Because someone else got the upper hand there, and the oil flows the other direction. Do you think people see the "Made in China" stamp just before bullet goes through their heads? Think they care?
Whatever — the point was, the prescribed "insightful" (if racist) method is, unfortunately, baloney...
Lets do Nigeria next. Or the DRC, you pick.
I strongly doubt either one of them would invade a neighbor and be foolish enough to pick the neighbor, who happens to be our ally... The world's scumbags have learned that lesson.
Your an OP's continuing insinuations, that we are in a "war for oil" is baloney too. Removing the embargo (which the rest of UN wanted to do, France especially) and buying oil from Saddam Hussein would've been far cheaper and easier, than even the most optimistic version of invasion imagined in 2002.
4 core CPU has no use at homes unless you are content creator. I'm software engineer, I don't think that any of my colleagues I work with knows how to write app that will take advantage of 2 cores; let alone 4.
Well, fortunately, some of this software has already been written just for you and your colleagues. Check out make(1) manual page — look for the -j option...
And no, it is not only for software engineering either. Every time I come back from vacation, I use make to convert my digital pictures from the lossless "raw" format of the camera to the lower resolution JPEG for the web-pages. Having four CPUs makes that process four times faster. Great idea, uhm?..
Your colleagues may be doofusen, but people, who will finally bring us reliable speech-generation and parsing (as an example) will certainly be smart enough to take full advantage of the multiple processors.
Meanwhile, you can schedule a meeting to discuss using OpenMP in your company's software... Compilers (including Visual Studio's and gcc) have been supporting this standard for some years now.
Then announce to the Western world that a routine governmental survey has found something of great value on the monkey-land. Gold, oil, rhodium, manganese, pretty flowers. Anything that can be collected and sold will do. The rest will take care of itself.
Has not worked in Darfur, for some reason, has it?
If that isn't a time and again proven effective method of monkey subordination I don't know what is.
... and you would surely agree that, as long as fellatio is illegal (as it is in many, many US states), lamenting the uninvited entry of police in your bedroom during sexual interaction is foolish
Yes, it is foolish. If the police have a probable cause to believe, something illegal is taking place in that bedroom — be that fellatio, or incest, or rape — they have a duty to break in and stop it.
What you wanted to say, I guess, is that fellatio should not be illegal. Yes, no disagreement here — that any form of sex between consenting adults is illegal anywhere, is highly lamentable. But off-topic...
but how much longer until the drug warriors want to deploy automatic sampling units farther upstream
As long as drug use remains illegal, lamenting a particular detection/enforcement method is foolish.
That said, I doubt installing such automatic sampling units far enough upstream to identify individuals will ever be allowed — not without a judge-signed warrant, because it is, really, a search.
The bad part is that the person who had their internet access
borrowed probably did not get any help to secure their WIFI.
It is a police responsibility to prosecute whoever goes into my unlocked house without permission — even if he only uses a toilet (thus using some water and electricity) without breaking anything.
It is not a police responsibility to help me lock the house up reliably.
Because if one does not care to vote, there is no harm in their vote getting to somebody, who does care.
I mind this a lot. If then only way a candidate or ballot initiative can win is by someone else deciding from someone who doesn't want to vote for it (not voting means they don't want to vote for it) then it wasn't supposed to win in the first place.
I don't see not voting as equivalent to voting against. Not voting means either "I don't care" or "I protest the lack of choices". If someone is not voting in protest, then they would make a point to destroy their coupon — perhaps even publicly. It is when they don't care, that I want them to be able to sell their vote to the highest bidder or donate it to someone, whom they trust to make a wiser decision.
I think, this is the root of our disagreement...
Anyway, this scheme achieves the goal of vote-secrecy, while introducing the problem of, uhm, vote-secrecy. The ability to transfer (for money or otherwise) one's vote can be abused using intimidation and threats (although "bribery" would be Ok, in my opinion). Even though such intimidation/threats are illegal, they will only become wider spread under the scheme.
Not sure — first we have to decide, whether we want to improve on the secrecy at all.
