ratio between the force applied to an object, and the acceleration that results. My dictionary calls it:
A property of matter equal to the measure of an object's resistance to changes in either the speed or direction of its motion.
Which is fair enough. On the other hand, weight is actually a name for force. In particular, Force = Mass x Acceleration, and we call weight the force which is the product of acceleration due to gravity. An object with zero mass will have zero force at any acceleration (ignoring, for the moment, quantum physics and relatavistic effects), and an object under zero acceleration must have zero net force applied to it, regardless of its mass.
On the surface of the Earth, you are being accelerated downwards at about 9.8 m/s^2, so if you mass 100kg, your weight is 980 newtons (which is the force required to accelerate a mass of 1kg by 1 m/s^2, and is abreviated as N in the SI system). Your mass is 100kg, your weight is 980 N - saying you "weigh" 100kg is meaningless, although if you assume the person is accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2, you can make a good guess as to what their weight actually is.:-)
Another common misuse of the unit is the claim that 1kg = 2.2 pounds. Since pounds are a measure of force, and kilograms are a measure of mass, this conversion is only true on the surface of the Earth - it's incorrect for pretty much anywhere else. The actual correct conversion would be between kilograms and slugs (which is actually the US customary unit for mass, and is the mass which one pound of force would accelerate at 1 foot/s^2), and between newtons and pounds.
For the curious:
1kg = 0.06852 slugs. 1 N = 0.2248 pounds.
And on the surface of the Earth (or anywhere else accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2, or 32 feet/s^2):
1kg = 0.1020 N 1 slug = 0.03125 pounds
Of course, in the real world, everyone is on the surface of the earth, and people who use the metric system use kilograms (a measure of mass) for both mass and force. On the other hand, people who use the US customary system use pounds (a measure of force) for both force and mass, so maybe it evens out.:-) Nonetheless, unless you assume that the speaker is accelerating at some known acceleration, saying you weigh 100kg is a bit like saying you mass 3 seconds, or that your temperature is 12 meters - meaningless.
(Note: I'm not entirerly confident of the metric to customary conversions, please double check if your using these numbers to build spacecraft.)
The IEC isn't universal? Perhaps, but neither is the ISO.:-) Further, IIRC, the IEC wrote the initial SI standard, and it may have slipped your notice, but we're talking about computers, which is definetly an elec eng topic - and as you yourself state, the IEC is definetly a relevant body for elec eng.
Further, the IEEE (a very relevent body for this topic) has decided that kilo, mega, etc. always and everywhere refer to their base-10 meanings - even if you're talking about bits and bytes, if you are referring to the base-2 meaning, you must explicitly state this on a case by case basis.
Further, the IEC standard has recently been submitted to the IEEE (and also to the ISO, although it's not really their area), and is currently being tested as a "trial-use standard" by the IEEE, and is expected to be officially adopted by it sometime next year.
There is no standard anywhere which defines kilo as 2^10. Kilo, as an SI prefix, is defined to be 10^3. The only prefix defined as 2^10 is Kibi. Well, as far as I'm aware, anyhow. But since the ISO, IEEE, and IEC (which in turn in an umbrella group for the various national standards bodies like ANSI, etc.) all agree on what kilo does and does not mean (and the only groups with an opinion agree on Kibi, I think we're running out of standards groups. If you know of a standard that defines kilo as 2^10, please cite.:-)
None of which, of course, changes the fact that Joe User uses "megabyte" all the time to refer to 1,048,576 bytes, but since hard disk makers have already switched to calling 10^9 bytes a terabyte, I don't see how using the base-2 prefixes can increase the anger and frustration.:-) (And lets not even talk about floppy disks, where 1.44M = 2^10 * 10^3 bytes...)
Ah... Did anyone ever claim the Challenger disaster had anything to do with metric units? Before my time, really, but I hadn't thought anyone had claimed the O-ring problems were caused by metric conversions.
In any case, I was thinking of the Mars Climate Orbiter, which AFAIK was indeed a victim of metric mishaps. Of course, the Mars Climate Orbiter wasn't a launch vehicle, I mererly called it that because...uh... as an intelligence test! Yes, that's it... *cough*
The standard prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc. mean the exact same thing when applied to ANY measure. That's the entire point of a standard, and the standard says 10^3, 10^6, 10^9, and 10^12, respectively.
