>>They could care less about the working stiff who earns less than $75,000/year.
I think their cut-off point for respect is something north of $500,000 annually, and $100M net worth. My opinion only.
And if you're paranoid as hell that someone with brown skin is going to take some of it, like by getting health care or unemployment from a tax pool that you paid into, you get big points for that too.
It's your basic short-sighted greed, and go right ahead and troll me for this if you need to.
Did I miss some posts? Did any else see this as scary? Did anyone see that this will be used by orgs like, let's see, Sony to see how you use remotes and TVs, Neilsen (sp?) to check your TV habits, The US Department Of Homeland Security and Redundancy to see if you're worth waterboarding (too many visits to the brown channel?), IBM to see if you're controlling any 3rd party servers, etc. etc. Here's a technology that will turn my daily activities into a big database and share it with whoever wants it.
Read "The Puzzle Palace", the first book by James Bamford (and then you can read the rest of them). He's made a career of exposing the NSA. This first book was written at a time when congress critters would not even admit publicly that the NSA existed. Bamford provides a history of eavesdropping and spying by the USA and shows that illegal listening has been going on ever since there has been anything at all to listen to. For example, I recall that the first Western Union offices, those that were the terminations of the Transatlantic cables, and others in NYC, had secret government offices right next door where the cables were spliced and terminated for us to spy on transmissions as soon as they arrived. Do you recall an item in the news about 15 or so years ago regarding a backdoor in Windows NT? Some security expert in, I think from memory, one of the major gov research campuses (Los Alamos or Livermore) was quoted as saying in a security overview seminar, rather casually, that there was a backdoor to the mil-spec security in NT, and that the government had the keys. Having read that book, this made complete sense to me.
The fact that this is "same as it ever was" does not mean that we should not be aware of it. It matters a great deal. My opinion is that some of this access is necessary "for a free and functioning democracy" in this world of ours. We want to know if some extremist asshole (no matter what the persuasion) is planning to set off a nuke anywhere. But much of the rest of it can be exploiting us, it can be used by people against their political enemies or for their individual profits, for purposes that has nothing to do with the well-being of the world. And we can keep an eye on which is which only if we know it's going on in the first place.
Yes we have the rule of law. We have due process, yet we know of people held by our government for years without trial. We have the Geneva conventions, yet we know people have been recently tortured by our government. We have the right against unlawful search, yet we know the government has been listening on our domestic correspondence without permission from the courts. We have the right against unlawful seizure, yet the government regularly seizes items (such as cash and property) it considers unlawful and without process. Congress alone can declare war, yet we have armies engaged without war being declared.
What's one more stupid internet filter in light of all this? If you don't act to maintain your rule of law, you will lose it.
I just don't buy the premise: "Any time an unpopular social program is established, the government tries to sell it under "special" tax provisions,..." OK then, I missed when they asked me if I wanted to opt-in to the armed forces. Or if I wanted to opt-in to the 'bailout' of vastly wealthy bankers.
Maybe we need to discuss your concept of "social program".
Anyone can do it. Spit into a beaker, find some keen organisms, move some DNA around (kits available online), and then flush it down the sink. Or maybe insert some plasmids you got from your cat.
If it turns out interesting you can mail it to your congress critter!
>>He has an obligation to the shareholders to not be "patriotic"....
Only following the generally accepted concept of the psychotic corporation that responds to nothing but profits. Let me be plain: that is not a healthy thing for the society that the corporation lives in, and ultimately for the corporation itself. I need to work to change that perception.
I saw this news item on my iphone before driving my late-model car to my condo by the lake, which I go to on weekends to wind down from the 14 hours days I put in during the week (plus weekend time remotely at the condo) so that I make enough to maintain this lifestyle. I can't believe people will do all that in the game just to accumulate stuff.
>>>ITER will not conduct energy-producing experiments until at least 2025 -- five years later than what had been previously agreed to. The article adds that the reactor will cost even more than the seven parties in the project first thought:'...Construction costs are likely to double from the 5-billion (US$7-billion)
I guess the in-home personal version of this is also delayed then?
>>I can easily imagine an ice cap melting somewhere in the antarctic, raising the humidity, and a good portion of that water vapor attaching and freezing again somewhere else where it's cooler.
I can easily imagine an ice cap melting, and replaced by an erupting volcano of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and spewing big red cherries.
But for what is happening and is going to happen to the environment, I prefer observation and the scientific method.
