It's hard to type when you're dead. Therefore I state that, in time, exactly 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing.
Not necessarily. All people who are dead will have trouble typing. All keyboard users who are also people and who are also dead will have trouble typing (this would exclude keyboard-using kittens beloved of calendar makers, but I leave open the question of whether it excludes keyboard-using chimpanzees. Or orangutans, if they're actually our closest relatives.) However, if there are any non-keyboard users who are also people and are also dead, then they too will have trouble typing. So, the number of dead people who will have trouble typing is greater than the number of keyboard users who will have trouble typing, i.e. more than 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing when they're dead.
It would be interesting to look for correlations between magnetic reversals or similar anomalies, and geologic events that must have had a major impact on ocean currents.
If I understand the article correctly, the largest effects would be from ocean currents running North-South, so the opening of E-W trending barriers would be the events to look for. Whether you'd get sufficient resolution more than a couple of million years ago though... hmmm.
Such as the formation of the Isthmus of Panama roughly 3 million to 10 million years ago (I don't know enough geology to understand why different articles use different figures)
I don't know that area in detail, but here is a scenario :
Fred is a geologist looking at ocean floor deposits formed below 2000m depth (the carbonate compensation depth, approximately) ; Fred sees the Isthmus close 10 million years ago, as the seabed level between Atlantic and Pacific rose above 2000m below MSL, and the creepy crawlies that Fred looks at can't cross between the newly-isolated Pacific and Atlantic basins.
Meanwhile, in the same area, George is looking at coral communities which form mostly in the photic zone (less than 200m depth) ; George sees the basins become separate (and to start developing endemic elements to their fauna) at 3 million years ago, when the water depth decreased through 200m to 0m and then to negative numbers.
Fred and George see the Isthmus close at different times because the objects of their study have different environmental tolerance ranges.
The same logic could easily apply to the question of ocean currents for the purposes of this hypothesis of the magnetohydrodynamics of seawater. The currents cited in the article are all surface currents, but it is (to me) credible that what would be most important might be the deep ocean circulation, which is generally slower but broader. This would have non-intuitive effects - for example the presence of the huge mountain range down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean could well have a significant effect, by forcing the deep circulation into more North-South routes than the surface circulation uses.
If you do some non-wiki research, you will find out that Earth's magnetic field has reversed many times over the eons.
Hundreds if not thousands of direction changes are documented, back into the Triassic at least and possibly into the Late Palaeozoic. There are sufficient that, in more recent times (Cretaceous onwards) the reversal record has been used as a tool for correlation. (Such work may go back further into the geological record ; I've certainly seen it used in Cretaceous mudrock sequences as a petrophysical indicator that can be measured faster and with less skilful operators than other techniques like palynology.)
We're overdue now by several thousand years.
For certain values of "overdue" ; the distribution of durations between reversal events seems to be essentially random, and since we're over the average duration between reversals, then one could meaningfully "expect" a reversal sooner rather than later. But once you start looking at the statistics, you have to accept that, if the model is accurate, then the probability of a reversal in the next thousand years (say), is the same as the probability of a reversal in the first thousand years after the last reversal. It's the same logic as tossing coins - if you get ten heads in a row, the probability of your next toss being a head is still 1/2, even if the probability of getting 11 heads in a row is 1/2048. Random variables - love 'em or hate 'em, but you can't predict 'em. That said, outside the statistical description of the record, the physical models suggest that some events seen at the moment (decreasing field strength ; regional anomalies) may be precursors to a reversal.
This Global Warming may be just another indicator that such a change is imminent.
Has someone been claiming global warming to be related to magnetic field strength? Whooo, can I get a smoke of that? Sounds like good gear.
Look for a doctor who is willing to spend some time talking to patients and working through a diagnostic problem. Treating horses is easy, quick and profitable.
What has the profit motive got to do with medical practice? Oh, let me guess - you're in a "developing country" which doesn't have a proper medical service. Fire the country and move to the civilised world ; more likely than not that'll solve your problem. Assuming of course that the civilised world allows immigration from your country.
If you go to doctors to get healed, you obviously live in a reality distortion.
They are there to make money. If you are healthy, you will not come anymore, meaning they will not get any money.
That's just how the system works. You get money for threating people. But it stops when you heal them.
Sounds to me like you've just given an excellent reason to move out of the society that you live in and into a more civilised one. Which would make you a pinko commie subversive fellow traveller. Probably gay too (amongst people who think that being a pinko commie subversive fellow traveller is a bad thing, many also think that being gay is a bad thing too, and so the irrelevant crime-by-association is alleged. I say this for parody.)
But seriously, by casting aspersions that the society that you live in is not the "best of all things in the best of all possible worlds", you do lay yourself open to charges of Panglossian unpatriotism. If that worries you.
BTW, it's "threatening", not "threating", assuming that you were trying to type in English. Oh, the mistakes I make trying to write in Russian ! Or Spanish.