The standard prefixes kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, etc. mean the exact same thing when applied to ANY measure. That's the entire point of a standard, and the standard says 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, and 2^40, respectively.
To be clear - the value of the SI prefixes do NOT change, no matter what you happen to be measuring. Thats the entire point of the SI system, for crying out loud! People may misuse the units (for example, I've heard people expressing their weight in kilograms, which is obviously absurd), and if you want to communicate with them, you may want to misuse the units in the same fashion, but it doesn't make them RIGHT.
<gratuitous flamage> Let's see - you're arguing that a unit system which is bizarre, contradictory, outdated, and confusing even to its adherents is good, because it sort of mostly works, despite the fact that there is a better and clearer alternative.
Tell me, what's the weather like in your part of the US? Managed to blow up any launch vehicles recently?:-) </gratuitous flamage>
The table tag is ALSO deprecated, and being phased out, and for exactly that reason. You're still missing the point.
HTML describes the meaning of a stream of text. This chunk is a paragraph, this chunk is a title, this chunk is another paragraph, this chunk is important. HTML does not (or should not) give directives, because it is NOT a programming language. Its up to the browser to decide how to render various types of data - titles should be larger maybe, or a different color, or spoken in a different voice, or emphasised by a sudden smell of violets - whatever the browser/user wants.
To be perfectly clear - HTML does NOT instruct an interpreter to perform actions. The browser is not an interpreter (not of HTML, anyhow), and in any case does not receive "instructions" from HTML code. Some HTML tags do exist (font, b, table) which issue explicit instructions, but these are seen as mistakes, and deprecated.
Slashdot Mirror
*DESPITE* it being on Reuters?
:-/
How about, BECAUSE?
I mean, this *IS* Reuters we're talking about here.
The article was poor, but the summary on /. was retarded. It didn't took a bad article, misunderstood it, spun it in a way seemingly designed to misdirect attention, and failed to convey the important information.
The bottom line is - Linus (or possibly an Australian LUG, the article wasn't entirely clear) was afraid that someone might trademark Linux and do Bad Things with it. So they initiated an attempt to trademark it for themselves, and the relevent authority told them not to be silly, the term was clearly generic.
This is great. First, it's a sign of sanity - all too rare in government bodies in charge of intellectual property protection. Second - it's ten times better for the term to be un-trademarkable than for it to be trademarked, even in the hands of someone theoretically trustworthy.
So, to sum up: 1) You can't trademark the term Linux in Australia. 2) This is a good thing.
No you idiot! The damn area is a bloody tidal delta. Water levels have risen in the region (to the extent that they have; the stupid place has been flooding since they built it) is because the bits of it that aren't bloody sinking into the bloody sea are eroding, mainly due to stupid efforts to prevent the floods. Some areas are...what, 7 feet under sea level? If global warming had caused the sea to rise 7 feet, it'd be a WEE BIT OBVIOUS.
Every year they have to build the levees up (and not by small amounts either) because they're sinking into the delta. Global warming, worst case, is causing an infintesamal fraction of that.
Hint: Venice isn't proof of global warming either.
First, a nitpick - the US president can agree all he wants (and a previous president did so), but US president has sharply limited powers. UK Prime Ministers, by contrast, have almost unlimited domestic power, so I understand how this could be confusing. In the US, Kyoto would require the agreement of both Congress and the president - and the last time anyone bothered to ask the senate, they voted unanimously against it (if memory serves, they felt it might harm the US economy, which was, it seems, unaceptable). Don't hold your breath waiting for them to change their minds.
Addressing your actual point, I'm somewhat curious as to how you think the Kyoto agreement would help. Supporters estimate that it would delay the warming by 6 years. In other words, the temperatures we would otherwise experience in 2100 would instead be felt in 2106. There is a strong theoretical link (even if the empirical data is so far pretty patchy) between a warming planet and stronger hurricanes, so we can probably assume that this means that the hurricanes we would otherwise experience in 2100 will occur in 2106 instead.
