You'd think that e-mail addresses by comparison would be simpler, but I have a hard time trying to register my e-mail address with sites that won't allow even simple things like "+", "-" or "." characters in the local part.
Proper email validation is not trivial
Check out the huge regex at the bottom of the RFC 5322 compliant validator from CPAN:
Nothing in the article really suggests that they were wrong given the evidence they had at the time. They're Geologists, not soothsayers.
Predictability is a continuum, not a binary scale. Earthquakes fall much further on the "hard to predict" side of things, but there is no arbitrary point at which you can draw a line. If a home inspector incorrectly claims a house has no sign of termites, a forester claims that a fire poses no danger to settled areas, or BP engineer claims that the methods used at Deepwater posed no danger to the environment, you aren't always going to be comfortable saying "oops, shit happens"
Were these geologists negligent? Given our current understanding of earthquakes, we can off-handedly state, "probably not", but we aren't sure. Is it unreasonable for somebody to want a court to investigate further, given the scale and scope of the damage? Not really.
From TFA: To access the content inside, however, you'll need the playkey, which is delivered to the buyer of a digital media file and lives within "tamper-protected circuit" inside some device (computer, cell phone, router) or online at a playkey bank account. Controlling the playkey means that you control the media, and you truly own it, since no part of the system needs to phone home, and it imposes no restrictions on copying (except for those that arise naturally from fear of loss).
"tamper-protected circuit": you may gain some "ownership" of some encrypted media files, but you have to give up ownership of your device.
You can just as easily label what they still control as the "content" and the encrypted files on your device as the "key". Interchanging those labels is just semantics, since you still need both parts to hear the music. The end result is that you gain no additional control over the content, and you have sacrificed control over the hardware.
Some of us GPL defenders are hoping to one day see the end of copyright. Yes that will kill off the GPL, but the GPL is unnecessary and needlessly restrictive anyway at that point.
The heart of this matter is "bundling" and the questions that arise from it.
1) If two products are distributed as a "bundle", should it be permissible to unbundle them and consume them separately? 2) If products in a bundle are "locked" together via some technological means, should the distributor be forced to make available the means to "unlock" the bundle. 3) What should happen if the consumer breaks or bypasses the "lock".
Many people think the answers to these questions are so obvious that the questions themselves are pointless. Unfortunately, those people don't agree on what those answers are, usually because they are thinking of difference example cases. Can I remove the ads from the web page my browser displays? Can I remove the Solvent Red 26 from my fuel oil?
The GPL itself even (ab)uses copyright law to enforce the bundling of the license with the code in the case of redistribution. Let's say I wanted to create my own version of the GPL for my own original code that included the clause "this license must be presented and accepted by the end-user before this software can be used". Should my new license be enforceable? Should I have recourse if developers use my code without adhering to my terms? Copyright laws only cover distribution, but I'm trying to enforce a restriction on usage.
The ramifications of the answers to these questions quickly get complicated, and many debates on the topic never accomplish anything because the participants are not carefully defining what they are talking about.
I hope we have less computers in cars in the future, maybe even none if we really could. It'll be tough but it would save a lot of money and a lot of hassle.
That depends on what your vision of the future is.
In the US, single driver commuters spend an average of 4 hours per week getting to work and back, and only a small minority rate this as a pleasurable activity. Recovering those billions of lost man-hours per year is one of the biggest benefits of an automated highway system. Furthermore, the vast majority of those cars sit idle most of the time.
An automated system has the potential to: (a) allow those commuters to engage in productive or enjoyable activity on their way to work (b) service multiple commuters through time-sharing (c) store idle commuter cars on less-valuable real-estate (d) be treated as a fleet for more efficient maintenance (e) allow people who are not capable of driving equivalent access to transportation (f) allow anonymous single passenger vehicle traffic.
There was a time when every elevator had a trained human operator inside, much like the modern taxi. Computerization got rid of that and allowed banks of elevators to coordinate to move more people faster and more efficiently. Frankly, turning cars into automated taxis sounds pretty cool. The biggest social hurdle is people who drive for fun.
The asset that is moved is exactly the same as it was before, but its price is now $100 instead of $80. So you have in fact just created inflation.