In Saudi Arabia, I went with the Boy Scouts once to catch the Leonid meteor shower out in the desert,
I remember my first trip out into the desert (near the Saudi/ Abu Dhabi border, on the edges of the Rub' al Khali (or however you transliterate the "Empty Quarter"). Stunning. It was the furthest south that I'd ever been too. Scorpius. The Teapot. Stunning.
I'm surprised by the claim the half of Europeans have skies degraded enough to not be able to see the Milky Way ; on the basis of my experiences trying to find a suitable place for a telescope (nothing spectacular - just a 115mm Newt ; but if the site were good, I'd look now at getting something significantly better. But no point on buying glass if the sky is shite) I'd put the number of people with a decent sky down in the under-10% range. I wouldn't waste time setting up the scope unless I was approaching 50km out of town, and even then I'd expect to have around 20% of the sky seriously degraded by the skyglow. That's from a relatively small town - a quarter million. If I were to look to where I was brought up... my home town (100k) is 25km from a town approaching a million in the west, 15km from a town of 150k to the north, 30k-people 10km to the SE, 100k-people to the NE. Snookered. Now that I've got a car, I wouldn't bother taking the scope south of the border. But hey, now I've got a car, I can go out to the Astronomy society's Observatory. Woohoo, I hadn't thought of that!! Where's their website... that's much more important than SlashDottiness.
Here here.
You're calling to people to pay attention to you : "[Over] Here, [over] here! "? Or did you intend that people attend to the person speaking [somewhere else in the room] : "Hear [second person, imperative]! Hear [second person, imperative]!" ?
And yeah, that would be a great way to effectively hamstring their internet presence until they pay, but the guy originally wanted something subtle
Oh yes, I understood that. You can take actions short of the nuclear option of cutting them off. It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man, for example, to automatically post a "Bill not paid" page as I described for a set time before automatically redirecting to the website in question. It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to make it so that the "Bill not paid" page stays up for (and example) [weeks_overdue-5] seconds before redirecting. So, the worse the overdueness gets, the worse the visitor's experience. Doing such things in code also allows you to say to your little old lady friend "that is how the system is designed to work - I'm not picking on you, it happens to all my customers. It's to protect my finances from my soft heart and easy-going nature. Excuse me, I'm feeling faint, I haven't been able to afford to eat this month." Actually, thinking about it, that's the sort of feature that might be a selling point for a "hosting management package", if such a thing exists. And if someone has tried to patent it, then I think it fails the "not trivially obvious" test of the patent system because I can think of it and I'm not in that business at all.
Each of the domains that would normally forward to her site, have them forward to a separate page, hosting YOUR adds (revenue for unpaid services), and have a small link at the bottom of the page saying "please let the merchant you are about to proceed to know, to pay their hosting site!".
So, people click through to the original hoster's site. And?
I get the feeling that there's some unexplained assumption going on here. If they're your adverts (with the links containing referrer codes that Google recognises as meaning "increment bill for customer _Barny_ by X Gelt for serving Y adverts"), then you, the hosting company, still have an unpaid hosting fee and the bill for adverts, while the defaulting website owner continues to get traffic. Which hurts the defaulting owner how? Wouldn't it be simpler, and probably more effective, to put up a holding page in place of the website to the effect "this website hasn't paid it's bills and service is suspended until they are paid", and each time that page is served, generate an email to the domain's billing contact which says "missed opportunity - IP X.X.X.X requested your page blah.website.com at time YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss. The page was not served due to outstanding bill dated YYYY-" etc. etc." The choice of "billing contact" is not accidental. If it's a corporation, that often ends up in BeanCounter Central instead of PropellorHead SandPit, who have different perspectives.
I don't know about you, but I use AdBlock extensively and almost never click on random adverts inserted into web pages. Which probably makes me a criminal in some jurisdictions. I fast-forward through adverts on the telly too.
Put a stack of google ads on them, and have a link pointing back to her site with the suggestion of "if you want to remove these ads from your site, pay your rent".
Run that past me again. Having some text ads in one part of a page is going to hurt her how? Always assuming of course that the hoster/ OP has the passwords to get into the site to edit it. (OK, presumably he's got root on the hosting machines, so ultimately he can do it. But you'd expect the hosted site to be systematically protected from deliberate or accidental incursions by other users on the system.) If there is some charge from Google to the site owner, then again - how is that going to hurt her? Unless the hoster/ OP forges some documentation to try to establish a contract between her and Google. Which is going from the subject of a minor ethical dilemma into the territory of serious fraud and misrepresentation. Why not just replace all the pictures on the site with kiddy porn and send the link to [insert name of government body here]. It'd be as legal and as ethically debatable. If Google have no contract with her... how will they know where to send the bill? When they pass the unpaid account to their bailiffs, the bailiffs will need to have the details of the contract (at least the T+Cs and the signing date and credentials). The bailiffs say "we can't serve this - we don't know whose knees to break (in a non-evil manner).
Nope, don't see the logic of that. So I deduce that it was just one of those jokes that needs to be explained. Or thought through in the first place.
