Why do you believe their purpose is what they claim it to be?
Has the government been so honest with you in the past that you find it incomprehensible that they might be lying, and have different motives than those they claim?
Does the representatives of government when dealing with other display such scrupulous honesty that you believe them when they say something you can't possibly check?
They might just be being incompetent. I'm not at all certain that that's the way to bet.
I've heard that "people who were citizens of the United States " just being disappeared happened, but the information wasn't even third hand. It's possible that it's true. If so, there's no evidence that it's stopped. (How could there be?)
(OTOH, my "source" claimed that it was being done as a part of training "special forces". There wasn't even an allegation that it was condoned at higher than a company level. So even if it's true, it doesn't imply any approval by anyone from either the executive or the legislative branches, except in the sense that since the president is ex officio commander-in-chief all the military is in the executive branch.)
If you don't see the danger of a device that can remove & replace reference materials without user action or notification...then you're nearly beyond help.
This particular interaction didn't demonstrate the entire capacity, that was done earlier (ref. Stephen King, above), but was significant because of it's ironic, nearly satiric, appropriateness.
But if it was first published in the UK, then by the US copyright law in effect at the time it wasn't entitled to ANY copyright in the US.
Was it? I think so.
P.S.: That law wasn't specifically aimed at Britain. If it was first published anywhere but the US, the US copyright law of the time didn't recognize that it had any copyright. That was why both Ace and Ballentine were able to print LOTR. And Ace didn't pay Tolkien any royalties. Ballentine advertised on the back cover they they were paying royalties, so you should buy their version instead.
I think you're referring to "Wizards!". If so, it only sucked if you thought of it as LOTR, which it definitely wasn't, though it was inspired by it, of course.
"Wizards" was a technical tour-de-force, and was excellent animation, at a time when computer animation didn't really exist. (Yeah, it could probably be done a lot better now...probably. But it hasn't been.)
OTOH, this is largely a matter of expectation. "Wizards" had a rather incoherent story-line. Well, so did Fantasia. And that's a more reasonable thing to compare it to...or at least as reasonable a thing. It was the first long animation that didn't come out of Disney.
And, yeah, some reviewers said it was LOTR in animated form. They were wrong. Sorry if that kept you from enjoying it.
I was trusting my memory, so I didn't check my facts at all...if I had I wouldn't have disclaimed knowing the precise amount. It happened, I can't remember the decade. And I may have the price wrong. But the reason was what I said. (Yeah, I heard about the hammer, but I don't know any details about that one.)
OTOH, there were also some rather expensive bolts that were perfectly justified. They were intended for an application where they had to meet some rather exacting stress performance specification. So merely seeing a high price doesn't mean that it's not justified. (Unfortunately, some of the bolts purchased turned out to not meet the specs...and the company that sold them was trusted with having ensured that they did. I don't know that this resulted in aircraft crashes...but somehow it came to the attention of an inspector a few years later.)
P.S.: This isn't a claim that government is too big. It may be, but that's not what I'm claiming. I'm claiming that ignorance of the law should be an excuse, but possibly not a completely exculpatory one. I'm also claiming that the red tape rules are excessively binding. There should have been a way to buy the wrench without going out to bid. (I think there is now, or was a decade ago...but there are all sorts of special situations, so I wouldn't want to claim that as a fact. The monkey wrench was one of the things that got some of the rules changed...at least in one area.)
It's a real problem, and one that programmers should be aware of as it's the same one that tends to lead to crufty code when several different developers work on it sequentially. The solution isn't obvious. Particularly in laws, where they don't do any beta testing, or even alpha testing. They just go with the first version written. True, they've got a very intelligent interpreter (the court system), but that doesn't fix design flaws.
Only where both land is fairly flat and quite cheap... and there's reasonable access to salt water. Of course, I can think of a lot of land like that in Southern Calif., New Mexico and Texas. And, of course, in Mexico, where they've got a contract of another plant. And along the Sahara.