You are confusing price and value. When you buy a widget, you pay its price. The only reason you would make that transaction is because its value to you is greater than the price. They are not the same thing.
Car Analogy Time: The moment someone drives a new car off the dealer's lot, its market price takes a nosedive. However, that car still has the exact same value it had 5 minutes before. If its value actually dropped along with the price, the buyer would never have paid what they did.
Changes in price affect inflation. Changes in value create or destroy wealth.
20 minute speculative bets are zero sum. In 20 minutes nothing of value was created.
That's absolutely false. The trade itself generates wealth. Say you have something you value at $80, and I want it and value it at $100. If we make a trade, we have increased our combined holdings by $20. That increase in value was generated by our trading.
In your example of the gambler, he moved a stock from somebody who valued it at $1 to someone else who valued it at $1.01. This work generated one penny of wealth. The profit the gambler makes is not coming out of anybody's pocket; he himself is generating wealth in the exact same way a trucker does when he moves a widget from a factory (where it's not worth much) to a store (where it's worth more).
Gambling at the stock market, on the other hand, is actually harmful to the economy and thus should not be rewarded.
It generates liquidity for the market, which benefits everyone through efficiency. The more shares that get traded, the closer the market makers can place the buy and sell prices to make the same profit. That means both buyers and sellers are getting better deals.
Basically, the gamblers subsidize the price that the non-gamblers pay for stock. In exchange, they get a chance for larger returns.
Say you own an item you value at $80, and I want that item and value it at $100, if we are unable to trade because the market for that item is completely illiquid, then between the two of us, we have lost an opportunity to earn $20.
If there is one dealer in the market, he'll buy your item for $81 and sell it to me for $99. We have collectively made $2. If the transaction cost was $15 because this item is rarely traded. The dealer made $3. In total, $5 of wealth was generated from thin air.
In a high volume market that has attracted lots of dealers, one will buy your item for $89 and sell it to me for $91 You and I have collectively made $18. If the transaction cost was $1 because this item is constantly traded, the dealer made $1. It total, $19 of wealth was generated from thin air.
Transferring an item from someone who values it at a low amount to someone who values it at a high amount generates wealth. This is a form of economic "work". Usually it takes an intermediary to do this efficiently, much like a trucking company transfers goods from a factory to a retail store. If the trucker's costs are less than the price differential between the source and destination, everybody involved sees an increase in their own holdings. This wealth is actually generated by doing the "work" of making the trade.
Albert Einstein didn't have a laptop in school. Ben Franklin didn't have a laptop in school. Stephen Hawking didn't have a laptop in school. Thomas Edison didn't have a laptop in school. Nikola Tesla didn't have a laptop in school. Even Bill Gates didn't have a laptop in school.
Oddly enough...
Einstein dropped out of Luitpold Gymnasium (=high school) Franklin dropped out of Boston Latin high school Edison went to school for a grand total of three months Tesla dropped out of Graz University Gates dropped out of Harvard
Hawking was the only one to stay the course...and yes, he did get a laptop.
But the shuttle is only relevant, if you want to bring people into space
The shuttle is only relevant if you want to deorbit satellites from LEO intact. Launching equipment, launching people, and bringing people home can be done cheaper by other means. Hauling a pair of wings to space and back on every trip is not very fuel-efficient.
here's a huge difference between lots of profit, and enough to get by.
Yup. It's called market share.
Microsoft has completely dominated the OS and core business app market for 15 years, for better or worse. All competing products have been designed, priced, and marketed around what MS is or is not doing. When MS makes a move, everybody feels it, even the non-commercial side of Linux.
I'm not saying that this has been a good or a bad thing...there are arguments either way, but that kind of dominance certainly cannot be accomplished by a company that is just interested in making enough to get by.
((Critical Mass doesn't fit into this picture. It's a protest, and you know full well when and where it will occur. Getting your side mirror bashed or your windshield krypto'd is your own damn fault))
I would assume it's the fault of the asshole vandalizing your car.