2) landline more likely to function in an emergency as cell systems usually overload and are unavailable
intnernet more likey to function in an emergency as that is what it was designed to do.
Shheeesh, doesn't anyone still, like, do spelling-checking, like man with their eyes, like, by, hey reading WFT LOL GGG they write, before they hey, dude, like, publish it? Man? But more importantly - you're right, to a degree, that the design of the internet communications protocols and particularly the routing protocols were based on assumptions relevant to warfare or widespread disaster taking out various nodes of a highly redundant net.
But your more importantly wrong because the implementation of domestic internet services (and most commercial/ industrial/ for-profit) services are done as star-hub topologies (so utterly dependant on that "last mile" link to your local telephone exchange, typically) with near nil redundancy because redundancy costs money.
The number of domestic users with true redundancy of connection is smaller by far than the number with a connection, because 1 degree of redundancy more than doubles the cost of your internet service (assuming that you use the cheapest service in your area for your initial service). It's only when you get quite far up the routing tree that you start to get a mesh-like network of services that could survive the loss of significant numbers of nodes.
I also tend to set the laptop on a flat solid surface for the borrower and I ask them not to move it. I am surprised how many unfriendly answers have been given to this question.:(
Just tape the network cable to the desk. Or do you use wireless?
Or tell them to go fuck themselves. [...] I've been unemployed for extended periods of time (years)
Gee, I wonder why
He's probably one of those persecuted types. Not his fault really, his personality disorder is likely genetic
Don't worry, the extinction of his genotype will be genetic too.... Actually, I wish that were true. More likely, that way the future lies. I'd ask my kids for their opinion, but they're as real as god.
The Romans had no problems to send either "need more garum" or anything else a couple of thousand years ago with their signal towers.
I think that you're conflating two reasonably well-known facts : the circa 1810 optical telegraph networks that were built in various parts of Europe (and ISTR, at least one in the NE USA ; but since they rather rely on large areas with significant population density, they'd be more incidental maintenance costs there) ; and the well-known ingenuity of the Romans.
I could perfectly well concede that a Roman engineer could understand and implement the telegraphy system after a couple of hours introduction. But I know of no evidence that they actually did so. Big territory ; relatively sparse population ; Pony Express as a competing technology needs less supporting technology and education in the population. A messenger only needs to know how to ride and where the next horse-changing station is ; in fact, you could make a good argument that it's a positive advantage for your messengers to be illiterate and wildly long-sighted. Your "clacks-tower" relay-clerks (to use PTerry's version of the idea) on the other hand, need at least reading and writing skills, even if the messages are encoded and/or encrypted.
Of course, if you know of evidence that the Romans DID have the "clacks"... I'd be fascinated. And only mildly surprised.
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1026340/Jurassic-Park-comes-true-How-scientists-bringing-dinosaurs-life-help-humble-chicken.html According to Jack Horner, professor of palaeontology at Montana State University, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
According to the authors of the "we found chicken-like DNA in a bit of T-rex bone" paper, there are equivocations. A number of challenges are ongoing about their reporting and their statistics (AIUI, they reported their positive hits for "chicken-like DNA", but not their negative counts, which makes it very difficult to assess the reliability of their identifications) ; several of the seven protein identifications that they initially claimed have now been retracted, so with all due respect to Dr Horner (*), the answer is at best an equivocal "yes" at the moment, and may degrade to a "possibly" before too much longer. Where are my notes
original claim : Asara, J. M., Schweitzer, M. H., Freimark, L. M. & Phillips, M., Science 316, 280-285 (2007) ;
technical comment and rebuttal : Pevzner, P. A., Kim, S. & Ng, J. Science doi:10.1126/science.1155006 (2008) ; Asara, J. M., Schweitzer, M. H., Cantley, L. C. & Cottrell, J. S., Science doi:10.1126/science.1157829 (2008).
first retraction of a protein : Asara, J. M. et al. Science 317, 1324-1325 (2007) ;
retraction of two further proteins... oh, hang on, that's not got a citation attached, just a note that it's being said in public (which normally means comments on the floor of a conference).
Anyway, very interesting work, but "unequivocal" is not an appropriate word to describe it. (*) I can't remember if Jack Horner has a PhD. ISTR one of his books talking about having a very non-standard academic career. It doesn't affect his work or his reputation, I'm just trying to get the terminology correct.
Ditto, from over 500 miles away. (OK, the parents live only 40 miles away, so it's not really that extreme a trip [G].)
If I had spare time I would volunteer my time and IT expertise FOC.
Put your money where your mouth is - sign up as a "Friend of Bletchley Park", which provides them with a steady income stream (your subscription, plus whatever you decide on as a regular commitment - I'm in for GBP20/year), another body to include in the count when they say to government (and other) funding bodies that "we have so-many supporters, in addition to so-many-else visitors per year", and provides you with a moderately interesting magazine and a nice warm feeling in the electrons of your main processor (or your coolant/ nutrient pump, if that's what makes you tick).
What - you're still hesitating? Which part of
"If I had spare time I would volunteer my time and IT expertise FOC."
did you actually mean? Or did you only intend to contribute time, and not something of tangible utility?
