Funny, but almost correct! There are indeed studies of the effect on ocean circulation being conducted to look at the effect of plonking a big turbine into a strong tidal force:)
whenever science cannot yet provide an answer. Back in the 1400-1600's a scientist would be brought in front of the inquisition for suggesting that the earth was not in the centre of the universe - today we know better. Result? Religion changes course and attack another bit of science where proof is not yet indisputable.
So once again religion is out for blood on a subject that is difficult to undisputably prove - apparently there is no room for statistics in religion (except when clinging on to that 1% margin of chance that it MIGHT be something else).
When will religion give up and allow people the personal freedom to choose.
Well I'm glad to see that my admittedly rather provocative statement did stimulate a debate.
Indeed I am not a 100% certain that the UK model is the "right" one, but even the most incarnated anti-ID campaigner must admist that currently ID theft is a lot easier in the UK than elsewhere.
Living in the UK and having been subject to such I feel that I do have some ground to stand on here, and I'm still shocked beyond belief that you can walk into a bank with bloody utility bills (which are commonly left in communal hallways and stairs) as proof of identity.
The lack of something approaching a nirn does provide problems when travelling through various departments of administration, and as a consequence a very small amount of information is used to vet your identity.
In addition, having your NI-number stamped onto a card with NO MEANS of identifying yourself short of a name and a number is just plain ridiculuos, the fact that its has written on it that it is not proof of identity does not seem to dissuade a number of administrative sectors to gladly take your NI number, name and adress as all thats needed to verify that you are who you are - something that any criminal can obtain within 5 minutes with your card and a phonebook.
Do I want to be tracked everwhere i go? No - but this state of near hysteria-paranoia assumes that the moment it is available it will singularily be used for evil purposes - and that is equally ridiculous to my purposedly provocative statement about the empire;-)
You can for once prove you are who you are in the UK
No need for that silly census where they try to guess how many people live in their own country
For the normal law-abiding citizen it will actually be easier to acquire a new driving license or passport should you have lsot the old one.
Improved information flow through the public sectors, e.g. if you become unemployed and go to the job centre or such like, your tax code can be updated right there instead by changing your status.
Credit card scams are ripe in the UK with people stealing identities and having to provide an absolute minimum of ID to empty your account.
Just because it wasn't part of the empire doesn't mean you can't use it!
And how many memery cards will you have to purchase to reach the equivalent capacity of the Xbox hdd? -even without upgrading the xbox hdd to the 120gb.........
8mb card at a pop of ~1$/mb.....That'll eat up the small proce difference between ps2 and xbox rather quickly.
Combined with the superior graphic quality of the xbox, the expansion options that come with modding, I really can't follow your argument!
I'm confused!
If Saruman is completely left out of ROTK - there's a couple of things that must also be missing:
1) When Gandalf talks to Saruman -trapped in his tower - Wormtounge flings the palanthir (seeing stone) after them - which prevents Saruman from informing Sauron on the Armies gathering and the (re-)existence of Gandalf. How are they going to deal with that?
It is a while since i read the books last - but does Aragorn not use the same palanthir to show himself to Sauron - another critical bit (in my view) of Aragorns transformation into a king - which we have essentially seen nothing of yet.
2) When the hobbits return to the shire after the wars and find corruption and drive out the "bandits" they meet Saruman and learn that his plotting had been going on for a loooong time. So will the entire return-to-the-shire scene be missing or will it just be a hobbits-in-shining-armor-drives-halfwit-humans-out -of-the-shire instead?
Well that should up the stakes a bit for virus programmers to have a couple of thousand money-grabbing digital hunters on their heels as well.
Better start coding that Bloodhound v 0.0.0.1
"Hello you have reached Comfy-computing's 24 hour telephone support, how may i help you."
"My sofa's not working!"
"OK are you running Windows Recliner or OpenSofa?"
"Recliner"
"Right Sir, have you rebooted your sofa and installed the newest security patch?"
"What! My sofa has no holes in it! I don't need any patches!"
"Well Sir there is a new virus out called DustMite which alters your sofa's WARP (Weight Adjsuted Recognition Pattern) Drive to belive that your are a 3.5 tonne elephant seal"
"So i need to patch my sofa then.....I've already spent 16 hours updating my microwave, blender, toilet, television, front door and my daughter's teddy bear"....................