Well, when I find a $20 laying on the floor, I try to find the owner of it.
And you could do exactly the same with the found coupon.
Just because you cannot think of a way to exploit it right now doesn't mean on won't come around.
Well, I was just shutting down your exploit, not claiming, there can't be others:)
So if I can get half of their coupons and distribute that half to a group of people
"If". So far the only examined way to get them is by finding the lost ones on the streets. This does not happen with money, and it will not happen with coupons. People will lose some of them, but you can't build an election "strategy" counting on that. You may be able to collect some via "garbage diving" — the way identity thieves go for "pre-approved" credit card applications, but people are increasingly aware, they need to shred the important stuff before throwing it out.
And I don't mind these coupons becoming more like money (anonymous, transferable) and less like credit card applications. Because if one does not care to vote, there is no harm in their vote getting to somebody, who does care. As long as all sides can do that, it is fine by me. Witness, for example, that paying someone to promise to vote a certain way is not illegal in many places (the actual result can not be verified). Nor should it be illegal...
The positives of the method, however, is that the maximum number of votes is well known ahead of time (preventing "busing-in" voters and last minute stuffing of the boxes with unaccounted ballots), and that whoever did not get their (coupon) will also know ahead of time (as opposite to being turned back on the voting day).
That said, even the current system is not (and was not) broken to begin with. The wide diversity of voting methods and procedures prevents a determined attack, which would significantly sway the poll in either direction. The sudden importance of the "key states" is, in itself, evidence of how little the particular pairs of candidates differed in recent years...
The threat is not from the "archaic" methods. The threat is from the proposals to "unify" the voting via a "central" mechanism. Once you have that, you only need to bribe/threaten/fool a very limited group of people to sway the vote...
What if I found a couple of them on the floor and used them the way I wanted?
What if you find a $20 bill? Would you rather money lose their anonymity to become recoverable?
One person 12 votes?
You did not earn the found money either. So be it — it may be lesser evil then the manipulations and/or intimidation, that the proposed method will prevent.
In fact, I'm quite certain, it is a lesser evil, because it can not be exploited systematically — just as nobody makes a living looking for dropped currency (collecting cans bottles provides steadier income), nobody could count on finding enough of these tickets to reliably influence an election.
conditional upon working or teaching in the field for at least four years.
And how will he enforce the rule? By making the non-complying graduates pay back — no other way, really, as there is no slavery here.
Which means, people, who find better jobs than teaching, will just pay off (as they do now) with the losers sticking to become teachers. Could find better use for that money...
If they weren't planning on using it for anything, why do they need the information?
They were using — for their own purposes. If you audit a government agency — any government agency — you'll find countless databases and spreadsheets. All used for something. This list may have been discontinued, but countless others remain, and there is nothing automatically wrong about it.
As long as it is not a law, that being on a list automatically means something non-trivial, the protesting is of little sense.
A much scarier example is (or, rather, should be) the "security clearance" — it can be revoked by the government without much recourse, depriving someone of the livelyhood and ruining a career... It is just that people , who are (potentially) affected by that, are reasonable and decent, and don't generate the inflammatory headlines, so this and other real outrages are continuously drowned out by the non-issues like the list in subject.
There is nothing illegal about government operating a list — of anything...
There is hardly even anything particularly wrong about it.
So much noise about a few anti-government activists being listed by the government as such — what's next, every slashdotter's list of foes to become subject of controversy and grounds for evoking gloomy "1989" comparisions?
Yes, some activists could be a threat against both property and persons — the lunatics rallying against WTO and similar forums have demonstrated that much. But even if listing them is a mistake, well, then so be it — not the first time the Executive branch has demonstrated stupidity and ineffectiveness...
The only legitimate reason to protest here is that the list may be (or, indeed, was) used to deny access to essential services (like airports) and otherwise limit essential freedoms over something so unrelated.
But, surprisingly, a very similar set of restrictions applied to people seeking so much as a passport (your State's government may blacklist you) raises nary a whisper of protest...
