While it's true that Sadam's military was full of essentially modern day Nazis, [...]
Saddam was not a nazi. He held a iron grip over muslim factions that can't help but to kill each other. And that is exactly what they did once Saddam was removed.
Saddam Hussein was not a model leader but he was a 'moderate' if such a thing can exist in the islamic word. He also was the only one able to control all these retarded Muslim and keep them from murdering each other. He also was the only one capable of protecting the iraqis minority of other religious faith.
All the claim that he killed babies or gas villages are lies. Not believe the CIA in the 1990s made you a tinfoil-hat'er, still believing them in 2014 make you a fool.
The truth is a bit more complex. The Sunnis weren't all that upset about getting rid of Saddam. What really ticked them off was when L. Paul Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army (sending a couple hundred thousand Sunnis out into the world with no job, no money and guns) and then fired every Sunni in the Iraqi civil service.
Only then did we start to see lots of internecine violence.
Then we brought in Nuri Al-Maliki who systematically discriminated against the Sunnis in all walks of life. Which just made things much, much worse.
It was about economic and political power. Once the U.S.bought off (with huge sums of money) the Shia and the Sunnis, the violence largely stopped. After the flow of money stopped when the U.S. left Iraq, the systematic discrimination by Al-Maliki's government pushed the Sunnis right into the arms of what would become ISIS.
Even that is an oversimplification, but there were failures on all sides, and everyone is a loser.
Well, clearly, if the comet has a higher D/H ratio, and Earth's water came from comets, then much of our deuterium has gone somewhere. Thus proving that the dinosaurs had an advanced technological civilization based on deuterium fusion. Too bad they didn't have a space program capable of deflecting asteroids.
As for comet 103P/Hartley 2, that was probably used as a refueling stop by extraterrestrials.
Finally! Someone with some common sense! Good show, old chap!
In the same matter I wish cosmology would create less theories based on on a single observation as one observation can neither prove or disprove theories.
Cosmology didn't claim that this observation proved anything, nor did it spark any new theories. OP made an unsupportable claim in the title. Which is complete hyperbole and not even close to what the researchers reported. Which is why I posted what you replied to.
Anything is possible. Even time travel into the past (with certain limitations).
No, Time travel to the past isn't possible at all. That would be acting like there is a physical place called the past to travel to which is physically separate from all the moving mass in the universe that we call the Present. That would require constant instantaneous non-big-bang creation of all the mass in the universe over and over again at a Planck-time like interval.. Care to show evidence for that actually happening?
It doesn't matter how some scientists choose to interpret certain equations, they are clearly misinterpreting how they actually relate to reality.
Actually, people a lot smarter than you have posited that it is, in fact, possible. It's quite unlikely, and completely beyond our abilities, but not impossible. Note that I said "possible" not feasible.
Isn't it also possible that no comets will have the right D/H ratio due to that fact the there is no guarantee all the comets that hit earth had the same d/h ratio.
Anything is possible. Even time travel into the past (with certain limitations).
However, since the article I linked (and quoted/bolded the relevant text) states that they have sampled a comet that has a composition matching the D/H ratio as found here on Earth, it seems reasonable to conclude that other comets, some of which hit the Earth and some of which did not, have Earthlike D/H ratios.
What is more, since all material in the solar system coalesced from the same molecular cloud that collapsed into our star, there are likely many similarities between objects in the solar system.
N.B. I am not a planetary scientist or an astronomer studying comets, so YMMV.
So what they're saying is that comets which formed in proximity to where the sampled comet formed, were not responsible for delivering significant quantities of our water.
No argument here.
There. FTFY. Not sure if you were being obtuse in attempt to be amusing or if you're just dumb as a box of rocks. Either way, have a wonderful day!
Since you deigned to post in the comments, I want to make sure that you knew that your posts are partially responsible for my slow departure from slashdot. Your poor writing skills, disorganized thought process and incredibly inane topic choices make your posts mostly unreadable.
I may post comments to your posts in the future. But, as before, it will just be to point out your real value.
I hope you have an awful day filled with uncomfortable itching and open sores. Fuck you.
The more informative article from the ESA website says that the Deuterium/Hydrogen (D/H) isotope ratio is significantly higher (more than three times, in fact) than that of water found on Earth.
However, The comet in question is not of the same type and composition as *all* comets. In fact, comets (even those that generally share orbits with the one sampled) vary widely in their D/H ratios. As such, the paper does not claim that comets didn't bring water to Earth, merely that comets like the one sampled (comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko) by ROSINA did not bring water to Earth.
