You do realize that those satellites didn't get there by magic, right? We actually put them there... with a rocket.
The US could almost certainly "get" the satellite, it is just a matter of cost and time. First, you don't actually want to blow it up. Better to have one satellite roaming around than a few thousand pieces of satellite roaming around. The best way to do it would be to boost another satellite into orbit with a arm/magnet/some-method-of-grappling, grapple, and then burn for a bit to de-orbit. If the US or China or whatever wants to throw their balls on the table and show everyone how massive their penis is, they can blow it up as it starts to deorbit.
There is a pretty damn good reason to not give NASA royalties... we paid for the damn stuff, and we paid top dollar. For every tax payer dollar that went into discovering something awesome, another thousand was blown on congressperson XX's part for the shuttle-by-politician-and-committee or whatever bloat NASA was working on. Frankly, I like NASA much more these days. They are scaling back on that ISS nonsense, getting out of the man mission nonsense, and doing what NASA should be doing, research the private sector isn't interested in. Rovers on mars, probes to asteroids, looking at far away galaxies is all good quality NASA stuff. Hell, even manned missions made sense back in the day. Now though, it is better off to just spin that off. NASA clearly doesn't have a clue how to make it cheap enough for the rest of us to care that we can do it. Throw some money at the private sector and let them try while NASA does the stuff the private sector wont. As a bonus, making obscure parts for a Jupiter probe is much harder for congressjackass to politicize.
Dude, it is North-fucking-Korea. Their news is a non-stop stream of verifiablely false bullshit. While they were shedding of double digit percentage points of their population to starvation in the 90's their news declared that all was well and all North Koreans were fat and happy. They were playing this shit on TV (for the very few who had TV) to people who had to work over corpses and were busy literally eating dirt. These people could clearly see from the corpses on the ground, dead relatives, and the fact that they were shaving pine bark into their "food" that the news was clearly lying, yet the news went on declaring all is well as people literally starved to death.
Me declaring that I have achieved fusion in my basement would be a more credible claim that North Korea doing it because at least I am not a proven compulsive liar. No, you should safely and easily dismiss North Korea's claims until they show evidence that they have done as they have done. Until they show evidence, you can safely discard this "news" from their propaganda machine as complete and total bullshit.
I would be pretty shocked if the answers if the smart folks who thought this up and got handed a large money sack did not already answer most of your questions, but I can probably guess the answers to your concerns.
If the salt hangs in the air for any length of time in any concentration... do it some place not near land. In fact, from all I have read on geoengineering, you want to do your work in the poles, so even if the salt hangs, it is a moot point. We also have a few thousands miles of Pacific with nothing in it to dump salt into.
As far as the price, the price is peanuts compared to turning off CO2 production. If you believe some of the climate models we are already fucked and in for 40 years of warming even if all of the man made CO2 stopped tomorrow. If that is the case, the ONLY answer is geoengineering. The cost of reducing CO2 is mind numbing. CO2 cost is basically energy cost, which means that any cost imposed is going to hit literally everything in the world wide economy. It makes EVERYTHING more expensive to tackle CO2. 7 billion is absolutely nothing. Hell, it could go up by 7 billion every single year, and it would still cost nothing in the grand scheme of things. Geoengineering is almost certainly cheaper than reducing worldwide energy consumption. Even if it cost a trillion dollars a year to keep the earth stable, that would still be peanuts compared to the cost of reducing CO2 to zero.
CO2 is an issue we are going to tackle eventually. We cant use fossil fuels forever. The problem is that tackling it aggressively now is far more expensive than in the future. Given time, it is inevitable that renewable energy will improve and win out. If global warming is your fear, geoengineering is really the only rational response. We can't muster the world wide political will to reduce CO2 output, even if we could the cost would be devastating, and we would STILL be fucked because it is already too late.
First, the fun thing this and nearly all of the serious geoengineer proposals that I have seen is that they are easily turned off. If there is some horrible consequence to making the ocean a little more cloudy? Ok... turn them off. We are already geoengineering through industrial pollutants. We might as well geoengineer some more to try and fix the problems. The path to using this techs is pretty clear. Start small, work up to the effect you want, turn it off if you don't like where it is going.
As far as "masking" the problem, what is wrong with that? So we need to run a bunch of sprinklers in the ocean. Is it cheaper than the substantial costs of reducing CO2 output now? If it is, then we should seriously think about doing it. That isn't to say that we shouldn't work on removing CO2 in a more permanent way or work on emitting less, but it could be a hell of a lot cheaper and political far more feasible than the alternative. Do you have to maintain these and replace them? Sure, but that goes with almost any technology. It isn't like the fact that power plants wear out stop us from building an electrical grid. You just include replacement in the cost. It is hardly an insurmountable problem.
If you really believe that climageddon is upon us, geoengineering really is shaping up to be the only way to level off the warming. The cost to reduce CO2 emissions now at levels high enough to stop global warming are through the roof. The political cost is even higher (if not utterly unpayable). We are going to fail at reducing CO2 emissions in the short term. Why not deploy technology to counteract our unintentional geoengineering at a fraction of the cost of "fixing" the problem. Don't stop working on the problem, just give the world some breathing room. Transitioning over to clean and renewable energy is the direction we want to go regardless, making it so that we need to make the transition in a few generations rather than a few years results in a drastically reduced cost.
Frankly, I think that geoengineering makes hardcore environmentalist pissy because it snatches away the best issue that environmentalist movement has had in decades. When it comes down to it, reducing CO2 emission with today's technology boils down to reduced consumption and energy usage. You can tie those two things to pretty much anything in the environmentalist cause. Global warming makes an good proxy in any fight over the environmental. Arguing that coal is bad because it pumps out toxic crap in the PPM range is a very hard argument to make to your average uneducated dolt. Simply declaring coal is a going to cause climageddon on the other hand is much much easier to understand and get worked up over.
Srsly. Did you read that before you posted it? The idea on its face is stupid. Lets pretend for a moment that I want life long government employees running Facebook because I think that is going to result in awesome quality. The idea of the same fine folks that run the DMV running Facebook really just fills my heart with joy. But hey, lets pretend. Okay, now that the government has full access to the greatest source of information about its citizens at their finger tips under their sovereign control.... NOW your privacy concerns are quelled? Holy-fucking-shit is that utterly insane.
I don't like Facebook pissing my information around the Internet. I don't like them selling my network info to private companies. It is annoying and probably going to result in spam mail. The idea that instead of giving it to people who can spam us to death we give it to people who can throw us in jail has to be the most bat shit insane thing I have ever heard in my entire life. It is one thing for your boss to see a picture of you smoking a bong. It is another thing entirely for the police to do so. I can safely say that the surest way to murder Facebook and burn taxpayer money in the process would be to nationalize it. I struggle with if I want to stay with Facebook now. The federal government nationalizing it would make that decision pretty damn easy.
Yeah yeah, and nothing is private unless you do it in a locked room. That isn't the point. If the original version of Facebook it was pretty easy to set it up such that only friends could access anything other than your name. Further, Facebook defaulted towards privacy so that poor uneducated suckers didn't have a nasty surprise.
The reason to keep a "friends only" network is to communicate with your friends. I really don't care if my friends know that the other night I passed out in a pool of my own vomit. Hell, I don't mind if they share pictures of it. I don't care if my friends know that I hate my job or dislike my boss. This is information that is fine to share among friends either on Facebook or in the real world. Where it becomes a problem is when my boss finds out. My friends don't know my boss and have no communications with him. Could he find out something through a friend of a friend of a friend in the real world? Sure, but the risk is slim. If on the other hand I am not technologically savvy and constantly managing my privacy settings on Facebook, he could find out the same through a relatively simple search on Facebook if you failed to realize that your account is open and posted as such.