Right - the prosecution is required by law to share all the evidence it has with the defense. It's called disclosure. Watch the movie "My Cousin Vinnie" for an explanation. Because the prosecution withheld evidence important from the defense, that is enough to throw out the charges. Doesn't matter if it's post-conviction. Legally Ted "inter-tubes" Stevens is no longer guilty, and he will shout that to the world from now on.
And governor Palin cries for a re-election for Steven's former senate seat, to address the wrongdoing. I wonder if she also supports freeing Aymen Batarfi, a gitmo detainee from whose defense the government also withheld substantial evidence. Maybe she'll grant him asylum in Alaska.
You don't need nearly the leverage of 1/100th or 1/10th the wage difference. IBM appears to make it work with as little as 2/3 (66%) of a wage difference. In many cases I'm working with 20-year olds in that foreign country, with little experience, and I'm trying to help them learn and get by on that wage of theirs which is a fraction of mine with over 25 years experience. And I guess it's pretty similar to if the new worker was a college grad here in the US, but they're not. I look at the empty desks of the people who were here a few months or years ago, who are now replaced by the lower-wage person thousands of miles away. There is something wrong. Spreading the wealth around the world is not the wrong thing, just as helping a new worker, no matter where they are, is not the wrong thing. The wrong thing is dumping the existing good person because of the wage difference (or labor law difference, or environmental law difference), and leaving any responsibility or accountability for them behind. Is Capitalism another way of never having to say you're sorry?
How long before this feature is part of the amplifier, and live musicians are singing 'tweaked' vocals? At first I thought that there will always be authentic live music, but thinking some more, maybe that is doomed too. Of course you can always switch it off.
Yes, the operant question for me in this story is "did we/the CIA cut the cable, did some other entity do it, or was it an accident?" Not a whole lot of clues to go on so far. And I wish I had some links to stories of various cable capers we (the USA) have been involved in before show those encountering this possibility for the first time.
>>It's nice to know we'd win all our wars with few, if any, American casualties,
Geez, there's so much to consider here: Whose wars? What about the people being killed by the bots, or is this just a higher-stakes battlebots game? American casualties are not the only consideration, but thought must be paid to all people involved and to the big picture.
Of course there is a need to be effective when combat becomes inevitable. That should be much more infrequent that has come to pass lately. Fighting wars by mechanical proxy is one more way to remove ourselves from the consequences and the reality of the deed, after removing reporters or negative comments from the battle zone. Not that it shouldn't ever be done, but don't forget what we probably become when we do it.
>>Private corporations could run most countries better.
That myth of the improved efficiency and capability of private enterprise is equally laughable. How many private projects have you worked on that were sufficiently funded, brought in on time, within budget, and met requirements? Please. &EndRant
"Our attitude" toward science depends on who the "our" is, and where you look.
While there are a significant number of people in the USA who honestly believe in Bible-based fundamentalism (in various ways personal to themselves), many are pandered to by corrupt portions of the ulta-moneyed class in order to maintain their power.
Put it another way, the Bush/Cheney crowd don't honestly care about evolution, stem-cell issues, anti-gay histeria, etc., but if by putting up a good face to these issues they can get votes from a base that helps elect them to allow them to cut taxes to the ultra-wealthy, deregulate just about anything where a big buck can be made, eliminate the inheritance tax, give our social-security to Wall Street to manage, get a pointless war going to do god-knows-what in the second-biggest oil producing area on the planet and provide unsupervised billions of $ in free money or no-bid contracts to buddies, squash education and heath care spending, (etc.), they will gladly pay that price. And we see that they do.
Is it possible that advanced civilizations are having it out with super powerful weapons? Using the mass-destroying power of a black hole to wipe out an enemy galaxy?
If so, then I for one welcome our galaxy-destroying overlords, at least for now.
The seed vault needs to be constructed in a polar area (for cooling) and just downstream of a large water body, a river/lake, that has been dammed up. The dam must be built to need human maintenance every 100 years or so.
Should humans disappear, the dam breaks, busting open the seed vault and washing them out to germinate and get dispersed.
Slashdot Mirror
>>They could care less about the working stiff who earns less than $75,000/year.
I think their cut-off point for respect is something north of $500,000 annually, and $100M net worth.
My opinion only.
And if you're paranoid as hell that someone with brown skin is going to take some of it, like by getting health care or unemployment from a tax pool that you paid into, you get big points for that too.
It's your basic short-sighted greed, and go right ahead and troll me for this if you need to.