Given this...how would this help? Given just how long a timescale we're talking about, I'm not quite sure I see how an extra 6 years to build levees would really help. Sure a big construction project takes 20-30 years, but it'll be that long before the impact of Kyoto on sea temperature could even be measured (we're talking about very small fractions of a degree per year, after all).
A $100 billion dollars would certainly pay for a LOT of levees, prepositioned supplies, shelters, and transportation for people without cars. It's certainly cheaper to prepare for hurricanes than to ignore them. (It might also be cheaper to prevent hurricanes than to prepare for them, although I find this unlikely.)
The problem is to find a way to actually spend $100 billion on those sorts of things. Congress keeps trying, but somehow (really mysterious, this) the money keeps ending up getting spent on bridges to uninhabited islands and repaving the Robert C. Byrd Memorial Parking Lot (otherwise known as the state of West Virgina). I must admit to being a wee bit hazy on how one might get some effective spending (on preperation OR prevention) through Congress as things stand.
That's easy enough if you care; use a fully switched network, keep a record of "authorized" desktop MAC addresses, and use port level security so that every port will only talk to the "expected" MAC address. In other words, any given port will work with the expected desktop only, anything else is locked out. This is actually a good idea for all sorts of reasons, but would certainly solve your issue. (Of course, the user could spoof the MAC address, but this is probably far beyond the abilities of most users.) Keeping the system running smoothing would be a pain until you trained everyone to notify the network admins whenever people changed offices, but that shouldn't be too difficult.
:-) (Wouldn't surprise me if there was an off-the-shelf solution that did this, actually, but if so I haven't heard of it.)
Hmm, ideally you could do some really nifty stuff by sorting packets dynamically onto different (firewalled) networks based on MAC address. Keep a list of trusted desktops (which go onto the "real" network), semi-trusted laptops (which go onto a special firewalled network). Anything else gets locked down so all they can access is a webserver with contact details for the net admin.
and useat the switch layer and only
The lesson here? Not that producers gain pricing power when capacity is close to demand (an idea which doesn't even make sense if you think about it for a second, and for which there isn't the slightest evidence). The real lesson is that local elections matter.
/.ish analogy, it's a lot like Microsoft's opinion of software pirates. Microsoft is a very strong supporter of intellectual property laws, because they benefit hugely from them. Shell (surprise!) has been a big backer of environmental regulations in recent years. Especially those sorts of regulations which make their infrastructure more valuable, limit competitors, and otherwise keep the industry a nice quiet cosy olligopoly.
The reason Shell has any pricing power at all is that state and local government has given it to them. They have done this by ensuring that refineries are a very very valuable and very very limited resource. It's been 70 years since the last refinery was built in California and 30 years since the last refinery was built in the US. Demand has increased a hell of a lot in 70 years, but the refining capacity has not. It's got so bad that the US imports about 10% of the gasoline it uses!
Now, who benefits from this? You? Bzzzz. Not unless you get a warm and tingly feeling from paying higher than normal prices due to a collusive olligopoly. Shell? Bingo! Owners of refineries (of which there are a remarkably small number) are quite happy with laws which (for the best of reasons, protecting the environment, thinking of the children, etc.) make their refineries rarer and more valuable. For a somewhat
And, let's see, if we google around, what do we see? The consumer advocacy group (Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights) currently fighting the oil refiners notes that "...much of the hardships created by California's refinery rules came at the urging of the major oil companies, not the environmental groups blamed by the industry."
Shocking. Next you'll tell me that the Mickey Mouse Protection Act....er, sorry, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act actually was the brainchild of the RIAA, Disney Corporation, and the entertainment industry, and not, as I've been led to believe, an sterling example of our congressmen acting to protect consumers!
Of course, unlike copyright law, a good chunk of the laws protection Shell from competition are passed at the local level - which means you actually have a chance of helping get Shell some competition. Small, I know, but the FTCR guys kept the refinery open. Why not try and get a new one open?
(Note to mods - yeah, I know, this is offtopic. Bite me, this is a lot closer to "news for nerds" or "stuff that matters" then a poorly-researched sob story about the falling stock price of one online poker operator.)
Don't forget, the official (the ONLY official) way to get patches for World of Warcraft is via BitTorrent.
