While I deplore the act of writing viruses, I can't say I wholly condemn anti-virus companies for doing so if they do/did so. For a long time, companies would sweep vulnerabilities under the carpet and avoid fixing them. Having exploits in the wild was the one way to grab their attention (and, if you go back far enough, even with a sample exploit you were more likely told to shut up than be lauded). So as a result, we overall probably have better systems security now than we would have otherwise, because the software publishers were slowly forced to deal with security threats and put in place processes to reduce their occurrence. It's also hard to blame the software vendors for not wanting to incur those costs unless the customers started making (more) secure software a priority in purchasing criteria.
One the one hand you expect security companies to act ethically, and "the ends don't justify the means", but when the software vendors don't take the necessary ethical actions to protect their clients, and the clients ignore the risks (and place their customer data and privacy at risk), the whole picture gets a lot more grey. The system was broken and those people used hammers to make the cracks big enough that they could no longer be ignored. Are they vandals or public benefactors? It depends on whether you broke an axle on one of the bigger cracks they made, or managed to avoid it and enjoy the smoother road once it got repaved. (Had to end with a car analogy)
It's more of a pain to change the batteries when you apply those wrappers/protectors that a lot of people seem to use for their smartphones, be it for extra impact protection or for accessorizing.
The option is there for a reason. Your reaction is like that of the person who cuts themselves by accident with a kitchen knife and resorts to buying all kinds of gadgets to protect their fingers instead of learning proper technique. The lesson you should learn isn't to never use -Rf or * with rm, it's that when you use one of those features you should double check everything you've typed before pressing the enter key. Measure twice, cut once works for more than carpentry.
Heh, no kidding. I remember in the 70's going through the Vancouver Public Library's complete collection of Jules Verne, some though inter-branch loans. I think most had been printed in the 40s, and were in good enough shape. Some of them might still be there. Yeah, they might not be as popular as ones from King, Ludlum, or Grisham, but they were still getting loaned out from time to time. Even more obscure novels like Into the Niger Bend.
No, they're all way too far north. You really need to be on the equator for a space elevator or you're going to have huge shear stresses at your attachment point. The cable also initially will climb at minimum at whatever angle corresponds to your latitude, which means extra climbing in atmosphere for the cars while fighting air friction. You would actually need extra length and counterweight (and tensile strength) to hold it down so it would be that straight. In practice you would have much less tension and it would initially bend at a much stronger angle like one end of a suspension bridge cable. That would add even more time spend in atmosphere and complicate the climbing mechanism and cab because they then need to deal with a shifting orientation for the cable and/or cargo.
Brazil would probably be more than happy to host it near Macapa, but that's tropical rainforest with monsoon weather (hence why the drier high Andes in Ecuador would be preferred). If you're going to spend that much money to build something, you're going to want to be able to run it all the time.
Of course if you do have one built, say in Ecuador, you would use any unbooked car time slots to ferry up the materials to build a second one (say in Kenya, Gabon, or Ileu das Rohas) so that you have redundancy in case of a disaster as well as shipping convenience for both American and European clients/suppliers.
Equatorial weather above the ocean tends to get much more interesting than it does above ground, for many months of the year. The type of storm that helped set the conditions for the crash of Air France Flight 447 is pretty common. Sure the cable would be pretty resistant, but the cars are going to have a nice sail area. You also would probably prefer to use beamed power to improve the mass ratio on the cars. The latter would be harder if you've got heavy cloud cover for a good deal of the year.
Well, here in BC at least, political parties don't use some recorded message telling me to "Please Wait" (Why? You called me!) while they line up a low-wage employee, but instead have somebody (probably an unpaid volunteer) talking to me immediately. The former gets a marketer hung up and the # blacklisted in my phone before I ever speak to someone, whereas the latter gives them a few seconds to hold my attention.
