if you're not fundamentalist, why are you attempting to excuse your fundamentalist allies?
What significant difference is there between a fundamentalist whackjob and a non-fundamentalist whackjob? They still believe in paranormal Peeping Toms in the sky, with lightning bolts and severe schizophrenia (one god or three? Really?). After that, whether they accept the existence of electric power or publicly eat human flesh on Sundays, isn't terribly important. They're still religious whackjobs.
Fair point, but I have to say that hearing guys complain about the chafing their wedding tackle is getting after a week in the desert wears a little thin after a while.
That's an education issue. They haven't been educated about which hole of the goat to use.
Unfortunately, one of these planets has around 10 times the mass of the other (which makes generating ejecta with the planet's escape velocity much harder) ; and one of these planets has an orbit further out from the Sun than the other (which means that the energy supplied from the initial impact needs to be greater, to supply the kinetic energy which will be converted to potential energy).
Both of these factors steeply decrease the proportion of impacts which are going to generate ejecta travelling in the appropriate direction.
Note that while the upper energy of an impact is essentially unlimited (up to and including planet-busters); the issue under discussion is to move life forms from one planet to another. That will require keeping the impact energy down to a minimum, otherwise the rocks that you do eject will be glowing a nice dull red with a very rapidly declining population of bugs.
The statistics have been done, reported, peer-reviewed and generally accepted, about a decade ago - it's considerably easier to transfer ejecta at life-preserving temperatures and pressures from Mars to Earth than it is the other way around. A factor of hundreds to thousands. (Incidentally, it's also easier to move material from the Galilean satellites to Earth than from anywhere in the inner solar system to anywhere further out.
If there is microbial life on Mars, will this and should this stop us from terraforming the planet?
You're assuming that terraforming Mars is actually possible. That's not at all clear to me - certainly for meanings of "terraform" that end up with humans on the Martian surface without breathing apparatus.
Guys - in the sky or in space, it's a meteor ; if it lands, it's a meteorite. (Words have definitions, for a reason.)
Meteors don't land - by definition. Meteorites land cold on their interiors, though their outermost couple of mm may be highly heated.
If we're talking about panspermia, don't forget that the organisms that survive are going to be the ones that have the most shielding from cosmic radiation during their wandering through space. So that means that the organisms in the outer few mm of any particular rock are likely to be more damaged (and less likely to be viable) compared to the ones deep within the meteor.
Not only to have a chance to study evolving life over the next aeons
Unfortunately, given what we know about the geological history of the planet, the conditions for life are steadily getting harder and harder. Most likely, if we did find a life form on Mars (please note the "if" there!) and we took no steps to secure a sample, then over aeons (thousands of millions of years) we'd almost certainly watch it die out.
Having said that, the Earth probably only has around an aeon left as a habitable planet. So a lot of the watching we'd have to do from asteroid belt colonies.
If there's life on Mars, it is not impossible that it originated here
FTFY
I hate it when a perfectly reasonable discussion of a possibility (the article you cite) gets reported and then remembered as "this and only this is the only possible thing that could have happened." That is not what the authors said, and is not what the scientific community believes. But it probably makes for more interesting reporting, so that makes such distortions acceptable?
Not in my book.
Is this a "news for nerds" site, or a "news for jocks" site?
you open the door to situations where person A falsly reports persons B's phone stolen and gets it bricked. This would be a denial of service prank/attach
This is why several peices of data are required to validate a lost/ stolen report (here in Europe, where we've had a working phone-blocking system for years) :
Step 1 - go to, or telephone, a branch of your network/ phone provider.
2 - Give them the number of the phone that is missing.
3 - Confirm the phone's make and model and (typically) the post code of the user's address. Some companies also use passwords/ passphrases for more security.
4 - The network company looks through it's data base, gets the hardware's serial number and IMEI codes, and puts them on the blocked list. Within a couple of days, that list propagates to all other network providers and that phone is blocked from all networks. (It's a requirement of the network license to have a working system for this blocking, operating for every phone connection).
5 - A new phone and SIM card (same number) is issued to the user, appropriate to their plan, their insurance cover, etc.
That should make it difficult to shut down someone else's phone. Not impossible - flatmates or spouses should have enough information to social engineer the system too - but much harder.
I'm almost wondering how "unblocking" works. I guess that it involves re-flashing the phone with different manufacturer and IMEI codes. Which begs the question of how the new codes are generated, and what happens if there's a code clash in a cell.
Whatever happened to those whistle blower protection laws
They've fulfilled their aims : a whistleblower has been fooled into exposing himself and is now being punished for whistleblowing. The corporation meanwhile, will manage to contain the problem (whistleblowing) cover up the evidence and continue getting away with it.