BitTorrent has significant legitimate real-world applications (unlike pretty much all the other p2p technologies, where such applications tended to be theoretical).
To put it more generally, I think the problem is your trying to make sense of politics in terms of a single left/right axis. If you assume that the oppositite of "conservative" is "liberal", and that the Republicans are "conservative", then if the Democratis oppose a Republican policy, then this must make them "liberal". The problem is that this isn't really so. Politics isn't a small narrow strip of land, but a vast territory.
Incidentally, several countries in Europe have banned the display of religious symbols, such as crosses, stars of David, or headscarves. Would you deem this policy "liberal", "conservative", or something else? For my money, it's deeply illiberal, but by no stretch of the imagination would I deem it conservative.
John Stuart Mill said that "If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind." That, in my view, is a core value of liberalism. He also said that "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant." - also, in my view, a core value.
However, looking around at both the Republicans and Democrats, neither seems to be very serious about free speech, the Democrats wish to excersise government power for people's own physical good, and the Republicans wish to excersise government power for people's own moral good. Therefore, whatever philosiphy either party may claim to champion, it isn't liberalism (or, at a minimum, isn't classical liberalism).
Actually, I agree completely. "Liberal" (much like "conservative"), isn't really a political term at all, but a philisophical one. By contrast, "left wing" and "right wing" are political terms. The confusion comes when people use philisophical terms to refer to whatever misbegoten stew of policies their political party of choice is serving up at the moment. It tends to flatter the policies of the party, but it makes it rather more difficult to have meaningful discussions about them...
No i think liberal means the same thing pretty much everywhere..
You sadden me. There are two (2) diverging branches of liberalism. In most of Europe and Britain, the term "liberal" is usually assumed to refer to the original branch (usually called "classical liberals"), in most of the US, the term "liberal" is usually assumed to refer to the much more recent "social liberalism" branch).
All "serious" US parties have at least a tiny amount of "classical liberal" in their genetic makeup, but the Greens have almost none, the Democrats only a small amount, the Republicans a fair bit (particularly on economic matters), and the Libertarians are almost pure classical liberals.
The order is reversed if we look at "social liberal" principles - the Libertarians have almost none, and the Greens think about little else.
For most Europeans, the only true, solid "liberal" party in the US is the Libertarians, Britain has no "liberal" party, Germany has the Free Democrats, New Zealand has the ACT, and so on. (Note, incidentally, that all those parties are rabidly free-market, and usually favor a flat income tax - core ideas for classical liberals, heresy to US-style "liberals".)
For most Americans, the only true, solid "liberal" party in the US is the Greens, Labor in Britain, or any of several parties in Germany or Britain.
If you're interested in classical liberalism, check out John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" - a great book which pretty much defines classical liberalism, but has very little to do with the modern Democratic party - because the modern Democratic party simply isn't classically liberal. Also check out this page for a decent discussion and more background.
(Mind you, I think both threads could probably agree that Putin is bad, but if the original author was European, he was probably thinking of views that in the US are popularly called libertarian.)
You do realize that FSF itself calls the Sun license free?
kthxbye
Oddly enough, I almost cited Thomas Kuhn in support of my point in my last post. His concept of paradigm shifts is exactly what I was talking about. I'm a little bit surprised that you'd cite him. Not everyone agrees with Kuhn; I had assumed you to be one of them.
Of course, I don't think we disagree by much - more a question of tradeoffs. The only thing I'd really disagree with is your opinion of citation counts, which I don't really think a lot of. They're particularly awful in the social sciences and humanities where some refereed journals will publish almost anything, the peer review process is a joke, and cults of personality are omnipresent. Further, since there's little way of measuring objective truth in those disciplines, they tend to be given a lot of weight. In the harder sciences, they aren't so bad. The peer review process is still badly broken though - Nature has been burnt a couple times recently over politically correct papers which shouldn't have passed peer review, if I recall correctly.
Hmm. Maybe if journalists would just get in the habit of always tacking on some form of citation count every time they mention a scientists name (a lot like they do now with politicians and their party and state)? Couldn't hurt, might help. (Of course, no chance of it happening, I fear.)