There is a lot of value in what Facebook offers. The reason why I have not nuked my account already is because it is a damn good way to keep in touch and organize with friends. What is disturbing is the slow (or not so slow) privacy removal creep. I nuked most of my profile just the other day because I frankly don't want to share with the entire intertubes what my interests are. So, is it true there is no "private"? Sure, but there is "private enough". "Private enough" is Facebook only showing what you post to people you accepted as friends. "Not private enough" is making everything you do on Facebook exposed to the entire intertubes.
Personally, I think Facebook walks a much thinner line than they realize. The techno-savvy blaze the trails in social media and the rest of the world follows. These folks understand what is going on. If Facebook manages to scare these folks away, they are going to get relegated to internet ghetto where AOL and MySpace live on as slowly rotting zombies. It only takes a few of the technologically elite to jump to a new platform before their friends start to follow. Once that happens, the outflow from Facebook will become a torrent. People don't even need to delete their profiles in disgust for Facebook to lose. Alls it takes is for people to go somewhere else when they fire up their browsers. A few hundred million users means shit if none of them uses the site and thus you get no ad revenue.
You never, ever, ever camouflage your military systems to look like civilian infrastructure.
Srsly?
The only people who are going to enter into a fight with the US are non-super power nations. China and Russia are not going to tussle with the US because both sides of the pond really are not all that thrilled with the idea of a nuclear war. Even if they were going to romp, cargo container missiles are last on the list of nasty things super powers can throw at each other. The only folks with any use for something like this are nations like Iran. Iran stands exactly zero chances of winning a stand up fight with the US. The thing about fighting the US is that they are not trying to murder you all. If they were, they would just glass your cities. They wouldn't even need nukes to do it. They are actually going to go out of their way to try and not murder off all of your civilians. That isn't to say the are going to flinch at dropping a two thousand pound bomb on a target nestled in a nice residential neighborhood, but they are not going to drop a MOAB on the neighborhood either.
If you have to fight a nation like the US, the stupidest thing you can do is stand up and fight. The US likes pounding on nations dumb enough to leave their military standing in the open wearing uniforms and waving flags. See Iraq War I for reference. If you stand and fight, they will certainly murder the shit out of you with enthusiastic glee.
Nope, the way to fight the US is hide your military among civilians. Eh, it is not all that honorable feeling, but it feels better than dead. Whenever the Americans murder your civilians they lose a little of their resolve. You are not going to out spend them or kill them all, so loss of resolve is really all you are after. Getting Americans to kill your civilians is the best way to inflict loss of resolve on Americans. If you send a war ship against the US fleet, you are certainly going to find yourself short one war ship. On the other hand, sending a container ship with Dutch flags or something fun like that is exactly the right tactic. Not only do they balk at blowing it to pieces, but if you are lucky, you get them jumpy enough to blow up a real dutch container ship. Asymmetrical warfare is the way to go. It isn't like they need an excuse to target your economy. If you are tussling with the US you can pretty much assume that they have already bent your economy over the barrel and are having their way with it without even having fired a shot.
Personally, I am skeptical of the container missiles. Warm fuzzy feelings aside, you can safely bet that the US is going to get all piratical on any container ship entering or leaving a nation it is in the process of beating on. This means you need to load your cruise missiles at another non-native port, and this opens you up pretty soundly to law enforcement. It might be a nice first strike weapon, but I think once war breaks out they are going to be hard to use. I am also just skeptical of the technology. You are going to need a big ass cargo container to hold a missile with enough firepower to bring down a carrier. There are very few non-nuclear missiles that can take a carrier in one swipe. Carrier also are pretty bad ass warship that tend to be surrounded by other bad ass warship, all of which are designed to keep cruise missiles from having their way.
I really don't see much use. You are better off to buy some much cheaper normal cruise missiles, try and hide them on land, get a lot of them, and fire as many as you can when the Americans get close to the coast. If you really have money burning a hole in your pocket, buy yourself a nice diesel / electric sub. With a little training you might get it close enough to the carrier fleet to deal real damage before it gets taken out. This cargo thing, should it magically work, is really a surprise first strike weapon, and first striking the US has proven to be a pretty dumb move time and time again. If the US comes after y
True, but it amounts to the same thing. You can basically make any accusation that tickles your fancy because they must PROVE that you thought it wasn't true. In fact, it is worse than that, it isn't just "not-true" but you need to prove that it is utterly false AND that the person knew it was utterly false. Slap the good old 5th amendment which lets you not testify against yourself, and the result is that libel and slander suit is basically impossible to win the US. There is literally no other nation with more friendly free speech laws than the US.
There are a lot of things in US law that suck. Copyright and drug laws float to the top of my list, but there are many more. Libel and slander laws are not one of them. If you like free speech, the US is, bar none, the best place to look to in terms with how it deals with libel and slander.
He wasn't criticizing the judge, so I am not sure exactly why you are defending him. He was criticizing Brazil's laws (civil or otherwise). Brazil's laws around libel and slander absolutely suck beyond all comprehension. Brazil has close to the worst in the world. They do infringe greatly on the quality of public speech in Brazil, and if crap like this continues, all speech by all citizens in Brazil. The US on the other hand has, bar none, the best libel and slander laws in the world... which is to say, we basically have none. In order to get nailed for libel or slander in the US you need to 1) cause actual and real harm 2) personally know it is a lie 3) are presumed innocent with extremely high bars set for proving 1 & 2, and 4) can counter sue any asshole that loses their case. You are more likely to be struck dead by lightening than get sued and lose a slander case in the US.
That said, the US has an equivalent to Brazil's terrible libel and slander laws. US copyright laws have more or less the same effect. The only reason why I would take evil US copyright laws over evil Brazil libel and slander laws is that you can make a half-assed argument that copyright does something useful and, far more importantly, crappy slander and libel laws protect slime ball politicians much better than crappy copyright laws.
Brazil is actually doing some innovative stuff in terms of copyright law. I don't know exactly where it stands today, but they had an awesome proposal that they were giving serious though to a little while back on enforcing sanity in copyright law. Give me that plus US libel and slander law, and I think you are looking at some pretty decent steps taken in protecting freedom of speech.
I think the only thing we disagree about is the need for man rated heavy lifting to be done by the government. Frankly, I am pretty content with what we have. I want money tossed out to private industry simply because it is going to take some innovation to make LEO and beyond worthwhile for humans. NASA isn't going to be that innovator and we frankly don't need a heavy man rated lifter like the shuttle.
Even for stuff that was previously "human only" like satellite repairs is easier to farm off to drones these days. I don't expect an instant miracle from private industry. I just want them to have enough funding to keep trying and failing. Maybe we waste what is pocket change to the shuttle program on private industry seed money and maybe someone does something innovative and the industry ignites.
NASA has a role in all of this. I expect NASA to work with private industry in the way universities work with chip makers. I am not calling for an end to NASA. I just don't want another expensive spaceship designed by committee that serves the purpose of dick waving at the rest of the world and funding state welfare programs.
So, give NASA the role of "university", toss some money and private industry with a focus on innovators trying something new.
As far as humans and safety go, I frankly would prefer that we cut the strings. Make it so that if you want to blast off from space you need to get your will in order and sign a YOU ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE contract. If a few people die in the process, eh, thats how the ball rolls. We seem to accept crab fishermen dying on a pretty regular basis to get luxury food items. I bet we can reach deep down into our collective pants, find our collective balls, and accept that some people are crazy mother fuckers who are literally willing to accept the risk of death to see space and let them go be crazy for the benefit of humanity. This post 9/11 nanny crap is getting incredibly tedious. Someone better not tell the media that OMFG dozens!!!!111!! of people are killed each year by lightening strikes or else some asshole politician is going to feel the pressure and stick Homeland Security at clouds.
I think an interesting thought experiment is to imagine we are the technologically superior aliens. How would we react?
