I would imagine that the Long Now Foundation, if it's around in a couple of hundred years time, would have plans to build a clock on the moon, maybe marked by a shiny thing that can be seen from Earth with a Galilean telescope. My hypothetical long-lived future self would certainly hope to be able to contribute to such a project.
Incidentally, I support legalization and taxation of soft drugs
What's the difference between soft drugs and hard drugs? Is alcohol a soft drug (because it's regularly consumed by people at all levels of society) or a hard drug (because it is ranked by experts as being more harmful than any other drug)?
Surely the solution is to regulate the supply of all substances, rather than the current two-tier market split between regulated supply of tobacco and alcohol and the effectively unregulated market run by large criminal organisations. Some good ideas are here: http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blueprint%20download.htm
Just curious, what's the average annual tax bill per person to pay for the NHS?
Have a look here. In 2009/10, the NHS cost £100bn (about $160bn). That's about 8% of the UK's GDP, and actually less a a proportion of GDP than the US spends on healthcare.
Yes, we get universal healthcare, free at the point of delivery, and it costs us less per person than the US system which, as TFA shows, drives people to commit crime in order to get treatment. Of course, health insurance companies don't make as much money over here, so maybe our system is the flawed one, eh?
How do we humans tend to naturally measure distance over ground? We pace it off.
I get 64 double paces to 100m. I couldn't tell you what that is in feet, as I don't walk with one foot immediately in front of another. Every map I've ever used for mountain navigation has a kilometer grid, so multiples of 100m are easy to measure and pace off. I can look at a map and tell you to within 30 seconds how long it'll take me to walk a particular route, but don't ask me how many yards or miles that is. Those units are meaningless to me, like Fahrenheit. I've no conception of what 0 F is, or 50 For 100 F. I know if the rime ice on my jacket melts then the temperature has just risen above 0 C, and if I'm comfortable standing around in short sleeves then it's probably about 20 C. I couldn't tell you how attractive a 100 lb woman is compared to a 200 lb one, but tell me she's 60kg or 90kg and I'll know what you mean.
My point is that you are comfortable with the units you are used to. Imperial measurements are not magically more intuitive. Intuition comes from the experience of knowing and applying a measurement system. The advantage of SI units is that they interrelate very easily. 1 watt of power is equal to 1 joule of work done in 1 second. Work out how many horsepower that is in calories per second and then tell me which system you think is more useful.
+1 to this. Running a relay also provides greater anonymity to your own Tor activity, as it is very hard to show whether traffic originated with your node or was just relayed.
A fork of Wikipedia exists, with the stated intention of encouraging high quality contributions from everyone, including academics. It's called Citizendium, and it's rather good. No edit wars, no wikilawyering, no deletionism. Everyone should use it and contribute, as it's a real shame it's not more widely known.
So when little Johnny coming home from his first day at a new school gets lost on the way home and can't find his way back he spends in the night on the street?
Yes, that always happened to every child ever, until GPS-enabled mobile phones were invented. It's a miracle any of us are alive today, let alone educated and everything.
Parent is wrong. Ordnance Survey maps are NOT magnetic north aligned. They are aligned to OS Grid North, which is fixed wrt the UK (but not congruent with True North). Each printed map sheet has a diagram indicating the deviation from grid north of magnetic north at the centre of the sheet at a given epoch. When taking a bearing with a protractor compass, it is necessary to account for the magnetic deviation before following that bearing (in Scotland, magnetic north is currently 2 deg west of grid north).
Wikileaks did share the cables, pre-publication, with several well known and respected news organisations - Der Spiegel, The Guardian, The New York Times, etc. It is wrong to suggest that those publications would not have reported on the cables if they had been given them directly by the leaker.
BBC Radio 4's Today programme is notorious for its take-no-bullshit interviewers, such as John Humphrys. Despite this, politicians of all levels, from the Prime Minister down, frequently appear on the programme to be questioned ("grilled") on their policies. This attitude extends even to the bosses of the BBC, who have been given very tough times on the programme by their own employees.
