The problem is that spam is inexpensive to send. Especially if you are using a bot net of infected computers so you utilize someone else's bandwidth. If you spend $100 to send out 1 million e-mails and get a 0.1% return rate at $1 per user, you make $900 per campaign.
One can, within Saudi Arabia, easily access Google.com. Does this means that Google if Google opened a Saudi Arabian subsidiary (not sure if they have one already), they would be forced to remove - on Google.com for all web users - links to any site showing women wearing clothing that doesn't completely cover them?
The problem with this reasoning, then, is that any multi-national corporation would need to follow the laws of every land they operate in - across their entire organization. Say Google opened Google Saudi Arabia, would they be required to force all female staff to cover their entire bodies in public - even female staff in California? If they didn't, Google would be violating Saudi Arabian law. Sure, it wouldn't be violating it *within* Saudi Arabia, but the "violation" would be there as would be the Google subsidiary.
What if Google also opened a subsidiary in a country that banned garb like that required by Saudi Arabian law? How do they follow both laws at once across their entire organization?
To be fair, it's the "control the government" part that's important, not which religion it is. If the WBC somehow got in control of the US government, you can be sure that the United States would quickly resemble a radical Christian version of some of the radical Muslim countries. Of course, the WBC has zero chance of doing this, but other fundamentalist religious groups have candidates either in office or with serious backing to take office. Those candidates then try to craft laws based on "Religion X says this is bad so we need to ban it for everyone." It's not nearly as bad as the radical Muslim countries, but it's still bad and should be stopped.
My wife and I use this on our kids all the time. They are very, very sorry for doing something bad and will beg for another chance, but if given it will almost immediately go back to their bad behavior. (And then beg for "one more chance.") It's amazing how a huge multi-national company and a seven year old can act the same. The difference is that the damage from a seven year old's misbehavior tends to be more limited and the punishments are easier to dole out. If only we could just send Kingston and PNY to their rooms.
Or until they get someone in power in some country Google operates in who declares discussing psychiatry online to be illegal. All those psychiatry websites will need to be delinked ASAP!
The problem is that Google could remove the content from Google.ca - the Canadian Google website - but why should they be compelled to remove it from the Google sites that serve other countries as well? If your answer is "because someone from Canada could reach that site and thus see the content", then we're back to "Google has to obey all the laws in every country they operate in, even just a little bit, including all the conflicting laws, simultaneously across their entire operation."
True, but they also maintain Google.ca for Canadian users. So perhaps they remove it from their Canadian website. Why should they also remove it from a data center in California, the UK, or Australia just because the Canadian judge says it violated Canadian law? If you allow this then you allow any country to set rules for how a company can act even if that portion of the company isn't in the country in question.
If the judge said that Google had to remove the item from Google.ca, the Canadian Google website, I'd have said Google should comply with it with no problem. The problem arises when a judge says that, thanks to laws in Canada, someone in the United States (or any other country) can't see certain content. How do you allow one country to mandate what the entire world is allowed to see without descending into a tangled web of restrictive laws banning all but the most innocuous content?
It looks like this judge fully understood the ramifications of stating that one nation's court could ban a company based in another country from displaying information in any country.
I will address here Google's submission that this analysis would give every state in the world jurisdiction over Google’s search services. That may be so. But if so, it flows as a natural consequence of Google doing business on a global scale, not from a flaw in the territorial competence analysis.
In other words, in this judge's opinion, since Google works on a global scale, they should be subject to the laws of all nations at once. Of course, all websites act on a global scale. Slashdot can be easily read in the United States, Canada, Australia, and likely even countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that all websites need to obey all nations' laws at once? Where they conflict, are we bound by the most restrictive ones? So while the USA would give Freedom of Speech, we must hold by the stricter laws from some Middle East countries banning the insulting of a certain prophet. Also, we must never mention a certain Chinese square or the incident that happened there. We won't even get into North Korean laws. (I'm sure at least one person there has Internet access even if it is just "Glorious Leader.")
Thank you, Mr. Canadian Judge for imposing the world's conflicting and restrictive laws on the Internet. I'm sure that this will result in a vast improvement in Internet content. I can see the countries with restrictive laws drooling in anticipation already.
The fun part is re-watching those old "hacker" movies and marveling at the old technology mixed in with the ridiculous. Ok, so she's taking the security camera footage, enhancing it way beyond what is physically capable and.. oh, no... someone's coming... and it is taking time saving to a 3.5" floppy disk!