If we picked up a signal from a 1930's like civilization within 50 light years of earth. What would we actually do? Personally, I think all options would be on the table. We would probably pour money into space R&D if for no other reason than defense. It might not make space easy if those pesky rules of physics hold up, but it would certainly give us the ability to launch something slow in their direction if we so chose. I personally think that humanity would be more or less split. Most people would want to carry on long range contact and send a representative (AI or frozen humans) as soon as possible. I think a lot of government would give serious thought to launching relativistic weapons preemptively, just as the US gave serious thought to nuking the USSR preemptively before they had the bomb. No one would have much thirst for colonization or invasion. If the world sent anything hostile, it would be to simply wipe them out, not to take over.
Now consider if we developed awesome telescopes and could see alien cave men within a 50 light year radius of earth. Personally, I think we would have only two responses. We would either send them a relativistic surprise to keep them ever rivaling us, or we would simply watch, study, and ignore. We would have no desire to make contact.
Finally, consider if we discovered intelligent caveman leveled life on Mars just chilling under the glaciers or something (which is the equivalent of aliens finding us and FTL being pretty easy). I personally think that we would exterminate them if they looked like they were "better" (learn much faster) and study them if they didn't appear to out match us given similar technology. The debate among humans than would be to decide we we want to try and raise them up and have contact, or simply watch and preserve them until they are "ready" for contact.
My point is that us boring old non-alien humans struggle with the idea of contact because WE have lots of responses if put in reverse roles. Not only will we respond radically different to two different "types" of contacts put in the shoes of being the technologically superior being, but we will often have completely contradictory responses. We will have the desire to annihilate co-existing with the desire to peacefully contact and study. If humans can pretty easily oscillate between the desire for peaceful contact and self preserving genocide, I have a feeling aliens are likely to do either. There is no "natural" answer. Aliens might sling relativistic weapons at us to prevent us from being a threat, or they might be curious and want cultural exchanges. Both are rational responses to different types of situations.
I think you are making some pretty large assumption on what it takes to be intelligent. The structure of modern human ethics and civilization are very heavily influenced by our rather weird "natural" social and sexual structures. Omnivores that band together in small family groups where the females are always sex ready are really freaking weird in the animal kingdom, and our weirdness permeates into our modern social structures and ethics. Our concepts of "justice" and "reciprocity" are very much artifacts of hardwired biological drives that let us live in small groups. There are certainly alternate ethics that we could have developed had we arisen with different social structures.
I think speculation on alternate social structures is iffy and best, but for fun consider some alternatives.
Herds: If we were herbivores who lived in massive herds, we might have a totally different outlook on life. I won't try and speculate too far, but I imagine an intelligent society that evolved from herds probably has a need to be far more communal. If they do the "fight for females" thing, they might be able to fight viciously among themselves during mating seasons, but quickly forget old injuries that would leave a human screaming for justice. They thus might completely lack a need for justice. In contact, they might do something nasty and expedient to humans, and then be shocked when we don't let it die due to our wounded sense of justice and reciprocity. I would hate to speculate how a herd (especially one "alpha" without leaders) end up building a society a few billion strong, but it is pretty safe to say it would be different.
Solitary predators: Intelligent solitary predictors might be a possibility. Clearly, they have to work together to be space faring, but "working together" for a species that normally hunts alone might take extreme and elaborate social structures. They might actually be extremely egalitarian anarchist, as they are naturally disinclined to follow leaders and so need to make all decisions through extreme consensus and voluntary action on the part of individuals. They might tear down anyone that looks to be getting a little too high and mighty, and they might find that personal one-to-one deals are far easier than society wide spanning deals. Humans could find them hard to work with due to an inability to find a leader and make deals. In fact, it might rule out diplomacy all together, as the heart of diplomacy is a few speaking for the many, regardless if the many agree. Diplomatic relations might simply be entirely impossible. On the plus side, they might appear to be less xenophobic than most. They already treat their own as slightly alien others not to be fully trusted, so they might already have the ingrained social know-how to deal with true aliens on a one-to-one basis.
Surely, my theories are way off. My point is that humans are freaks on planet earth, and that our social structures are surely heavily influenced by how weird we are. If we had not evolved our senses of justice, fairness, and society in an extended period where we exist in largish (up to a couple hundred) family group, we would almost certainly had to of built our society much differently than it is today. If aliens evolved in some alien social structure, surely, their societies will reflect that. Our social structure isn't the only one that works, it is just the one that works well for semi-nomadic family group based omnivores where the females are always in heat but conceal ovulation.
It is a pretty arrogant to assume that humans are the nastiest motherfuckers ever to grace the universe. What if the universe is simply filled with aliens of human-like disposition, there is a hard limit of light speed for travel, and limits of physics and technology are basically what they appear to be. In other words, the future for humanity is more or less confined to this solar system, we will not be building ring-worlds or FTL, and if humanity even bothers to colonize the rest of the solar system it won't be due to mass migration (too expensive) but simply due to miners (the only people with a reasonable excuse for wanting to wander around a vacuum) breeding. How will humans look in a few thousand years if that is the case? Well, we will look pretty much like what we do now. We sure as hell won't be invading nearby solar systems. What is the point of sending a few million people to another star when you replace that population in a few days and the resources you might conquer are worthless to a home system that is hundreds of years away?
Humans might be nasty and warlike, but the discovery of aliens on another planet is just going to make us curios, not provoke us into sending out the war fleets to capture resources we can't use. Alien contact in the case of a universe limited by physics and resources is just going to be a very slow and dull exchange with species in the same shit boat of being stuck in their own home system duking it out for the home systems limited resources with no thoughts to planets hundreds of years away.
There, are of course the two other option.
1) The other alternative is that the limits of physics are way beyond our understanding and you can FTL, build ring worlds and dyson spheres, and life is plentiful. In which case, we are royally fucked. This is the heart of Fermi's paradox. If this was true, where the hell is everyone? The only reasonable answer is that they killed themselves (I don't buy it, killing off a civilization is hard), or they have seeded the galaxy with hunter killers that are going to come over and stomp us flat the second they detect intelligence.
2) The limits of physics are way beyond our understanding and you can FTL, build ring worlds and dyson spheres, but life is intelligent life is rare/non-existant. In which case, rock. We are going to own this place, bitches.
Please note, this FAQ contains personally identifiable information - First and last names, job titles, address of employment, phone and fax number, of Governor Deval L. Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Timothyt P. Murray, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Gregory Bialecki, and Undersecretary Barbara Anthony. It was obtained by http - NOT https, as required by the law.
Spoken like someone who didn't actually read the law or the countless posts on about the article.
What the law ACTUALLY covers:
Personal information, a Massachusetts resident's first name and last name or first initial and last name in combination with any one or more of the following data elements that relate to such resident. (a) Social Security number; (b) driver's license number or state-issued identification card number; or (c) financial account number, or credit or debit card number, with or without any required security code, access code, personal identification number or password, that would permit access to a resident’s financial account; provided, however, that “Personal information” shall not include information that is lawfully obtained from publicly available information, or from federal, state or local government records lawfully made available to the general public.
The law allows for displaying someone's name, address, address of employment, and job title. The only time you start to violate the law when you slap one of those three OTHER things to a name. Good. If you are dealing with my credit card number or you better damn well have it encrypted.
Example: "Have you stored your records and data containing PI in locked facilities, storage areas or containers?" - better not have a hardcopy of any records in an unlocked drawer,or take them home to work on.
Yes, that is true. You are an asshole if you walk home with a list of customer names and credit cards in plain text. If there is something you need to do with that involves credit card and SS numbers, you are actually going to have to act responsible for them and secure them. Yes, that might mean you can't actually can't walk home with a brief case full of credit card numbers. Boo-fucking-ho.
"Have you identified the paper, electronic and other records, computing systems, and storage media, including laptops and portable devices, that contain personal information?" - so much for using your smartphone for email and phone calls since you have an unencrypted phone book sitting in there (or evenif it's encrypted, it can be accessed at will without having to enter a password each time - and a 4-digit "unlock" is not considered an effective password under the law... so sux 2 b u.
Unless you are adding SS numbers and credit card numbers to your smart phone's phone book, you are not violating the law. Again, actually read the law. It is reasonable. If you are dealing with sensitive information (SS number, state/federal IDs, finical data), you actually need to make at least half-assed attempt to be responsible for it.