I don't know how much water these things need. It might not be unreasonable to pipe it in. It sounds like it's basically a closed system outside of air, but with some water lost in evaporation. That could be minimized if it weren't salable as fresh water. If you lose too much water, you need to pipe in more sea water to keep it from getting too concentrated.
First you do a research study. Probably in glass on a lab bench. Then you do a pilot project. This is in steel, larger reactors, etc. and is intended mainly to find out how things scale. Then you do a demo project. This is a really small scale version. Probably still too small to be economic. Then you do a small scale commercial plant. Where you go from there depends on how successful it is, but if you don't get this far, you just kill the whole thing off.
Personally, I think what the article is talking about is a demo project. I doubt that it's expected to be run at a profit. (Note that the article calls it a "demonstration plant"...I decided to cheat and read the article before finalizing this post.)
P.S.: Apparently the official DOW purpose of this is to have access to cheap materials for making plastic, not fuel. OTOH, a spokesman (Woods) reportedly said "It's our expectation to produce ethanol for $1.25 a gallon," At that price it sounds like competition as a fuel...but I don't know. A lot of the costs of gasoline are for distribution and taxes. Still, that probably means they could sell it for, say, $2.50/gallon.
Wrong. Ethanol has much lower energy concentration than gasoline. So equivalent amounts won't let you go as far in identically designed engines that are near optimum for both. (What did you expect? It's a shorter hydrocarbon chain.)
OTOH, it does have many good characteristics (besides being a good organic solvent).
In general I think you're right. In this particular case, though.... Various things have been using ethanol for chemical warfare for as long as we can figure. I really, really, doubt that this will be something that can compete outside of a carefully regulated and tailored environment. (And even there it may have problems.)
I bet they need to keep a separate stockpile that they breed from, and periodically replace the old cultures from their base stock. And check the base stock that is hasn't been accumulating adverse mutations.
That depends on how the law reads. And even if it's true, you still may not be able to prove it...especially to the satisfaction of someone who doesn't want to believe it. And even if you can, you STILL may not be able to afford the lawyers' fees.
And *I* would assert that any system that has more words in the law than any person could plausibly read in their lifetime, and also has a rule saying "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is guaranteed to be corrupt and unfair.
This particular law is possibly an urban legend (I don't totally trust Snopes...I think I've caught them in mistakes before now). This class of law is definitely NOT merely an urban legend. Neither is the $10,000 monkey wrench. (I may have the exact figure wrong. The company didn't want to fill out the paper work for a single monkey wrench, so they tried to get underbid. They failed. But the budgetary process didn't allow paying for a guy going to a hardware store to get a monkey wrench, and nobody wanted to pay for it out of their own pocket. Stupidly enough, when the story hit the news the blame landed on the company, not on the paperwork required.)
Actually, it makes a lot of sense. I don't know whether it's true or not, but it makes a lot of sense.
OTOH, I *HAVEN'T* followed the money. I can see where it's likely to have gone, but I haven't traced it personally, and neither has anybody I've ever talked to. If you have a plausible reason why one shouldn't accept the "most plausible" scenario as to how the money is flowing, I would be interested in hearing it.
(Do note that as nobody else has proven how the money flows, I'm not requiring it of you. What I'm asking for is what others have offered: a plausible scenario WRT how the money is flowing and why.)
25 years is too long. We need to keep legislators HARMLESSLY busy. I recommend 9 years. (8 might be better, but I don't want it to sync with an election year cycle.)
OTOH, if this is to be done safely, there needs to be STRONG limitations placed on lobbyists and campaign funding...even by independent groups. Which means laws.
How many of those characters are actually USED in checking that the password is valid? I was surprised one time to find that Linux, the version I was then using, only used the first 8 letters, and discarded the rest. (I don't know the current limit...but it's probably still there.)
Nonsense. You just use "leet", or, if you prefer, "133t".