Yep. Communist Russia had a wonderful constitution, outlining all sorts of individual rights, and it was regularly ignored by the state apparatus. With a majority of the USA Supreme Court now biased in favour of corporate rights over individual rights, non court-supervised secret intelligence/military operations against citizens, and more - the USA is well travelled down that same path.
Years ago, I was getting fax calls at all hours of the day and night from a number block in Alberta that had been owned by Telus but, even as a Telus customer, they wouldn't tell me who the block belonged to. The numbers wouldn't answer if I called back (since it was calling in the middle of the night for cheap rates, it was probably a computer fax line with my number mistyped in their directory) so I had no way to tell them to stop. Telus' only solution was to change my number, which would mean notifying all my acquaintances, with no guarantee it wouldn't happen again. Eventually I got fed up, dropped my land line and switched to a different cellular provider. That's ten years of steady cheap income (>$2500), and counting, that they lost because they wouldn't help me find out who was screwing with my sleep (assuming it wasn't them in the first place).
About a year ago I started getting robocalls again, but just voice this time. Yes, even though I was on the Canadian do-not-call list. My new Android smartphone had this nice built-in feature where I could just blacklist the number based on Caller ID and it would reject the call immediately. I never heard it ring again and, after a few weeks, they eventually gave up (or possibly whatever marketing or political campaign had my number ran out of time or money).
I prefer the reliability of land lines in case of a disaster. However I don't think it is worth running 24x7 power and cooling (in summer) for a computer w/ telephony, just to be able to automatically screen and hang up a land line based on a caller-id blacklist before it rings at 3AM. Not when that function comes built-in on a decent smartphone.
Yeah, because the poor were doing just fine during the Dark Ages. No consequences from that in the 1700 and 1800s when communications improved enough for organization to take place.
Hmm. I looked at a whole bunch of flat screen monitors and generally preferred the picture from the Samsungs, so I bought one. I looked at a whole bunch of Android phones August of last year, and wound up buying a Galaxy S because I liked the AMOLED screen and disliked Motorola's policy on requiring signed kernels on their droids. I since haven't been too thrilled with how long it's taken to get Android updates, but now that the warranty is expired, I'll probably switch to Cyanogen soon when it supports Android 4 for the Galaxy.
So technology wise, they seem to be above average, although their update support leaves something to be desired. When I next have to buy home electronics, I'll probably take a close look at anything Samsung has to offer, keeping in mind their supposed limitations. You could call me a Samsung fan because I have bought two of their products and would consider buying more, or you could call me a careful shopper. I'm willing to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt that he just appreciates the good qualities of their products.
entries in respected sources like Wikipedia and the Wall Street Journal
Wikipedia is a mostly reliable source on subjects that do not involve political controversy, but is highly manipulated on those subjects that do. Clearly this subject falls into the latter category. The Wall Street journal, by its very name, should not need any explanation of its inherent bias on this issue, one significantly exacerbated since its purchase by News International.
What you're meant to do is turn the damn engine off so the brakes don't overheat and fail!
Well, to be fair you should either disengage the clutch (on a manual transmission) or put the transmission in neutral (automatic transmission) before turning off the engine. Trying to stop a car engine while in gear at high speed is a good way to lose control, trash your transmission, or both. This is actually an easier step for people with a standard transmission because they should already be used to spending a lot of time with their hand on the stick shift while in motion and popping out of gear and into neutral.
In contrast, most people driving automatics probably never spend much time in neutral except for passing from park or reverse into drive, or vice versa. Sure they should probably be in neutral when stopped at most red lights to save wear and tear on the transmission, but the opposite is true when the vehicle is in motion (for both legal and mechanical reasons). So drivers used to automatic transmissions are pretty well conditioned not to think of putting the car into neutral while running. Your recommendation, while correct, therefore goes against the typical learned behaviour of those who drive automatic transmissions. That learned behaviour is the one they are likely to be falling back to under conditions of stress (which would apply with a stuck pedal and runaway acceleration).