What other possible reason could you have for buying politicians and getting them to design and implement "whisltblowing" laws?
Torture is a well known technique, shown to be ineffective many times in history.
FTFY
Torture is very well known to be an effective way of getting the torture victim to tell the torturers absolutely anything that the torture victim thinks that the torturers want to hear, in order to get the torture to stop.
Other than that, torture is singularly ineffective compared to intelligence work, traffic analysis, forensic analysis, etc. Though it does give the impression of doing "something", which is often important to the torturers.
Simple solution : Switch the America-based workers (who evidently still work for a company that operates under Canadian law) to using Canadian SaaS systems.
It's a simple decision : if one software provider can't provide the software services you want (including complying with relevant laws), and another provider can provide... you use the second provider, not the first. Well, Doh!
If God knows all then surely it knows how you feel without you having to say anything.
Which neatly exposes the fact that the purpose of prayer is nothing to do with any deity, but is to detect dissension and independent thought in the congregation. The priests know who their enemies are and need tools like this to check who is complying with their orders.
Any operation where there can be a significant delay in getting critical personnel to the work site routinely puts people up on site. The oil rigs I work on ; many construction sites ; all sorts of transport operations. It's absolutely bog-standard.
The next shock! horror! story is going to be that they have two shifts of staff on 12-hour rotation, or three shifts on 8 hour on/ 16 off.
True, but many performance mods do not void insurance coverage;
I'll let you take the risk of putting that to the test. An increasingly frequent response by the police (here) to finding a vehicle without insurance cover is to have it crushed. This, of course will not affect your financial obligations to paying for the vehicle. So I'll let you take that risk.
(You get 20 days from detection to produce valid insurance, as well as paying the fine. No pay ; it gets sold or crushed ; you continue to pay any finance on it, because it's your responsibility to have the vehicle insured.)
If the insurance companies in America are as slack as you're saying, then I'd expect that to change. As I said, denying insurance coverage improves the income (you keep the premiums so far) to liability ("you're not covered ; go away") ratio, which is pretty much all that insurance is about.
For sample, a stereo mod
I was only considering "drive train" modifications. Conceivably the leather cover I put onto the issue steering wheel might just possibly make it as a "mod". Stereos, interior stuff and fluffy dice hainging from the rear view mirror... that's like caring about your hair cut - I can see that some people do care about such things, but I simply do not understand why they care.
("For sample," ; that's a usage I've not seen before. Is it common? Becoming more common? American English? Or... it has a Caribbean feel to it.))
Most engine software modifications I'd suspect are "drive train" modifications in this light (and why else would you do one? I am not now a petrol head and am unlikely to ever become one ; they're boxes with wheels at each corner and large bills attached, which sink both money and time.)
The purpose of car companies is to sell cars and to a lesser degree parts ; for this they need their dealer networks. So, for a very long time they have been designing cars so that they can only be serviced by the dealers, often using special, patented licensed and serial-numbered tools :
In approximately 1982 I was hitch-hiking and got a lift for a couple of hundred miles from an engineer for IIRC Ford, moving between their London-ish plant and their Liverpool-ish plant for a meeting. His task for the last few months was to re-design the clutch for a new model so that it could not be changed without dropping the engine out on a sub-frame jig, splitting it into two parts on the jig, changing the clutch then re-assembling on the jig, needing laser tools for alignment of parts. That jig, the plan was, was to never be sold to anyone, but to be leased to registered dealers only. Usual design and patent protection, so that any copied jigs could be seized and destroyed. As an engineer, he hated having to create problems like that ; as a person in the vehicle business, he understood fully why it was a good thing for the company. And of course, there's nothing illegal about it. There's also nothing illegal about a dealer refusing to perform a clutch change with their leased equipment without using genuine manufacturer parts. It's simply a question of whether the one clutch change is worth losing their registered dealer status.
In the US at least that is illegal - you cannot require dealer or manufacturer service to maintain a warranty;
In the incredible (i.e., "not believable") circumstance that I ever find myself maintaining a car in America... no, it's not worth considering. Someone Else's Problem.
But why can't you design something so that it is impossible to service *properly* (i.e. in accordance with the manufacturer's service manual) without using tools and equipment that are simply not sold to the public? I'm almost certain that it's done already. Case in point : I have SCUBA regulators that need to be serviced. The regulators require O-rings of particul
No, seriously, the rest of the world (well, Europe, at least), has had cross-carrier stolen device blocking for well over a decade. So... America is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the late 1990s?