From the better TFA:
Previous measurements of the deuterium/hydrogen (D/H) ratio in other comets have shown a wide range of values. Of the 11 comets for which measurements have been made, it is only the Jupiter-family Comet 103P/Hartley 2 that was found to match the composition of Earth’s water, in observations made by ESA’s Herschel mission in 2011. [Emphasis added]
I'm not affiliated with SoylentNews other than as a user. I have no access or control over the site itself.
However, from what I've seen the folks over there seem to be working hard to improve the site.
Assuming you're not a troll (and that's a big assumption based on the idiotic complaint you made), I'm sure that if you offer to help, the folks over there would be happy to have you.
TFS says: "Our culture evolves quickly — even going back 100 years would be a difficult transition to get used to"
I don't think that comparison is an apt one. Our culture does evolve quickly, but I'd posit that given the technological culture that's developed over the past 150 years or so, it would be much more difficult to adjust to the culture(s) of the past than of the future. No antibiotics, no ubuiquitous telecommunications infrastructure, much more primitive agricultural techniques, etc., etc., etc.
Unless you presume social, economic and technological collapse (which is possible, I guess) for the future, the world of 500 years from now would be more recognizable to a resident of the early 21st century than the world of even 200 years ago, IMHO.
I think the premise of the TFA is stupid. Yes, culture changes. And yes, we can incorporate such changes into our stories.
However, It seems to me that the essence of science fiction (or, as Heinlein also called it, "speculative fiction") is to identify a particular change in something. A change in culture, a scientific breakthrough, a technological innovation or some other event or idea, then explore how such a change could impact people, and tell a story which incorporates those implications.
Essentially, it's asking "What if...?" and examining the consequences, in human and technological terms, of the answer.
It's not necessary (in fact, in many cases, it will get in the way of telling the story) to create a completely new culture, unless that culture directly relates to the theme (answering the "What if...?" question) of the story.
That is mainly a problem if you sign up to get something for free. I don't expect that a company that makes 50 bucks net profit off of a fridge is going to risk their reputation in order to make a tiny bit more money by selling my data.
I'm more worried that the NSA would hack into an accelerometer intended to detect vibrations of the compressor and use it as a microphone to spy on my kitchen.
If you think that manufacturers have such small profit margins, you're kidding yourself. And cross-licensing deals with big data aggregators could be huge money for that scum.
Also, those scenarios aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, friend.
When I hear "Internet of Things", I think, "Twitter Enabled Refrigerator"
It's that too, but that's not what the (more serious) suits are excited about. The suits are typically excited about increasing profits for stuff that already exists, or about new business to business inventions.
Imagine for instance connecting everything in a factory in such a way that you can sit at a screen in a control room and detect or predict problems ahead of time. You could also have a risk function that quantifies risk. Sensors might for instance detect weak but unusual vibrations in a machine. Other sensors might detect that you only have spares in stock for one repair of that machine. The risk function has a model of how the factory works and the model shows that the machine is vital and that production will be significantly reduced if it breaks down, which means that you're looking at a fairly high economic risk. The system could then suggest potential fixes, like stocking up on more spares, or running the machine more slowly until the next scheduled maintenance.
I think this sort of setup is already in place in many factories, but it will get more common and more advanced in the future.
Actually, what I think have the "suits" excited is the ability to things like identify what's in your refrigerator at any given time so they can send targeted ads to your (tracked) mobile device to buy crap you don't want while you're buying stuff you need. And to monitor your video/audio consumption habits for similar reasons (seamless ad insertion, product placements, etc., etc.).
When anything and everything can send data to the Internet, who do you think will be receiving such data?
The field sobriety tests is designed for catching alcohol. 2 out of the 3 tests in the link you provided specifically say that failing them is associated with having consumed too much alcohol. The only one that doesn't specifically state as being about alcohol still only tests for a very specific impairment common to being drunk.
Is it your position that it's impossible to determine impairment if it isn't alcohol related?
It seems to me that it's the skills required for safe driving that are at issue, and if those are impaired, there's a problem. If not, then it's not an issue (at least not with driving, which is what we're discussing).
I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to modify (if necessary, and I'm not sure that it is) sobriety tests to cover those skills (e.g, reaction time, coordination, object recognition, etc., etc.) and make a pretty good assessment of the subject's ability to safely operate a vehicle. If there's a positive result, further (blood, saliva, etc.) tests could be performed to confirm the result.