BTW - when I offered them my PDP-11, including delivery from over 500 miles away - they weren't interested. "Got 5 already, mate" was the gist of the response. Oh well, it's living with a nerd in Stirling now, TTBOMK.
What do you expect from a socialist government who,
Who? Socialistic government? In Britain? Have you seen the bastards?
To call the present government "socialistic" is to show a profound, almost clinical, lack of understanding of what socialism is. they're just another bunch of thieving, lieing fucking politicians.
I've just filled out my postal vote for the UK's elections to Europe, while watching a Party Political Broadcast for the British Nazi Party. The only thing that prevented me from returning the ballot paper "spoiled" was the desire to not give those fuckers even the tiniest semblance of credibility. so the only bunch of thieving, lieing fucking politicians that I could bring myself to vote for were the Liberals. Oh, the shame of it!
How was the Second Iraq War/Operation Iraqi Freedom, a bad thing?
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, possibly approaching a million depending on how you count the bodies and who you consider a casualty ; a coalition of hostile FOREIGNERS have effective control of the country ; much of the country's infrastructure is in a worse state than it was before GW2 (Gulf War 2 ; perhaps GWB for it's main proponent and "Gulf War B") ; and those fucking foreigners are STILL here, treating Iraqi citizens like sand niggers and raping the natural resources of the country for their own use. Transpose those elements to your own society (as if I couldn't guess which one you live in), and see how you'd feel about the invaders.
Do the Iraqi people now have a freely elected government?
That is an arguable point. It would be at best optimistic to describe the current Iraqi government as "untroubled", or as "wholly accepted". The country is still likely to split into several, and some of the fucking foreigners would find that highly convenient.
Yep. Is Saddam and his sons in power? Nope.
"Are", not "Is" - but yes, you've found the point that puts the "almost" into the next phrase.
Explain how it was a "almost wholly bad war"?
You have put your finger on pretty much the only point that makes it an "almost wholly bad war" instead of a "wholly bad war". Well done. Welcome to "International Relations 1.0.1".
Oh, you were looking from your own society's perspective? Oh, well, in that case, GW2 (GWB) still isn't a wholly good thing. You've probably generated several generations of people who'll be willing (and, of course, able) to attack and kill you, and your children, and your children's children ; you've had significant casualties yourself (so has my country too, but of course none of my friends have been injured because I treat militaristic thugs with the contempt they deserve) ; you may, or may not, have successfully gained access to significant natural resources belonging to other people (this is as-yet undecided ; there's nothing to prevent the oil fields from being nationalised back to their owners) ; you've had a cathartic exercise on beating up someone because of 2001/11/9, even though it was a country unrelated to those events.
What other benefits have you gained? Oh yes, triumph and acclaim. As they don't say in Germany any more, "Seig heil!"
Hmmm, [FX :/self arches eyebrow] fascinating! Pity that the film footage has gone in that fire. It would be interesting to see if the orcas were to regain their cooperative habits should whaling resume from this shore-station.
My sister decided it would be humorous to present me with an astrolabe the next day at lunch, so I could make the directions for the next even even more esoteric.
Did your sister know what an astrolabe was before she got you one? No, evidently not, otherwise she'd have not got you one.
I have the same make of internal GPS as you, I think (give or take a few thousand base-pairs). Naturally I also use the biggest landmarks around (sun, moon, stars) before resorting to smaller ones (buildings, slopes and topography, clouds, sounds...). Someone up-thread mentioned wondering if their iGPS would work in the far north? Well, my model works perfectly fine in northern Siberia and central Norway. It certainly works better then my wife's Zenit iGPS - in fact, I'm not at all sure if hers works at all. Mine also works south of the equator, though it is somewhat disconcerting to find that someone has put the sky on upside-down.
If I get to the South Shetland Islands, I'll report back on this iGPS' efficacy in the deep south.
The subject is trying to resolve evidence of interaction between Neandertal and AMH (Anatomically Modern Human). Little material is unequivocally associated with the Neanderthals. First of all, the attribution of one of the mandibles to "Neandertal" is on a probabilistic basis, there being no uniquely diagnostic characters.
Although overlap exists between these two human groups in all variables, these traits can be used to suggest a probable attribution as either AMH or Neandertal
What age is this deposit? Well, at least 5 layer (units) were reported from the excavation (implying 5 different ages), 2 containing human remains. The types of stone/ bone artefacts recovered are not definitive ; there are similarities to Advanced Aurignacian, but with elements similar to the Early and/ or Archaic Aurignacian. Radio-carbon ages are reasonably robust at "between ca. 27.3 kyr and 30.4 14C kyr BP (1 kyr = 1,000 years) for both units." These ages are reasonably robust, but
Proof that contamination has been fully removed is, unfortunately, difficult if not impossible to provide and an earlier age for these units cannot be ruled out.
As, indeed, always.