Ms Palin, America desperately need your presidency to bring it's sanity clearly to the minds of the Rest Of The World. By the middle testicle of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you must do this!
Not sure you where you are, but in general most mods to cars would not void insurance coverage in the US.
I'm not in the US, thank Allah's left testicle, but any sane insurance company would improve their income:liability ratio by voiding any insurance policy for a vehicle with modifications. That is why the put the poison words in their policies about "any" modifications into the contract. You changed the carbs on your car... not an authorised or agreed modification... not detailed on your premium agreement... invalid insurance. You changed the suspension for [any of stiffer shocks, lowered springs, phase of the moon]... it's not the car we-the-insurance-company quoted you for, It's not on the description of the vehicle, so the insurance is not now (and never has been - you lied on your application) valid. Go directly to Jail ; do not pass "Go".
At any rate, I was thinking about software mods - such as changing build codes to activate features not originally active
And you can prove, to the insurance company's satisfaction that this is not going to change (say) the performance of the ABS? The important word is, of course, "prove". Don't hold your breath waiting for assistance from the car company.
at least giver users a choice wether to install it.
"whether", not "wether". Regardless, I cannot conceive that a car manufacturer would find it financially or politically (NB : description of electorate below) useful to allow users to do "X" (where "X" is nore than filling up the fluids containers - petrol, screen wash... that's it. Brake and engine oil are too complex for users.), when "X" can be cast as requiring the paid services of a trained dealer engineer.
The purpose of dealers (the "electorate", from the car manufacturer's point of view) is to be assured of a revenue stream (from servicing, etc).
The purpose of car manufacturer (from the dealers' point of view) is to be assured of a revenue stream (from new sales etc).
If you can see any interest for the consumer in there... then you've got better eyes than I have, Gunga-Din!
There is probably a way around this : get a couple of hundred thousand other users of precisely the same vehicle as you, with precisely the same modification, applied in precisely the same way... and you might be able to get it considered as an authorised modification. Enjoy trying to herd those cats!
In the real world, modifications that don't appreciably change the vehicle's performance are unlikely to attract attention, but modifications that do, will. Your opinion, as a petrol-head counts for nothing against the opinion of the insurance company (who are not, corporately, petrol-heads).
I can image the grief a wireless flash might cause on a factory car with mods, potentially rendering it undrivable;
And your question:
and leaving the owner fighting the factory over whose fault it is.
If the mods were manufacturer-approved and dealer-installed, then it's the manufacturer-dealer-network's problem. Otherwise, it's the problem of the person who designed or installed the unapproved modification.
Oh, and by driving the vehicle with unapproved modifications, you were almost certainly in violation of the terms and conditions of your insurance policy (unless you'd told them exactly what you'd done to the car). So, potentially you've been committing criminal offences of driving without insurance too.
That would be the way I read the law (in my jurisdiction) ; you may not like it, but that's not a problem I lose sleep over.
Grey area : permitted non-dealer modifications. I've just (this morning) taken the winter tyres off the car. They're not ones from the dealer (the dealer was out of stock, it was that time of year), but they're the correct size and other details and winter tyres are mentioned in TFMs, so I assume that's in the range of permitted modifications.
Slashdot Mirror
What significant difference is there between a fundamentalist whackjob and a non-fundamentalist whackjob? They still believe in paranormal Peeping Toms in the sky, with lightning bolts and severe schizophrenia (one god or three? Really?). After that, whether they accept the existence of electric power or publicly eat human flesh on Sundays, isn't terribly important. They're still religious whackjobs.
That's an education issue. They haven't been educated about which hole of the goat to use.
Both of these factors steeply decrease the proportion of impacts which are going to generate ejecta travelling in the appropriate direction.
Note that while the upper energy of an impact is essentially unlimited (up to and including planet-busters); the issue under discussion is to move life forms from one planet to another. That will require keeping the impact energy down to a minimum, otherwise the rocks that you do eject will be glowing a nice dull red with a very rapidly declining population of bugs.
The statistics have been done, reported, peer-reviewed and generally accepted, about a decade ago - it's considerably easier to transfer ejecta at life-preserving temperatures and pressures from Mars to Earth than it is the other way around. A factor of hundreds to thousands. (Incidentally, it's also easier to move material from the Galilean satellites to Earth than from anywhere in the inner solar system to anywhere further out.
You're assuming that terraforming Mars is actually possible. That's not at all clear to me - certainly for meanings of "terraform" that end up with humans on the Martian surface without breathing apparatus.
Probably not. too many people think this is an entertainment site, not a science site.
Plus, of course, there's the Anonymous Coward problem - they can post.