This would save time, money and, in many cases, stop needless invasions of privacy (e.g., forced body searches -- which breathalyzers, etc. are). I'm not sure what your objection to field sobriety tests might be, unless you work for a company that sells onsite testing kits. Please elucidate.
I used the NHTSA test regime as an example, not as the definitive test that must always be used by everyone, everywhere, for every test.
A field sobriety test doesn't care what substance you've been imbibing. It tests your current level of impairment. Which is what we should be looking at if the goal is to reduce injuries and fatalities on the roads.
Why waste all kinds of money on tests that may or may not be able to measure actual impairment? And that goes for alcohol too.
This is essentially what I was going to post. I set up a pod on a VM, and while I finally got it working (after assistance from one of the devs via IRC), if there's going to be real acceptance of Diaspora, it needs to deploy cleanly and automatically. This is not currently the case.
Another point that doesn't get enough attention is the lack of symmetrical bandwidth on consumer ISP links. This will limit both the utility and acceptance of any distributed app/protocol (social networking or otherwise). It's unlikely that will happen anytime soon, as that props up the status quo for the content arms of the big ISPs, so I think we're mostly SOL.
This is really a shame, as moving away from centralized models can allow greater flexibility and privacy. Others have mentioned privacy on this thread, but only in the context of which "friends" or others can see what and what sort of advertising is shown.
I'm a lot less concerned about which people I know can see photos of me smooching the giraffe at the zoo. I'm much more concerned that the folks who run these sites have access (and analyze such information ad infinitum, ad nauseam) to everything I might post, and even the sfuff I don't.
Space-procured Palladium and Platinum has the potential to make space-based mining possible. If you could put an asteroid in earth orbit containing a couple of tons of platinum group metals and extract them (that's the tricky part) you would own the global market for those materials.
From a medium-term perspective, I think iron, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon would be more useful as they would then be available for space-based construction, allowing us to expand our space resources.
Slashdot Mirror
Too bad that the only option is Facebook.
Actually, that's not true. It's because of people like you that distributed/non-commercial social networks don't make much headway.
While it's true that Sadam's military was full of essentially modern day Nazis, [...]
Saddam was not a nazi. He held a iron grip over muslim factions that can't help but to kill each other. And that is exactly what they did once Saddam was removed.
Saddam Hussein was not a model leader but he was a 'moderate' if such a thing can exist in the islamic word. He also was the only one able to control all these retarded Muslim and keep them from murdering each other. He also was the only one capable of protecting the iraqis minority of other religious faith.
All the claim that he killed babies or gas villages are lies. Not believe the CIA in the 1990s made you a tinfoil-hat'er, still believing them in 2014 make you a fool.
The truth is a bit more complex. The Sunnis weren't all that upset about getting rid of Saddam. What really ticked them off was when L. Paul Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army (sending a couple hundred thousand Sunnis out into the world with no job, no money and guns) and then fired every Sunni in the Iraqi civil service.
Only then did we start to see lots of internecine violence.
Then we brought in Nuri Al-Maliki who systematically discriminated against the Sunnis in all walks of life. Which just made things much, much worse.
It was about economic and political power. Once the U.S.bought off (with huge sums of money) the Shia and the Sunnis, the violence largely stopped. After the flow of money stopped when the U.S. left Iraq, the systematic discrimination by Al-Maliki's government pushed the Sunnis right into the arms of what would become ISIS.
Even that is an oversimplification, but there were failures on all sides, and everyone is a loser.
Well, clearly, if the comet has a higher D/H ratio, and Earth's water came from comets, then much of our deuterium has gone somewhere. Thus proving that the dinosaurs had an advanced technological civilization based on deuterium fusion. Too bad they didn't have a space program capable of deflecting asteroids.
As for comet 103P/Hartley 2, that was probably used as a refueling stop by extraterrestrials.
Finally! Someone with some common sense! Good show, old chap!
In the same matter I wish cosmology would create less theories based on on a single observation as one observation can neither prove or disprove theories.
Cosmology didn't claim that this observation proved anything, nor did it spark any new theories. OP made an unsupportable claim in the title. Which is complete hyperbole and not even close to what the researchers reported. Which is why I posted what you replied to.
So what they're saying is that WHOOSH.
No argument here.
There. FTFY. Not sure if you were being obtuse in attempt to be amusing or if you're just dumb as a box of rocks. Either way, have a wonderful day!
FTFY
I see. so you subscribe to my second theory about GP. Gotcha.
Anything is possible. Even time travel into the past (with certain limitations).