Cutmarks Microscopic analysis confirms the presence of cutmarks on mandible B and their absence on mandible A. Cutmarks on mandible B consist of three parallel striations located on the lingual aspect, below the right lateral canine and P3. Two of them bear diagnostic features of flint cutting-edge generated marks in form of v-shaped cross sections, "barbs" and, in one case, a typical splitting.
i.e., the cut is on the tongue side of the lower jaw (not on the outside) as if someone were cutting out flesh around the tongue. It's not a position that would be accessible until the owner was completely incapacitated, if not dead. Similar marks are seen in comparable positions on 23% of the associated finds of reindeer mandibles.
Considering their location and orientation, these cut-marks may have resulted from slicing through the geniohyoid muscle to remove the tongue.
"May" is an important word.
In our case, however, contextual pieces of information needed to favour the cannibalistic interpretation are missing.
... because - skinning and de-fleshing skulls is a common part of trophy-making ; there are no contemporary (Aurignacian) burial sites to compare with the treatment of the (allegedly) cannibalised bones ; thirdly, a number of sites from this area and time period, including this site, have evidence of human remains that are used for decorative purposes (particularly teeth pierced, perhaps to make pendants or necklaces).
In summary, although the possibility that the young individual bearing Neandertal features was consumed cannot be discarded, available data on the treatment and symbolic use of human remains during the Aurignacian do not appear to support this interpretation.
Which is typically cautious scientific wording. It's not impossible that these cut marks indicate cannibalism, but there are other non-cannibalistic interpretations that are just as plausible.
I've not (yet) read the paper - but having RTFA already I've seen the careful words of the journalist and smelt that the paper doesn't say what the article implies, or at least doesn't say it like as strongly. Anyway, you've got 34 pages of reading to do. So have I.
When Jesus took the bread at the last supper and said "take, eat, this is my body" he clearly wasn't actually handing out his body was he. He was sat right there.
Your pyre awaits. Could you hold this torch while I rearrange the faggots around your legs? Thank you, now please try not to die until you're actually burning and your skin is peeling off - it spoils the torment. And no chanting your heretical slogans to the crowd or we'll start the choir singing and damp down the fire to make it last longer for you.
[Song]... that old time religion, gimme that old time religion, it's good enough for me... [/song]
Slashdot Mirror
Not necessarily. All people who are dead will have trouble typing. All keyboard users who are also people and who are also dead will have trouble typing (this would exclude keyboard-using kittens beloved of calendar makers, but I leave open the question of whether it excludes keyboard-using chimpanzees. Or orangutans, if they're actually our closest relatives.) However, if there are any non-keyboard users who are also people and are also dead, then they too will have trouble typing. So, the number of dead people who will have trouble typing is greater than the number of keyboard users who will have trouble typing, i.e. more than 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing when they're dead.
If I understand the article correctly, the largest effects would be from ocean currents running North-South, so the opening of E-W trending barriers would be the events to look for. Whether you'd get sufficient resolution more than a couple of million years ago though ... hmmm.
I don't know that area in detail, but here is a scenario :
Fred sees the Isthmus close 10 million years ago, as the seabed level between Atlantic and Pacific rose above 2000m below MSL, and the creepy crawlies that Fred looks at can't cross between the newly-isolated Pacific and Atlantic basins.
George sees the basins become separate (and to start developing endemic elements to their fauna) at 3 million years ago, when the water depth decreased through 200m to 0m and then to negative numbers.
Fred and George see the Isthmus close at different times because the objects of their study have different environmental tolerance ranges.
The same logic could easily apply to the question of ocean currents for the purposes of this hypothesis of the magnetohydrodynamics of seawater. The currents cited in the article are all surface currents, but it is (to me) credible that what would be most important might be the deep ocean circulation, which is generally slower but broader. This would have non-intuitive effects - for example the presence of the huge mountain range down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean could well have a significant effect, by forcing the deep circulation into more North-South routes than the surface circulation uses.
Hundreds if not thousands of direction changes are documented, back into the Triassic at least and possibly into the Late Palaeozoic. There are sufficient that, in more recent times (Cretaceous onwards) the reversal record has been used as a tool for correlation. (Such work may go back further into the geological record ; I've certainly seen it used in Cretaceous mudrock sequences as a petrophysical indicator that can be measured faster and with less skilful operators than other techniques like palynology.)
For certain values of "overdue" ; the distribution of durations between reversal events seems to be essentially random, and since we're over the average duration between reversals, then one could meaningfully "expect" a reversal sooner rather than later. But once you start looking at the statistics, you have to accept that, if the model is accurate, then the probability of a reversal in the next thousand years (say), is the same as the probability of a reversal in the first thousand years after the last reversal. It's the same logic as tossing coins - if you get ten heads in a row, the probability of your next toss being a head is still 1/2, even if the probability of getting 11 heads in a row is 1/2048. Random variables - love 'em or hate 'em, but you can't predict 'em.
That said, outside the statistical description of the record, the physical models suggest that some events seen at the moment (decreasing field strength ; regional anomalies) may be precursors to a reversal.
