For automobiles, limits on NOx have been useful in improving air quality and are probably worth it; limits on CO2 emissions from personal automobiles are not worth the trouble because they have a negligible impact on overall US greenhouse gas emissions.
Citation please... There may be greater sources of CO2 than personal automobiles but I very much doubt that their contribution is negligible.
For CO2 emissions, a substantial tax increase would be a better mechanism if we wanted to reduce CO2 emissions from driving, but politicians know full well that they couldn't pass that.
Agreed. Probably the best thing we could do with economic policy to help the environment would be to tax fossil fuels at a higher rate. It would drive economic behavior in reasonable time frames to more sensible alternatives for transportation and industrial fuel use. Sadly you are correct that it wouldn't have a prayer of passing the current Congress in the US.
You'd rather have the financial impact of swathes of the population being killed in easily-preventable ways, just so you can feel superior to them?
If they cannot be bothered to look up at a light it means they aren't watching for traffic either. Believe it or not there is more to watch for than just the light. If some idiot wants to wait another cycle because they can't be bothered to look up from their phone then I don't really see the problem. If they are dumb enough to walk out into traffic without actually looking up then they are candidates for a Darwin award. I don't wish anyone to be hurt but if they are because they were idiots I wouldn't feel bad for very long.
What Tesla is planning to do this year covers maybe ONE MILLIONTH of what USA would need. Does that sound like a solid plan?
Umm, yeah. It does sound like a solid plan. What on earth makes you think we need to or even could replace all fossil fuel generation in one year by one company with a nascent technology? It's going to take a while. That doesn't make it a bad idea or make it impossible. I can't be bothered to verify your generating capacity claims but quite frankly we should have as much battery backed solar and wind power as our technology feasibly will permit.
"Gold nanowires"? They are saying they coat them so they don't corrode but isn't one of the main properties for which gold is valued the fact that it is highly non-reactive and doesn't typically corrode? Plus I've never heard of wires being used as an energy storage medium, nano or otherwise. I'm certainly no expert in chemistry but Popular Science isn't usually where I go to for reliable information about the latest in battery research. If this were real I'd expect to see the research come from some sort of peer reviewed source.
Not for the particular point I'm making though I agree with what you are saying. I'm not talking about the cost of sugar as a commodity but the cost of treating the effects of too much sugar in our diet as well as the indirect cost of lost industry. Apologies as I wasn't clear on that point. By holding the price of sugar artificially high we incur indirect costs that far exceed the added market price of the sugar itself. Furthermore the cost of treating the diseases caused by the excess consumption of sugar (and sugar substitutes) is not included in the price of sugar so it actually is arguably priced too low. We've traded price stability for a host of other more serious problems.
Sugar is indeed subsidized but that is to enable the sugar plantations in the US to exist and compete with Caribbean and South American producers.
If they cannot compete then there is no reason for them to exist. There is no reason we need to have domestically produced sugar. I believe we are probably in agreement here.
Combined with import taxes the result is an INCREASED price for sugar. Without these subsidies the sugar plantations in the US would disappear, there would be no need for the high import taxes, and the cost would drop.
You are correct in your market analysis but the problem is deeper than you are indicating and the resulting problems more pernicious. The sugar subsidies have forced purchasers of sugar towards alternative sweeteners (HFCS, etc) of dubious nutritional merit which have made their way into seemingly everything we eat. While sugar is more expensive, the alternatives have actually driven down the price of unhealthy food. Low income people have high obesity rates much of which is explained by the amount of sugar in the foods economically available to them. It has driven domestic food manufacturing industry away from the US which costs FAR more than the increase in sugar prices.
The right to self-destructive behavior is fundamental to freedom.
That freedom is not unlimited when it comes at a cost to others. Self destructive behavior rarely affects only the person behaving in a destructive manner. Someone else usually has to clean up the mess.
Then you could say typing is a form of playing an instrument.
That would be true to an extent. Typing isn't so different from playing a piano in many respects.
Shitting is a form of drawing because it leaves marks in the toilet.
Really? You really think this is a good argument?