The independence of the BBC's journalists is recognised as exemplary, although it may not always be welcomed by politicians. The politicians know that to be taken seriously, they have to submit to serious questioning.
In the UK, you can already text 999, provided your phone is registered (send "register" to 999). This is aimed at people with speech or hearing impairments, but is also being used by outdoor enthusiasts, as a text can often be sent when there is insufficient signal strength for a voice call.
How about we work on removing nuclear weapons from France, Russia, India, Pakistan, England, USA and of course ISRAEL?
Hooray! Scotland gets to keep all the nukes in Glen Douglas, Coulport, and Faslane! Now the English will tremble as the Scots get revenge for Culloden. Sweet, sweet nuclear revenge!
Or maybe instead of England, you meant the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northen Ireland, the sovereign state of which England is a constituent part?
You need to put it his comments in context. She said that UK politicians have no right to comment on things like stoning of women in Iran, presumably because that's a Muslim thing and she's a "political correctness" extremist who would sooner allow an innocent teenager to die a horrible death than dare insult precious male Muslim feelings. He shouldn't have even apologized, never mind get arrested. It's obviously a sarcastic response to her comments and in no way an incitement to violence.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has consistently campaigned for women's rights in Islam, and against barbaric punishments such as stoning. She has in fact insulted the feeling of many conservative male muslims. She said that UK politicians have no right to comment on things like stoning of women in Iran, not because it's a muslim thing, but because British politicians voted for illegal wars where British troops committed horrible abuses of human rights.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why you hire editor's to proof these things children.
Oh dear, Muphry's Law strikes again.
I would imagine that the Long Now Foundation, if it's around in a couple of hundred years time, would have plans to build a clock on the moon, maybe marked by a shiny thing that can be seen from Earth with a Galilean telescope. My hypothetical long-lived future self would certainly hope to be able to contribute to such a project.
How can 1 whale not be half there, but 2 whale can be?
Wait, can two whales not half be not there but 1 whale can be not half there?
Not half.
Linking to that site should be instant -100 karma. I want my three hours back!
Incidentally, I support legalization and taxation of soft drugs
What's the difference between soft drugs and hard drugs? Is alcohol a soft drug (because it's regularly consumed by people at all levels of society) or a hard drug (because it is ranked by experts as being more harmful than any other drug)?
Surely the solution is to regulate the supply of all substances, rather than the current two-tier market split between regulated supply of tobacco and alcohol and the effectively unregulated market run by large criminal organisations. Some good ideas are here: http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blueprint%20download.htm
Just curious, what's the average annual tax bill per person to pay for the NHS?
Have a look here. In 2009/10, the NHS cost £100bn (about $160bn). That's about 8% of the UK's GDP, and actually less a a proportion of GDP than the US spends on healthcare.
Yes, we get universal healthcare, free at the point of delivery, and it costs us less per person than the US system which, as TFA shows, drives people to commit crime in order to get treatment. Of course, health insurance companies don't make as much money over here, so maybe our system is the flawed one, eh?
You can still help by running a relay-only node. No exit traffic necessary.
Some reality-deniers in the US are doing just that.
How do we humans tend to naturally measure distance over ground? We pace it off.
I get 64 double paces to 100m. I couldn't tell you what that is in feet, as I don't walk with one foot immediately in front of another. Every map I've ever used for mountain navigation has a kilometer grid, so multiples of 100m are easy to measure and pace off. I can look at a map and tell you to within 30 seconds how long it'll take me to walk a particular route, but don't ask me how many yards or miles that is. Those units are meaningless to me, like Fahrenheit. I've no conception of what 0 F is, or 50 For 100 F. I know if the rime ice on my jacket melts then the temperature has just risen above 0 C, and if I'm comfortable standing around in short sleeves then it's probably about 20 C. I couldn't tell you how attractive a 100 lb woman is compared to a 200 lb one, but tell me she's 60kg or 90kg and I'll know what you mean.