So maybe the solution to the problem is to insist that everybody has some competency on driving with a standard transmission and must pass their driver's test with it. By all means start driving lessons with a more forgiving automatic transmission so new drivers can focus their attention on signalling, traffic awareness, and the rules of the road. However basic manual transmission skill also should be learned so that you aren't petrified if you are put into a situation with a runaway engine.
I'm not sure a 'good teacher' teaches things his employer doesn't want him teaching.
That's exactly the problem he's talking about isn't it? The 'good teacher' should be teaching his students what they need to know. However his customer/employer can often be pressured into pushing material that is not in the students' best interest (from lobbying by textbook publishers to pandering to religious biases of a vocal subset of the population).
I hate to say this but, similar to McGyver - The A-Team. It seems like half the episodes wind up with B.A. in a barn that has an old truck, some metal plate and oxy-acetylene equipment that gets used to build a makeshift tank.
Well maybe he knows about methane clathrates on the sea bottom and understands about how they could be the basis of a tipping point? If those things start to melt, we're screwed.
The Scientific Method calls for formulating hypotheses, testing those hypotheses, and modifying them if the hypothesis did not correctly predict the outcome of the test. It is the REAL outcome of ACTUAL tests that you adjust your hypotheses and theories to match, not just models based on observations. If you can't test it, you don't have a theory. Period. No matter how much or for how long you refine your model based on mere observation.
Sorry but this type of bullshit argument is what's brought up all the time by the fundamentalists to argue against evolution. After all, without a time machine, you can't go back in time to try to modify an evolutionary path by wiping out a species to confirm that other species descended from that "now-dead" species used to exist but have been wiped out. Never mind that such an experimental procedure might also wipe out the experimenter and cause a time paradox.
Observational science cannot produce results as quickly as experimental science (especially as the number of uncontrolled variables increase). However if a theoretical framework advances to the point where it makes useful predictions on general trends that are much more statistically accurate than just random guessing (and than any other competing theoretical framework), then that is a scientifically significant result. The important part of science is being able to make falsifiable predictions. "Controls" in an experiment help constrain variables to increase statistical relevance with a lower number of observations, but they are not required for scientifically significant results.
On the contrary; tobacco-caused lung cancer, if it exists, is an economic question. If it has to be "tackled", it has to, in any rational plan, be industry that has to "tackle" it, since if it exists, it is industry that is causing it.
Because that approach worked well with tobacco right? While there are exceptions when they are still run by idealistic founders, for the most part the legal and organizational framework for publicly owned corporations causes them to behave like greedy psychopaths. "Industry" will tackle it while kicking and screaming like a sleep-deprived 3 year old when they are legally forced to, and not a second sooner.
There's pretty good consensus over thermodynamics. There's some cranks who claim they've got perpetual machines, but so far they haven't been able to put out a working model that convinces physicists to change their minds about the second law. Sure some day, somebody might find some loophole, but it's a pretty low probability event.
Consensus is what you get when the evidence becomes overwhelmingly in favour of a particular theoretical framework/interpretation. At any time it can be replaced by a new interpretation that explains both existing data and new contradicting data. So far AGW best explains a lot of observed data, and the competing explanations (when any are provided) have been downright laughable in how poorly they match observations (i.e. "It's solar!" at a period of low solar activity and record global average temperatures). If somebody can come up with a credible alternative theory to AGW for the observed effects, their scientific career will be assured. Up til now I've only seen hot air.
You're hoping for too much from deniers. Their selective memory will take care of the issue and they won't admit to being wrong anyway.
Even better, there's a big crossover between them and the over-the-top religious fundamentalists. When bad things happen, even if some of them are most likely related to global warming, they'll say that those disasters are the results of god's anger with whatever is on their personal shit list. Never mind that the people they denigrate have been predicting those types of events as a result of anthropogenic global warming for over a decade. These people could be facing a second Dust Bowl from global warming and blame it on "God's anger" at gay rights and abortions.