Just because an asshole is in proximity to several other assholes doesn't make them less of an asshole. Usually it makes them more of one. There are too many people who use Critical Mass as an excuse to smash others people's property while they hide in a crowd. It's the organizers' damn fault for tolerating that shit
I would like to personally applaud you, since you are a better biker than virtually all the ones here in Boston. Our bikers pay no to stop signs or red lights, swerve between lanes, cut cars off, dodge back and forth from the sidewalks and generally make an unsafe nuisance of themselves.
We have traffic laws in Boston?
I think the jaywalking culture here has a big part to play in the chaos. Since the fines are laughable ($1 for the first 4 offenses in a 12-month period, $2 for the 5th and subsequent) and there are so many one-way streets (easier mid-block crossings), the only people using the crosswalks are tourists. Pair that with a severe lack of bikelanes where they really matter (places where most bikers can't maintain car speeds, like the Harvard Bridge), and you get the mess that is Boston traffic.
As for mentioning Engels in the original post as a communist with a vision on ecology, let's not forget the guy inspired the USSR, and see what they've done to nature, the Aral sea, Chernobyl, and other such things
http://unimaps.com/aral-sea/aral-pic.gif
We do the same thing in the US. In some years the Colorado River no longer even makes it to the Pacific. http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2004/3062/images/fig2.jpg...and that's not because Lake Mead is holding all the water... http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/photogalleries/wip-week40/images/primary/3_461.jpg
The problem with electronic gizmos hit when planes already had a lot of electronic instruments.
The real problem is that a cellphone at 10,000ft over an urban area can see a crapton of cell towers. The system wasn't originally designed to have one phone talking to 500 towers while moving at 450 knots. That the inter-cell traffic to constantly hand off that phone and coordinate everything put a huge strain on the system.
Also, the airlines didn't want cellphones competing with their existing Airphone at $5/minute.
The 1991 cellphone ban on airplanes had little to do with safety...it was about technical limitations and price gouging. Selling the ban as "for safety reasons" was just the easiest way to get everyone to comply and to speak up if their rowmate broke the rules.
Nowadays, the cell system is far more robust, and phones at altitude aren't so disruptive. The Airphone is mostly dead. Congress is looking into relaxing the ban. People are also realizing that thousands of cellphones get used on planes every day, either intentionally or accidentally left on, and thousands of planes aren't crashing every day.
The biggest resistance to lifting the ban now is that people don't want to sit next to someone screaming into a cellphone for several hours.
Friend comes to my house. Friend uses Google location service. Now Google has the information about my wireless network, even though I did not give it to them.
If you are worried about broadcasting information that you would prefer to keep private, perhaps you could consider not broadcasting such information.
I've heard good reports about some networking technique that doesn't use radios. It may be relatively new, but you can find the equipment in stores.
But it ended up that he eventually figured out that a server admin had poisoned a Web-downloadable.exe map pack file with a trojan that scraped some account info off files while running a keylogger to get anything that the scraper missed. These hackers are usually on top of their game
That's one step above coldcalling your friend and asking for his credentials. These aren't "hackers" "on top of their game"...your bud is just a complete moron.
Did they try nuking a well before? I know they used dynamite back in Kuwait, but surely not nukes were used for this purpose, no?
Yes, the Russians have nuked 5 wells before. The method is to drill a parallel hole and set off an explosion deep underground, crushing the rock around the original well. Deep underground detonations are quite clean.
Four times it worked, one time they were not able to drill close enough because of the gas fires on the surface from the leaking well. "Close enough" means detonating the nuke within 50-60 meters of the original bore for a Hiroshima-size nuke of a few dozen kilotons.
A big drawback to this method, apart from the political ramifications, is that it takes time to drill the shot-hole. Even nukes don't have much of a blast radius under a kilometer of rock...you need to be really precise.
The Shuttle is an artifact of the Cold War; it's only benefit was for espionage.
1) The only advantage the Shuttle has over everything else is that it can deorbit a fragile payload intact. 2) Deorbiting people doesn't need a shuttle; there are cheaper methods 3) It's cheaper to repair satellites in space or replace them entirely
What the albatross could do, however, was grab somebody else's satellite and bring it back. We just never used it for that.