Don't worry. The plucky geek sidekick will - via phone - talk him through reprogramming his entire GPS operating system by pushing five buttons in the right order. The sidekick will then try to help more by remotely hacking into and reprogramming the mafia terrorists' car to disable the steering. The hero will berate the sidekick after the car nearly crashes into a bus filled with sweet, innocent children. Thankfully, the hero was able to aim his gun (which only had one bullet left) behind him and hit the tire of the mafia terrorists' car causing it to explode and flip up and over the bus.
Physics? Reasonable technology? A movie craves not these things.
I think most discussions about aliens - especially ones that want to destroy the Earth - would require them to have some kind of FTL drive. However, even assuming no FTL drive (either because they use generation ships or because FTL is used to travel between solar systems and they use a more conventional drive within solar systems), would we really be able to detect one ship's emissions in the vastness of space? If they stayed away from planets, and possibly kept the Sun between them and us, I don't see why they couldn't make it to the asteroid belt undetected.
That depends on what kind of ship it is, how it is powered, how big it is, etc. A small enough ship - or one with an exotic enough propulsion system, could wind up being undetectable to us.
Then again, if the aliens had FTL travel, they could equip a small projectile with it, crank it to 99% of the speed of light, and crash it into Earth. The resulting explosion would likely end all life on Earth. (See https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/.) Even if they began the projectile's journey by Pluto and we detected it immediately, we'd have about 6 hours until impact. Plenty of time to panic, but not enough time to come up with an effective defense.
I think the "other explanation" is that a story is told, and then people try to fit elements of that story to new discoveries that are made. So the waters of the "Great Flood" vanished? And we discover an ocean's worth of water under North America. How is it obvious that those two are linked? Couldn't it also be true that the stories in the bible are parables meant to teach a lesson and not meant as a literal history lesson?
Maybe they slingshotted a little black hole into our sun, which will begin to collapse while we still depend on it for sustenance.
No need to mess with black holes. Just park your space ship in the asteroid belt. We'll never see it there. Next, pick a nice, large asteroid and give it a nudge in just the right way. After enough time passes, the asteroid will collide with Earth. It will look like an act of nature, not a premeditated act, and will (at the very least) collapse our civilization or (at best - for them) destroy all life on our world.
How is intelligence a 'handicap'? The human species is the most evolutionary successful mammal in any way you choose to measure success.
Ok, let's measure success by how long a species lasts. Crocodiles and horseshoe crabs would easily have humans beat.
Or maybe numbers are key. After all, the more there is of a species, the less likely the species is to go extinct. In that case, many species of insects could beat humans many times over.
Or by "in any way you choose to measure success" did you really mean "in any way you choose to measure success that winds up showing humans are superior"?
I think the original comment posited that you might be able to have some kind of modified SCUBA suit instead of a full space suit. Perhaps a face mask with a hose leading to an oxygen tank but keeping your skin either exposed or covered with minimal material. Of course, the atmospheric pressure might be so low that this would be uncomfortable or could even result in injury. As a comparison, I looked up the pressure on the top of Mount Everest and got 58 kPa which is far above Mars' 0.6 kPa. It's quite possible that skin exposure to Mars' lack of pressure would result in serious injury and that a pressurized suit would still be needed.
Nobody, but the ISPs buy a lot of Cisco gear so Cisco wants to side with them. Plus, if the ISPs want to build a "Usain Bolt" lane and a "Usain Bolted To An Anchor" lane, they'll need some shiny, new networking gear to implement it. Cue Cisco's executives getting cartoon dollar signs in their eyes.
I'd also add my example. I live in a decent sized city. We're no New York City, by far, but we're not suburbs either. When Verizon was laying their FIOS cables, they went to the suburbs and bypassed the city. The population density of the city was higher, but they avoided us entirely. Of course, the reason wasn't population density, but income. Suburbs are more likely to have middle class/high middle class/affluent individuals who can pay Verizon more money. Cities might have poorer individuals and they might not be able to afford FIOS. So they made a business decision and avoided the poorer locations.
The problem with this is that, in the 21st century, knowledge of how to use the Internet is crucial to many jobs. Use of the Internet can help lift a person up from poverty. Sticking the poor regions with slower speeds is exasperating the income separation.
Of course, Verizon is free to build where they like and avoid poorer areas. It's not like they took billions of taxpayer money to wire states, reneged on their promises, and kept the money, right? (Oh, wait. They did.)