Pretty much everything which is scientifically orthodox today was, at one time, a heretical afront to established wisdom (and established wisdom is exactly what a citation count will give you). Now, here's a question for you - how much of what is today orthodox will be laughed at in 20 years? And by how many years will that happy day be delayed if no view which is not orthodox can gain attention?
In university research labs, there is already a major problem in that the orthodox views get the funding, and the unorthodox views get mocked and excluded. Most (hell, almost every time) the "lunatic" with a "crackpot" theory is, in fact...a lunatic with a crackpot theory. Sometimes, rarerly...he isn't. Ink is cheap, getting the view of all sides won't hurt - and if the view really is nuts, it's very helpful to publicize the view so it can be laughed at (or if its nuts enough, looked at it horror). Example - please fill in the following as appropriate:
The [Democrats|Republicans] have some associated fringe groups whose views would horrify all [god-fearing people|progressive people] to such an extent that had they received more publicity, the last election would have gone to [Bush|Kerry] by a 20 point margin! If they would just get more airtime, nobody would vote for those dirty [Commies|Rednecks]!
(Note for humor impaired - joke!)
On a more serious note, others in this debate have already pointed towards Crichton's attack on consensus science. I prefer John Stuart Mill's On Liberty. Both make similar points, and have relevance, I think, regardless of which side of the various debates you fall on.
A lot of people seem to be missing the real problem here. Let's say journalists only report one side - which would, of course, be the "right" side. Except...right according to whom? The journalist who is NOT trained in the field (or they'd be working in a lab, not a newsroom)? The large corporation whom the journalist works for? An opinion poll of some group? The say-so of a government agency (and isn't THAT a scary thought!)? Who?
/. isn't exactly mainstream, you know...)
When people complain about a journalist presenting two sides of a debate, what they want is for the journalist to pick just one side, AND for it to be the side they agree with. This just isn't always going to happen.
Having a journalist give equal weight to some fringe view is frustrating, but if it annoys you, just remember - it's pretty much a given that something you believe very strongly is a fringe view to someone. (Such as open source/free software, which outside of
Still not convinced? Okay, imagine that a journalist does an article on something you have no real clue about. Maybe something about the economy, or south american politics, or chinese military power, or whatever. Assume they report one view. Quick! Is that a mainstream view, or is the reporter feeding you some fringe view? How could you possibly know? If the reporter gives two opposing views, well, you still don't know which is "mainstream" (whatever the hell that means), but at least you know that debate exists, you can go look the details up, and then wonder why the reporter even included one of those views. It's not perfect, but it's better than getting a monoculture rammed down your throat.
Speaking of which - Fox tends to have a pretty poor reputation around here, at least partly because they don't bother with the "he said/she said" school as much as other broadcasters do. Instead, they present what they thing is "right". Which is fine - but...doesn't look so nifty when you don't agree with the reporters definition of "right", does it?
Just what the world needed, another programming language.
:-)
Also...assuming you do feel that the VB.NET syntax is awful (and it's really pretty decent), and so aren't satisfied with current mono efforts to port VB.NET, I still don't see why you wouldn't have your new language compile to the mono runtime. The benefits would be substantial, and I don't see a drawback. It's free, opensource, and you can leverage a BIG chunk of pre-existing code and infrastructure. But if I read the FAQ right, not only is Gambas not based on mono, the author says it will never be. Why not?
On the other hand, hey, it's his project, he can write what he wants, and maybe he just wanted to do the whole thing from scratch. That being said, I'm just not seeing a compelling incentive here for anyone to use it. Anyone want to point out something I'm missing? The world is hardly short of languages right now.
I mean, even if I had some powerful urge to use a basic syntax on linux (which seems pretty deviant, frankly), I'd just hold out for the mono port of vb.net to get to a usable level.
'course, regardless of the fact that I have no use for it, and I doubt very many other people will...dude! He wrote a programming language! Mad props.
Couldn't they find any *good* sci-fi writers? Or even, maybe, some mediocre ones?
I guess I should give them a break, its obvious the organisers were focusing on ideology first, and writing ability last, but still!
Until and unless we have universal ID numbers (and I hope we never do have them, for various reasons), we use names to identify people. Now, the problem with names is that they're not a 1:1 mapping. John Smith may have other names - and more to the point, there are many John Smiths in the US.