You're using a huge false analogy in which you equate the creation of a few marks in juxtaposition with the construction of an image
Nothing false about it at all. You seem to be under the misapprehension that drawing is merely the act of creating images in the sense of art work and that one has to be well trained to draw. That's an overly narrow and misleading view of what is taking place. If I grab a pencil and scratch an X on a piece of paper, I am drawing. It's a simple drawing but a drawing nonetheless. I can choose to draw characters or I can choose to draw images but either way I am still drawing. Drawing is the act of using drawing implements (pencil, pen, stylus, etc) to put down marks on a two dimensional surface. Handwriting is one form of drawing. There are others.
Writing is even easier than using a mouse to click on menu items on a PC--which, apparently, is a form of drawing, too, if you think about things in the broken manner in which you do.
It's possible to draw with a mouse. It's not a very effective or efficient tool for the task but it can be done. I've scrawled some crude images and text with a mouse. But anyone with sufficient coordination can created artworks or text with a mouse on a computer screen and in some cases you certainly could call that drawing. That said the primary intended purpose of a mouse is pointing and indicating. If you are clicking buttons on a GUI then you aren't drawing.
most nudity that is porn portrays abusive behavior and feeds a need in the viewer that probably is not healthy.
People are horny whether or not they have access to porn. "Portrays abusive behavior"? In some cases sure but the porn isn't the cause, it is the result.
I've done a lot of counseling sessions with people whose relationships and lives were ruined by the persons addiction to porn.
Addiction is a real problem but it doesn't follow that porn = public health crisis because some people cannot manage their libido effectively. Alcoholism is a disease but that doesn't make alcohol a public health problem. It makes alcoholism a public health problem. See the difference? Alcohol consumed responsibly is a non-problem. Alcohol consumed to excess routinely and/or in an irresponsible manner (i.e. alcoholism) is a problem.
Seriously, this is a Mormon lawmaker trying to legislate his own morality on others. Let's not pretend there is any credibility to calling this a public health crisis because it isn't.
I have yet to do a single one where sugary drinks, for example, caused it.
And exactly how do you get to the conclusion that obesity and diabetes are conditions best treated by counseling?
They've all been restricted to some extent, with attempts made to expand the restrictions.
The way you can tell if something is actually a public health issue is to figure out if it is a cause or problems or a symptom.
The problem is that sugar is needleslly subsidized so their economic cost isn't realized in their market price. Some consumption of sugar is fine but as a society we've gone WAY beyond what is demonstrably healthy. So over consumption of sugary drinks is a public health crisis because it is a significant factor in obesity, diabetes and other conditions common in the population. Eat too much sugar and you get fat and/or diabetes and/or other illnesses. Cause and effect.
Smoking IS a genuine public health crisis. There are innumerable diseases with clear causal relationships to smoking. It's not even a debate that it is a public health issue. Smoking clearly causes illnesses
Porn is NOT a genuine health crisis. Arguments to that effect are people looking for an excuse to interject their own morality in most cases. At most it is a symptom of people who have genuine mental health issues but the porn isn't the cause. Porn doesn't cause mental health issues but mental health issue might result in porn. You won't make the mental health issue go away by suppressing or removing access to porn. Even nasty stuff like kiddie-porn does not cause mental health problems - it merely shows us where they already exist.
Maybe some freak can scribble that fast for short periods but no normal human can write at that pace in cursive for any meaningful length of time. Not in full words anyway. I don't know anyone who can hand write full words in legible text at a rate of nearly two words per second.
When it comes down to it, cursive longhand isn't exactly "drawing"; it's a fluid and repetitive motor skill, whereas drawing relies on high accuracy.
Nonsense. Cursive (and block printing) most definitely is a form of drawing. The fact that it is a practiced and repetitive form of drawing does not change its basic nature. We use it for creating text because in some circumstances it is an efficient and/or practical means of doing so. But make no mistake that it is a form of drawing. I don' t mean to imply that drawing letters is a bad thing, merely that we need to understand what it is to understand where and why it is useful. Furthermore one can draw accurately or not and it remains the act of drawing either way. The fact that I happen to be a very sloppy artist (which is true) doesn't mean I'm not drawing because I have poor accuracy. The subject matter being drawn doesn't change the fact that it still is drawing.
I type at 125wpm and I still write notes because it's faster to write.