"This government is evil, so everyone must oppose it, and anyone who doesn't we are going to harass/imprison/kill," well then you aren't really any better than that government.
Of course I am better. Because what I wish to bring them is better — in both mine and your opinion. "Better" is in the eye of the beholder, but, I trust, we both agree, that government with free elections and freedom of the press is better, than China's system — however improved it may have become in recent years.
My point isn't that it is wrong for people to provide them the means to do so.
Uhm, well, put things into perspective. Spamming — any spamming — as "the means" is far less invasive, than an armed conflict, for example...
My point is it IS wrong to try and force it down their throats. If they don't care that's their own business.
Who are "they"? China's population is over a billion. They have not had free elections nor even opinion polls for, uhm, ever. Democracy is not sufficient for decent governance, but it is required — if only to be certain, that the people really do have the government they want. (The sentiment may be too Neo-Conservative for this forum, but it is still observably true...)
Back to the particular example of spamming, well, it may just be, the key — if the entire Internet-using population of the country gets the spam, it stops being a crime to posses the message... People may be able to click on it with impunity. Not sure — but I can't dismiss it off-hand the way you do...
Then, again, even if the majority is "happy" now, it may well be because they just don't know any better. An isolated activist in China may be able to persuade fellow citizens and connect with other activists...
The Chinese people will have to begin any kind of revolution from within, just as the American colonies did.
That's a wrong view. Excusable, but wrong. American colonies faced a fairly benign oppressors (the King and the Parliament), who would shy away from mass-murder — the list of greivances, while exposing the rule as ineffectual, mentions little bodily harm.
Cuban and North Korean governments, on contrast, are determined to apply whatever violence may be necessary to stay in power, which makes them stable in their rut. External agitation may or may not be enough kick them out of that stability, but it is certainly not wrong to try.
And yes, at some point, more tangible help may be needed. It was not just French King's money, mind you, but also French naval force and artillery that helped American colonies win their independence. And that would not be automatically wrong either.
1) It is still unsolicited e-mail. You may think that there's something I really, really want. You may believe to the core of your being it is something I care about. You may still be wrong. There may well be people in those restricted countries that just don't give a shit. Perhaps all of the web they care about is allowed through the filters. Thus they really don't want to hear from you.
Well then, the whole idea of subverting (covertly, overtly, or even militarily) a nasty government (even when its nastyness is not in doubt) is wrong — because there are always people, who agree with and support it and who will be annoyed, inconvenienced, or even killed in the process.
2) More importantly e-mail is not secure. The government will find out, they will monitor the spam, and they will use that to either block your proxies or arrest those that use them or whatever.
I really wish a method to reliably do what you describe existed. It would an end to the spamming problem, at least. Then I'll accept subverting the oppressive governments the old-fashioned way — via radio and TV broadcasts...
Of course I am going to have to pay my bill or else they would shut my service off, give me a bad credit mark, and then go to collections on me. A no-win situation.
Mmm, why can't you pay the (last) bill and cancel the service?
Just conveniently neglect to mention where you're using the HHV and the LHV...
The low is provided by river's water — it is about 25C or 300K. The high is by nuclear reaction, which could be much higher (thousands of degrees) than it is currently, if the engineering problems around it were solved.
But that's irrelevant — if a plant was anywhere near the theoretical limit, the water coming out would not be noticeably hotter than what's coming in... The hotter it is, the further from the theoretical limit (whatever the limit) the plant is operating.
Mi - Wonko and SMNW are both right and know their Carnot cycle, thermodynamics, etc.
They don't, dear. Not any better, than I do, anyway. Although all three of us seem to know it better than yourself. Now, run along... There is always a Republican-bashing thread somewhere, and they always need your input, don't they?..
I think what you're suggesting is an infinite series of sources and sinks, with infinitesimal temperature differentials
Uhm, that was just an example: if there is "waste heat", it should be re-used.
We now seem to have established, that a plant running at or close to the theoretical maximum (Carnot's) will not, in fact, have "waste heat" to speak of.
That the current plants don't are — as I originally stated — an engineering problem.