Obama did public space flight. It will not be missed. Our dear "socialist" leader also dumped a pile of money into private space flight. Obama didn't kill space flight. He killed a state welfare program and at the same time gave a boost to the people doing real innovative R&D in manned and unmanned lift vehicles in the private sector. This was long LONG over due. Having the US government design and fund a fucking spaceship by committee and legislation makes about as much sense as the US government designing by fucking committee and legislation cars. It is a really dumb idea and Obama did us a favor by killing it. NASA can now focus on stuff that the private sector can't do, namely, raw science. I'm not against NASA, I just want to see them fretting over stuff like how to detect life on another planet or the arcane working of some exotic stellar mass. Stuff that I want commercialized and brought to the public at large on the other hand needs to be kicked off to private industry ASAP.
Yeah, I actually agree. Long shitty hours are pretty much par for an industrial revolution. China has a problem in that it hasn't developed enough of a middle class where it can be anything other than the cheap-o manufacturing center of the world. As their wages rise, it gets rougher to maintain their position as world factory. All developed nations go through it, but China is trying to do it in a very short timespan. When alls you have going for you is that you are cheap you need to be, well, cheap, at least until your middle class can take up some slack.
So, the fact that they work long shitty days is too bad, but the alternative is to look like Africa. This is life.
The real tragedy as the parent points out is that they are making it shittier than it has to be. Doing stupid shit like not letting your employees talk as they do a mind numbing job for 16 hours is not just malicious, it isn't productive. Anything to break up the tedium is going to make your employees more productive. I have heard this complaint far more than once when I talk to folk who do business in China that managers are simply sadistic for the sake of being sadistic. It is ingrain in their management cultural treating your employees like shit is a good thing, even when there is no conceivable business reason to do it. Certainly it isn't every single manager in China, but it is a non-trivial problem. Their manager class culture is just a dozen ways fucked up, and they make a shitty industrial revolution far more miserable than it has to be.
A bullet doesn't actually apply all that much force. If the theoretical T-shirt was to go rigid and stop the bullet before it penetrates, and then distribute the entire force of the bullet to the entire surface area of your chest, you would be perfectly fine. It probably wouldn't even do more than make you stagger. Bullets don't actually have all that much kinetic energy in the grand scheme of things. What makes them deadly is that they focus all of their kinetic energy it a single point. It is like a knife blade. Slap someone with the flat of the knife and you just sting their skin. Stab someone with the point of the knife and you skewer them.
Sorry, Ubisoft has taken the cake for pure evil over the past few months. They might make good games, but they then turn around cripple the crap out of them and declare customers the enemy. At least EA has not plastered everything they own in crippleware.
Personally, I feel sorry for the developers. They make a great game, and then corporate slithers out from the cracks in the ground and intentionally turns it into a steaming pile of shit.
Good job ass hole, you kept the broke 12 year old kid who isn't going to buy it anyways from pirating it. You also made this late 20's asshole with WAY too much disposable income on his hands not buy it either. Good job.
Let me know when your corporation stops intentionally tearing into the guts of your video games and turning them into steaming piles of shit that we are only allowed to rent (at full retail of course). Ka?
This isn't going to lead to a sales boost. When I was 14 and a pirate I pirated because I was poor. Every game I didn't or couldn't pirates wasn't a game I bought. It was just a game I didn't own.
Well, now I am twenty something and out of college with an engineering degree. I am single, make a tidy pile of money, and have pretty much no expenses beyond student loans. I buy every single video game that catches my fancy without thinking twice. I never pirate because I don't need to. I just pass on DRM titles. There are more than enough without DRM that it isn't a hard decision.
Ubi has lost money from me. I would have bought Assassins Creed 2 and Settlers 7. Hell, I was even eying Silent Hunter 5 a little. Instead though? I just went out and got Bioshock 2, both Empire and Napolian Total War, the new STALKER, the new Dragons Age, and Mass Effect 2, on top of a couple of small indie games. Metro 2037 and MW2 are in my list of games to buy as soon as I catch up on the pile I have already bought.
I really doubt Ubi has "forced' pirates to buy any games. They might not be playing any Ubi games, but what good does that do if they don't buy the game either? For people like me though, I have not and will not buy any Ubi games. Keep a pirate from playing and you gain nothing. Make me and people like me not want to play, and you lose a few hundred bucks.
The issue with Google, and the reason why people shove their heads so far up their asses, is that Google hasn't done anything bad with the info they are collecting. They have had gaffs like Buzz default settings, but the fact that Google knows what adverts to toss your way really isn't all that disconcerting. So I get an ad I might click on instead of OMFG HOME LOANS 4 FREE!!!11!! ads really doesn't cause much lost sleep.
The big reason why everyone has their lips firmly planted on Google's ass is because Google's business model is to increase connectivity. That is good for Google, but also good for me. Google plowing into the smart phone market with an alternative to the closed loop Apple products is a good thing. Google tossing Chrome into the wind to show how to REALLY do a browser is a good thing. If Google pulls the trigger on offering ultra high bandwidth broadband at rates to make the cable companies weep, that is a freaking awesome thing. Does it all serve Google's bottom line? Sure. It also serves my happiness.
All that is wrong with Google is its potential do something horrible. If Google wanted to do something truly evil, they could. They have a scary amount of information and power they are sitting on, but it is just a potential they have thus far refrained from trying to use.
Democracy is still a monopoly on power. It is a better way to do it than the alternatives that have been tried to date, but don't delude yourself. In a democracy, 51% of the population can vote to have the other 49% dragged from their homes and shot. Hell, the most cherished parts of the US constitution are the NON-democratic portions. The beloved bill of rights is a big old "fuck you" to democracy. It lays out the stuff that a democratically elected government can't do unless follows an arcana process that requires an overwhelming super majority.
There is nothing particularly wonderful or just about democracies. The real value a functioning democracy provides is that it gives the assholes in power the boot every few years, hopefully before they gather up too much power for themselves, and does so in a non-violent way. The selection process in a democracy ensure that at least a majority is more or less happy with the results. It isn't just, good, or anything of that nature. It is just convenient. Someone needs a monopoly on force, there are commons that need to be regulated, and some stuff that just works better when a guy can point a gun to your head and tell you to just do something. Highways are not built on hugs and democratic snuggles. They are built on a government's ability to point a gun at your head and tell you that you are going to pay for it or get cozy with the inside of a jail cell, and then do that a few million times to different people until they have enough money to build the communal asset.
As far as corporations go, they are great when they work. Personally, I love that I can pick between competing pizza places. There is nothing authoritarian in that. It is the ultimate expression of free will. In a democracy, if 51% are for something, they can put a gun to your head and make you do it. In the corporate world, if I think that Davis Square Pizza kicks the shit out of Sound Bites Pizza... I just go eat at Davis Square Pizza. The majority might prefer Sound Bites, but they can go fuck themselves because I prefer Davis Square Pizza. That is a vastly superior system over voting for a winner and then forcing everyone to agree with the results.
That isn't to say that corporations are all fine and dandy. They can gather up monopoly power, manipulate governments, and do all the nasty things that humans with accumulate power tend to do. When they work though, they are great, and the ability to freely choose between competing entities beats the living piss out of a 51% moral majority dictating to the other 49% what they are going to do. Personally, I am for free choice when it works, and only after that fails, do we resort to the injustice of democracy.
We might not be able to watch nips on broadcast TV, but at least we can watch small breasted Asian midget pr0n on the Intertubes while playing a nice and gory round and Aliens vs Predators. Not that I want either, but I would take the US governments regulating three crappy broadcast channels from showing nips over a universal internet filter and a fucking censor board on video games. Wait until someone realizes that books have violence in Australia. OMFGTHECHILDREN!
Slashdot Mirror
You do realize that those satellites didn't get there by magic, right? We actually put them there... with a rocket.