Did I miss some posts? Did any else see this as scary?
Did anyone see that this will be used by orgs like, let's see, Sony to see how you use remotes and TVs, Neilsen (sp?) to check your TV habits, The US Department Of Homeland Security and Redundancy to see if you're worth waterboarding (too many visits to the brown channel?), IBM to see if you're controlling any 3rd party servers, etc. etc.
Here's a technology that will turn my daily activities into a big database and share it with whoever wants it.
In other DIY news, man successfully levels wobbly table using platinum ingots.
that the Batmobile had a 220-cylinder engine?
...they replace the fuel spray from injectors with heavy hydrogen pellets.
Read "The Puzzle Palace", the first book by James Bamford (and then you can read the rest of them). He's made a career of exposing the NSA. This first book was written at a time when congress critters would not even admit publicly that the NSA existed. Bamford provides a history of eavesdropping and spying by the USA and shows that illegal listening has been going on ever since there has been anything at all to listen to.
For example, I recall that the first Western Union offices, those that were the terminations of the Transatlantic cables, and others in NYC, had secret government offices right next door where the cables were spliced and terminated for us to spy on transmissions as soon as they arrived.
Do you recall an item in the news about 15 or so years ago regarding a backdoor in Windows NT? Some security expert in, I think from memory, one of the major gov research campuses (Los Alamos or Livermore) was quoted as saying in a security overview seminar, rather casually, that there was a backdoor to the mil-spec security in NT, and that the government had the keys. Having read that book, this made complete sense to me.
The fact that this is "same as it ever was" does not mean that we should not be aware of it. It matters a great deal. My opinion is that some of this access is necessary "for a free and functioning democracy" in this world of ours. We want to know if some extremist asshole (no matter what the persuasion) is planning to set off a nuke anywhere. But much of the rest of it can be exploiting us, it can be used by people against their political enemies or for their individual profits, for purposes that has nothing to do with the well-being of the world. And we can keep an eye on which is which only if we know it's going on in the first place.
Yes we have the rule of law.
We have due process, yet we know of people held by our government for years without trial.
We have the Geneva conventions, yet we know people have been recently tortured by our government.
We have the right against unlawful search, yet we know the government has been listening on our domestic correspondence without permission from the courts.
We have the right against unlawful seizure, yet the government regularly seizes items (such as cash and property) it considers unlawful and without process.
Congress alone can declare war, yet we have armies engaged without war being declared.
What's one more stupid internet filter in light of all this?
If you don't act to maintain your rule of law, you will lose it.
I just don't buy the premise: "Any time an unpopular social program is established, the government tries to sell it under "special" tax provisions,..."
OK then, I missed when they asked me if I wanted to opt-in to the armed forces.
Or if I wanted to opt-in to the 'bailout' of vastly wealthy bankers.
Maybe we need to discuss your concept of "social program".
Anyone can do it.
Spit into a beaker, find some keen organisms, move some DNA around (kits available online), and then flush it down the sink.
Or maybe insert some plasmids you got from your cat.
If it turns out interesting you can mail it to your congress critter!
>>That assumption is that for communication, sharing intelligence is more important than sharing genetics.
How smart is that? My daughter is laughing.
>>He has an obligation to the shareholders to not be "patriotic"....
Only following the generally accepted concept of the psychotic corporation that responds to nothing but profits.
Let me be plain: that is not a healthy thing for the society that the corporation lives in, and ultimately for the corporation itself.
I need to work to change that perception.
I saw this news item on my iphone before driving my late-model car to my condo by the lake, which I go to on weekends to wind down from the 14 hours days I put in during the week (plus weekend time remotely at the condo) so that I make enough to maintain this lifestyle.
I can't believe people will do all that in the game just to accumulate stuff.
>>>ITER will not conduct energy-producing experiments until at least 2025 -- five years later than what had been previously agreed to. The article adds that the reactor will cost even more than the seven parties in the project first thought:'...Construction costs are likely to double from the 5-billion (US$7-billion)
I guess the in-home personal version of this is also delayed then?
>>I can easily imagine an ice cap melting somewhere in the antarctic, raising the humidity, and a good portion of that water vapor attaching and freezing again somewhere else where it's cooler.
I can easily imagine an ice cap melting, and replaced by an erupting volcano of vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and spewing big red cherries.
But for what is happening and is going to happen to the environment, I prefer observation and the scientific method.