Has someone been claiming global warming to be related to magnetic field strength? Whooo, can I get a smoke of that? Sounds like good gear.
What has the profit motive got to do with medical practice?
Oh, let me guess - you're in a "developing country" which doesn't have a proper medical service.
Fire the country and move to the civilised world ; more likely than not that'll solve your problem. Assuming of course that the civilised world allows immigration from your country.
Sounds to me like you've just given an excellent reason to move out of the society that you live in and into a more civilised one. Which would make you a pinko commie subversive fellow traveller. Probably gay too (amongst people who think that being a pinko commie subversive fellow traveller is a bad thing, many also think that being gay is a bad thing too, and so the irrelevant crime-by-association is alleged. I say this for parody.)
But seriously, by casting aspersions that the society that you live in is not the "best of all things in the best of all possible worlds", you do lay yourself open to charges of Panglossian unpatriotism. If that worries you.
BTW, it's "threatening", not "threating", assuming that you were trying to type in English. Oh, the mistakes I make trying to write in Russian ! Or Spanish.
I remember my first trip out into the desert (near the Saudi/ Abu Dhabi border, on the edges of the Rub' al Khali (or however you transliterate the "Empty Quarter"). Stunning. It was the furthest south that I'd ever been too. Scorpius. The Teapot. Stunning.
I'm surprised by the claim the half of Europeans have skies degraded enough to not be able to see the Milky Way ; on the basis of my experiences trying to find a suitable place for a telescope (nothing spectacular - just a 115mm Newt ; but if the site were good, I'd look now at getting something significantly better. But no point on buying glass if the sky is shite) I'd put the number of people with a decent sky down in the under-10% range. I wouldn't waste time setting up the scope unless I was approaching 50km out of town, and even then I'd expect to have around 20% of the sky seriously degraded by the skyglow. That's from a relatively small town - a quarter million. If I were to look to where I was brought up ... my home town (100k) is 25km from a town approaching a million in the west, 15km from a town of 150k to the north, 30k-people 10km to the SE, 100k-people to the NE. Snookered. Now that I've got a car, I wouldn't bother taking the scope south of the border. ... that's much more important than SlashDottiness.
But hey, now I've got a car, I can go out to the Astronomy society's Observatory. Woohoo, I hadn't thought of that!! Where's their website
You're calling to people to pay attention to you : "[Over] Here, [over] here! "?
Or did you intend that people attend to the person speaking [somewhere else in the room] : "Hear [second person, imperative]! Hear [second person, imperative]!" ?
Oh yes, I understood that. You can take actions short of the nuclear option of cutting them off. It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man, for example, to automatically post a "Bill not paid" page as I described for a set time before automatically redirecting to the website in question. It shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to make it so that the "Bill not paid" page stays up for (and example) [weeks_overdue-5] seconds before redirecting. So, the worse the overdueness gets, the worse the visitor's experience.
Doing such things in code also allows you to say to your little old lady friend "that is how the system is designed to work - I'm not picking on you, it happens to all my customers. It's to protect my finances from my soft heart and easy-going nature. Excuse me, I'm feeling faint, I haven't been able to afford to eat this month."
Actually, thinking about it, that's the sort of feature that might be a selling point for a "hosting management package", if such a thing exists. And if someone has tried to patent it, then I think it fails the "not trivially obvious" test of the patent system because I can think of it and I'm not in that business at all.
So, people click through to the original hoster's site. And?
I get the feeling that there's some unexplained assumption going on here. If they're your adverts (with the links containing referrer codes that Google recognises as meaning "increment bill for customer _Barny_ by X Gelt for serving Y adverts"), then you, the hosting company, still have an unpaid hosting fee and the bill for adverts, while the defaulting website owner continues to get traffic. Which hurts the defaulting owner how?
Wouldn't it be simpler, and probably more effective, to put up a holding page in place of the website to the effect "this website hasn't paid it's bills and service is suspended until they are paid", and each time that page is served, generate an email to the domain's billing contact which says "missed opportunity - IP X.X.X.X requested your page blah.website.com at time YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss. The page was not served due to outstanding bill dated YYYY-" etc. etc."
The choice of "billing contact" is not accidental. If it's a corporation, that often ends up in BeanCounter Central instead of PropellorHead SandPit, who have different perspectives.
I don't know about you, but I use AdBlock extensively and almost never click on random adverts inserted into web pages. Which probably makes me a criminal in some jurisdictions. I fast-forward through adverts on the telly too.
Run that past me again. ... how will they know where to send the bill? When they pass the unpaid account to their bailiffs, the bailiffs will need to have the details of the contract (at least the T+Cs and the signing date and credentials). The bailiffs say "we can't serve this - we don't know whose knees to break (in a non-evil manner).
Having some text ads in one part of a page is going to hurt her how? Always assuming of course that the hoster/ OP has the passwords to get into the site to edit it. (OK, presumably he's got root on the hosting machines, so ultimately he can do it. But you'd expect the hosted site to be systematically protected from deliberate or accidental incursions by other users on the system.)