The US could almost certainly "get" the satellite, it is just a matter of cost and time. First, you don't actually want to blow it up. Better to have one satellite roaming around than a few thousand pieces of satellite roaming around. The best way to do it would be to boost another satellite into orbit with a arm/magnet/some-method-of-grappling, grapple, and then burn for a bit to de-orbit. If the US or China or whatever wants to throw their balls on the table and show everyone how massive their penis is, they can blow it up as it starts to deorbit.
There is a pretty damn good reason to not give NASA royalties... we paid for the damn stuff, and we paid top dollar. For every tax payer dollar that went into discovering something awesome, another thousand was blown on congressperson XX's part for the shuttle-by-politician-and-committee or whatever bloat NASA was working on. Frankly, I like NASA much more these days. They are scaling back on that ISS nonsense, getting out of the man mission nonsense, and doing what NASA should be doing, research the private sector isn't interested in. Rovers on mars, probes to asteroids, looking at far away galaxies is all good quality NASA stuff. Hell, even manned missions made sense back in the day. Now though, it is better off to just spin that off. NASA clearly doesn't have a clue how to make it cheap enough for the rest of us to care that we can do it. Throw some money at the private sector and let them try while NASA does the stuff the private sector wont. As a bonus, making obscure parts for a Jupiter probe is much harder for congressjackass to politicize.
Dude, it is North-fucking-Korea. Their news is a non-stop stream of verifiablely false bullshit. While they were shedding of double digit percentage points of their population to starvation in the 90's their news declared that all was well and all North Koreans were fat and happy. They were playing this shit on TV (for the very few who had TV) to people who had to work over corpses and were busy literally eating dirt. These people could clearly see from the corpses on the ground, dead relatives, and the fact that they were shaving pine bark into their "food" that the news was clearly lying, yet the news went on declaring all is well as people literally starved to death.
Me declaring that I have achieved fusion in my basement would be a more credible claim that North Korea doing it because at least I am not a proven compulsive liar. No, you should safely and easily dismiss North Korea's claims until they show evidence that they have done as they have done. Until they show evidence, you can safely discard this "news" from their propaganda machine as complete and total bullshit.
I would be pretty shocked if the answers if the smart folks who thought this up and got handed a large money sack did not already answer most of your questions, but I can probably guess the answers to your concerns.
If the salt hangs in the air for any length of time in any concentration... do it some place not near land. In fact, from all I have read on geoengineering, you want to do your work in the poles, so even if the salt hangs, it is a moot point. We also have a few thousands miles of Pacific with nothing in it to dump salt into.
As far as the price, the price is peanuts compared to turning off CO2 production. If you believe some of the climate models we are already fucked and in for 40 years of warming even if all of the man made CO2 stopped tomorrow. If that is the case, the ONLY answer is geoengineering. The cost of reducing CO2 is mind numbing. CO2 cost is basically energy cost, which means that any cost imposed is going to hit literally everything in the world wide economy. It makes EVERYTHING more expensive to tackle CO2. 7 billion is absolutely nothing. Hell, it could go up by 7 billion every single year, and it would still cost nothing in the grand scheme of things. Geoengineering is almost certainly cheaper than reducing worldwide energy consumption. Even if it cost a trillion dollars a year to keep the earth stable, that would still be peanuts compared to the cost of reducing CO2 to zero.
CO2 is an issue we are going to tackle eventually. We cant use fossil fuels forever. The problem is that tackling it aggressively now is far more expensive than in the future. Given time, it is inevitable that renewable energy will improve and win out. If global warming is your fear, geoengineering is really the only rational response. We can't muster the world wide political will to reduce CO2 output, even if we could the cost would be devastating, and we would STILL be fucked because it is already too late.
First, the fun thing this and nearly all of the serious geoengineer proposals that I have seen is that they are easily turned off. If there is some horrible consequence to making the ocean a little more cloudy? Ok... turn them off. We are already geoengineering through industrial pollutants. We might as well geoengineer some more to try and fix the problems. The path to using this techs is pretty clear. Start small, work up to the effect you want, turn it off if you don't like where it is going.
As far as "masking" the problem, what is wrong with that? So we need to run a bunch of sprinklers in the ocean. Is it cheaper than the substantial costs of reducing CO2 output now? If it is, then we should seriously think about doing it. That isn't to say that we shouldn't work on removing CO2 in a more permanent way or work on emitting less, but it could be a hell of a lot cheaper and political far more feasible than the alternative. Do you have to maintain these and replace them? Sure, but that goes with almost any technology. It isn't like the fact that power plants wear out stop us from building an electrical grid. You just include replacement in the cost. It is hardly an insurmountable problem.
If you really believe that climageddon is upon us, geoengineering really is shaping up to be the only way to level off the warming. The cost to reduce CO2 emissions now at levels high enough to stop global warming are through the roof. The political cost is even higher (if not utterly unpayable). We are going to fail at reducing CO2 emissions in the short term. Why not deploy technology to counteract our unintentional geoengineering at a fraction of the cost of "fixing" the problem. Don't stop working on the problem, just give the world some breathing room. Transitioning over to clean and renewable energy is the direction we want to go regardless, making it so that we need to make the transition in a few generations rather than a few years results in a drastically reduced cost.
Frankly, I think that geoengineering makes hardcore environmentalist pissy because it snatches away the best issue that environmentalist movement has had in decades. When it comes down to it, reducing CO2 emission with today's technology boils down to reduced consumption and energy usage. You can tie those two things to pretty much anything in the environmentalist cause. Global warming makes an good proxy in any fight over the environmental. Arguing that coal is bad because it pumps out toxic crap in the PPM range is a very hard argument to make to your average uneducated dolt. Simply declaring coal is a going to cause climageddon on the other hand is much much easier to understand and get worked up over.
Srsly. Did you read that before you posted it? The idea on its face is stupid. Lets pretend for a moment that I want life long government employees running Facebook because I think that is going to result in awesome quality. The idea of the same fine folks that run the DMV running Facebook really just fills my heart with joy. But hey, lets pretend. Okay, now that the government has full access to the greatest source of information about its citizens at their finger tips under their sovereign control.... NOW your privacy concerns are quelled? Holy-fucking-shit is that utterly insane.
I don't like Facebook pissing my information around the Internet. I don't like them selling my network info to private companies. It is annoying and probably going to result in spam mail. The idea that instead of giving it to people who can spam us to death we give it to people who can throw us in jail has to be the most bat shit insane thing I have ever heard in my entire life. It is one thing for your boss to see a picture of you smoking a bong. It is another thing entirely for the police to do so. I can safely say that the surest way to murder Facebook and burn taxpayer money in the process would be to nationalize it. I struggle with if I want to stay with Facebook now. The federal government nationalizing it would make that decision pretty damn easy.
Friends aren't about sex, or cool parties.
1) Speak for yourself.
2) Get better friends.
Yeah yeah, and nothing is private unless you do it in a locked room. That isn't the point. If the original version of Facebook it was pretty easy to set it up such that only friends could access anything other than your name. Further, Facebook defaulted towards privacy so that poor uneducated suckers didn't have a nasty surprise.
The reason to keep a "friends only" network is to communicate with your friends. I really don't care if my friends know that the other night I passed out in a pool of my own vomit. Hell, I don't mind if they share pictures of it. I don't care if my friends know that I hate my job or dislike my boss. This is information that is fine to share among friends either on Facebook or in the real world. Where it becomes a problem is when my boss finds out. My friends don't know my boss and have no communications with him. Could he find out something through a friend of a friend of a friend in the real world? Sure, but the risk is slim. If on the other hand I am not technologically savvy and constantly managing my privacy settings on Facebook, he could find out the same through a relatively simple search on Facebook if you failed to realize that your account is open and posted as such.