Stop being boringly realistic. That's my job!
Meteors don't land - by definition. Meteorites land cold on their interiors, though their outermost couple of mm may be highly heated.
If we're talking about panspermia, don't forget that the organisms that survive are going to be the ones that have the most shielding from cosmic radiation during their wandering through space. So that means that the organisms in the outer few mm of any particular rock are likely to be more damaged (and less likely to be viable) compared to the ones deep within the meteor.
Unfortunately, given what we know about the geological history of the planet, the conditions for life are steadily getting harder and harder. Most likely, if we did find a life form on Mars (please note the "if" there!) and we took no steps to secure a sample, then over aeons (thousands of millions of years) we'd almost certainly watch it die out.
Having said that, the Earth probably only has around an aeon left as a habitable planet. So a lot of the watching we'd have to do from asteroid belt colonies.
FTFY
I hate it when a perfectly reasonable discussion of a possibility (the article you cite) gets reported and then remembered as "this and only this is the only possible thing that could have happened." That is not what the authors said, and is not what the scientific community believes. But it probably makes for more interesting reporting, so that makes such distortions acceptable?
Not in my book.
Is this a "news for nerds" site, or a "news for jocks" site?
This is why several peices of data are required to validate a lost/ stolen report (here in Europe, where we've had a working phone-blocking system for years) :
That should make it difficult to shut down someone else's phone. Not impossible - flatmates or spouses should have enough information to social engineer the system too - but much harder.
I'm almost wondering how "unblocking" works. I guess that it involves re-flashing the phone with different manufacturer and IMEI codes. Which begs the question of how the new codes are generated, and what happens if there's a code clash in a cell.
They've fulfilled their aims : a whistleblower has been fooled into exposing himself and is now being punished for whistleblowing. The corporation meanwhile, will manage to contain the problem (whistleblowing) cover up the evidence and continue getting away with it.
What other possible reason could you have for buying politicians and getting them to design and implement "whisltblowing" laws?
I have a bridge for sale. Are you interested?
FTFY
Torture is very well known to be an effective way of getting the torture victim to tell the torturers absolutely anything that the torture victim thinks that the torturers want to hear, in order to get the torture to stop.
Other than that, torture is singularly ineffective compared to intelligence work, traffic analysis, forensic analysis, etc. Though it does give the impression of doing "something", which is often important to the torturers.
It's a simple decision : if one software provider can't provide the software services you want (including complying with relevant laws), and another provider can provide ... you use the second provider, not the first. Well, Doh!
There are several cosmogonies in which the creator god forms the Earth from his ejaculate.
As a geologist, I find this implausible.
Which neatly exposes the fact that the purpose of prayer is nothing to do with any deity, but is to detect dissension and independent thought in the congregation. The priests know who their enemies are and need tools like this to check who is complying with their orders.
It's mind control. Like the rest of religion.
Inadequate quality control
Boring!
Let's perform experiments by throwing 10-km diameter asteroids at our own planet. What could possibly go wrong?
The next shock! horror! story is going to be that they have two shifts of staff on 12-hour rotation, or three shifts on 8 hour on/ 16 off.
Not rocket science.
It's not difficult.
It's probably just as well that they died young ; they'd have suffered more at the hands of such stupid abusive parents if they'd lived longer.
I'll let you take the risk of putting that to the test. An increasingly frequent response by the police (here) to finding a vehicle without insurance cover is to have it crushed. This, of course will not affect your financial obligations to paying for the vehicle. So I'll let you take that risk.
(You get 20 days from detection to produce valid insurance, as well as paying the fine. No pay ; it gets sold or crushed ; you continue to pay any finance on it, because it's your responsibility to have the vehicle insured.)
If the insurance companies in America are as slack as you're saying, then I'd expect that to change. As I said, denying insurance coverage improves the income (you keep the premiums so far) to liability ("you're not covered ; go away") ratio, which is pretty much all that insurance is about.
I was only considering "drive train" modifications. Conceivably the leather cover I put onto the issue steering wheel might just possibly make it as a "mod". Stereos, interior stuff and fluffy dice hainging from the rear view mirror ... that's like caring about your hair cut - I can see that some people do care about such things, but I simply do not understand why they care.
("For sample," ; that's a usage I've not seen before. Is it common? Becoming more common? American English? Or ... it has a Caribbean feel to it.))
Most engine software modifications I'd suspect are "drive train" modifications in this light (and why else would you do one? I am not now a petrol head and am unlikely to ever become one ; they're boxes with wheels at each corner and large bills attached, which sink both money and time.)