No, Time travel to the past isn't possible at all. That would be acting like there is a physical place called the past to travel to which is physically separate from all the moving mass in the universe that we call the Present. That would require constant instantaneous non-big-bang creation of all the mass in the universe over and over again at a Planck-time like interval.. Care to show evidence for that actually happening?
It doesn't matter how some scientists choose to interpret certain equations, they are clearly misinterpreting how they actually relate to reality.
Actually, people a lot smarter than you have posited that it is, in fact, possible. It's quite unlikely, and completely beyond our abilities, but not impossible. Note that I said "possible" not feasible.
Isn't it also possible that no comets will have the right D/H ratio due to that fact the there is no guarantee all the comets that hit earth had the same d/h ratio.
Anything is possible. Even time travel into the past (with certain limitations).
However, since the article I linked (and quoted/bolded the relevant text) states that they have sampled a comet that has a composition matching the D/H ratio as found here on Earth, it seems reasonable to conclude that other comets, some of which hit the Earth and some of which did not, have Earthlike D/H ratios.
What is more, since all material in the solar system coalesced from the same molecular cloud that collapsed into our star, there are likely many similarities between objects in the solar system.
N.B. I am not a planetary scientist or an astronomer studying comets, so YMMV.
So what they're saying is that comets which formed in proximity to where the sampled comet formed, were not responsible for delivering significant quantities of our water.
No argument here.
There. FTFY. Not sure if you were being obtuse in attempt to be amusing or if you're just dumb as a box of rocks. Either way, have a wonderful day!
Since you deigned to post in the comments, I want to make sure that you knew that your posts are partially responsible for my slow departure from slashdot. Your poor writing skills, disorganized thought process and incredibly inane topic choices make your posts mostly unreadable.
I may post comments to your posts in the future. But, as before, it will just be to point out your real value.
I hope you have an awful day filled with uncomfortable itching and open sores. Fuck you.
The more informative article from the ESA website says that the Deuterium/Hydrogen (D/H) isotope ratio is significantly higher (more than three times, in fact) than that of water found on Earth.
However, The comet in question is not of the same type and composition as *all* comets. In fact, comets (even those that generally share orbits with the one sampled) vary widely in their D/H ratios. As such, the paper does not claim that comets didn't bring water to Earth, merely that comets like the one sampled (comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko) by ROSINA did not bring water to Earth.
From the better TFA:
While you're still here, why not sign the petition: http://petitions.moveon.org/si...
Thanks for the suggestion, but slashdot is mostly in my rear-view mirror now, so I'll let it be.
Let me know when you guys get your site working.
I'm not affiliated with SoylentNews other than as a user. I have no access or control over the site itself.
However, from what I've seen the folks over there seem to be working hard to improve the site.
Assuming you're not a troll (and that's a big assumption based on the idiotic complaint you made), I'm sure that if you offer to help, the folks over there would be happy to have you.
I don't know. I'm not affiliated with SoylentNews other than as a user.
TL;DR: Bennett blathers on without much rhyme or reason about something.
There. FTFY
There are no posts from this jackass over at Soylent News.
There are many reasons I now prefer that site over /., but a lack of Bennett Haselton is definitely one of them.
Signed, Lionel Hutz. "Attorney" Slashdot.org
You make me nostalgic for Phil Hartman. he was a gem.
TFS says: "Our culture evolves quickly — even going back 100 years would be a difficult transition to get used to"
I don't think that comparison is an apt one. Our culture does evolve quickly, but I'd posit that given the technological culture that's developed over the past 150 years or so, it would be much more difficult to adjust to the culture(s) of the past than of the future. No antibiotics, no ubuiquitous telecommunications infrastructure, much more primitive agricultural techniques, etc., etc., etc.
Unless you presume social, economic and technological collapse (which is possible, I guess) for the future, the world of 500 years from now would be more recognizable to a resident of the early 21st century than the world of even 200 years ago, IMHO.
I think the premise of the TFA is stupid. Yes, culture changes. And yes, we can incorporate such changes into our stories.
However, It seems to me that the essence of science fiction (or, as Heinlein also called it, "speculative fiction") is to identify a particular change in something. A change in culture, a scientific breakthrough, a technological innovation or some other event or idea, then explore how such a change could impact people, and tell a story which incorporates those implications.
Essentially, it's asking "What if...?" and examining the consequences, in human and technological terms, of the answer.
It's not necessary (in fact, in many cases, it will get in the way of telling the story) to create a completely new culture, unless that culture directly relates to the theme (answering the "What if...?" question) of the story.
That is mainly a problem if you sign up to get something for free. I don't expect that a company that makes 50 bucks net profit off of a fridge is going to risk their reputation in order to make a tiny bit more money by selling my data.