There is a lot of value in what Facebook offers. The reason why I have not nuked my account already is because it is a damn good way to keep in touch and organize with friends. What is disturbing is the slow (or not so slow) privacy removal creep. I nuked most of my profile just the other day because I frankly don't want to share with the entire intertubes what my interests are. So, is it true there is no "private"? Sure, but there is "private enough". "Private enough" is Facebook only showing what you post to people you accepted as friends. "Not private enough" is making everything you do on Facebook exposed to the entire intertubes.
Personally, I think Facebook walks a much thinner line than they realize. The techno-savvy blaze the trails in social media and the rest of the world follows. These folks understand what is going on. If Facebook manages to scare these folks away, they are going to get relegated to internet ghetto where AOL and MySpace live on as slowly rotting zombies. It only takes a few of the technologically elite to jump to a new platform before their friends start to follow. Once that happens, the outflow from Facebook will become a torrent. People don't even need to delete their profiles in disgust for Facebook to lose. Alls it takes is for people to go somewhere else when they fire up their browsers. A few hundred million users means shit if none of them uses the site and thus you get no ad revenue.
You never, ever, ever camouflage your military systems to look like civilian infrastructure.
Srsly?
The only people who are going to enter into a fight with the US are non-super power nations. China and Russia are not going to tussle with the US because both sides of the pond really are not all that thrilled with the idea of a nuclear war. Even if they were going to romp, cargo container missiles are last on the list of nasty things super powers can throw at each other. The only folks with any use for something like this are nations like Iran. Iran stands exactly zero chances of winning a stand up fight with the US. The thing about fighting the US is that they are not trying to murder you all. If they were, they would just glass your cities. They wouldn't even need nukes to do it. They are actually going to go out of their way to try and not murder off all of your civilians. That isn't to say the are going to flinch at dropping a two thousand pound bomb on a target nestled in a nice residential neighborhood, but they are not going to drop a MOAB on the neighborhood either.
If you have to fight a nation like the US, the stupidest thing you can do is stand up and fight. The US likes pounding on nations dumb enough to leave their military standing in the open wearing uniforms and waving flags. See Iraq War I for reference. If you stand and fight, they will certainly murder the shit out of you with enthusiastic glee.
Nope, the way to fight the US is hide your military among civilians. Eh, it is not all that honorable feeling, but it feels better than dead. Whenever the Americans murder your civilians they lose a little of their resolve. You are not going to out spend them or kill them all, so loss of resolve is really all you are after. Getting Americans to kill your civilians is the best way to inflict loss of resolve on Americans. If you send a war ship against the US fleet, you are certainly going to find yourself short one war ship. On the other hand, sending a container ship with Dutch flags or something fun like that is exactly the right tactic. Not only do they balk at blowing it to pieces, but if you are lucky, you get them jumpy enough to blow up a real dutch container ship. Asymmetrical warfare is the way to go. It isn't like they need an excuse to target your economy. If you are tussling with the US you can pretty much assume that they have already bent your economy over the barrel and are having their way with it without even having fired a shot.
Personally, I am skeptical of the container missiles. Warm fuzzy feelings aside, you can safely bet that the US is going to get all piratical on any container ship entering or leaving a nation it is in the process of beating on. This means you need to load your cruise missiles at another non-native port, and this opens you up pretty soundly to law enforcement. It might be a nice first strike weapon, but I think once war breaks out they are going to be hard to use. I am also just skeptical of the technology. You are going to need a big ass cargo container to hold a missile with enough firepower to bring down a carrier. There are very few non-nuclear missiles that can take a carrier in one swipe. Carrier also are pretty bad ass warship that tend to be surrounded by other bad ass warship, all of which are designed to keep cruise missiles from having their way.
I really don't see much use. You are better off to buy some much cheaper normal cruise missiles, try and hide them on land, get a lot of them, and fire as many as you can when the Americans get close to the coast. If you really have money burning a hole in your pocket, buy yourself a nice diesel / electric sub. With a little training you might get it close enough to the carrier fleet to deal real damage before it gets taken out. This cargo thing, should it magically work, is really a surprise first strike weapon, and first striking the US has proven to be a pretty dumb move time and time again. If the US comes after y
True, but it amounts to the same thing. You can basically make any accusation that tickles your fancy because they must PROVE that you thought it wasn't true. In fact, it is worse than that, it isn't just "not-true" but you need to prove that it is utterly false AND that the person knew it was utterly false. Slap the good old 5th amendment which lets you not testify against yourself, and the result is that libel and slander suit is basically impossible to win the US. There is literally no other nation with more friendly free speech laws than the US.
There are a lot of things in US law that suck. Copyright and drug laws float to the top of my list, but there are many more. Libel and slander laws are not one of them. If you like free speech, the US is, bar none, the best place to look to in terms with how it deals with libel and slander.
Give this man a lawsuit!
No, wait! Give Slashdot a lawsuit
He wasn't criticizing the judge, so I am not sure exactly why you are defending him. He was criticizing Brazil's laws (civil or otherwise). Brazil's laws around libel and slander absolutely suck beyond all comprehension. Brazil has close to the worst in the world. They do infringe greatly on the quality of public speech in Brazil, and if crap like this continues, all speech by all citizens in Brazil. The US on the other hand has, bar none, the best libel and slander laws in the world... which is to say, we basically have none. In order to get nailed for libel or slander in the US you need to 1) cause actual and real harm 2) personally know it is a lie 3) are presumed innocent with extremely high bars set for proving 1 & 2, and 4) can counter sue any asshole that loses their case. You are more likely to be struck dead by lightening than get sued and lose a slander case in the US.
That said, the US has an equivalent to Brazil's terrible libel and slander laws. US copyright laws have more or less the same effect. The only reason why I would take evil US copyright laws over evil Brazil libel and slander laws is that you can make a half-assed argument that copyright does something useful and, far more importantly, crappy slander and libel laws protect slime ball politicians much better than crappy copyright laws.
Brazil is actually doing some innovative stuff in terms of copyright law. I don't know exactly where it stands today, but they had an awesome proposal that they were giving serious though to a little while back on enforcing sanity in copyright law. Give me that plus US libel and slander law, and I think you are looking at some pretty decent steps taken in protecting freedom of speech.
I think the only thing we disagree about is the need for man rated heavy lifting to be done by the government. Frankly, I am pretty content with what we have. I want money tossed out to private industry simply because it is going to take some innovation to make LEO and beyond worthwhile for humans. NASA isn't going to be that innovator and we frankly don't need a heavy man rated lifter like the shuttle.
Even for stuff that was previously "human only" like satellite repairs is easier to farm off to drones these days. I don't expect an instant miracle from private industry. I just want them to have enough funding to keep trying and failing. Maybe we waste what is pocket change to the shuttle program on private industry seed money and maybe someone does something innovative and the industry ignites.
NASA has a role in all of this. I expect NASA to work with private industry in the way universities work with chip makers. I am not calling for an end to NASA. I just don't want another expensive spaceship designed by committee that serves the purpose of dick waving at the rest of the world and funding state welfare programs.
So, give NASA the role of "university", toss some money and private industry with a focus on innovators trying something new.
As far as humans and safety go, I frankly would prefer that we cut the strings. Make it so that if you want to blast off from space you need to get your will in order and sign a YOU ARE GOING TO FUCKING DIE contract. If a few people die in the process, eh, thats how the ball rolls. We seem to accept crab fishermen dying on a pretty regular basis to get luxury food items. I bet we can reach deep down into our collective pants, find our collective balls, and accept that some people are crazy mother fuckers who are literally willing to accept the risk of death to see space and let them go be crazy for the benefit of humanity. This post 9/11 nanny crap is getting incredibly tedious. Someone better not tell the media that OMFG dozens!!!!111!! of people are killed each year by lightening strikes or else some asshole politician is going to feel the pressure and stick Homeland Security at clouds.
I think an interesting thought experiment is to imagine we are the technologically superior aliens. How would we react?