For written words that cannot possibly be true unless you are fluent in shorthand. For written words most competent typists are can take notes typing far faster than they can hand write them.
Hand writing is really a form of drawing. You can use it to draw text but it's not efficient to do so in large quantities. It has the advantages or being space efficient and for pen/paper energy efficient but drawing words is not quick compared with typing. The mistake most software developers make when creating software for handwriting systems is that they forget that it is a form of drawing even when you are putting letters to paper.
Neil Tyson needs to stfu and recognize the fact that no matter how hard he tries he will never be Carl Sagan.
Does this anger of yours towards NdGT have a point? Did he pee in your cereal bowl or something?
And I LIKED Pluto.
And what is stopping you from continuing to like Pluto? NdGT didn't blow it up with a cannon or anything. Last I checked it's still there, same as it ever was. Even has a heart on it to make it extra lovable.
What do you think: is it an alien spaceship or something more likely such as a reflection from a station window?
Have you forgotten what the "U" in UFO stands for? When you see a UFO you should stop right there. It's unidentified so you don't know what it is. You can make a list of possible explanations but until you have evidence to establish or refute any given explanation you shouldn't go further. If the "evidence" for the UFO is eye-witness testimony then you should examine the drinking habits of the observer.
There is a saying that when you hear the sound of hoofs you should probably be thinking horses instead of zebras. Point is that there are innumerable explanations FAR more likely than an alien visitation. In fact alien visitation should be at the absolute bottom of any list of possible explanations of a UFO sighting. You might keep it on the list just because you cannot definitively rule it out but it doesn't move higher on the list unless you have some VERY compelling evidence. Some visual artifacts on film doesn't remotely qualify as very compelling.
Depends on what I'm taking notes for. If it is mostly text then typing is the way to go. I can type nearly fast enough to transcribe in many cases. But if math or drawings are involved then handwriting is the only realistic option. Paper and pen are fine. A tablet with a very well done stylus and good software actually is ideal but so far I haven't found one I consider adequate, mostly because the software for note taking is complete shit. (and I'm being generous - the hardware is passable but the software is a complete train wreck) And yes I've tried a number of options and don't like any of them so far. They all seem focused on the solving the wrong problems.
The biggest problem with tablet and PC handwriting software is that the developers waste enormous effort on tying to do quasi-pointless things like turn scribbles into typewritten text. I don't care about that AT ALL because handwriting is essentially a form of drawing. Drawings should be left as drawings. When I want to type something I'll use a keyboard. Make drawing and managing the documents as easy as possible and that would solve a lot of problems. A stylus isn't a substitute for a keyboard - it's a drawing implement and should be used for nothing else. Now you can draw text but the primary purpose of as stylus (like a pen/pencil) is drawing. Developers seem to have a hard time remembering that idea.
Getting politicians to care about anything other than getting power and bashing the opposition these days is nigh impossible.
More funding could also "develop the technologies that will power the world -- while also fighting climate change, promoting energy independence, and providing affordable energy for the 1.3 billion poor people who don't have it today."
The party which currently controls Congress cares about none of those things. They plainly dispute even the existence of climate change, they aren't concerned about energy independence because that would hurt their oil and coal buddies and they certainly don't care about providing energy for poor people, especially ones that aren't American citizens.
I have stated before that we are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good,
That would be a huge step up from days when companies didn't give a shit about their reputations at all. See companies like United Fruit if you need examples of what evil looks like.
Furthermore I think he's equivocating more than a little bit. "The greater good"? I assume this is code for someone who thinks that we should allow the government to play fast an loose with our civil liberties, never mind the cost or consequences. People who think that there is some middle ground where only the good guys can use back doors in encryption. People who think that cops have a right to be lazy.
A scientist is someone who seeks to find the truth via the scientific process. Bill Nye is not this. He is an actor.
Actually he is an engineer and arguably a scientist too. He also happens to be an actor, scientific advocate, writer, and several other things besides. Unlike Sara Palin he actually has a talent beside self promotion. If you want to call him a citizen scientist, fine, but he's much more involved in science than 99.9% of the population. Particularly one former governor of Alaska.