There is a crucial difference between how lawyers and engineers view the issue:
To an engineer, the content of a digital file is the primary attribute. Two files with identical contents are indistinguishable and interchangeable.
To a lawyer, the pedigree of a digital file just as important as the content. Two identical files with different histories are different entities.
What this means is that if you and your friend each own a copy of the same album, you may feel it is reasonable to copy data from his disk when convenient, since you legally own a copy with the exact same contents. In the eyes of the law, however, those song files are NOT the same, because they have different histories. The rights you have to your copy do not extend to all other instances of that file, even if they are indistinguishable or not.
It's easy to say that the lawyer view is ridiculous, but (a) that is the view that defines the law, and (b) it seems far less ridiculous after one studies the history of copyright law beginning in the 1500s.
There is a good article on this subject: http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php
I'll say the same thing here that has occurred to me with several other decisions. It's amazing to me that there could be any controversy over this or otherwise a widespread view that there is any other way to handle it.
Remove the "genetics" aspect from the issue; let's imagine that the tribe consented to have the researchers take photographs to study, say, body morphology, or whatever. The researchers then use those photographs to also analyze facial morphology.
Should the research subjects be able to control in perpetuity how those photographs can be looked at and thought about? Should they be able to control what tools are used to examine the photographs? (i.e. eyes only, no lenses or calipers...not even eyeglasses) Or can the researcher analyze those photos as they see fit and draw whatever conclusions they wish?
Both a photograph and a DNA sample are snapshots of some aspect of a person's individuality. Both yield medical data. Both can be used to track and uniquely identify a person (except for twins). We're just far more comfortable with the concept of photographs.
If this case were about photographs, would the Slashdot crowd react in the same way, or would we dismiss the tribe as backwards aboriginals afraid of losing their soul? Informed consent is a very good policy, but does our discomfort stem from the breach of policy or the genetic bogeyman?
Slashdot Mirror
But, what about that player-to-be-named later?
They're fucked.
You'd think that e-mail addresses by comparison would be simpler, but I have a hard time trying to register my e-mail address with sites that won't allow even simple things like "+", "-" or "." characters in the local part.
Proper email validation is not trivial
Check out the huge regex at the bottom of the RFC 5322 compliant validator from CPAN:
http://cpansearch.perl.org/src/RJBS/Email-Valid-0.184/lib/Email/Valid.pm
Nothing in the article really suggests that they were wrong given the evidence they had at the time. They're Geologists, not soothsayers.
Predictability is a continuum, not a binary scale. Earthquakes fall much further on the "hard to predict" side of things, but there is no arbitrary point at which you can draw a line. If a home inspector incorrectly claims a house has no sign of termites, a forester claims that a fire poses no danger to settled areas, or BP engineer claims that the methods used at Deepwater posed no danger to the environment, you aren't always going to be comfortable saying "oops, shit happens"
Were these geologists negligent? Given our current understanding of earthquakes, we can off-handedly state, "probably not", but we aren't sure. Is it unreasonable for somebody to want a court to investigate further, given the scale and scope of the damage? Not really.
I'm sure somebody has tried to get a grip on it.
From TFA:
To access the content inside, however, you'll need the playkey, which is delivered to the buyer of a digital media file and lives within "tamper-protected circuit" inside some device (computer, cell phone, router) or online at a playkey bank account. Controlling the playkey means that you control the media, and you truly own it, since no part of the system needs to phone home, and it imposes no restrictions on copying (except for those that arise naturally from fear of loss).
"tamper-protected circuit": you may gain some "ownership" of some encrypted media files, but you have to give up ownership of your device.
You can just as easily label what they still control as the "content" and the encrypted files on your device as the "key". Interchanging those labels is just semantics, since you still need both parts to hear the music. The end result is that you gain no additional control over the content, and you have sacrificed control over the hardware.
No thanks.
Some of us GPL defenders are hoping to one day see the end of copyright. Yes that will kill off the GPL, but the GPL is unnecessary and needlessly restrictive anyway at that point.
The heart of this matter is "bundling" and the questions that arise from it.
1) If two products are distributed as a "bundle", should it be permissible to unbundle them and consume them separately?
2) If products in a bundle are "locked" together via some technological means, should the distributor be forced to make available the means to "unlock" the bundle.