Right - the prosecution is required by law to share all the evidence it has with the defense. It's called disclosure. Watch the movie "My Cousin Vinnie" for an explanation.
Because the prosecution withheld evidence important from the defense, that is enough to throw out the charges. Doesn't matter if it's post-conviction.
Legally Ted "inter-tubes" Stevens is no longer guilty, and he will shout that to the world from now on.
And governor Palin cries for a re-election for Steven's former senate seat, to address the wrongdoing. I wonder if she also supports freeing Aymen Batarfi, a gitmo detainee from whose defense the government also withheld substantial evidence. Maybe she'll grant him asylum in Alaska.
Yes, "I'm fairly certain that they have controls to prevent that kind of thing. "
Add this to the list of potential epitaphs.
Yes - with this advance, the bagged veggies can now talk to you and tell you which dressing to buy.
And plastic bags can tell you to take them off your head so you don't suffocate!
Or say "I TOLD you not to leave the tuna sandwich unrefrigerated, you jerk!"
You don't need nearly the leverage of 1/100th or 1/10th the wage difference.
IBM appears to make it work with as little as 2/3 (66%) of a wage difference.
In many cases I'm working with 20-year olds in that foreign country, with little experience, and I'm trying to help them learn and get by on that wage of theirs which is a fraction of mine with over 25 years experience.
And I guess it's pretty similar to if the new worker was a college grad here in the US, but they're not.
I look at the empty desks of the people who were here a few months or years ago, who are now replaced by the lower-wage person thousands of miles away.
There is something wrong.
Spreading the wealth around the world is not the wrong thing, just as helping a new worker, no matter where they are, is not the wrong thing.
The wrong thing is dumping the existing good person because of the wage difference (or labor law difference, or environmental law difference), and leaving any responsibility or accountability for them behind.
Is Capitalism another way of never having to say you're sorry?
How long before this feature is part of the amplifier, and live musicians are singing 'tweaked' vocals?
At first I thought that there will always be authentic live music, but thinking some more, maybe that is doomed too.
Of course you can always switch it off.
Yes, the operant question for me in this story is "did we/the CIA cut the cable, did some other entity do it, or was it an accident?"
Not a whole lot of clues to go on so far.
And I wish I had some links to stories of various cable capers we (the USA) have been involved in before show those encountering this possibility for the first time.
>>It's nice to know we'd win all our wars with few, if any, American casualties,
Geez, there's so much to consider here:
Whose wars?
What about the people being killed by the bots, or is this just a higher-stakes battlebots game?
American casualties are not the only consideration, but thought must be paid to all people involved and to the big picture.
Of course there is a need to be effective when combat becomes inevitable. That should be much more infrequent that has come to pass lately. Fighting wars by mechanical proxy is one more way to remove ourselves from the consequences and the reality of the deed, after removing reporters or negative comments from the battle zone. Not that it shouldn't ever be done, but don't forget what we probably become when we do it.
>>Private corporations could run most countries better.
That myth of the improved efficiency and capability of private enterprise is equally laughable.
How many private projects have you worked on that were sufficiently funded, brought in on time, within budget, and met requirements?
Please.
&EndRant
"Our attitude" toward science depends on who the "our" is, and where you look.
While there are a significant number of people in the USA who honestly believe in Bible-based fundamentalism (in various ways personal to themselves), many are pandered to by corrupt portions of the ulta-moneyed class in order to maintain their power.
Put it another way, the Bush/Cheney crowd don't honestly care about evolution, stem-cell issues, anti-gay histeria, etc., but if by putting up a good face to these issues they can get votes from a base that helps elect them to allow them to cut taxes to the ultra-wealthy, deregulate just about anything where a big buck can be made, eliminate the inheritance tax, give our social-security to Wall Street to manage, get a pointless war going to do god-knows-what in the second-biggest oil producing area on the planet and provide unsupervised billions of $ in free money or no-bid contracts to buddies, squash education and heath care spending, (etc.), they will gladly pay that price. And we see that they do.
Is it possible that advanced civilizations are having it out with super powerful weapons? Using the mass-destroying power of a black hole to wipe out an enemy galaxy?
If so, then I for one welcome our galaxy-destroying overlords, at least for now.
The seed vault needs to be constructed in a polar area (for cooling) and just downstream of a large water body, a river/lake, that has been dammed up. The dam must be built to need human maintenance every 100 years or so.
Should humans disappear, the dam breaks, busting open the seed vault and washing them out to germinate and get dispersed.
Or something.