The UK has a space hardware manufacturing industry. We make a lot of scientific and commercial sats. We just have no launch facilities, because physics says those need to be as close to equatorial as possible. We're too far north.
Write a mod for ut2k4 and you'll soon start seeing how it works. The local game runs a simulation, but subject to correction by the server. Extrapolating events until the packets catch up. Really latency-sensitive things like sniping are handled locally. This can lead to some very strange things happening at times:
1. Run past a window. 2. Clear the window. 3. Your movement is passed to the server, and then to another player. 4. Other player snipes you. 5. Snipe victory is reported back to the server, then to you. 6. Half a second after passing the window, you drop dead. Headshot. Even though from your perspective, you were in a place you should have been out of sight. Serves you right for running past a sniper-visible window.
Generally the game is good enough that almost all of this is transparent though. Only the exceptionally observent notice it. Still rather strange to code for, as everything you write is actually being executed three times in parallel (On the server, on the client, and on everyone else's client), and you need to make sure that all three executions eventually give the same result, even if not at quite the same moment.
"If not managed properly, flooding the market with Iranian crude could carry its own negative consequences by suddenly making fracked oil in the US unprofitable."
You know all those people comaining about the money the government 'wastes' on subsidising green energy?
The government spends a lot more on oil, just less directly. Whole wars have been fought to keep that fuel affordable, and now they are even important enough to engage in market price manipulation to protect their profits.
It's a global market - oil gets shipped all around the world via tanker. If the US buys less oil, that means the sellers have more oil to sell, which they in turn sell to someone else (Probably China, they have huge demand), who in turn then doesn't buy from Iran. It's all interconnected.
A reasonable argument could be made for legal protection at some point prior to birth.
Unfortunately, the US situation *isn't* a reasonable argument. The hyper-polarised nature of politics there has forced everyone to either the 'abortion on demand' or the 'protect the magic zygote!' extremes. The middle ground is effectively excluded from the debate. A situation further worsened by just how dirty everyone fights to deal with the tangled legal situation - it's an accepted strategy on the pro-life side to fight abortion by passing 'regulations' that are intentionally impossible to comply with.
It's also very hard to give the pro-life side much respect when the same people rallying against abortion are also rallying just as enthusiastically against widely-available contraception and comprehensive sex education - the most effective tools they could use to eliminate almost all of the need for elective abortion. It betrays their hidden motivation: Old-fashioned fear of non-marital sex.
There's the problem! People are fundamentally lazy, and busy. They aren't going to go to the trouble to properly dispose of and recycle all their plastic waste. It just ends up as litter, or at best thrown out in the mixed-waste domestic trash. Separating and recycling it after that is possible, but expensive - it's not cost-effective, so most of it ends up in landfill or as part of the great oceanic plastic patch.
That's just for 'pure' plastics, like packaging. A lot of plastic is used in plastic products - electrical goods, toys, polyblend shirts, elasticated clothing, etc. Those all get thrown out eventually too.
Remember when the minimum efficiency standard for light bulbs was imposed? Even though halogen lamps could still meet the standard, and there was an exception for specialty lights, the right-wing sites were still running 'Big government is going to take away your lightbulbs' stories for months. Along with a lot of even worse ones describing how CFLs cause migrane, autism and cancer. There was even an oft-repeated story that appeared on places like Fox News about how a broken CFL would need the entire house evacuated and a government cleanup crew in HAZMAT suits sent in.
It's a symptom of how broken the US political culture is, due to that left-vs-right split that so polarises everything. If a cause is associated with the left - like light bulb efficiency standards, or clean air regulations - then the right is obliged to oppose it in whatever way possible. And vice versa.
Except for outlawing abortion. And the war on drugs they love so much. Oh, and the FCC control over broadcast obscenity and indecency. For that matter, most of them are upset that the government isn't jailing enough people for distributing pornography. For a faction that claims to support states' rights, they certainly put a lot of support into a no-gay-marriage constitutional amenment, too, and supported DOMA.
Everyone loves wrapping their views up in the language of freedom. They may even believe it.
And the 'conservatives' claim to be strongly opposed to excessive government control - except in the case of promoting abstinance-only education, banning porn, broadcast indecency an obscenity regulation, a federal ban on gay marriage, the war on drugs and government promotion of their favored religion.
The stated aims of any political faction and their real actions often seem to bear little resemblence.
Helps, but most cities now either have or are looking into large-scale CCTV systems. Face recognition isn't up to the task of automatically following you across the city yet, but it's only a matter of time.