Can't wait for this amazing technological advancement;-)
Some artists make sculptures from old parts of cars and other junk. Does it mean that Ford can sue the artist because their exhaust pipe from the Mondeo forms part of the sculpture?
No, and the same should be the case for musicians. Perhaps these people should look into simply removing some of the miserable creamy-pop cover songs that are being pumped into the market like a giant lethal injection for any kind of taste or appreciation of the original.
OK so we go ahead and ban OS - God knows how they are actually going to manage that short of in a few American companies and organisation who in contrast to what they might believe do not make up the entire world of computing:-)
Next step must be to lock up the programmers of OS. Seeing it as OS is essentially a weapon (mass destruction? - doubt it, unless a few screwed up regsitries count)by now, anyone who has knowledge of such a thing must be potential terrorists.
And so on and so on..........
Honestly, these people need to get a grip and get on with reality!
Although you are mostly hunting for non-commercial sites, the BBC UK's websites on science are quite good. It does not necessarily all apeal to children, but there are ususally games and competitions tied in with the current themes. Check it at bbc.co.uk/science
So i guess that means in legal terms that as long a you can view video over your connection, and you can download/surf and speak on the phone through the same plug in the wall, you are ok regardless of speed.
The swedes probably have a point! The major problem in making such a statement is that it will immediately be used as ammunition by "anti-recyclers".
A similar issue arose when Bjorn Lomborg wrote "The Skeptical Environmentalist", claiming that the global environment was not getting worse.
In both cases the statements probably have a lot of truth in them depending on interpretation, but the damage caused in the line of policy making is detrimental. The world really do not need people who will sign a carte blanche for policy makers for a few minutes of fame.
It reminds me of the sauna-game "Jokka". You take 6 people and a case of vodka, pour the vodka on the sauna - and wait a while. Afterwards someone leaves the sauna and the rest has to guess who!
This game can be played by two players as well, but it requires more vokda!
Well its seems that pepole in general are starting to open their eyes for the possibilities in opensource. Although, like some of you have already mentioned, its not necessarily the superiority of Open Source software as much aas it is prices for MS products that is turning the tide.
In Denmark there are trial runs for all the regional councils to change all their public services onto open source machines, completely dropping MS products. Although there are soem technicalities about reliability, the millions of $ that are to be saved has made almost every politican there a supporter of the open source environment.
Being outside the US but inside government-funded sicence I recognise this issue albeit on another scale.
At times directions for where reserach should be heading will sometimes come down from "the top", leading to strcutural changes in the way research units are put together.
Mostly there is a wish for scientists to mark themselves internationally as well as conducting the government's research, which leaves the scientist with excellent opportunities to participate in international programmes in whatever type of research he/she wants to do.
If sudden media attention arises on a certain topic, which was previously denied funding, will all of a sudden find funding ocmming flooding in, so that officials can turn around and say "see we ARE doing something about it...."
However, the construct in many european countries are somewhat different in that we have a separate ethical board which deals with the really touchy subject. These boards are composed of researchers from all sectors, as well as government officials. Having a bunch of government officials having absolute power over decision making of where science is going would most likely lead to ever-changing direction without any commitment to any kind of research that are likely to last any longer than the current election period
By "letting" educations and to some extent private people use pirated software, companies obviously loose some income.
On the other hand they build a user group, which, once they find themselves employed in companies across the country, will request using the software that they know best, hence the software company stand to gain considerable amounts of corporate licenses over a period of time. Comparing the prices of private/academic userlicenses with the corporate ditto's I'd say that the software developer stands to make money in the long run.....if they stay afloat for that long of course.
For starters a research group of 54 people with and 54 without the disease does not strike me as being a very large group to be carrying out life-style and diet statistics on. Especially when you are making the occurrence of the disease 50% in the "virtual population". By introducing such a composition you actually risk over-emphasizing the coffee drinking effect. On another note it may simply be that the people in the study who drank lots of coffee were associated with ie. high demanding jobs. Now before you even start climbing up on that high horse, I'm NOT saying that people who are unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with Alzheimers are stupid or less intelligent. However, there has been research that suggest that people who work in an environment where they carry out a variety of tasks, and are forced to change the way they think frequently are less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimers. And I could easily imagine that people in such positions would be more likely to grab an extra cup of coffee.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny, but almost correct! There are indeed studies of the effect on ocean circulation being conducted to look at the effect of plonking a big turbine into a strong tidal force :)
whenever science cannot yet provide an answer. Back in the 1400-1600's a scientist would be brought in front of the inquisition for suggesting that the earth was not in the centre of the universe - today we know better. Result? Religion changes course and attack another bit of science where proof is not yet indisputable.