The purpose of car companies is to sell cars and to a lesser degree parts ; for this they need their dealer networks. So, for a very long time they have been designing cars so that they can only be serviced by the dealers, often using special, patented licensed and serial-numbered tools :
In approximately 1982 I was hitch-hiking and got a lift for a couple of hundred miles from an engineer for IIRC Ford, moving between their London-ish plant and their Liverpool-ish plant for a meeting. His task for the last few months was to re-design the clutch for a new model so that it could not be changed without dropping the engine out on a sub-frame jig, splitting it into two parts on the jig, changing the clutch then re-assembling on the jig, needing laser tools for alignment of parts. That jig, the plan was, was to never be sold to anyone, but to be leased to registered dealers only. Usual design and patent protection, so that any copied jigs could be seized and destroyed. As an engineer, he hated having to create problems like that ; as a person in the vehicle business, he understood fully why it was a good thing for the company. And of course, there's nothing illegal about it. There's also nothing illegal about a dealer refusing to perform a clutch change with their leased equipment without using genuine manufacturer parts. It's simply a question of whether the one clutch change is worth losing their registered dealer status.
In the incredible (i.e., "not believable") circumstance that I ever find myself maintaining a car in America ... no, it's not worth considering. Someone Else's Problem.
But why can't you design something so that it is impossible to service *properly* (i.e. in accordance with the manufacturer's service manual) without using tools and equipment that are simply not sold to the public? I'm almost certain that it's done already. Case in point : I have SCUBA regulators that need to be serviced. The regulators require O-rings of particul
Or words to that general effect.
Is this the sort of hypocrisy that has earned America contempt all around the world?
No, seriously, the rest of the world (well, Europe, at least), has had cross-carrier stolen device blocking for well over a decade. So ... America is being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the late 1990s?
Ms Palin, America desperately need your presidency to bring it's sanity clearly to the minds of the Rest Of The World. By the middle testicle of Jesus, Mary and Joseph, you must do this!
I'm not in the US, thank Allah's left testicle, but any sane insurance company would improve their income:liability ratio by voiding any insurance policy for a vehicle with modifications. That is why the put the poison words in their policies about "any" modifications into the contract. You changed the carbs on your car ... not an authorised or agreed modification ... not detailed on your premium agreement ... invalid insurance. You changed the suspension for [any of stiffer shocks, lowered springs, phase of the moon] ... it's not the car we-the-insurance-company quoted you for, It's not on the description of the vehicle, so the insurance is not now (and never has been - you lied on your application) valid. Go directly to Jail ; do not pass "Go".
And you can prove, to the insurance company's satisfaction that this is not going to change (say) the performance of the ABS? The important word is, of course, "prove". Don't hold your breath waiting for assistance from the car company.
"whether", not "wether". Regardless, I cannot conceive that a car manufacturer would find it financially or politically (NB : description of electorate below) useful to allow users to do "X" (where "X" is nore than filling up the fluids containers - petrol, screen wash ... that's it. Brake and engine oil are too complex for users.), when "X" can be cast as requiring the paid services of a trained dealer engineer.
The purpose of dealers (the "electorate", from the car manufacturer's point of view) is to be assured of a revenue stream (from servicing, etc).
The purpose of car manufacturer (from the dealers' point of view) is to be assured of a revenue stream (from new sales etc).
If you can see any interest for the consumer in there ... then you've got better eyes than I have, Gunga-Din!
There is probably a way around this : get a couple of hundred thousand other users of precisely the same vehicle as you, with precisely the same modification, applied in precisely the same way ... and you might be able to get it considered as an authorised modification. Enjoy trying to herd those cats!
In the real world, modifications that don't appreciably change the vehicle's performance are unlikely to attract attention, but modifications that do, will. Your opinion, as a petrol-head counts for nothing against the opinion of the insurance company (who are not, corporately, petrol-heads).
And your question :
If the mods were manufacturer-approved and dealer-installed, then it's the manufacturer-dealer-network's problem. Otherwise, it's the problem of the person who designed or installed the unapproved modification.
Oh, and by driving the vehicle with unapproved modifications, you were almost certainly in violation of the terms and conditions of your insurance policy (unless you'd told them exactly what you'd done to the car). So, potentially you've been committing criminal offences of driving without insurance too.
That would be the way I read the law (in my jurisdiction) ; you may not like it, but that's not a problem I lose sleep over.
Grey area : permitted non-dealer modifications. I've just (this morning) taken the winter tyres off the car. They're not ones from the dealer (the dealer was out of stock, it was that time of year), but they're the correct size and other details and winter tyres are mentioned in TFMs, so I assume that's in the range of permitted modifications.