3) What should happen if the consumer breaks or bypasses the "lock".
Many people think the answers to these questions are so obvious that the questions themselves are pointless. Unfortunately, those people don't agree on what those answers are, usually because they are thinking of difference example cases. Can I remove the ads from the web page my browser displays? Can I remove the Solvent Red 26 from my fuel oil?
The GPL itself even (ab)uses copyright law to enforce the bundling of the license with the code in the case of redistribution. Let's say I wanted to create my own version of the GPL for my own original code that included the clause "this license must be presented and accepted by the end-user before this software can be used". Should my new license be enforceable? Should I have recourse if developers use my code without adhering to my terms? Copyright laws only cover distribution, but I'm trying to enforce a restriction on usage.
The ramifications of the answers to these questions quickly get complicated, and many debates on the topic never accomplish anything because the participants are not carefully defining what they are talking about.
I hope we have less computers in cars in the future, maybe even none if we really could. It'll be tough but it would save a lot of money and a lot of hassle.
That depends on what your vision of the future is.
In the US, single driver commuters spend an average of 4 hours per week getting to work and back, and only a small minority rate this as a pleasurable activity. Recovering those billions of lost man-hours per year is one of the biggest benefits of an automated highway system. Furthermore, the vast majority of those cars sit idle most of the time.
An automated system has the potential to:
(a) allow those commuters to engage in productive or enjoyable activity on their way to work
(b) service multiple commuters through time-sharing
(c) store idle commuter cars on less-valuable real-estate
(d) be treated as a fleet for more efficient maintenance
(e) allow people who are not capable of driving equivalent access to transportation
(f) allow anonymous single passenger vehicle traffic.
There was a time when every elevator had a trained human operator inside, much like the modern taxi. Computerization got rid of that and allowed banks of elevators to coordinate to move more people faster and more efficiently. Frankly, turning cars into automated taxis sounds pretty cool. The biggest social hurdle is people who drive for fun.
The asset that is moved is exactly the same as it was before, but its price is now $100 instead of $80. So you have in fact just created inflation.
You are confusing price and value. When you buy a widget, you pay its price. The only reason you would make that transaction is because its value to you is greater than the price. They are not the same thing.
Car Analogy Time:
The moment someone drives a new car off the dealer's lot, its market price takes a nosedive. However, that car still has the exact same value it had 5 minutes before. If its value actually dropped along with the price, the buyer would never have paid what they did.
Changes in price affect inflation. Changes in value create or destroy wealth.
20 minute speculative bets are zero sum. In 20 minutes nothing of value was created.
That's absolutely false. The trade itself generates wealth. Say you have something you value at $80, and I want it and value it at $100. If we make a trade, we have increased our combined holdings by $20. That increase in value was generated by our trading.
In your example of the gambler, he moved a stock from somebody who valued it at $1 to someone else who valued it at $1.01. This work generated one penny of wealth. The profit the gambler makes is not coming out of anybody's pocket; he himself is generating wealth in the exact same way a trucker does when he moves a widget from a factory (where it's not worth much) to a store (where it's worth more).
Gambling at the stock market, on the other hand, is actually harmful to the economy and thus should not be rewarded.
It generates liquidity for the market, which benefits everyone through efficiency. The more shares that get traded, the closer the market makers can place the buy and sell prices to make the same profit. That means both buyers and sellers are getting better deals.
Basically, the gamblers subsidize the price that the non-gamblers pay for stock. In exchange, they get a chance for larger returns.
Say you own an item you value at $80, and I want that item and value it at $100, if we are unable to trade because the market for that item is completely illiquid, then between the two of us, we have lost an opportunity to earn $20.
If there is one dealer in the market, he'll buy your item for $81 and sell it to me for $99. We have collectively made $2. If the transaction cost was $15 because this item is rarely traded. The dealer made $3. In total, $5 of wealth was generated from thin air.
In a high volume market that has attracted lots of dealers, one will buy your item for $89 and sell it to me for $91 You and I have collectively made $18. If the transaction cost was $1 because this item is constantly traded, the dealer made $1. It total, $19 of wealth was generated from thin air.