If we picked up a signal from a 1930's like civilization within 50 light years of earth. What would we actually do? Personally, I think all options would be on the table. We would probably pour money into space R&D if for no other reason than defense. It might not make space easy if those pesky rules of physics hold up, but it would certainly give us the ability to launch something slow in their direction if we so chose. I personally think that humanity would be more or less split. Most people would want to carry on long range contact and send a representative (AI or frozen humans) as soon as possible. I think a lot of government would give serious thought to launching relativistic weapons preemptively, just as the US gave serious thought to nuking the USSR preemptively before they had the bomb. No one would have much thirst for colonization or invasion. If the world sent anything hostile, it would be to simply wipe them out, not to take over.
Now consider if we developed awesome telescopes and could see alien cave men within a 50 light year radius of earth. Personally, I think we would have only two responses. We would either send them a relativistic surprise to keep them ever rivaling us, or we would simply watch, study, and ignore. We would have no desire to make contact.
Finally, consider if we discovered intelligent caveman leveled life on Mars just chilling under the glaciers or something (which is the equivalent of aliens finding us and FTL being pretty easy). I personally think that we would exterminate them if they looked like they were "better" (learn much faster) and study them if they didn't appear to out match us given similar technology. The debate among humans than would be to decide we we want to try and raise them up and have contact, or simply watch and preserve them until they are "ready" for contact.
My point is that us boring old non-alien humans struggle with the idea of contact because WE have lots of responses if put in reverse roles. Not only will we respond radically different to two different "types" of contacts put in the shoes of being the technologically superior being, but we will often have completely contradictory responses. We will have the desire to annihilate co-existing with the desire to peacefully contact and study. If humans can pretty easily oscillate between the desire for peaceful contact and self preserving genocide, I have a feeling aliens are likely to do either. There is no "natural" answer. Aliens might sling relativistic weapons at us to prevent us from being a threat, or they might be curious and want cultural exchanges. Both are rational responses to different types of situations.
I think you are making some pretty large assumption on what it takes to be intelligent. The structure of modern human ethics and civilization are very heavily influenced by our rather weird "natural" social and sexual structures. Omnivores that band together in small family groups where the females are always sex ready are really freaking weird in the animal kingdom, and our weirdness permeates into our modern social structures and ethics. Our concepts of "justice" and "reciprocity" are very much artifacts of hardwired biological drives that let us live in small groups. There are certainly alternate ethics that we could have developed had we arisen with different social structures.
I think speculation on alternate social structures is iffy and best, but for fun consider some alternatives.
Herds: If we were herbivores who lived in massive herds, we might have a totally different outlook on life. I won't try and speculate too far, but I imagine an intelligent society that evolved from herds probably has a need to be far more communal. If they do the "fight for females" thing, they might be able to fight viciously among themselves during mating seasons, but quickly forget old injuries that would leave a human screaming for justice. They thus might completely lack a need for justice. In contact, they might do something nasty and expedient to humans, and then be shocked when we don't let it die due to our wounded sense of justice and reciprocity. I would hate to speculate how a herd (especially one "alpha" without leaders) end up building a society a few billion strong, but it is pretty safe to say it would be different.
Solitary predators: Intelligent solitary predictors might be a possibility. Clearly, they have to work together to be space faring, but "working together" for a species that normally hunts alone might take extreme and elaborate social structures. They might actually be extremely egalitarian anarchist, as they are naturally disinclined to follow leaders and so need to make all decisions through extreme consensus and voluntary action on the part of individuals. They might tear down anyone that looks to be getting a little too high and mighty, and they might find that personal one-to-one deals are far easier than society wide spanning deals. Humans could find them hard to work with due to an inability to find a leader and make deals. In fact, it might rule out diplomacy all together, as the heart of diplomacy is a few speaking for the many, regardless if the many agree. Diplomatic relations might simply be entirely impossible. On the plus side, they might appear to be less xenophobic than most. They already treat their own as slightly alien others not to be fully trusted, so they might already have the ingrained social know-how to deal with true aliens on a one-to-one basis.
Surely, my theories are way off. My point is that humans are freaks on planet earth, and that our social structures are surely heavily influenced by how weird we are. If we had not evolved our senses of justice, fairness, and society in an extended period where we exist in largish (up to a couple hundred) family group, we would almost certainly had to of built our society much differently than it is today. If aliens evolved in some alien social structure, surely, their societies will reflect that. Our social structure isn't the only one that works, it is just the one that works well for semi-nomadic family group based omnivores where the females are always in heat but conceal ovulation.
It is a pretty arrogant to assume that humans are the nastiest motherfuckers ever to grace the universe. What if the universe is simply filled with aliens of human-like disposition, there is a hard limit of light speed for travel, and limits of physics and technology are basically what they appear to be. In other words, the future for humanity is more or less confined to this solar system, we will not be building ring-worlds or FTL, and if humanity even bothers to colonize the rest of the solar system it won't be due to mass migration (too expensive) but simply due to miners (the only people with a reasonable excuse for wanting to wander around a vacuum) breeding. How will humans look in a few thousand years if that is the case? Well, we will look pretty much like what we do now. We sure as hell won't be invading nearby solar systems. What is the point of sending a few million people to another star when you replace that population in a few days and the resources you might conquer are worthless to a home system that is hundreds of years away?
Humans might be nasty and warlike, but the discovery of aliens on another planet is just going to make us curios, not provoke us into sending out the war fleets to capture resources we can't use. Alien contact in the case of a universe limited by physics and resources is just going to be a very slow and dull exchange with species in the same shit boat of being stuck in their own home system duking it out for the home systems limited resources with no thoughts to planets hundreds of years away.
There, are of course the two other option.
1) The other alternative is that the limits of physics are way beyond our understanding and you can FTL, build ring worlds and dyson spheres, and life is plentiful. In which case, we are royally fucked. This is the heart of Fermi's paradox. If this was true, where the hell is everyone? The only reasonable answer is that they killed themselves (I don't buy it, killing off a civilization is hard), or they have seeded the galaxy with hunter killers that are going to come over and stomp us flat the second they detect intelligence.
2) The limits of physics are way beyond our understanding and you can FTL, build ring worlds and dyson spheres, but life is intelligent life is rare/non-existant. In which case, rock. We are going to own this place, bitches.
Please note, this FAQ contains personally identifiable information - First and last names, job titles, address of employment, phone and fax number, of Governor Deval L. Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Timothyt P. Murray, Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Gregory Bialecki, and Undersecretary Barbara Anthony. It was obtained by http - NOT https, as required by the law.
Spoken like someone who didn't actually read the law or the countless posts on about the article.
What the law ACTUALLY covers:
Personal information, a Massachusetts resident's first name and last name or first initial and
last name in combination with any one or more of the following data elements that relate to
such resident. (a) Social Security number; (b) driver's license number or state-issued
identification card number; or (c) financial account number, or credit or debit card number,
with or without any required security code, access code, personal identification number or
password, that would permit access to a resident’s financial account; provided, however, that
“Personal information” shall not include information that is lawfully obtained from publicly
available information, or from federal, state or local government records lawfully made
available to the general public.
The law allows for displaying someone's name, address, address of employment, and job title. The only time you start to violate the law when you slap one of those three OTHER things to a name. Good. If you are dealing with my credit card number or you better damn well have it encrypted.
Example: "Have you stored your records and data containing PI in locked facilities, storage areas or containers?" - better not have a hardcopy of any records in an unlocked drawer,or take them home to work on.
Yes, that is true. You are an asshole if you walk home with a list of customer names and credit cards in plain text. If there is something you need to do with that involves credit card and SS numbers, you are actually going to have to act responsible for them and secure them. Yes, that might mean you can't actually can't walk home with a brief case full of credit card numbers. Boo-fucking-ho.
"Have you identified the paper, electronic and other records, computing systems, and storage media, including laptops and portable devices, that contain personal information?" - so much for using your smartphone for email and phone calls since you have an unencrypted phone book sitting in there (or evenif it's encrypted, it can be accessed at will without having to enter a password each time - and a 4-digit "unlock" is not considered an effective password under the law ... so sux 2 b u.