The problem is that corn has really poor efficiency in alcohol production. You use almost as much fuel to produce alcohol from corn as you wind producing. Sugar cane is a much better crop for producing alcohol. (And rum tastes better than corn mash whiskey too:-).
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One the one hand you expect security companies to act ethically, and "the ends don't justify the means", but when the software vendors don't take the necessary ethical actions to protect their clients, and the clients ignore the risks (and place their customer data and privacy at risk), the whole picture gets a lot more grey. The system was broken and those people used hammers to make the cracks big enough that they could no longer be ignored. Are they vandals or public benefactors? It depends on whether you broke an axle on one of the bigger cracks they made, or managed to avoid it and enjoy the smoother road once it got repaved. (Had to end with a car analogy)
It's more of a pain to change the batteries when you apply those wrappers/protectors that a lot of people seem to use for their smartphones, be it for extra impact protection or for accessorizing.
Rule #35: That which does not kill me has made a tactical mistake.
The option is there for a reason. Your reaction is like that of the person who cuts themselves by accident with a kitchen knife and resorts to buying all kinds of gadgets to protect their fingers instead of learning proper technique. The lesson you should learn isn't to never use -Rf or * with rm, it's that when you use one of those features you should double check everything you've typed before pressing the enter key. Measure twice, cut once works for more than carpentry.
Heh, no kidding. I remember in the 70's going through the Vancouver Public Library's complete collection of Jules Verne, some though inter-branch loans. I think most had been printed in the 40s, and were in good enough shape. Some of them might still be there. Yeah, they might not be as popular as ones from King, Ludlum, or Grisham, but they were still getting loaned out from time to time. Even more obscure novels like Into the Niger Bend.
Nope. What he's proposing is still Agile, just that alpha and beta testing aren't done after User Acceptance Testing.
So you are smart but not wise.
No, they're all way too far north. You really need to be on the equator for a space elevator or you're going to have huge shear stresses at your attachment point. The cable also initially will climb at minimum at whatever angle corresponds to your latitude, which means extra climbing in atmosphere for the cars while fighting air friction. You would actually need extra length and counterweight (and tensile strength) to hold it down so it would be that straight. In practice you would have much less tension and it would initially bend at a much stronger angle like one end of a suspension bridge cable. That would add even more time spend in atmosphere and complicate the climbing mechanism and cab because they then need to deal with a shifting orientation for the cable and/or cargo.
Brazil would probably be more than happy to host it near Macapa, but that's tropical rainforest with monsoon weather (hence why the drier high Andes in Ecuador would be preferred). If you're going to spend that much money to build something, you're going to want to be able to run it all the time.
Of course if you do have one built, say in Ecuador, you would use any unbooked car time slots to ferry up the materials to build a second one (say in Kenya, Gabon, or Ileu das Rohas) so that you have redundancy in case of a disaster as well as shipping convenience for both American and European clients/suppliers.
Equatorial weather above the ocean tends to get much more interesting than it does above ground, for many months of the year. The type of storm that helped set the conditions for the crash of Air France Flight 447 is pretty common. Sure the cable would be pretty resistant, but the cars are going to have a nice sail area. You also would probably prefer to use beamed power to improve the mass ratio on the cars. The latter would be harder if you've got heavy cloud cover for a good deal of the year.
The political situation in most of equatorial Africa is pretty crazy. If you have the capital to build a space elevator, maybe you could negotiate to buy Ilhéu das Rolas from Sao Tomé to ensure political stability. However, it looks like that wouldn't solve the weather issue. With Indonesia you have frequent precipitation and cloud cover with a peaceful democratic political structure only very recently. Kenya seems to be the most stable equatorial East African country and it's amazing that it has managed to remain so despite political upheavals. However it has neighbours like Somalia and Uganda, who might find the elevator a tempting target. An alternative might be to locate on the Andean highlands in Ecuador, although that country has had its own political stability challenges, as well as Columbia and Peru for neighbours.