0C is just over 273K, so for water at boiling point T_c would be 373, but that's a minor point. The link you gave actually specified, for that type of reactor, a T_h of 1000C, not "in the thousands"
Yes. Both are minor points, however, because the core of a reactor can be much hotter than 1000C — it is only our present engineering limitations, that cause us to keep lower.
No. The equation used (for the maximum theoretical efficiency of a Carnot cycle) already assumes infinitely large hot and cold sources, at constant temperatures. A river, since it is as you say eternal and endless, is actually very well modelled by this.
Yes, indeed. Well, back to the T_c/T_h ratio then. The ratio could be 10% and lower — there is nothing "fundamentally" impossible about that. And it means theoretical efficiency of above 90%...
Again, not really. At the maximum theoretical efficiency (reversible Carnot cycle), there is no usable waste heat: the output into the cold sink at any point is negligibly higher than the temperature of the sink.
Exactly! This was my point before I got dragged into discussing that maximum itself. If the "spent" water is hot, the plant must be not be working at the maximum theoretical efficiency (whatever it is). Pushing it closer to that limit is an engineering problem — whether it can be solved by deploying multiple heat engines or somehow else is not relevant.
Every subsequent round is less efficient than the previous round, because the difference between the fluids keeps dropping every round. Every round captures a smaller fraction of a shrinking temperature difference.
Yes, of course. But it does not explain your assertion, that the total efficiency of this converges to Carnot's. In fact, I don't think, Carnot's limit should even be used here because, once again, it applies only to closed systems. Does not it?
Slashdot Mirror
Whatever — the point was, the prescribed "insightful" (if racist) method is, unfortunately, baloney...
I strongly doubt either one of them would invade a neighbor and be foolish enough to pick the neighbor, who happens to be our ally... The world's scumbags have learned that lesson.
Your an OP's continuing insinuations, that we are in a "war for oil" is baloney too. Removing the embargo (which the rest of UN wanted to do, France especially) and buying oil from Saddam Hussein would've been far cheaper and easier, than even the most optimistic version of invasion imagined in 2002.
Well, fortunately, some of this software has already been written just for you and your colleagues. Check out make(1) manual page — look for the -j option...
And no, it is not only for software engineering either. Every time I come back from vacation, I use make to convert my digital pictures from the lossless "raw" format of the camera to the lower resolution JPEG for the web-pages. Having four CPUs makes that process four times faster. Great idea, uhm?..
Your colleagues may be doofusen, but people, who will finally bring us reliable speech-generation and parsing (as an example) will certainly be smart enough to take full advantage of the multiple processors.
Meanwhile, you can schedule a meeting to discuss using OpenMP in your company's software... Compilers (including Visual Studio's and gcc) have been supporting this standard for some years now.
Has not worked in Darfur, for some reason, has it?
You don't, indeed.
I don't think, these guys have ever trapped anyone.
Yes, it is foolish. If the police have a probable cause to believe, something illegal is taking place in that bedroom — be that fellatio, or incest, or rape — they have a duty to break in and stop it.
What you wanted to say, I guess, is that fellatio should not be illegal. Yes, no disagreement here — that any form of sex between consenting adults is illegal anywhere, is highly lamentable. But off-topic...
As long as drug use remains illegal, lamenting a particular detection/enforcement method is foolish.
That said, I doubt installing such automatic sampling units far enough upstream to identify individuals will ever be allowed — not without a judge-signed warrant, because it is, really, a search.
It is a police responsibility to prosecute whoever goes into my unlocked house without permission — even if he only uses a toilet (thus using some water and electricity) without breaking anything.
It is not a police responsibility to help me lock the house up reliably.
I don't see not voting as equivalent to voting against. Not voting means either "I don't care" or "I protest the lack of choices". If someone is not voting in protest, then they would make a point to destroy their coupon — perhaps even publicly. It is when they don't care, that I want them to be able to sell their vote to the highest bidder or donate it to someone, whom they trust to make a wiser decision.
I think, this is the root of our disagreement...