And while at it, how about one saying that a warrant means an actual warrant, signed by an actual judge? Not an all-encompassing national security letter, not a secret order to hand everything over, not a rubber-stamped off-the-public-records order by a FISA court, and not a flimsy 'Non-citizens have no rights' excuse.
What you'd need to do is disable query frames. Easily enough done, but probably not the default.
When I was hacking all my neighbour's wifi just for practice to see if I could, I noticed that I could detect busses passing by. Their onboard computer queries every few seconds for the depo's ESSID.
This means that the bus is actually asking 'Are we nearly there yet?' every five seconds, like an annoying child.
The obvious solution is for those who do have skill to make the task as simple and automated as possible for everyone else. Beyond that though, we also need to get the techniques in widespread use.
Right now, if someone is arrested on a serious charge and the police find they have anti-tracking software on their phone, they could probably use that as a sign of suspicion in court - if this person is innocent, why are they hideing from justice? The solution is to just get the software as widely used as possible, through a combination of spreading stories of abuse*, making anti-tracking a default configuration where possible** and providing services based around anti-tracking technology***.
*It's only a matter of time before some police offices suspects his wife is having an affair, and can't resist finding out. ** Every site should use SSL. Sure, the NSA could break it with a targetted attack, but at least it stops bulk-monitoring. *** Mostly piracy, but also forums and social functions where you can be absolutely sure that your pro-X boss won't find your anti-X rants, where X may be any form of social, political, religious or personal view.
It's impossible on a phone/tablet unless you hack it first. Rooting android isn't too difficult, but it's still an undesireable situation when the only way to avoid government tracking is is via technological skill.
So, they are recruiting experts in a community that almost exclusively supports Snowden and despises the NSA's various mass-spying-on-civilians programs?
Slashdot Mirror
Are your principles worth more to your than your career?
The UK has a space hardware manufacturing industry. We make a lot of scientific and commercial sats. We just have no launch facilities, because physics says those need to be as close to equatorial as possible. We're too far north.
Close enough. Corn. There is no latin name, because it's a new world species - by the time it was discovered, latin was no longer in common use.
Write a mod for ut2k4 and you'll soon start seeing how it works. The local game runs a simulation, but subject to correction by the server. Extrapolating events until the packets catch up. Really latency-sensitive things like sniping are handled locally. This can lead to some very strange things happening at times:
1. Run past a window.
2. Clear the window.
3. Your movement is passed to the server, and then to another player.
4. Other player snipes you.
5. Snipe victory is reported back to the server, then to you.
6. Half a second after passing the window, you drop dead. Headshot. Even though from your perspective, you were in a place you should have been out of sight. Serves you right for running past a sniper-visible window.
Generally the game is good enough that almost all of this is transparent though. Only the exceptionally observent notice it. Still rather strange to code for, as everything you write is actually being executed three times in parallel (On the server, on the client, and on everyone else's client), and you need to make sure that all three executions eventually give the same result, even if not at quite the same moment.
"If not managed properly, flooding the market with Iranian crude could carry its own negative consequences by suddenly making fracked oil in the US unprofitable."
You know all those people comaining about the money the government 'wastes' on subsidising green energy?
The government spends a lot more on oil, just less directly. Whole wars have been fought to keep that fuel affordable, and now they are even important enough to engage in market price manipulation to protect their profits.
It's a global market - oil gets shipped all around the world via tanker. If the US buys less oil, that means the sellers have more oil to sell, which they in turn sell to someone else (Probably China, they have huge demand), who in turn then doesn't buy from Iran. It's all interconnected.
Nope.
A reasonable argument could be made for legal protection at some point prior to birth.
Unfortunately, the US situation *isn't* a reasonable argument. The hyper-polarised nature of politics there has forced everyone to either the 'abortion on demand' or the 'protect the magic zygote!' extremes. The middle ground is effectively excluded from the debate. A situation further worsened by just how dirty everyone fights to deal with the tangled legal situation - it's an accepted strategy on the pro-life side to fight abortion by passing 'regulations' that are intentionally impossible to comply with.
It's also very hard to give the pro-life side much respect when the same people rallying against abortion are also rallying just as enthusiastically against widely-available contraception and comprehensive sex education - the most effective tools they could use to eliminate almost all of the need for elective abortion. It betrays their hidden motivation: Old-fashioned fear of non-marital sex.