Well, here in BC at least, political parties don't use some recorded message telling me to "Please Wait" (Why? You called me!) while they line up a low-wage employee, but instead have somebody (probably an unpaid volunteer) talking to me immediately. The former gets a marketer hung up and the # blacklisted in my phone before I ever speak to someone, whereas the latter gives them a few seconds to hold my attention.
Yep. Communist Russia had a wonderful constitution, outlining all sorts of individual rights, and it was regularly ignored by the state apparatus. With a majority of the USA Supreme Court now biased in favour of corporate rights over individual rights, non court-supervised secret intelligence/military operations against citizens, and more - the USA is well travelled down that same path.
Years ago, I was getting fax calls at all hours of the day and night from a number block in Alberta that had been owned by Telus but, even as a Telus customer, they wouldn't tell me who the block belonged to. The numbers wouldn't answer if I called back (since it was calling in the middle of the night for cheap rates, it was probably a computer fax line with my number mistyped in their directory) so I had no way to tell them to stop. Telus' only solution was to change my number, which would mean notifying all my acquaintances, with no guarantee it wouldn't happen again. Eventually I got fed up, dropped my land line and switched to a different cellular provider. That's ten years of steady cheap income (>$2500), and counting, that they lost because they wouldn't help me find out who was screwing with my sleep (assuming it wasn't them in the first place).
About a year ago I started getting robocalls again, but just voice this time. Yes, even though I was on the Canadian do-not-call list. My new Android smartphone had this nice built-in feature where I could just blacklist the number based on Caller ID and it would reject the call immediately. I never heard it ring again and, after a few weeks, they eventually gave up (or possibly whatever marketing or political campaign had my number ran out of time or money).
I prefer the reliability of land lines in case of a disaster. However I don't think it is worth running 24x7 power and cooling (in summer) for a computer w/ telephony, just to be able to automatically screen and hang up a land line based on a caller-id blacklist before it rings at 3AM. Not when that function comes built-in on a decent smartphone.
Yeah, because the poor were doing just fine during the Dark Ages. No consequences from that in the 1700 and 1800s when communications improved enough for organization to take place.
Hmm. I looked at a whole bunch of flat screen monitors and generally preferred the picture from the Samsungs, so I bought one. I looked at a whole bunch of Android phones August of last year, and wound up buying a Galaxy S because I liked the AMOLED screen and disliked Motorola's policy on requiring signed kernels on their droids. I since haven't been too thrilled with how long it's taken to get Android updates, but now that the warranty is expired, I'll probably switch to Cyanogen soon when it supports Android 4 for the Galaxy.
So technology wise, they seem to be above average, although their update support leaves something to be desired. When I next have to buy home electronics, I'll probably take a close look at anything Samsung has to offer, keeping in mind their supposed limitations. You could call me a Samsung fan because I have bought two of their products and would consider buying more, or you could call me a careful shopper. I'm willing to give the other guy the benefit of the doubt that he just appreciates the good qualities of their products.
Wikipedia is a mostly reliable source on subjects that do not involve political controversy, but is highly manipulated on those subjects that do. Clearly this subject falls into the latter category. The Wall Street journal, by its very name, should not need any explanation of its inherent bias on this issue, one significantly exacerbated since its purchase by News International.
So you're saying they weren't pirates so much as privateers with Letters of Marque. I'll have to remember that.
Well, to be fair you should either disengage the clutch (on a manual transmission) or put the transmission in neutral (automatic transmission) before turning off the engine. Trying to stop a car engine while in gear at high speed is a good way to lose control, trash your transmission, or both. This is actually an easier step for people with a standard transmission because they should already be used to spending a lot of time with their hand on the stick shift while in motion and popping out of gear and into neutral.