So once again religion is out for blood on a subject that is difficult to undisputably prove - apparently there is no room for statistics in religion (except when clinging on to that 1% margin of chance that it MIGHT be something else).
When will religion give up and allow people the personal freedom to choose.
For some time now I have heard people joking that the next thing Bush would declare war on was the weather.... Now I'm not so sure it was a joke...
Well I'm glad to see that my admittedly rather provocative statement did stimulate a debate. Indeed I am not a 100% certain that the UK model is the "right" one, but even the most incarnated anti-ID campaigner must admist that currently ID theft is a lot easier in the UK than elsewhere. Living in the UK and having been subject to such I feel that I do have some ground to stand on here, and I'm still shocked beyond belief that you can walk into a bank with bloody utility bills (which are commonly left in communal hallways and stairs) as proof of identity. The lack of something approaching a nirn does provide problems when travelling through various departments of administration, and as a consequence a very small amount of information is used to vet your identity. In addition, having your NI-number stamped onto a card with NO MEANS of identifying yourself short of a name and a number is just plain ridiculuos, the fact that its has written on it that it is not proof of identity does not seem to dissuade a number of administrative sectors to gladly take your NI number, name and adress as all thats needed to verify that you are who you are - something that any criminal can obtain within 5 minutes with your card and a phonebook. Do I want to be tracked everwhere i go? No - but this state of near hysteria-paranoia assumes that the moment it is available it will singularily be used for evil purposes - and that is equally ridiculous to my purposedly provocative statement about the empire ;-)
Hey - Just because you are paranoid doesn't mena they're not out to get you!
Well said. Its lovely to see someone who for once sees things with a positive spin rather than screaming "it can't be done". Good on you mate!
And how many memery cards will you have to purchase to reach the equivalent capacity of the Xbox hdd? -even without upgrading the xbox hdd to the 120gb......... 8mb card at a pop of ~1$/mb.....That'll eat up the small proce difference between ps2 and xbox rather quickly. Combined with the superior graphic quality of the xbox, the expansion options that come with modding, I really can't follow your argument!
"I'm sorry I haven't made my homework sir - but a storm last night blew away our internet airship"
I guess Waterhouse would be jumping with joy over the reintroduction of pipe-orgain into computing :-)
I'm confused! If Saruman is completely left out of ROTK - there's a couple of things that must also be missing:
t -of-the-shire instead?
1) When Gandalf talks to Saruman -trapped in his tower - Wormtounge flings the palanthir (seeing stone) after them - which prevents Saruman from informing Sauron on the Armies gathering and the (re-)existence of Gandalf. How are they going to deal with that?
It is a while since i read the books last - but does Aragorn not use the same palanthir to show himself to Sauron - another critical bit (in my view) of Aragorns transformation into a king - which we have essentially seen nothing of yet.
2) When the hobbits return to the shire after the wars and find corruption and drive out the "bandits" they meet Saruman and learn that his plotting had been going on for a loooong time. So will the entire return-to-the-shire scene be missing or will it just be a hobbits-in-shining-armor-drives-halfwit-humans-ou
Well that should up the stakes a bit for virus programmers to have a couple of thousand money-grabbing digital hunters on their heels as well. Better start coding that Bloodhound v 0.0.0.1
"Hello you have reached Comfy-computing's 24 hour telephone support, how may i help you." "My sofa's not working!" "OK are you running Windows Recliner or OpenSofa?" "Recliner" "Right Sir, have you rebooted your sofa and installed the newest security patch?" "What! My sofa has no holes in it! I don't need any patches!" "Well Sir there is a new virus out called DustMite which alters your sofa's WARP (Weight Adjsuted Recognition Pattern) Drive to belive that your are a 3.5 tonne elephant seal" "So i need to patch my sofa then.....I've already spent 16 hours updating my microwave, blender, toilet, television, front door and my daughter's teddy bear" ....................