Even state secrets are subject to FOIA acts and even if decades pass they are eventually released
What good does a FOIA act do for a citizen if they can't get an answer until decades later? The effects of the gag order and the information they are seeking happen presently. Denying a citizen the right to face their accuser in a timely manner is functionally equivalent to declaring them guilty of whatever they are accused of. The notion of a permanent gag order seems blatantly unconstitutional, not to mention immoral.
It's sad that SCOTUS won't allow Americans to sue for unconstitutional actions to collect their data, but will allow American companies (in the loosest sense of the term) to do so.
The difference (probably) is in that Microsoft has actual evidence of harm done to them and their customers so they have standing to sue. Microsoft would be aware of these gag orders and what the government was requesting from them. Additionally it costs a measurable amount of money for Microsoft to comply with these search orders so there is a way to gauge A) the amount of harm done and B) the cost of compliance. Since Microsoft should be able to show some amount of harm (even if small) then they would have standing to sue.
While I agree that it's kind of shitty that citizens are in this catch 22 where they can't sue because they don't have standing but they can't get/prove the information to establish that they do have standing because the only means to get it is to sue. But if Microsoft can short circuit this problem on behalf of citizens then perhaps we will end up with a resolution after all.
Is in US House or Senate - No trust at all, should probably be placed in a padded room for their own protection Is in the state House or Senate - Very little trust but they likely don't need to be in a padded room
I heard someone once say that a person runs for local or state office only because their deepest darkest secret keeps them from running for higher office. Probably some truth in that somewhere...
Great, it's not like there's a dozen ways to compromise this. From malware on the phone to duplicate SIM cards to intercepting the text message somewhere in transit...
You say that as if there aren't a zillion ways to compromise password protection.
Perhaps what we are talking about here is TAXABLE profit? Amazon, among others, have been in the news for not paying any tax due to what can best be described as trickery.
Amazon doesn't pay a lot of tax primarily because they don't make a lot of profit. While they definitely do some of the same shenanigans other multi-nationals engage in (and shame on them for that), Amazon doesn't do as much of it because they don't need to. They only get taxed on their profits which have been generally scant. They generate a lot of revenue but their margins aren't huge and they re-invest much of that into the company or in building products to get bigger and their primary business (online sales) isn't a fat margin business to begin with.
Unlike companies like Apple which generate huge profits but then route it through countries with low tax obligations or other overly clever schemes, Amazon just generates minimal profits by actually investing in their business. As such they don't pay a lot of tax mostly for a reason I can actually get behind - building their business. Believe me I'm hugely against companies that dodge taxes through financial engineering but I think as a general proposition there are better companies to target tax dodging rage against at the moment than Amazon.
It wouldn't surprise me if in time AWS turned into the real profit center for Amazon. I think the same thought has occurred to Amazon management
You are wrong. The fact that we don't know what dark matter is, doesn't imply we don't know whether it's matter.
That is a non-sequitur. If we don't know what it is then QED we don't know if it is matter. Your argument is like viewing a UFO and immediately deciding it must be aliens from another planet - completely disregarding what the U stands for. It could very easily be a modeling error like the difference between Newtonian physics and General Relativity. If that turns out to be true then it obviously is not a new form of matter. Until we actually observe and can describe in detail something physical that is causing the difference between our models and our observations then modeling error remains a possibility. Right now all we have are some educated guesses and incomplete data.
We do have some observations that tell us what Dark Matter cannot be but we still have a wide menu of options for what it actually is.
One of the few things we know is that it is matter.
No, we SUSPECT that it is matter. All the difference in the world. We plainly do not know that it is matter to a sufficiently level of certainty.
The other thing we are certain about is that it does not interact as easily as other matter with "accounted for" matter.
That can only be true if it actually is matter and we don't actually know that at this time.
"Direct observation" stopped being required proof over a century ago.
Not here on Earth. Last time I checked science was pretty serious about requiring actual proof through observations and evidence.
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For automobiles, limits on NOx have been useful in improving air quality and are probably worth it; limits on CO2 emissions from personal automobiles are not worth the trouble because they have a negligible impact on overall US greenhouse gas emissions.
Citation please... There may be greater sources of CO2 than personal automobiles but I very much doubt that their contribution is negligible.