If there is some charge from Google to the site owner, then again - how is that going to hurt her? Unless the hoster/ OP forges some documentation to try to establish a contract between her and Google. Which is going from the subject of a minor ethical dilemma into the territory of serious fraud and misrepresentation. Why not just replace all the pictures on the site with kiddy porn and send the link to [insert name of government body here]. It'd be as legal and as ethically debatable.
If Google have no contract with her
Nope, don't see the logic of that. So I deduce that it was just one of those jokes that needs to be explained. Or thought through in the first place.
Shheeesh, doesn't anyone still, like, do spelling-checking, like man with their eyes, like, by, hey reading WFT LOL GGG they write, before they hey, dude, like, publish it? Man?
But more importantly - you're right, to a degree, that the design of the internet communications protocols and particularly the routing protocols were based on assumptions relevant to warfare or widespread disaster taking out various nodes of a highly redundant net.
But your more importantly wrong because the implementation of domestic internet services (and most commercial/ industrial/ for-profit) services are done as star-hub topologies (so utterly dependant on that "last mile" link to your local telephone exchange, typically) with near nil redundancy because redundancy costs money.
The number of domestic users with true redundancy of connection is smaller by far than the number with a connection, because 1 degree of redundancy more than doubles the cost of your internet service (assuming that you use the cheapest service in your area for your initial service). It's only when you get quite far up the routing tree that you start to get a mesh-like network of services that could survive the loss of significant numbers of nodes.
Just tape the network cable to the desk.
Or do you use wireless?
Don't worry, the extinction of his genotype will be genetic too. ...
Actually, I wish that were true. More likely, that way the future lies. I'd ask my kids for their opinion, but they're as real as god.
Simultaneously.
I think that you're conflating two reasonably well-known facts : the circa 1810 optical telegraph networks that were built in various parts of Europe (and ISTR, at least one in the NE USA ; but since they rather rely on large areas with significant population density, they'd be more incidental maintenance costs there) ; and the well-known ingenuity of the Romans.
I could perfectly well concede that a Roman engineer could understand and implement the telegraphy system after a couple of hours introduction. But I know of no evidence that they actually did so. Big territory ; relatively sparse population ; Pony Express as a competing technology needs less supporting technology and education in the population. A messenger only needs to know how to ride and where the next horse-changing station is ; in fact, you could make a good argument that it's a positive advantage for your messengers to be illiterate and wildly long-sighted. Your "clacks-tower" relay-clerks (to use PTerry's version of the idea) on the other hand, need at least reading and writing skills, even if the messages are encoded and/or encrypted.
Of course, if you know of evidence that the Romans DID have the "clacks" ... I'd be fascinated. And only mildly surprised.
According to the authors of the "we found chicken-like DNA in a bit of T-rex bone" paper, there are equivocations. A number of challenges are ongoing about their reporting and their statistics (AIUI, they reported their positive hits for "chicken-like DNA", but not their negative counts, which makes it very difficult to assess the reliability of their identifications) ; several of the seven protein identifications that they initially claimed have now been retracted, so with all due respect to Dr Horner (*), the answer is at best an equivocal "yes" at the moment, and may degrade to a "possibly" before too much longer.
Where are my notes
Anyway, very interesting work, but "unequivocal" is not an appropriate word to describe it.
(*) I can't remember if Jack Horner has a PhD. ISTR one of his books talking about having a very non-standard academic career. It doesn't affect his work or his reputation, I'm just trying to get the terminology correct.
Ditto, from over 500 miles away. (OK, the parents live only 40 miles away, so it's not really that extreme a trip [G].)
Put your money where your mouth is - sign up as a "Friend of Bletchley Park", which provides them with a steady income stream (your subscription, plus whatever you decide on as a regular commitment - I'm in for GBP20/year), another body to include in the count when they say to government (and other) funding bodies that "we have so-many supporters, in addition to so-many-else visitors per year", and provides you with a moderately interesting magazine and a nice warm feeling in the electrons of your main processor (or your coolant/ nutrient pump, if that's what makes you tick).
What - you're still hesitating? Which part of
did you actually mean? Or did you only intend to contribute time, and not something of tangible utility?
BTW - when I offered them my PDP-11, including delivery from over 500 miles away - they weren't interested. "Got 5 already, mate" was the gist of the response. Oh well, it's living with a nerd in Stirling now, TTBOMK.
Who? Socialistic government? In Britain? Have you seen the bastards?
To call the present government "socialistic" is to show a profound, almost clinical, lack of understanding of what socialism is. they're just another bunch of thieving, lieing fucking politicians.
I've just filled out my postal vote for the UK's elections to Europe, while watching a Party Political Broadcast for the British Nazi Party. The only thing that prevented me from returning the ballot paper "spoiled" was the desire to not give those fuckers even the tiniest semblance of credibility. so the only bunch of thieving, lieing fucking politicians that I could bring myself to vote for were the Liberals. Oh, the shame of it!
Pity that Sheridan and co imploded so badly.