Now, the point of the watch list is that you put the name of someone your looking for on it. This will allow you to find the person your looking for, should they travel, but it also will match everyone else with the same name when they travel. The system gets false-positives by design.
Everyone involved knows perfectly well that when you add the name John Smith (or T Kennedy, as the case may be), you're effectively flagging hundreds of perfectly innocent people along with the one person your actually interested in. That's a given from the moment you put the name on the list.
Now, if an innocent John Smith flies, and is flagged, and then complains, that isn't in any way, shape, or form a reason to take John Smith off the list. You knew when you put the name on there that there were innocent people with the same name. Equally, the fact that one of those innocent people has now complained adds zero new bits of data about whether the name should or should not be on the list.
The fact that Lewis's name is on the list doesn't mean that anyone thinks Representitive Lewis may be a security risk - and the fact that he is, presumably, not a security risk does not mean that the name shouldn't be on the list.
If your going to have watch lists at all (and I question whether they're really useful), then removing a name because someone who shares it complains is a profoundly stupid idea. If you're willing to remove the name without uncovering any new data, you should never have put the name on the list to start with.
Now, if we had universal unqiue ID numbers, the situation would be different. We'd no longer get any false positives unless the info was wrong, and if your ID number did get on the list, and you wearn't a threat, then of course it should be removed. But when we use names, that is NOT the case, and I find it most annoying to see our elected representitives attempting to pull strings in a fashion which decreases security. Well, decreases security if you accept the premise of watch lists at all. But if you don't think they add to security, the correct response isn't to try and pull strings to get your name off, its to legislate a better solution.
Of course, if you'd actually read the article, you'd see that it argues that spectrum should NOT be auctioned off, and that while RF may be a limited resource, it is not a scarce resource.
But hey, this is slashdot - why would anyone assume a poster had read the article?
Oh, BTW - electricity markets actually work pretty well. Your probably thinking of California's problems, which had nothing to do with "electricity auctions", and very little to do with "markets", in any meaningful sense of the word.
In any case, electricity is a vastly different sort of good than spectrum (it's just a wee bit tricky to store, transport, or generate spectrum), and if you're looking for a reason to avoid spectrum auctions, you don't have to go any further afield than...spectrum auctions! Recent auctions have been quite messy enough to justify looking for saner solutions than privitization - which, of course, the article does.
But then, you already know that, since you read the article...
Gee, another moron on Slashdot who didn't read the actual article? What a surprise! Let me guess, you were too busy "reading between the lines" to actually, you know, read the lines?
Reality check - The Economist explicitly argues AGAINST privatisation as a solution. My, how "fundamentalist"...
Kilograms are a measure of mass. There's various ways of defining the concept of mass, but you might say that it's the ratio between the force applied to an object, and the acceleration that results. My dictionary calls it:Which is fair enough. On the other hand, weight is actually a name for force. In particular, Force = Mass x Acceleration, and we call weight the force which is the product of acceleration due to gravity. An object with zero mass will have zero force at any acceleration (ignoring, for the moment, quantum physics and relatavistic effects), and an object under zero acceleration must have zero net force applied to it, regardless of its mass.
On the surface of the Earth, you are being accelerated downwards at about 9.8 m/s^2, so if you mass 100kg, your weight is 980 newtons (which is the force required to accelerate a mass of 1kg by 1 m/s^2, and is abreviated as N in the SI system). Your mass is 100kg, your weight is 980 N - saying you "weigh" 100kg is meaningless, although if you assume the person is accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2, you can make a good guess as to what their weight actually is.
Another common misuse of the unit is the claim that 1kg = 2.2 pounds. Since pounds are a measure of force, and kilograms are a measure of mass, this conversion is only true on the surface of the Earth - it's incorrect for pretty much anywhere else. The actual correct conversion would be between kilograms and slugs (which is actually the US customary unit for mass, and is the mass which one pound of force would accelerate at 1 foot/s^2), and between newtons and pounds.
For the curious:And on the surface of the Earth (or anywhere else accelerating at 9.8 m/s^2, or 32 feet/s^2):Of course, in the real world, everyone is on the surface of the earth, and people who use the metric system use kilograms (a measure of mass) for both mass and force. On the other hand, people who use the US customary system use pounds (a measure of force) for both force and mass, so maybe it evens out.