My point is that you are comfortable with the units you are used to. Imperial measurements are not magically more intuitive. Intuition comes from the experience of knowing and applying a measurement system. The advantage of SI units is that they interrelate very easily. 1 watt of power is equal to 1 joule of work done in 1 second. Work out how many horsepower that is in calories per second and then tell me which system you think is more useful.
ever noticed even the scientists can't bring themselves to decimalize the circle?
Why would you decimalize a circle when 2*pi is much more natural?
+1 to this. Running a relay also provides greater anonymity to your own Tor activity, as it is very hard to show whether traffic originated with your node or was just relayed.
I suspect, if not a troll, the IP in Slashdot's server logs would correspond to a Tor exit node.
A fork of Wikipedia exists, with the stated intention of encouraging high quality contributions from everyone, including academics. It's called Citizendium, and it's rather good. No edit wars, no wikilawyering, no deletionism. Everyone should use it and contribute, as it's a real shame it's not more widely known.
So when little Johnny coming home from his first day at a new school gets lost on the way home and can't find his way back he spends in the night on the street?
Yes, that always happened to every child ever, until GPS-enabled mobile phones were invented. It's a miracle any of us are alive today, let alone educated and everything.
Parent is wrong. Ordnance Survey maps are NOT magnetic north aligned. They are aligned to OS Grid North, which is fixed wrt the UK (but not congruent with True North). Each printed map sheet has a diagram indicating the deviation from grid north of magnetic north at the centre of the sheet at a given epoch. When taking a bearing with a protractor compass, it is necessary to account for the magnetic deviation before following that bearing (in Scotland, magnetic north is currently 2 deg west of grid north).
Thanks, I'll give that a try.
Weird copy-protection schemes don't often play nicely with Wine. KVM/qemu often works well except for accelerated 3D graphics.
Wikileaks did share the cables, pre-publication, with several well known and respected news organisations - Der Spiegel, The Guardian, The New York Times, etc. It is wrong to suggest that those publications would not have reported on the cables if they had been given them directly by the leaker.
BBC journalist Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight famously asked Michael Howard the same question 12 times in a row.
BBC Radio 4's Today programme is notorious for its take-no-bullshit interviewers, such as John Humphrys. Despite this, politicians of all levels, from the Prime Minister down, frequently appear on the programme to be questioned ("grilled") on their policies. This attitude extends even to the bosses of the BBC, who have been given very tough times on the programme by their own employees.
The independence of the BBC's journalists is recognised as exemplary, although it may not always be welcomed by politicians. The politicians know that to be taken seriously, they have to submit to serious questioning.
Can you recommend a free linux VM player that does good (emulated if necessary) hardware 3D acceleration?
In the UK, you can already text 999, provided your phone is registered (send "register" to 999). This is aimed at people with speech or hearing impairments, but is also being used by outdoor enthusiasts, as a text can often be sent when there is insufficient signal strength for a voice call.
How about we work on removing nuclear weapons from France, Russia, India, Pakistan, England, USA and of course ISRAEL?
Hooray! Scotland gets to keep all the nukes in Glen Douglas, Coulport, and Faslane! Now the English will tremble as the Scots get revenge for Culloden. Sweet, sweet nuclear revenge!
Or maybe instead of England, you meant the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northen Ireland, the sovereign state of which England is a constituent part?
You need to put it his comments in context. She said that UK politicians have no right to comment on things like stoning of women in Iran, presumably because that's a Muslim thing and she's a "political correctness" extremist who would sooner allow an innocent teenager to die a horrible death than dare insult precious male Muslim feelings. He shouldn't have even apologized, never mind get arrested. It's obviously a sarcastic response to her comments and in no way an incitement to violence.
Wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong.
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown has consistently campaigned for women's rights in Islam, and against barbaric punishments such as stoning. She has in fact insulted the feeling of many conservative male muslims. She said that UK politicians have no right to comment on things like stoning of women in Iran, not because it's a muslim thing, but because British politicians voted for illegal wars where British troops committed horrible abuses of human rights.
Neither does the half of the world population who live on less than $3 per day.
Although a few (not enough) of their kids have Linux-based OLPCs to play with... Shame that project seems to be dying.