For CO2 emissions, a substantial tax increase would be a better mechanism if we wanted to reduce CO2 emissions from driving, but politicians know full well that they couldn't pass that.
Agreed. Probably the best thing we could do with economic policy to help the environment would be to tax fossil fuels at a higher rate. It would drive economic behavior in reasonable time frames to more sensible alternatives for transportation and industrial fuel use. Sadly you are correct that it wouldn't have a prayer of passing the current Congress in the US.
You'd rather have the financial impact of swathes of the population being killed in easily-preventable ways, just so you can feel superior to them?
If they cannot be bothered to look up at a light it means they aren't watching for traffic either. Believe it or not there is more to watch for than just the light. If some idiot wants to wait another cycle because they can't be bothered to look up from their phone then I don't really see the problem. If they are dumb enough to walk out into traffic without actually looking up then they are candidates for a Darwin award. I don't wish anyone to be hurt but if they are because they were idiots I wouldn't feel bad for very long.
Apologies to Ron White but you can't fix stupid.
What Tesla is planning to do this year covers maybe ONE MILLIONTH of what USA would need. Does that sound like a solid plan?
Umm, yeah. It does sound like a solid plan. What on earth makes you think we need to or even could replace all fossil fuel generation in one year by one company with a nascent technology? It's going to take a while. That doesn't make it a bad idea or make it impossible. I can't be bothered to verify your generating capacity claims but quite frankly we should have as much battery backed solar and wind power as our technology feasibly will permit.
"Gold nanowires"? They are saying they coat them so they don't corrode but isn't one of the main properties for which gold is valued the fact that it is highly non-reactive and doesn't typically corrode? Plus I've never heard of wires being used as an energy storage medium, nano or otherwise. I'm certainly no expert in chemistry but Popular Science isn't usually where I go to for reliable information about the latest in battery research. If this were real I'd expect to see the research come from some sort of peer reviewed source.
On this point you definitely have it backwards.
Not for the particular point I'm making though I agree with what you are saying. I'm not talking about the cost of sugar as a commodity but the cost of treating the effects of too much sugar in our diet as well as the indirect cost of lost industry. Apologies as I wasn't clear on that point. By holding the price of sugar artificially high we incur indirect costs that far exceed the added market price of the sugar itself. Furthermore the cost of treating the diseases caused by the excess consumption of sugar (and sugar substitutes) is not included in the price of sugar so it actually is arguably priced too low. We've traded price stability for a host of other more serious problems.
Sugar is indeed subsidized but that is to enable the sugar plantations in the US to exist and compete with Caribbean and South American producers.
If they cannot compete then there is no reason for them to exist. There is no reason we need to have domestically produced sugar. I believe we are probably in agreement here.
Combined with import taxes the result is an INCREASED price for sugar. Without these subsidies the sugar plantations in the US would disappear, there would be no need for the high import taxes, and the cost would drop.
You are correct in your market analysis but the problem is deeper than you are indicating and the resulting problems more pernicious. The sugar subsidies have forced purchasers of sugar towards alternative sweeteners (HFCS, etc) of dubious nutritional merit which have made their way into seemingly everything we eat. While sugar is more expensive, the alternatives have actually driven down the price of unhealthy food. Low income people have high obesity rates much of which is explained by the amount of sugar in the foods economically available to them. It has driven domestic food manufacturing industry away from the US which costs FAR more than the increase in sugar prices.
The right to self-destructive behavior is fundamental to freedom.
That freedom is not unlimited when it comes at a cost to others. Self destructive behavior rarely affects only the person behaving in a destructive manner. Someone else usually has to clean up the mess.
Then you could say typing is a form of playing an instrument.
That would be true to an extent. Typing isn't so different from playing a piano in many respects.
Shitting is a form of drawing because it leaves marks in the toilet.
Really? You really think this is a good argument?
You're using a huge false analogy in which you equate the creation of a few marks in juxtaposition with the construction of an image
Nothing false about it at all. You seem to be under the misapprehension that drawing is merely the act of creating images in the sense of art work and that one has to be well trained to draw. That's an overly narrow and misleading view of what is taking place. If I grab a pencil and scratch an X on a piece of paper, I am drawing. It's a simple drawing but a drawing nonetheless. I can choose to draw characters or I can choose to draw images but either way I am still drawing. Drawing is the act of using drawing implements (pencil, pen, stylus, etc) to put down marks on a two dimensional surface. Handwriting is one form of drawing. There are others.