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that spam is inexpensive to send. Especially if you are using a bot net of infected computers so you utilize someone else's bandwidth. If you spend $100 to send out 1 million e-mails and get a 0.1% return rate at $1 per user, you make $900 per campaign.
One can, within Saudi Arabia, easily access Google.com. Does this means that Google if Google opened a Saudi Arabian subsidiary (not sure if they have one already), they would be forced to remove - on Google.com for all web users - links to any site showing women wearing clothing that doesn't completely cover them?
The problem with this reasoning, then, is that any multi-national corporation would need to follow the laws of every land they operate in - across their entire organization. Say Google opened Google Saudi Arabia, would they be required to force all female staff to cover their entire bodies in public - even female staff in California? If they didn't, Google would be violating Saudi Arabian law. Sure, it wouldn't be violating it *within* Saudi Arabia, but the "violation" would be there as would be the Google subsidiary.
What if Google also opened a subsidiary in a country that banned garb like that required by Saudi Arabian law? How do they follow both laws at once across their entire organization?
To be fair, it's the "control the government" part that's important, not which religion it is. If the WBC somehow got in control of the US government, you can be sure that the United States would quickly resemble a radical Christian version of some of the radical Muslim countries. Of course, the WBC has zero chance of doing this, but other fundamentalist religious groups have candidates either in office or with serious backing to take office. Those candidates then try to craft laws based on "Religion X says this is bad so we need to ban it for everyone." It's not nearly as bad as the radical Muslim countries, but it's still bad and should be stopped.
So what you're saying is that, if I cut the cord, not only will I save on my cable bill, but I'll also save on my electricity bill?
My wife and I use this on our kids all the time. They are very, very sorry for doing something bad and will beg for another chance, but if given it will almost immediately go back to their bad behavior. (And then beg for "one more chance.") It's amazing how a huge multi-national company and a seven year old can act the same. The difference is that the damage from a seven year old's misbehavior tends to be more limited and the punishments are easier to dole out. If only we could just send Kingston and PNY to their rooms.
Or until they get someone in power in some country Google operates in who declares discussing psychiatry online to be illegal. All those psychiatry websites will need to be delinked ASAP!
The problem is that Google could remove the content from Google.ca - the Canadian Google website - but why should they be compelled to remove it from the Google sites that serve other countries as well? If your answer is "because someone from Canada could reach that site and thus see the content", then we're back to "Google has to obey all the laws in every country they operate in, even just a little bit, including all the conflicting laws, simultaneously across their entire operation."
Good point. Slashdot doesn't have an edit function, so consider it changed-if-I-could-edit-the-post. ;-)
True, but they also maintain Google.ca for Canadian users. So perhaps they remove it from their Canadian website. Why should they also remove it from a data center in California, the UK, or Australia just because the Canadian judge says it violated Canadian law? If you allow this then you allow any country to set rules for how a company can act even if that portion of the company isn't in the country in question.
If the judge said that Google had to remove the item from Google.ca, the Canadian Google website, I'd have said Google should comply with it with no problem. The problem arises when a judge says that, thanks to laws in Canada, someone in the United States (or any other country) can't see certain content. How do you allow one country to mandate what the entire world is allowed to see without descending into a tangled web of restrictive laws banning all but the most innocuous content?
It looks like this judge fully understood the ramifications of stating that one nation's court could ban a company based in another country from displaying information in any country.
In other words, in this judge's opinion, since Google works on a global scale, they should be subject to the laws of all nations at once. Of course, all websites act on a global scale. Slashdot can be easily read in the United States, Canada, Australia, and likely even countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia. Does this mean that all websites need to obey all nations' laws at once? Where they conflict, are we bound by the most restrictive ones? So while the USA would give Freedom of Speech, we must hold by the stricter laws from some Middle East countries banning the insulting of a certain prophet. Also, we must never mention a certain Chinese square or the incident that happened there. We won't even get into North Korean laws. (I'm sure at least one person there has Internet access even if it is just "Glorious Leader.")
Thank you, Mr. Canadian Judge for imposing the world's conflicting and restrictive laws on the Internet. I'm sure that this will result in a vast improvement in Internet content. I can see the countries with restrictive laws drooling in anticipation already.
The fun part is re-watching those old "hacker" movies and marveling at the old technology mixed in with the ridiculous. Ok, so she's taking the security camera footage, enhancing it way beyond what is physically capable and.. oh, no... someone's coming... and it is taking time saving to a 3.5" floppy disk!