Of course, this means you only have to check for numbers at certain particular locations, and you know just which number to check as a substitute for each vowel... So back to the dictionary attack, only with a few mods. And you don't need to check any word shorter than six letters...but you do need to include proper names, like "H3rman".
So you're rich, and probably a teenager. This doesn't cause me to respect your opinions.
If you aren't a teenager, why haven't you learned anything in the intervening years? If you weren't rich, you wouldn't presume that everyone had access to a pool. (Admittedly, I do. I just hate the narrow lanes. They design them for people shorter than I am...or at least who have shorter arms. But MOST people don't have access. And of that MOST, a large proportion don't have the spare cash to be able to afford access.)
I'm a lazy bastard, and it's my fault I don't exercise more than an hour a day...less when my wife will occasionally let me get away with it. (She makes it up on the next day, though. Last night was over two hours.) And I've lost my taste for junk food over the last few years...got out of the habit (again thanks to my wife). But I do like to eat. More precisely, I have a mild compulsion to eat which I can trace back to my childhood. (Nevermind the details.) But if I avoid food, I don't tend to think about it. And I'm not a vegetarian...but I don't eat beef, pork is less than once every other week, and chicken is steamed and any broth used is skimmed. So it's portions...and starches. And I know.
But the idiots who say it's all will-power are still just idiots.
You don't understand what a complex system the body is.
E.g., I once went on a total fast (well, I allowed myself water) for a week. I gained weight. Measured on the same scale.
Now I didn't gain much, just about a half pound, and it was probably mainly water...but I *did* gain.
Recent research seems to indicate that a lot of the variations in weight loss/retention stem from the bacterial culture of the guts. I don't know if this affects feelings of hunger, and how and when they arise or not.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you believe their purpose is what they claim it to be?
Has the government been so honest with you in the past that you find it incomprehensible that they might be lying, and have different motives than those they claim?
Does the representatives of government when dealing with other display such scrupulous honesty that you believe them when they say something you can't possibly check?
They might just be being incompetent. I'm not at all certain that that's the way to bet.
I've heard that "people who were citizens of the United States " just being disappeared happened, but the information wasn't even third hand. It's possible that it's true. If so, there's no evidence that it's stopped. (How could there be?)
(OTOH, my "source" claimed that it was being done as a part of training "special forces". There wasn't even an allegation that it was condoned at higher than a company level. So even if it's true, it doesn't imply any approval by anyone from either the executive or the legislative branches, except in the sense that since the president is ex officio commander-in-chief all the military is in the executive branch.)
It's no surprise that he supports warrantless wiretaps. He did by his actions while he was running for office, no matter what he SAID.
I suppose that he's better than his opposition would have been. But there's no way to prove this, and that's definitely faint praise.
If you don't see the danger of a device that can remove & replace reference materials without user action or notification...then you're nearly beyond help.
This particular interaction didn't demonstrate the entire capacity, that was done earlier (ref. Stephen King, above), but was significant because of it's ironic, nearly satiric, appropriateness.
But if it was first published in the UK, then by the US copyright law in effect at the time it wasn't entitled to ANY copyright in the US.
Was it? I think so.
P.S.: That law wasn't specifically aimed at Britain. If it was first published anywhere but the US, the US copyright law of the time didn't recognize that it had any copyright. That was why both Ace and Ballentine were able to print LOTR. And Ace didn't pay Tolkien any royalties. Ballentine advertised on the back cover they they were paying royalties, so you should buy their version instead.
If the Kindle didn't have DRM, I *MIGHT* consider it. But not if it could do this.
I think you're referring to "Wizards!". If so, it only sucked if you thought of it as LOTR, which it definitely wasn't, though it was inspired by it, of course.
"Wizards" was a technical tour-de-force, and was excellent animation, at a time when computer animation didn't really exist. (Yeah, it could probably be done a lot better now...probably. But it hasn't been.)
OTOH, this is largely a matter of expectation. "Wizards" had a rather incoherent story-line. Well, so did Fantasia. And that's a more reasonable thing to compare it to...or at least as reasonable a thing. It was the first long animation that didn't come out of Disney.