Writing is even easier than using a mouse to click on menu items on a PC--which, apparently, is a form of drawing, too, if you think about things in the broken manner in which you do.
It's possible to draw with a mouse. It's not a very effective or efficient tool for the task but it can be done. I've scrawled some crude images and text with a mouse. But anyone with sufficient coordination can created artworks or text with a mouse on a computer screen and in some cases you certainly could call that drawing. That said the primary intended purpose of a mouse is pointing and indicating. If you are clicking buttons on a GUI then you aren't drawing.
most nudity that is porn portrays abusive behavior and feeds a need in the viewer that probably is not healthy.
People are horny whether or not they have access to porn. "Portrays abusive behavior"? In some cases sure but the porn isn't the cause, it is the result.
I've done a lot of counseling sessions with people whose relationships and lives were ruined by the persons addiction to porn.
Addiction is a real problem but it doesn't follow that porn = public health crisis because some people cannot manage their libido effectively. Alcoholism is a disease but that doesn't make alcohol a public health problem. It makes alcoholism a public health problem. See the difference? Alcohol consumed responsibly is a non-problem. Alcohol consumed to excess routinely and/or in an irresponsible manner (i.e. alcoholism) is a problem.
Seriously, this is a Mormon lawmaker trying to legislate his own morality on others. Let's not pretend there is any credibility to calling this a public health crisis because it isn't.
I have yet to do a single one where sugary drinks, for example, caused it.
And exactly how do you get to the conclusion that obesity and diabetes are conditions best treated by counseling?
They've all been restricted to some extent, with attempts made to expand the restrictions.
The way you can tell if something is actually a public health issue is to figure out if it is a cause or problems or a symptom.
The problem is that sugar is needleslly subsidized so their economic cost isn't realized in their market price. Some consumption of sugar is fine but as a society we've gone WAY beyond what is demonstrably healthy. So over consumption of sugary drinks is a public health crisis because it is a significant factor in obesity, diabetes and other conditions common in the population. Eat too much sugar and you get fat and/or diabetes and/or other illnesses. Cause and effect.
Smoking IS a genuine public health crisis. There are innumerable diseases with clear causal relationships to smoking. It's not even a debate that it is a public health issue. Smoking clearly causes illnesses
Porn is NOT a genuine health crisis. Arguments to that effect are people looking for an excuse to interject their own morality in most cases. At most it is a symptom of people who have genuine mental health issues but the porn isn't the cause. Porn doesn't cause mental health issues but mental health issue might result in porn. You won't make the mental health issue go away by suppressing or removing access to porn. Even nasty stuff like kiddie-porn does not cause mental health problems - it merely shows us where they already exist.
Cursive writing can break 100wpm
Maybe some freak can scribble that fast for short periods but no normal human can write at that pace in cursive for any meaningful length of time. Not in full words anyway. I don't know anyone who can hand write full words in legible text at a rate of nearly two words per second.
When it comes down to it, cursive longhand isn't exactly "drawing"; it's a fluid and repetitive motor skill, whereas drawing relies on high accuracy.
Nonsense. Cursive (and block printing) most definitely is a form of drawing. The fact that it is a practiced and repetitive form of drawing does not change its basic nature. We use it for creating text because in some circumstances it is an efficient and/or practical means of doing so. But make no mistake that it is a form of drawing. I don' t mean to imply that drawing letters is a bad thing, merely that we need to understand what it is to understand where and why it is useful. Furthermore one can draw accurately or not and it remains the act of drawing either way. The fact that I happen to be a very sloppy artist (which is true) doesn't mean I'm not drawing because I have poor accuracy. The subject matter being drawn doesn't change the fact that it still is drawing.
I type at 125wpm and I still write notes because it's faster to write.
For written words that cannot possibly be true unless you are fluent in shorthand. For written words most competent typists are can take notes typing far faster than they can hand write them.