Can't wait for this amazing technological advancement ;-)
Some artists make sculptures from old parts of cars and other junk. Does it mean that Ford can sue the artist because their exhaust pipe from the Mondeo forms part of the sculpture? No, and the same should be the case for musicians. Perhaps these people should look into simply removing some of the miserable creamy-pop cover songs that are being pumped into the market like a giant lethal injection for any kind of taste or appreciation of the original.
OK so we go ahead and ban OS - God knows how they are actually going to manage that short of in a few American companies and organisation who in contrast to what they might believe do not make up the entire world of computing :-)
Next step must be to lock up the programmers of OS. Seeing it as OS is essentially a weapon (mass destruction? - doubt it, unless a few screwed up regsitries count)by now, anyone who has knowledge of such a thing must be potential terrorists.
And so on and so on..........
Honestly, these people need to get a grip and get on with reality!
Although you are mostly hunting for non-commercial sites, the BBC UK's websites on science are quite good. It does not necessarily all apeal to children, but there are ususally games and competitions tied in with the current themes. Check it at bbc.co.uk/science
Well MENSA should be some of the first to buy domains in iraq with the .IQ they have :-)
So i guess that means in legal terms that as long a you can view video over your connection, and you can download/surf and speak on the phone through the same plug in the wall, you are ok regardless of speed.
The swedes probably have a point! The major problem in making such a statement is that it will immediately be used as ammunition by "anti-recyclers". A similar issue arose when Bjorn Lomborg wrote "The Skeptical Environmentalist", claiming that the global environment was not getting worse. In both cases the statements probably have a lot of truth in them depending on interpretation, but the damage caused in the line of policy making is detrimental. The world really do not need people who will sign a carte blanche for policy makers for a few minutes of fame.
It reminds me of the sauna-game "Jokka". You take 6 people and a case of vodka, pour the vodka on the sauna - and wait a while. Afterwards someone leaves the sauna and the rest has to guess who!
This game can be played by two players as well, but it requires more vokda!
Well its seems that pepole in general are starting to open their eyes for the possibilities in opensource. Although, like some of you have already mentioned, its not necessarily the superiority of Open Source software as much aas it is prices for MS products that is turning the tide.
In Denmark there are trial runs for all the regional councils to change all their public services onto open source machines, completely dropping MS products. Although there are soem technicalities about reliability, the millions of $ that are to be saved has made almost every politican there a supporter of the open source environment.
Stephen Fry would be the ultimate Arthur Dent. As british as you'll ever find'em
Being outside the US but inside government-funded sicence I recognise this issue albeit on another scale. At times directions for where reserach should be heading will sometimes come down from "the top", leading to strcutural changes in the way research units are put together.
Mostly there is a wish for scientists to mark themselves internationally as well as conducting the government's research, which leaves the scientist with excellent opportunities to participate in international programmes in whatever type of research he/she wants to do. If sudden media attention arises on a certain topic, which was previously denied funding, will all of a sudden find funding ocmming flooding in, so that officials can turn around and say "see we ARE doing something about it...."
However, the construct in many european countries are somewhat different in that we have a separate ethical board which deals with the really touchy subject. These boards are composed of researchers from all sectors, as well as government officials. Having a bunch of government officials having absolute power over decision making of where science is going would most likely lead to ever-changing direction without any commitment to any kind of research that are likely to last any longer than the current election period
By "letting" educations and to some extent private people use pirated software, companies obviously loose some income.
On the other hand they build a user group, which, once they find themselves employed in companies across the country, will request using the software that they know best, hence the software company stand to gain considerable amounts of corporate licenses over a period of time.
Comparing the prices of private/academic userlicenses with the corporate ditto's I'd say that the software developer stands to make money in the long run.....if they stay afloat for that long of course.
For starters a research group of 54 people with and 54 without the disease does not strike me as being a very large group to be carrying out life-style and diet statistics on. Especially when you are making the occurrence of the disease 50% in the "virtual population". By introducing such a composition you actually risk over-emphasizing the coffee drinking effect.
On another note it may simply be that the people in the study who drank lots of coffee were associated with ie. high demanding jobs. Now before you even start climbing up on that high horse, I'm NOT saying that people who are unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with Alzheimers are stupid or less intelligent. However, there has been research that suggest that people who work in an environment where they carry out a variety of tasks, and are forced to change the way they think frequently are less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimers. And I could easily imagine that people in such positions would be more likely to grab an extra cup of coffee.