From a European perspective, America doesn't have 'left' and 'right' wings. They have the 'right' and 'extreme right' wing.
Given how intensely the left hates the right and the right hates the left? I'm thinking more 'The United States of Canada' and 'Jesusland.'
Don't forget luck. That's an important factor, too.
panem et circenses?
Mays et television.
(I leave it to you to figure out what 'Mays' means. Suffice to say I had to improvise, as the word has no direct latin translation.)
Was interupted. Continuing,
" if dealt with properly."
There's the problem! People are fundamentally lazy, and busy. They aren't going to go to the trouble to properly dispose of and recycle all their plastic waste. It just ends up as litter, or at best thrown out in the mixed-waste domestic trash. Separating and recycling it after that is possible, but expensive - it's not cost-effective, so most of it ends up in landfill or as part of the great oceanic plastic patch.
That's just for 'pure' plastics, like packaging. A lot of plastic is used in plastic products - electrical goods, toys, polyblend shirts, elasticated clothing, etc. Those all get thrown out eventually too.
" if dealt with properly."
There's the problem!
There's precedent.
Remember when the minimum efficiency standard for light bulbs was imposed? Even though halogen lamps could still meet the standard, and there was an exception for specialty lights, the right-wing sites were still running 'Big government is going to take away your lightbulbs' stories for months. Along with a lot of even worse ones describing how CFLs cause migrane, autism and cancer. There was even an oft-repeated story that appeared on places like Fox News about how a broken CFL would need the entire house evacuated and a government cleanup crew in HAZMAT suits sent in.
It's a symptom of how broken the US political culture is, due to that left-vs-right split that so polarises everything. If a cause is associated with the left - like light bulb efficiency standards, or clean air regulations - then the right is obliged to oppose it in whatever way possible. And vice versa.
One family does not a significant sample make.
Except for outlawing abortion. And the war on drugs they love so much. Oh, and the FCC control over broadcast obscenity and indecency. For that matter, most of them are upset that the government isn't jailing enough people for distributing pornography. For a faction that claims to support states' rights, they certainly put a lot of support into a no-gay-marriage constitutional amenment, too, and supported DOMA.
Everyone loves wrapping their views up in the language of freedom. They may even believe it.
And the 'conservatives' claim to be strongly opposed to excessive government control - except in the case of promoting abstinance-only education, banning porn, broadcast indecency an obscenity regulation, a federal ban on gay marriage, the war on drugs and government promotion of their favored religion.
The stated aims of any political faction and their real actions often seem to bear little resemblence.
Helps, but most cities now either have or are looking into large-scale CCTV systems. Face recognition isn't up to the task of automatically following you across the city yet, but it's only a matter of time.
And while at it, how about one saying that a warrant means an actual warrant, signed by an actual judge? Not an all-encompassing national security letter, not a secret order to hand everything over, not a rubber-stamped off-the-public-records order by a FISA court, and not a flimsy 'Non-citizens have no rights' excuse.
What you'd need to do is disable query frames. Easily enough done, but probably not the default.
When I was hacking all my neighbour's wifi just for practice to see if I could, I noticed that I could detect busses passing by. Their onboard computer queries every few seconds for the depo's ESSID.
This means that the bus is actually asking 'Are we nearly there yet?' every five seconds, like an annoying child.
The obvious solution is for those who do have skill to make the task as simple and automated as possible for everyone else. Beyond that though, we also need to get the techniques in widespread use.
Right now, if someone is arrested on a serious charge and the police find they have anti-tracking software on their phone, they could probably use that as a sign of suspicion in court - if this person is innocent, why are they hideing from justice? The solution is to just get the software as widely used as possible, through a combination of spreading stories of abuse*, making anti-tracking a default configuration where possible** and providing services based around anti-tracking technology***.
*It's only a matter of time before some police offices suspects his wife is having an affair, and can't resist finding out.
** Every site should use SSL. Sure, the NSA could break it with a targetted attack, but at least it stops bulk-monitoring.
*** Mostly piracy, but also forums and social functions where you can be absolutely sure that your pro-X boss won't find your anti-X rants, where X may be any form of social, political, religious or personal view.
It's impossible on a phone/tablet unless you hack it first. Rooting android isn't too difficult, but it's still an undesireable situation when the only way to avoid government tracking is is via technological skill.
So, they are recruiting experts in a community that almost exclusively supports Snowden and despises the NSA's various mass-spying-on-civilians programs?
They shall soon acquire the scent of urine and vomit.