Unless you are adding SS numbers and credit card numbers to your smart phone's phone book, you are not violating the law. Again, actually read the law. It is reasonable. If you are dealing with sensitive information (SS number, state/federal IDs, finical data), you actually need to make at least half-assed attempt to be responsible for it.
Obama did public space flight. It will not be missed. Our dear "socialist" leader also dumped a pile of money into private space flight. Obama didn't kill space flight. He killed a state welfare program and at the same time gave a boost to the people doing real innovative R&D in manned and unmanned lift vehicles in the private sector. This was long LONG over due. Having the US government design and fund a fucking spaceship by committee and legislation makes about as much sense as the US government designing by fucking committee and legislation cars. It is a really dumb idea and Obama did us a favor by killing it. NASA can now focus on stuff that the private sector can't do, namely, raw science. I'm not against NASA, I just want to see them fretting over stuff like how to detect life on another planet or the arcane working of some exotic stellar mass. Stuff that I want commercialized and brought to the public at large on the other hand needs to be kicked off to private industry ASAP.
Yeah, I actually agree. Long shitty hours are pretty much par for an industrial revolution. China has a problem in that it hasn't developed enough of a middle class where it can be anything other than the cheap-o manufacturing center of the world. As their wages rise, it gets rougher to maintain their position as world factory. All developed nations go through it, but China is trying to do it in a very short timespan. When alls you have going for you is that you are cheap you need to be, well, cheap, at least until your middle class can take up some slack.
So, the fact that they work long shitty days is too bad, but the alternative is to look like Africa. This is life.
The real tragedy as the parent points out is that they are making it shittier than it has to be. Doing stupid shit like not letting your employees talk as they do a mind numbing job for 16 hours is not just malicious, it isn't productive. Anything to break up the tedium is going to make your employees more productive. I have heard this complaint far more than once when I talk to folk who do business in China that managers are simply sadistic for the sake of being sadistic. It is ingrain in their management cultural treating your employees like shit is a good thing, even when there is no conceivable business reason to do it. Certainly it isn't every single manager in China, but it is a non-trivial problem. Their manager class culture is just a dozen ways fucked up, and they make a shitty industrial revolution far more miserable than it has to be.
A bullet doesn't actually apply all that much force. If the theoretical T-shirt was to go rigid and stop the bullet before it penetrates, and then distribute the entire force of the bullet to the entire surface area of your chest, you would be perfectly fine. It probably wouldn't even do more than make you stagger. Bullets don't actually have all that much kinetic energy in the grand scheme of things. What makes them deadly is that they focus all of their kinetic energy it a single point. It is like a knife blade. Slap someone with the flat of the knife and you just sting their skin. Stab someone with the point of the knife and you skewer them.
Sorry, Ubisoft has taken the cake for pure evil over the past few months. They might make good games, but they then turn around cripple the crap out of them and declare customers the enemy. At least EA has not plastered everything they own in crippleware.
Personally, I feel sorry for the developers. They make a great game, and then corporate slithers out from the cracks in the ground and intentionally turns it into a steaming pile of shit.
Good job ass hole, you kept the broke 12 year old kid who isn't going to buy it anyways from pirating it. You also made this late 20's asshole with WAY too much disposable income on his hands not buy it either. Good job.
Let me know when your corporation stops intentionally tearing into the guts of your video games and turning them into steaming piles of shit that we are only allowed to rent (at full retail of course). Ka?
This isn't going to lead to a sales boost. When I was 14 and a pirate I pirated because I was poor. Every game I didn't or couldn't pirates wasn't a game I bought. It was just a game I didn't own.
Well, now I am twenty something and out of college with an engineering degree. I am single, make a tidy pile of money, and have pretty much no expenses beyond student loans. I buy every single video game that catches my fancy without thinking twice. I never pirate because I don't need to. I just pass on DRM titles. There are more than enough without DRM that it isn't a hard decision.
Ubi has lost money from me. I would have bought Assassins Creed 2 and Settlers 7. Hell, I was even eying Silent Hunter 5 a little. Instead though? I just went out and got Bioshock 2, both Empire and Napolian Total War, the new STALKER, the new Dragons Age, and Mass Effect 2, on top of a couple of small indie games. Metro 2037 and MW2 are in my list of games to buy as soon as I catch up on the pile I have already bought.
I really doubt Ubi has "forced' pirates to buy any games. They might not be playing any Ubi games, but what good does that do if they don't buy the game either? For people like me though, I have not and will not buy any Ubi games. Keep a pirate from playing and you gain nothing. Make me and people like me not want to play, and you lose a few hundred bucks.
The issue with Google, and the reason why people shove their heads so far up their asses, is that Google hasn't done anything bad with the info they are collecting. They have had gaffs like Buzz default settings, but the fact that Google knows what adverts to toss your way really isn't all that disconcerting. So I get an ad I might click on instead of OMFG HOME LOANS 4 FREE!!!11!! ads really doesn't cause much lost sleep.
The big reason why everyone has their lips firmly planted on Google's ass is because Google's business model is to increase connectivity. That is good for Google, but also good for me. Google plowing into the smart phone market with an alternative to the closed loop Apple products is a good thing. Google tossing Chrome into the wind to show how to REALLY do a browser is a good thing. If Google pulls the trigger on offering ultra high bandwidth broadband at rates to make the cable companies weep, that is a freaking awesome thing. Does it all serve Google's bottom line? Sure. It also serves my happiness.
All that is wrong with Google is its potential do something horrible. If Google wanted to do something truly evil, they could. They have a scary amount of information and power they are sitting on, but it is just a potential they have thus far refrained from trying to use.
Democracy is still a monopoly on power. It is a better way to do it than the alternatives that have been tried to date, but don't delude yourself. In a democracy, 51% of the population can vote to have the other 49% dragged from their homes and shot. Hell, the most cherished parts of the US constitution are the NON-democratic portions. The beloved bill of rights is a big old "fuck you" to democracy. It lays out the stuff that a democratically elected government can't do unless follows an arcana process that requires an overwhelming super majority.
There is nothing particularly wonderful or just about democracies. The real value a functioning democracy provides is that it gives the assholes in power the boot every few years, hopefully before they gather up too much power for themselves, and does so in a non-violent way. The selection process in a democracy ensure that at least a majority is more or less happy with the results. It isn't just, good, or anything of that nature. It is just convenient. Someone needs a monopoly on force, there are commons that need to be regulated, and some stuff that just works better when a guy can point a gun to your head and tell you to just do something. Highways are not built on hugs and democratic snuggles. They are built on a government's ability to point a gun at your head and tell you that you are going to pay for it or get cozy with the inside of a jail cell, and then do that a few million times to different people until they have enough money to build the communal asset.
As far as corporations go, they are great when they work. Personally, I love that I can pick between competing pizza places. There is nothing authoritarian in that. It is the ultimate expression of free will. In a democracy, if 51% are for something, they can put a gun to your head and make you do it. In the corporate world, if I think that Davis Square Pizza kicks the shit out of Sound Bites Pizza... I just go eat at Davis Square Pizza. The majority might prefer Sound Bites, but they can go fuck themselves because I prefer Davis Square Pizza. That is a vastly superior system over voting for a winner and then forcing everyone to agree with the results.
That isn't to say that corporations are all fine and dandy. They can gather up monopoly power, manipulate governments, and do all the nasty things that humans with accumulate power tend to do. When they work though, they are great, and the ability to freely choose between competing entities beats the living piss out of a 51% moral majority dictating to the other 49% what they are going to do. Personally, I am for free choice when it works, and only after that fails, do we resort to the injustice of democracy.
We might not be able to watch nips on broadcast TV, but at least we can watch small breasted Asian midget pr0n on the Intertubes while playing a nice and gory round and Aliens vs Predators. Not that I want either, but I would take the US governments regulating three crappy broadcast channels from showing nips over a universal internet filter and a fucking censor board on video games. Wait until someone realizes that books have violence in Australia. OMFGTHECHILDREN!