In contrast, most people driving automatics probably never spend much time in neutral except for passing from park or reverse into drive, or vice versa. Sure they should probably be in neutral when stopped at most red lights to save wear and tear on the transmission, but the opposite is true when the vehicle is in motion (for both legal and mechanical reasons). So drivers used to automatic transmissions are pretty well conditioned not to think of putting the car into neutral while running. Your recommendation, while correct, therefore goes against the typical learned behaviour of those who drive automatic transmissions. That learned behaviour is the one they are likely to be falling back to under conditions of stress (which would apply with a stuck pedal and runaway acceleration).
So maybe the solution to the problem is to insist that everybody has some competency on driving with a standard transmission and must pass their driver's test with it. By all means start driving lessons with a more forgiving automatic transmission so new drivers can focus their attention on signalling, traffic awareness, and the rules of the road. However basic manual transmission skill also should be learned so that you aren't petrified if you are put into a situation with a runaway engine.
I hate to say this but, similar to McGyver - The A-Team. It seems like half the episodes wind up with B.A. in a barn that has an old truck, some metal plate and oxy-acetylene equipment that gets used to build a makeshift tank.
Well maybe he knows about methane clathrates on the sea bottom and understands about how they could be the basis of a tipping point? If those things start to melt, we're screwed.
Sorry but this type of bullshit argument is what's brought up all the time by the fundamentalists to argue against evolution. After all, without a time machine, you can't go back in time to try to modify an evolutionary path by wiping out a species to confirm that other species descended from that "now-dead" species used to exist but have been wiped out. Never mind that such an experimental procedure might also wipe out the experimenter and cause a time paradox.
Observational science cannot produce results as quickly as experimental science (especially as the number of uncontrolled variables increase). However if a theoretical framework advances to the point where it makes useful predictions on general trends that are much more statistically accurate than just random guessing (and than any other competing theoretical framework), then that is a scientifically significant result. The important part of science is being able to make falsifiable predictions. "Controls" in an experiment help constrain variables to increase statistical relevance with a lower number of observations, but they are not required for scientifically significant results.
On the contrary; tobacco-caused lung cancer, if it exists, is an economic question. If it has to be "tackled", it has to, in any rational plan, be industry that has to "tackle" it, since if it exists, it is industry that is causing it.
Because that approach worked well with tobacco right? While there are exceptions when they are still run by idealistic founders, for the most part the legal and organizational framework for publicly owned corporations causes them to behave like greedy psychopaths. "Industry" will tackle it while kicking and screaming like a sleep-deprived 3 year old when they are legally forced to, and not a second sooner.
There's pretty good consensus over thermodynamics. There's some cranks who claim they've got perpetual machines, but so far they haven't been able to put out a working model that convinces physicists to change their minds about the second law. Sure some day, somebody might find some loophole, but it's a pretty low probability event.
Consensus is what you get when the evidence becomes overwhelmingly in favour of a particular theoretical framework/interpretation. At any time it can be replaced by a new interpretation that explains both existing data and new contradicting data. So far AGW best explains a lot of observed data, and the competing explanations (when any are provided) have been downright laughable in how poorly they match observations (i.e. "It's solar!" at a period of low solar activity and record global average temperatures). If somebody can come up with a credible alternative theory to AGW for the observed effects, their scientific career will be assured. Up til now I've only seen hot air.
Even better, there's a big crossover between them and the over-the-top religious fundamentalists. When bad things happen, even if some of them are most likely related to global warming, they'll say that those disasters are the results of god's anger with whatever is on their personal shit list. Never mind that the people they denigrate have been predicting those types of events as a result of anthropogenic global warming for over a decade. These people could be facing a second Dust Bowl from global warming and blame it on "God's anger" at gay rights and abortions.
The problem is that corn has really poor efficiency in alcohol production. You use almost as much fuel to produce alcohol from corn as you wind producing. Sugar cane is a much better crop for producing alcohol. (And rum tastes better than corn mash whiskey too :-).