Transferring an item from someone who values it at a low amount to someone who values it at a high amount generates wealth. This is a form of economic "work". Usually it takes an intermediary to do this efficiently, much like a trucking company transfers goods from a factory to a retail store. If the trucker's costs are less than the price differential between the source and destination, everybody involved sees an increase in their own holdings. This wealth is actually generated by doing the "work" of making the trade.
Albert Einstein didn't have a laptop in school.
Ben Franklin didn't have a laptop in school.
Stephen Hawking didn't have a laptop in school.
Thomas Edison didn't have a laptop in school.
Nikola Tesla didn't have a laptop in school.
Even Bill Gates didn't have a laptop in school.
Oddly enough...
Einstein dropped out of Luitpold Gymnasium (=high school)
Franklin dropped out of Boston Latin high school
Edison went to school for a grand total of three months
Tesla dropped out of Graz University
Gates dropped out of Harvard
Hawking was the only one to stay the course...and yes, he did get a laptop.
But the shuttle is only relevant, if you want to bring people into space
The shuttle is only relevant if you want to deorbit satellites from LEO intact. Launching equipment, launching people, and bringing people home can be done cheaper by other means. Hauling a pair of wings to space and back on every trip is not very fuel-efficient.
You overestimate the average consumer's ability to care about things such as being able to run software from anywhere.
The above comment brought to you by Apple Computer Corporation, circa 1988.
here's a huge difference between lots of profit, and enough to get by.
Yup. It's called market share.
Microsoft has completely dominated the OS and core business app market for 15 years, for better or worse. All competing products have been designed, priced, and marketed around what MS is or is not doing. When MS makes a move, everybody feels it, even the non-commercial side of Linux.
I'm not saying that this has been a good or a bad thing...there are arguments either way, but that kind of dominance certainly cannot be accomplished by a company that is just interested in making enough to get by.
((Critical Mass doesn't fit into this picture. It's a protest, and you know full well when and where it will occur. Getting your side mirror bashed or your windshield krypto'd is your own damn fault))
I would assume it's the fault of the asshole vandalizing your car.
Just because an asshole is in proximity to several other assholes doesn't make them less of an asshole. Usually it makes them more of one. There are too many people who use Critical Mass as an excuse to smash others people's property while they hide in a crowd. It's the organizers' damn fault for tolerating that shit
I would like to personally applaud you, since you are a better biker than virtually all the ones here in Boston. Our bikers pay no to stop signs or red lights, swerve between lanes, cut cars off, dodge back and forth from the sidewalks and generally make an unsafe nuisance of themselves.
We have traffic laws in Boston?
I think the jaywalking culture here has a big part to play in the chaos. Since the fines are laughable ($1 for the first 4 offenses in a 12-month period, $2 for the 5th and subsequent) and there are so many one-way streets (easier mid-block crossings), the only people using the crosswalks are tourists. Pair that with a severe lack of bikelanes where they really matter (places where most bikers can't maintain car speeds, like the Harvard Bridge), and you get the mess that is Boston traffic.
As for mentioning Engels in the original post as a communist with a vision on ecology, let's not forget the guy inspired the USSR, and see what they've done to nature, the Aral sea, Chernobyl, and other such things
http://unimaps.com/aral-sea/aral-pic.gif
We do the same thing in the US. In some years the Colorado River no longer even makes it to the Pacific. ...and that's not because Lake Mead is holding all the water...
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2004/3062/images/fig2.jpg
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/08/photogalleries/wip-week40/images/primary/3_461.jpg
The problem with electronic gizmos hit when planes already had a lot of electronic instruments.
The real problem is that a cellphone at 10,000ft over an urban area can see a crapton of cell towers. The system wasn't originally designed to have one phone talking to 500 towers while moving at 450 knots. That the inter-cell traffic to constantly hand off that phone and coordinate everything put a huge strain on the system.
Also, the airlines didn't want cellphones competing with their existing Airphone at $5/minute.
The 1991 cellphone ban on airplanes had little to do with safety...it was about technical limitations and price gouging. Selling the ban as "for safety reasons" was just the easiest way to get everyone to comply and to speak up if their rowmate broke the rules.