Don't worry. The plucky geek sidekick will - via phone - talk him through reprogramming his entire GPS operating system by pushing five buttons in the right order. The sidekick will then try to help more by remotely hacking into and reprogramming the mafia terrorists' car to disable the steering. The hero will berate the sidekick after the car nearly crashes into a bus filled with sweet, innocent children. Thankfully, the hero was able to aim his gun (which only had one bullet left) behind him and hit the tire of the mafia terrorists' car causing it to explode and flip up and over the bus.
Physics? Reasonable technology? A movie craves not these things.
Maybe Microsoft could increase their marketshare by 50%: And get to 1.5% of the market.
6K ought to be enough for anybody?
I think most discussions about aliens - especially ones that want to destroy the Earth - would require them to have some kind of FTL drive. However, even assuming no FTL drive (either because they use generation ships or because FTL is used to travel between solar systems and they use a more conventional drive within solar systems), would we really be able to detect one ship's emissions in the vastness of space? If they stayed away from planets, and possibly kept the Sun between them and us, I don't see why they couldn't make it to the asteroid belt undetected.
That depends on what kind of ship it is, how it is powered, how big it is, etc. A small enough ship - or one with an exotic enough propulsion system, could wind up being undetectable to us.
Then again, if the aliens had FTL travel, they could equip a small projectile with it, crank it to 99% of the speed of light, and crash it into Earth. The resulting explosion would likely end all life on Earth. (See https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/.) Even if they began the projectile's journey by Pluto and we detected it immediately, we'd have about 6 hours until impact. Plenty of time to panic, but not enough time to come up with an effective defense.
I think the "other explanation" is that a story is told, and then people try to fit elements of that story to new discoveries that are made. So the waters of the "Great Flood" vanished? And we discover an ocean's worth of water under North America. How is it obvious that those two are linked? Couldn't it also be true that the stories in the bible are parables meant to teach a lesson and not meant as a literal history lesson?
No need to mess with black holes. Just park your space ship in the asteroid belt. We'll never see it there. Next, pick a nice, large asteroid and give it a nudge in just the right way. After enough time passes, the asteroid will collide with Earth. It will look like an act of nature, not a premeditated act, and will (at the very least) collapse our civilization or (at best - for them) destroy all life on our world.
Ok, let's measure success by how long a species lasts. Crocodiles and horseshoe crabs would easily have humans beat.
Or maybe numbers are key. After all, the more there is of a species, the less likely the species is to go extinct. In that case, many species of insects could beat humans many times over.
Or by "in any way you choose to measure success" did you really mean "in any way you choose to measure success that winds up showing humans are superior"?
Except that Mars is much further away from the Sun than we are (1.5 times as far) and so gets much less radiation from it.
I think the original comment posited that you might be able to have some kind of modified SCUBA suit instead of a full space suit. Perhaps a face mask with a hose leading to an oxygen tank but keeping your skin either exposed or covered with minimal material. Of course, the atmospheric pressure might be so low that this would be uncomfortable or could even result in injury. As a comparison, I looked up the pressure on the top of Mount Everest and got 58 kPa which is far above Mars' 0.6 kPa. It's quite possible that skin exposure to Mars' lack of pressure would result in serious injury and that a pressurized suit would still be needed.
Nobody, but the ISPs buy a lot of Cisco gear so Cisco wants to side with them. Plus, if the ISPs want to build a "Usain Bolt" lane and a "Usain Bolted To An Anchor" lane, they'll need some shiny, new networking gear to implement it. Cue Cisco's executives getting cartoon dollar signs in their eyes.
I'd also add my example. I live in a decent sized city. We're no New York City, by far, but we're not suburbs either. When Verizon was laying their FIOS cables, they went to the suburbs and bypassed the city. The population density of the city was higher, but they avoided us entirely. Of course, the reason wasn't population density, but income. Suburbs are more likely to have middle class/high middle class/affluent individuals who can pay Verizon more money. Cities might have poorer individuals and they might not be able to afford FIOS. So they made a business decision and avoided the poorer locations.
The problem with this is that, in the 21st century, knowledge of how to use the Internet is crucial to many jobs. Use of the Internet can help lift a person up from poverty. Sticking the poor regions with slower speeds is exasperating the income separation.
Of course, Verizon is free to build where they like and avoid poorer areas. It's not like they took billions of taxpayer money to wire states, reneged on their promises, and kept the money, right? (Oh, wait. They did.)