And, yeah, some reviewers said it was LOTR in animated form. They were wrong. Sorry if that kept you from enjoying it.
I was trusting my memory, so I didn't check my facts at all...if I had I wouldn't have disclaimed knowing the precise amount. It happened, I can't remember the decade. And I may have the price wrong. But the reason was what I said. (Yeah, I heard about the hammer, but I don't know any details about that one.)
OTOH, there were also some rather expensive bolts that were perfectly justified. They were intended for an application where they had to meet some rather exacting stress performance specification. So merely seeing a high price doesn't mean that it's not justified. (Unfortunately, some of the bolts purchased turned out to not meet the specs...and the company that sold them was trusted with having ensured that they did. I don't know that this resulted in aircraft crashes...but somehow it came to the attention of an inspector a few years later.)
P.S.: This isn't a claim that government is too big. It may be, but that's not what I'm claiming. I'm claiming that ignorance of the law should be an excuse, but possibly not a completely exculpatory one. I'm also claiming that the red tape rules are excessively binding. There should have been a way to buy the wrench without going out to bid. (I think there is now, or was a decade ago...but there are all sorts of special situations, so I wouldn't want to claim that as a fact. The monkey wrench was one of the things that got some of the rules changed...at least in one area.)
It's a real problem, and one that programmers should be aware of as it's the same one that tends to lead to crufty code when several different developers work on it sequentially. The solution isn't obvious. Particularly in laws, where they don't do any beta testing, or even alpha testing. They just go with the first version written. True, they've got a very intelligent interpreter (the court system), but that doesn't fix design flaws.
Only where both land is fairly flat and quite cheap ... and there's reasonable access to salt water. Of course, I can think of a lot of land like that in Southern Calif., New Mexico and Texas. And, of course, in Mexico, where they've got a contract of another plant. And along the Sahara.
I don't know how much water these things need. It might not be unreasonable to pipe it in. It sounds like it's basically a closed system outside of air, but with some water lost in evaporation. That could be minimized if it weren't salable as fresh water. If you lose too much water, you need to pipe in more sea water to keep it from getting too concentrated.
I don't think you understand building plants.
First you do a research study. Probably in glass on a lab bench.
Then you do a pilot project. This is in steel, larger reactors, etc. and is intended mainly to find out how things scale.
Then you do a demo project. This is a really small scale version. Probably still too small to be economic.
Then you do a small scale commercial plant.
Where you go from there depends on how successful it is, but if you don't get this far, you just kill the whole thing off.
Personally, I think what the article is talking about is a demo project. I doubt that it's expected to be run at a profit. (Note that the article calls it a "demonstration plant"...I decided to cheat and read the article before finalizing this post.)
P.S.: Apparently the official DOW purpose of this is to have access to cheap materials for making plastic, not fuel. OTOH, a spokesman (Woods) reportedly said "It's our expectation to produce ethanol for $1.25 a gallon," At that price it sounds like competition as a fuel...but I don't know. A lot of the costs of gasoline are for distribution and taxes. Still, that probably means they could sell it for, say, $2.50/gallon.
Wrong. Ethanol has much lower energy concentration than gasoline. So equivalent amounts won't let you go as far in identically designed engines that are near optimum for both. (What did you expect? It's a shorter hydrocarbon chain.)
OTOH, it does have many good characteristics (besides being a good organic solvent).
In general I think you're right. In this particular case, though....
Various things have been using ethanol for chemical warfare for as long as we can figure. I really, really, doubt that this will be something that can compete outside of a carefully regulated and tailored environment. (And even there it may have problems.)
I bet they need to keep a separate stockpile that they breed from, and periodically replace the old cultures from their base stock. And check the base stock that is hasn't been accumulating adverse mutations.
That depends on how the law reads. And even if it's true, you still may not be able to prove it...especially to the satisfaction of someone who doesn't want to believe it. And even if you can, you STILL may not be able to afford the lawyers' fees.