Hand writing is really a form of drawing. You can use it to draw text but it's not efficient to do so in large quantities. It has the advantages or being space efficient and for pen/paper energy efficient but drawing words is not quick compared with typing. The mistake most software developers make when creating software for handwriting systems is that they forget that it is a form of drawing even when you are putting letters to paper.
Neil Tyson needs to stfu and recognize the fact that no matter how hard he tries he will never be Carl Sagan.
Does this anger of yours towards NdGT have a point? Did he pee in your cereal bowl or something?
And I LIKED Pluto.
And what is stopping you from continuing to like Pluto? NdGT didn't blow it up with a cannon or anything. Last I checked it's still there, same as it ever was. Even has a heart on it to make it extra lovable.
What do you think: is it an alien spaceship or something more likely such as a reflection from a station window?
Have you forgotten what the "U" in UFO stands for? When you see a UFO you should stop right there. It's unidentified so you don't know what it is. You can make a list of possible explanations but until you have evidence to establish or refute any given explanation you shouldn't go further. If the "evidence" for the UFO is eye-witness testimony then you should examine the drinking habits of the observer.
There is a saying that when you hear the sound of hoofs you should probably be thinking horses instead of zebras. Point is that there are innumerable explanations FAR more likely than an alien visitation. In fact alien visitation should be at the absolute bottom of any list of possible explanations of a UFO sighting. You might keep it on the list just because you cannot definitively rule it out but it doesn't move higher on the list unless you have some VERY compelling evidence. Some visual artifacts on film doesn't remotely qualify as very compelling.
Depends on what I'm taking notes for. If it is mostly text then typing is the way to go. I can type nearly fast enough to transcribe in many cases. But if math or drawings are involved then handwriting is the only realistic option. Paper and pen are fine. A tablet with a very well done stylus and good software actually is ideal but so far I haven't found one I consider adequate, mostly because the software for note taking is complete shit. (and I'm being generous - the hardware is passable but the software is a complete train wreck) And yes I've tried a number of options and don't like any of them so far. They all seem focused on the solving the wrong problems.
The biggest problem with tablet and PC handwriting software is that the developers waste enormous effort on tying to do quasi-pointless things like turn scribbles into typewritten text. I don't care about that AT ALL because handwriting is essentially a form of drawing. Drawings should be left as drawings. When I want to type something I'll use a keyboard. Make drawing and managing the documents as easy as possible and that would solve a lot of problems. A stylus isn't a substitute for a keyboard - it's a drawing implement and should be used for nothing else. Now you can draw text but the primary purpose of as stylus (like a pen/pencil) is drawing. Developers seem to have a hard time remembering that idea.
Bill Gates attempted a commendable feat: to get politicians to focus on something other than the current election cycle and its partisan bickering.
I didn't know his middle name was Sisyphus...
Getting politicians to care about anything other than getting power and bashing the opposition these days is nigh impossible.
More funding could also "develop the technologies that will power the world -- while also fighting climate change, promoting energy independence, and providing affordable energy for the 1.3 billion poor people who don't have it today."
The party which currently controls Congress cares about none of those things. They plainly dispute even the existence of climate change, they aren't concerned about energy independence because that would hurt their oil and coal buddies and they certainly don't care about providing energy for poor people, especially ones that aren't American citizens.
I have stated before that we are indeed in a dark place when companies put their reputations above the greater good,
That would be a huge step up from days when companies didn't give a shit about their reputations at all. See companies like United Fruit if you need examples of what evil looks like.
Furthermore I think he's equivocating more than a little bit. "The greater good"? I assume this is code for someone who thinks that we should allow the government to play fast an loose with our civil liberties, never mind the cost or consequences. People who think that there is some middle ground where only the good guys can use back doors in encryption. People who think that cops have a right to be lazy.
A scientist is someone who seeks to find the truth via the scientific process. Bill Nye is not this. He is an actor.
Actually he is an engineer and arguably a scientist too. He also happens to be an actor, scientific advocate, writer, and several other things besides. Unlike Sara Palin he actually has a talent beside self promotion. If you want to call him a citizen scientist, fine, but he's much more involved in science than 99.9% of the population. Particularly one former governor of Alaska.