Oh well, time to post the vote.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead, possibly approaching a million depending on how you count the bodies and who you consider a casualty ; a coalition of hostile FOREIGNERS have effective control of the country ; much of the country's infrastructure is in a worse state than it was before GW2 (Gulf War 2 ; perhaps GWB for it's main proponent and "Gulf War B") ; and those fucking foreigners are STILL here, treating Iraqi citizens like sand niggers and raping the natural resources of the country for their own use. Transpose those elements to your own society (as if I couldn't guess which one you live in), and see how you'd feel about the invaders.
That is an arguable point. It would be at best optimistic to describe the current Iraqi government as "untroubled", or as "wholly accepted". The country is still likely to split into several, and some of the fucking foreigners would find that highly convenient.
"Are", not "Is" - but yes, you've found the point that puts the "almost" into the next phrase.
You have put your finger on pretty much the only point that makes it an "almost wholly bad war" instead of a "wholly bad war". Well done. Welcome to "International Relations 1.0.1".
Oh, you were looking from your own society's perspective? Oh, well, in that case, GW2 (GWB) still isn't a wholly good thing. You've probably generated several generations of people who'll be willing (and, of course, able) to attack and kill you, and your children, and your children's children ; you've had significant casualties yourself (so has my country too, but of course none of my friends have been injured because I treat militaristic thugs with the contempt they deserve) ; you may, or may not, have successfully gained access to significant natural resources belonging to other people (this is as-yet undecided ; there's nothing to prevent the oil fields from being nationalised back to their owners) ; you've had a cathartic exercise on beating up someone because of 2001/11/9, even though it was a country unrelated to those events.
What other benefits have you gained? Oh yes, triumph and acclaim. As they don't say in Germany any more, "Seig heil!"
Hmmm, [FX : /self arches eyebrow] fascinating!
Pity that the film footage has gone in that fire.
It would be interesting to see if the orcas were to regain their cooperative habits should whaling resume from this shore-station.
Did your sister know what an astrolabe was before she got you one? No, evidently not, otherwise she'd have not got you one.
I have the same make of internal GPS as you, I think (give or take a few thousand base-pairs). Naturally I also use the biggest landmarks around (sun, moon, stars) before resorting to smaller ones (buildings, slopes and topography, clouds, sounds ...).
Someone up-thread mentioned wondering if their iGPS would work in the far north? Well, my model works perfectly fine in northern Siberia and central Norway. It certainly works better then my wife's Zenit iGPS - in fact, I'm not at all sure if hers works at all. Mine also works south of the equator, though it is somewhat disconcerting to find that someone has put the sky on upside-down.
If I get to the South Shetland Islands, I'll report back on this iGPS' efficacy in the deep south.
http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2009%20vol87/PDF/On-Line_bassa/JASs2009_06_RamirezRozi.pdf
It's open access.
The subject is trying to resolve evidence of interaction between Neandertal and AMH (Anatomically Modern Human). Little material is unequivocally associated with the Neanderthals.
First of all, the attribution of one of the mandibles to "Neandertal" is on a probabilistic basis, there being no uniquely diagnostic characters.
What age is this deposit? Well, at least 5 layer (units) were reported from the excavation (implying 5 different ages), 2 containing human remains. The types of stone/ bone artefacts recovered are not definitive ; there are similarities to Advanced Aurignacian, but with elements similar to the Early and/ or Archaic Aurignacian. Radio-carbon ages are reasonably robust at "between ca. 27.3 kyr and 30.4 14C kyr BP (1 kyr = 1,000 years) for both units." These ages are reasonably robust, but
As, indeed, always.
i.e., the cut is on the tongue side of the lower jaw (not on the outside) as if someone were cutting out flesh around the tongue. It's not a position that would be accessible until the owner was completely incapacitated, if not dead. Similar marks are seen in comparable positions on 23% of the associated finds of reindeer mandibles.
"May" is an important word.
Which is typically cautious scientific wording. It's not impossible that these cut marks indicate cannibalism, but there are other non-cannibalistic interpretations that are just as plausible.
Did you try to RTFP? The actual paper, not the newspaper article (RTFA). http://www.isita-org.com/jass/Contents/2009%20vol87/PDF/On-Line_bassa/JASs2009_06_RamirezRozi.pdf
I've not (yet) read the paper - but having RTFA already I've seen the careful words of the journalist and smelt that the paper doesn't say what the article implies, or at least doesn't say it like as strongly.
Anyway, you've got 34 pages of reading to do. So have I.
Your pyre awaits.
Could you hold this torch while I rearrange the faggots around your legs?
Thank you, now please try not to die until you're actually burning and your skin is peeling off - it spoils the torment.
And no chanting your heretical slogans to the crowd or we'll start the choir singing and damp down the fire to make it last longer for you.
[Song]... that old time religion, gimme that old time religion, it's good enough for me ... [/song]
It's just meat, but any parasites or disease in that meat are particularly well-suited to living in you.
So make sure that it is your last resort ; otherwise it could be just that!
Your references for the killer whales, please?