I'm more worried that the NSA would hack into an accelerometer intended to detect vibrations of the compressor and use it as a microphone to spy on my kitchen.
If you think that manufacturers have such small profit margins, you're kidding yourself. And cross-licensing deals with big data aggregators could be huge money for that scum.
Also, those scenarios aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, friend.
When I hear "Internet of Things", I think, "Twitter Enabled Refrigerator"
It's that too, but that's not what the (more serious) suits are excited about. The suits are typically excited about increasing profits for stuff that already exists, or about new business to business inventions.
Imagine for instance connecting everything in a factory in such a way that you can sit at a screen in a control room and detect or predict problems ahead of time. You could also have a risk function that quantifies risk. Sensors might for instance detect weak but unusual vibrations in a machine. Other sensors might detect that you only have spares in stock for one repair of that machine. The risk function has a model of how the factory works and the model shows that the machine is vital and that production will be significantly reduced if it breaks down, which means that you're looking at a fairly high economic risk. The system could then suggest potential fixes, like stocking up on more spares, or running the machine more slowly until the next scheduled maintenance.
I think this sort of setup is already in place in many factories, but it will get more common and more advanced in the future.
Actually, what I think have the "suits" excited is the ability to things like identify what's in your refrigerator at any given time so they can send targeted ads to your (tracked) mobile device to buy crap you don't want while you're buying stuff you need. And to monitor your video/audio consumption habits for similar reasons (seamless ad insertion, product placements, etc., etc.).
When anything and everything can send data to the Internet, who do you think will be receiving such data?
The field sobriety tests is designed for catching alcohol. 2 out of the 3 tests in the link you provided specifically say that failing them is associated with having consumed too much alcohol. The only one that doesn't specifically state as being about alcohol still only tests for a very specific impairment common to being drunk .
Is it your position that it's impossible to determine impairment if it isn't alcohol related?
It seems to me that it's the skills required for safe driving that are at issue, and if those are impaired, there's a problem. If not, then it's not an issue (at least not with driving, which is what we're discussing).
I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to modify (if necessary, and I'm not sure that it is) sobriety tests to cover those skills (e.g, reaction time, coordination, object recognition, etc., etc.) and make a pretty good assessment of the subject's ability to safely operate a vehicle. If there's a positive result, further (blood, saliva, etc.) tests could be performed to confirm the result.
This would save time, money and, in many cases, stop needless invasions of privacy (e.g., forced body searches -- which breathalyzers, etc. are). I'm not sure what your objection to field sobriety tests might be, unless you work for a company that sells onsite testing kits. Please elucidate.
I used the NHTSA test regime as an example, not as the definitive test that must always be used by everyone, everywhere, for every test.
A field sobriety test doesn't care what substance you've been imbibing. It tests your current level of impairment. Which is what we should be looking at if the goal is to reduce injuries and fatalities on the roads.
Why waste all kinds of money on tests that may or may not be able to measure actual impairment? And that goes for alcohol too.
This is essentially what I was going to post. I set up a pod on a VM, and while I finally got it working (after assistance from one of the devs via IRC), if there's going to be real acceptance of Diaspora, it needs to deploy cleanly and automatically. This is not currently the case.
Another point that doesn't get enough attention is the lack of symmetrical bandwidth on consumer ISP links. This will limit both the utility and acceptance of any distributed app/protocol (social networking or otherwise). It's unlikely that will happen anytime soon, as that props up the status quo for the content arms of the big ISPs, so I think we're mostly SOL.
This is really a shame, as moving away from centralized models can allow greater flexibility and privacy. Others have mentioned privacy on this thread, but only in the context of which "friends" or others can see what and what sort of advertising is shown.
I'm a lot less concerned about which people I know can see photos of me smooching the giraffe at the zoo. I'm much more concerned that the folks who run these sites have access (and analyze such information ad infinitum, ad nauseam) to everything I might post, and even the sfuff I don't.
OK, so a perfectly fine word like "hella" has no place in the very serious topic of asteroid mining?
I wouldn't use it in such a discussion, but then I wouldn't use it in most discussions. But that's me, and you're not me. Carry on.
Space-procured Palladium and Platinum has the potential to make space-based mining possible. If you could put an asteroid in earth orbit containing a couple of tons of platinum group metals and extract them (that's the tricky part) you would own the global market for those materials.
From a medium-term perspective, I think iron, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon would be more useful as they would then be available for space-based construction, allowing us to expand our space resources.