And *I* would assert that any system that has more words in the law than any person could plausibly read in their lifetime, and also has a rule saying "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is guaranteed to be corrupt and unfair.
This particular law is possibly an urban legend (I don't totally trust Snopes...I think I've caught them in mistakes before now). This class of law is definitely NOT merely an urban legend. Neither is the $10,000 monkey wrench. (I may have the exact figure wrong. The company didn't want to fill out the paper work for a single monkey wrench, so they tried to get underbid. They failed. But the budgetary process didn't allow paying for a guy going to a hardware store to get a monkey wrench, and nobody wanted to pay for it out of their own pocket. Stupidly enough, when the story hit the news the blame landed on the company, not on the paperwork required.)
Actually, it makes a lot of sense. I don't know whether it's true or not, but it makes a lot of sense.
OTOH, I *HAVEN'T* followed the money. I can see where it's likely to have gone, but I haven't traced it personally, and neither has anybody I've ever talked to. If you have a plausible reason why one shouldn't accept the "most plausible" scenario as to how the money is flowing, I would be interested in hearing it.
(Do note that as nobody else has proven how the money flows, I'm not requiring it of you. What I'm asking for is what others have offered: a plausible scenario WRT how the money is flowing and why.)
25 years is too long. We need to keep legislators HARMLESSLY busy. I recommend 9 years. (8 might be better, but I don't want it to sync with an election year cycle.)
OTOH, if this is to be done safely, there needs to be STRONG limitations placed on lobbyists and campaign funding...even by independent groups. Which means laws.
Oops!
Use camel casing.
You could change your password every month to one based on, say, the polish name of the month.
I prefer "Ralph124c41+".
How many of those characters are actually USED in checking that the password is valid? I was surprised one time to find that Linux, the version I was then using, only used the first 8 letters, and discarded the rest. (I don't know the current limit...but it's probably still there.)
Nonsense. You just use "leet", or, if you prefer, "133t".
Of course, this means you only have to check for numbers at certain particular locations, and you know just which number to check as a substitute for each vowel... So back to the dictionary attack, only with a few mods. And you don't need to check any word shorter than six letters...but you do need to include proper names, like "H3rman".
So you're rich, and probably a teenager. This doesn't cause me to respect your opinions.
If you aren't a teenager, why haven't you learned anything in the intervening years? If you weren't rich, you wouldn't presume that everyone had access to a pool. (Admittedly, I do. I just hate the narrow lanes. They design them for people shorter than I am...or at least who have shorter arms. But MOST people don't have access. And of that MOST, a large proportion don't have the spare cash to be able to afford access.)
I'm a lazy bastard, and it's my fault I don't exercise more than an hour a day...less when my wife will occasionally let me get away with it. (She makes it up on the next day, though. Last night was over two hours.) And I've lost my taste for junk food over the last few years...got out of the habit (again thanks to my wife). But I do like to eat. More precisely, I have a mild compulsion to eat which I can trace back to my childhood. (Nevermind the details.) But if I avoid food, I don't tend to think about it. And I'm not a vegetarian...but I don't eat beef, pork is less than once every other week, and chicken is steamed and any broth used is skimmed. So it's portions...and starches. And I know.
But the idiots who say it's all will-power are still just idiots.
You *DON'T* cost society more to keep you alive. Society just doesn't keep you alive quite as long.
Actually, people who die sooner, on the average, cost society less. (Yeah, there are exceptions.)
You don't understand what a complex system the body is.
E.g., I once went on a total fast (well, I allowed myself water) for a week. I gained weight. Measured on the same scale.
Now I didn't gain much, just about a half pound, and it was probably mainly water...but I *did* gain.
Recent research seems to indicate that a lot of the variations in weight loss/retention stem from the bacterial culture of the guts. I don't know if this affects feelings of hunger, and how and when they arise or not.
I'm sure that avoiding junk food is good advice...but it sure isn't sufficient.