Nowadays, the cell system is far more robust, and phones at altitude aren't so disruptive. The Airphone is mostly dead. Congress is looking into relaxing the ban. People are also realizing that thousands of cellphones get used on planes every day, either intentionally or accidentally left on, and thousands of planes aren't crashing every day.
The biggest resistance to lifting the ban now is that people don't want to sit next to someone screaming into a cellphone for several hours.
Friend comes to my house. Friend uses Google location service. Now Google has the information about my wireless network, even though I did not give it to them.
If you are worried about broadcasting information that you would prefer to keep private, perhaps you could consider not broadcasting such information.
I've heard good reports about some networking technique that doesn't use radios. It may be relatively new, but you can find the equipment in stores.
But it ended up that he eventually figured out that a server admin had poisoned a Web-downloadable .exe map pack file with a trojan that scraped some account info off files while running a keylogger to get anything that the scraper missed. These hackers are usually on top of their game
That's one step above coldcalling your friend and asking for his credentials. These aren't "hackers" "on top of their game"...your bud is just a complete moron.
Did they try nuking a well before? I know they used dynamite back in Kuwait, but surely not nukes were used for this purpose, no?
Yes, the Russians have nuked 5 wells before. The method is to drill a parallel hole and set off an explosion deep underground, crushing the rock around the original well. Deep underground detonations are quite clean.
Four times it worked, one time they were not able to drill close enough because of the gas fires on the surface from the leaking well. "Close enough" means detonating the nuke within 50-60 meters of the original bore for a Hiroshima-size nuke of a few dozen kilotons.
A big drawback to this method, apart from the political ramifications, is that it takes time to drill the shot-hole. Even nukes don't have much of a blast radius under a kilometer of rock...you need to be really precise.
The Shuttle is an artifact of the Cold War; it's only benefit was for espionage.
1) The only advantage the Shuttle has over everything else is that it can deorbit a fragile payload intact.
2) Deorbiting people doesn't need a shuttle; there are cheaper methods
3) It's cheaper to repair satellites in space or replace them entirely
What the albatross could do, however, was grab somebody else's satellite and bring it back. We just never used it for that.
There is a crucial difference between how lawyers and engineers view the issue:
To an engineer, the content of a digital file is the primary attribute. Two files with identical contents are indistinguishable and interchangeable.
To a lawyer, the pedigree of a digital file just as important as the content. Two identical files with different histories are different entities.
What this means is that if you and your friend each own a copy of the same album, you may feel it is reasonable to copy data from his disk when convenient, since you legally own a copy with the exact same contents. In the eyes of the law, however, those song files are NOT the same, because they have different histories. The rights you have to your copy do not extend to all other instances of that file, even if they are indistinguishable or not.
It's easy to say that the lawyer view is ridiculous, but (a) that is the view that defines the law, and (b) it seems far less ridiculous after one studies the history of copyright law beginning in the 1500s.
There is a good article on this subject:
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/lawpoli/colour/2004061001.php
In what jurisdiction? Cite, please.
Earth-That-Was, duh.
I'll say the same thing here that has occurred to me with several other decisions. It's amazing to me that there could be any controversy over this or otherwise a widespread view that there is any other way to handle it.
Remove the "genetics" aspect from the issue; let's imagine that the tribe consented to have the researchers take photographs to study, say, body morphology, or whatever. The researchers then use those photographs to also analyze facial morphology.
Should the research subjects be able to control in perpetuity how those photographs can be looked at and thought about? Should they be able to control what tools are used to examine the photographs? (i.e. eyes only, no lenses or calipers...not even eyeglasses) Or can the researcher analyze those photos as they see fit and draw whatever conclusions they wish?
Both a photograph and a DNA sample are snapshots of some aspect of a person's individuality. Both yield medical data. Both can be used to track and uniquely identify a person (except for twins). We're just far more comfortable with the concept of photographs.
If this case were about photographs, would the Slashdot crowd react in the same way, or would we dismiss the tribe as backwards aboriginals afraid of losing their soul? Informed consent is a very good policy, but does our discomfort stem from the breach of policy or the genetic bogeyman?