Maybe but it sure seems like only the real wack jobs make it to the national level.
That's just because they get more publicity. Trust me that the local guys are every bit as weird as the national guys and frequently even weirder.
Even state secrets are subject to FOIA acts and even if decades pass they are eventually released
What good does a FOIA act do for a citizen if they can't get an answer until decades later? The effects of the gag order and the information they are seeking happen presently. Denying a citizen the right to face their accuser in a timely manner is functionally equivalent to declaring them guilty of whatever they are accused of. The notion of a permanent gag order seems blatantly unconstitutional, not to mention immoral.
It's sad that SCOTUS won't allow Americans to sue for unconstitutional actions to collect their data, but will allow American companies (in the loosest sense of the term) to do so.
The difference (probably) is in that Microsoft has actual evidence of harm done to them and their customers so they have standing to sue. Microsoft would be aware of these gag orders and what the government was requesting from them. Additionally it costs a measurable amount of money for Microsoft to comply with these search orders so there is a way to gauge A) the amount of harm done and B) the cost of compliance. Since Microsoft should be able to show some amount of harm (even if small) then they would have standing to sue.
While I agree that it's kind of shitty that citizens are in this catch 22 where they can't sue because they don't have standing but they can't get/prove the information to establish that they do have standing because the only means to get it is to sue. But if Microsoft can short circuit this problem on behalf of citizens then perhaps we will end up with a resolution after all.
Is in US House or Senate - No trust at all, should probably be placed in a padded room for their own protection
Is in the state House or Senate - Very little trust but they likely don't need to be in a padded room
I heard someone once say that a person runs for local or state office only because their deepest darkest secret keeps them from running for higher office. Probably some truth in that somewhere...
Great, it's not like there's a dozen ways to compromise this. From malware on the phone to duplicate SIM cards to intercepting the text message somewhere in transit ...
You say that as if there aren't a zillion ways to compromise password protection.
Perhaps what we are talking about here is TAXABLE profit? Amazon, among others, have been in the news for not paying any tax due to what can best be described as trickery.
Amazon doesn't pay a lot of tax primarily because they don't make a lot of profit. While they definitely do some of the same shenanigans other multi-nationals engage in (and shame on them for that), Amazon doesn't do as much of it because they don't need to. They only get taxed on their profits which have been generally scant. They generate a lot of revenue but their margins aren't huge and they re-invest much of that into the company or in building products to get bigger and their primary business (online sales) isn't a fat margin business to begin with.
Unlike companies like Apple which generate huge profits but then route it through countries with low tax obligations or other overly clever schemes, Amazon just generates minimal profits by actually investing in their business. As such they don't pay a lot of tax mostly for a reason I can actually get behind - building their business. Believe me I'm hugely against companies that dodge taxes through financial engineering but I think as a general proposition there are better companies to target tax dodging rage against at the moment than Amazon.
It wouldn't surprise me if in time AWS turned into the real profit center for Amazon. I think the same thought has occurred to Amazon management
You are wrong. The fact that we don't know what dark matter is, doesn't imply we don't know whether it's matter.
That is a non-sequitur. If we don't know what it is then QED we don't know if it is matter. Your argument is like viewing a UFO and immediately deciding it must be aliens from another planet - completely disregarding what the U stands for. It could very easily be a modeling error like the difference between Newtonian physics and General Relativity. If that turns out to be true then it obviously is not a new form of matter. Until we actually observe and can describe in detail something physical that is causing the difference between our models and our observations then modeling error remains a possibility. Right now all we have are some educated guesses and incomplete data.
We do have some observations that tell us what Dark Matter cannot be but we still have a wide menu of options for what it actually is.
One of the few things we know is that it is matter.
No, we SUSPECT that it is matter. All the difference in the world. We plainly do not know that it is matter to a sufficiently level of certainty.
The other thing we are certain about is that it does not interact as easily as other matter with "accounted for" matter.
That can only be true if it actually is matter and we don't actually know that at this time.
"Direct observation" stopped being required proof over a century ago.
Not here on Earth. Last time I checked science was pretty serious about requiring actual proof through observations and evidence.
Am I alone in wondering what the heck this article is about?
Here on slashdot? Yeah pretty much...