(Note: I'm not entirerly confident of the metric to customary conversions, please double check if your using these numbers to build spacecraft.)
The IEC isn't universal? Perhaps, but neither is the ISO. :-) Further, IIRC, the IEC wrote the initial SI standard, and it may have slipped your notice, but we're talking about computers, which is definetly an elec eng topic - and as you yourself state, the IEC is definetly a relevant body for elec eng.
:-)
:-) (And lets not even talk about floppy disks, where 1.44M = 2^10 * 10^3 bytes...)
Further, the IEEE (a very relevent body for this topic) has decided that kilo, mega, etc. always and everywhere refer to their base-10 meanings - even if you're talking about bits and bytes, if you are referring to the base-2 meaning, you must explicitly state this on a case by case basis.
Further, the IEC standard has recently been submitted to the IEEE (and also to the ISO, although it's not really their area), and is currently being tested as a "trial-use standard" by the IEEE, and is expected to be officially adopted by it sometime next year.
There is no standard anywhere which defines kilo as 2^10. Kilo, as an SI prefix, is defined to be 10^3. The only prefix defined as 2^10 is Kibi. Well, as far as I'm aware, anyhow. But since the ISO, IEEE, and IEC (which in turn in an umbrella group for the various national standards bodies like ANSI, etc.) all agree on what kilo does and does not mean (and the only groups with an opinion agree on Kibi, I think we're running out of standards groups. If you know of a standard that defines kilo as 2^10, please cite.
None of which, of course, changes the fact that Joe User uses "megabyte" all the time to refer to 1,048,576 bytes, but since hard disk makers have already switched to calling 10^9 bytes a terabyte, I don't see how using the base-2 prefixes can increase the anger and frustration.
Ah... Did anyone ever claim the Challenger disaster had anything to do with metric units? Before my time, really, but I hadn't thought anyone had claimed the O-ring problems were caused by metric conversions.
In any case, I was thinking of the Mars Climate Orbiter, which AFAIK was indeed a victim of metric mishaps. Of course, the Mars Climate Orbiter wasn't a launch vehicle, I mererly called it that because...uh... as an intelligence test! Yes, that's it... *cough*
Um, no.
:-)
The standard prefixes kilo, mega, giga, tera, etc. mean the exact same thing when applied to ANY measure. That's the entire point of a standard, and the standard says 10^3, 10^6, 10^9, and 10^12, respectively.
The standard prefixes kibi, mebi, gibi, tebi, etc. mean the exact same thing when applied to ANY measure. That's the entire point of a standard, and the standard says 2^10, 2^20, 2^30, and 2^40, respectively.
To be clear - the value of the SI prefixes do NOT change, no matter what you happen to be measuring. Thats the entire point of the SI system, for crying out loud! People may misuse the units (for example, I've heard people expressing their weight in kilograms, which is obviously absurd), and if you want to communicate with them, you may want to misuse the units in the same fashion, but it doesn't make them RIGHT.
<gratuitous flamage>
Let's see - you're arguing that a unit system which is bizarre, contradictory, outdated, and confusing even to its adherents is good, because it sort of mostly works, despite the fact that there is a better and clearer alternative.
Tell me, what's the weather like in your part of the US? Managed to blow up any launch vehicles recently?
</gratuitous flamage>
The table tag is ALSO deprecated, and being phased out, and for exactly that reason. You're still missing the point.
HTML describes the meaning of a stream of text. This chunk is a paragraph, this chunk is a title, this chunk is another paragraph, this chunk is important. HTML does not (or should not) give directives, because it is NOT a programming language. Its up to the browser to decide how to render various types of data - titles should be larger maybe, or a different color, or spoken in a different voice, or emphasised by a sudden smell of violets - whatever the browser/user wants.
To be perfectly clear - HTML does NOT instruct an interpreter to perform actions. The browser is not an interpreter (not of HTML, anyhow), and in any case does not receive "instructions" from HTML code. Some HTML tags do exist (font, b, table) which issue explicit instructions, but these are seen as mistakes, and deprecated.