Anyway, this scheme achieves the goal of vote-secrecy, while introducing the problem of, uhm, vote-secrecy. The ability to transfer (for money or otherwise) one's vote can be abused using intimidation and threats (although "bribery" would be Ok, in my opinion). Even though such intimidation/threats are illegal, they will only become wider spread under the scheme.
Not sure — first we have to decide, whether we want to improve on the secrecy at all.
And you could do exactly the same with the found coupon.
Well, I was just shutting down your exploit, not claiming, there can't be others :)
"If". So far the only examined way to get them is by finding the lost ones on the streets. This does not happen with money, and it will not happen with coupons. People will lose some of them, but you can't build an election "strategy" counting on that. You may be able to collect some via "garbage diving" — the way identity thieves go for "pre-approved" credit card applications, but people are increasingly aware, they need to shred the important stuff before throwing it out.
And I don't mind these coupons becoming more like money (anonymous, transferable) and less like credit card applications. Because if one does not care to vote, there is no harm in their vote getting to somebody, who does care. As long as all sides can do that, it is fine by me. Witness, for example, that paying someone to promise to vote a certain way is not illegal in many places (the actual result can not be verified). Nor should it be illegal...
The positives of the method, however, is that the maximum number of votes is well known ahead of time (preventing "busing-in" voters and last minute stuffing of the boxes with unaccounted ballots), and that whoever did not get their (coupon) will also know ahead of time (as opposite to being turned back on the voting day).
That said, even the current system is not (and was not) broken to begin with. The wide diversity of voting methods and procedures prevents a determined attack, which would significantly sway the poll in either direction. The sudden importance of the "key states" is, in itself, evidence of how little the particular pairs of candidates differed in recent years...
The threat is not from the "archaic" methods. The threat is from the proposals to "unify" the voting via a "central" mechanism. Once you have that, you only need to bribe/threaten/fool a very limited group of people to sway the vote...
What if you find a $20 bill? Would you rather money lose their anonymity to become recoverable?
You did not earn the found money either. So be it — it may be lesser evil then the manipulations and/or intimidation, that the proposed method will prevent.
In fact, I'm quite certain, it is a lesser evil, because it can not be exploited systematically — just as nobody makes a living looking for dropped currency (collecting cans bottles provides steadier income), nobody could count on finding enough of these tickets to reliably influence an election.
Right. "National service". Make a GOSPLAN while we are at it...
How one stupid Democratic idea can bring others in tow...
And how will he enforce the rule? By making the non-complying graduates pay back — no other way, really, as there is no slavery here.
Which means, people, who find better jobs than teaching, will just pay off (as they do now) with the losers sticking to become teachers. Could find better use for that money...
They were using — for their own purposes. If you audit a government agency — any government agency — you'll find countless databases and spreadsheets. All used for something. This list may have been discontinued, but countless others remain, and there is nothing automatically wrong about it.
As long as it is not a law, that being on a list automatically means something non-trivial, the protesting is of little sense.
A much scarier example is (or, rather, should be) the "security clearance" — it can be revoked by the government without much recourse, depriving someone of the livelyhood and ruining a career... It is just that people , who are (potentially) affected by that, are reasonable and decent, and don't generate the inflammatory headlines, so this and other real outrages are continuously drowned out by the non-issues like the list in subject.
There is nothing illegal about government operating a list — of anything...
There is hardly even anything particularly wrong about it.
So much noise about a few anti-government activists being listed by the government as such — what's next, every slashdotter's list of foes to become subject of controversy and grounds for evoking gloomy "1989" comparisions?
Yes, some activists could be a threat against both property and persons — the lunatics rallying against WTO and similar forums have demonstrated that much. But even if listing them is a mistake, well, then so be it — not the first time the Executive branch has demonstrated stupidity and ineffectiveness...
The only legitimate reason to protest here is that the list may be (or, indeed, was) used to deny access to essential services (like airports) and otherwise limit essential freedoms over something so unrelated.
But, surprisingly, a very similar set of restrictions applied to people seeking so much as a passport (your State's government may blacklist you) raises nary a whisper of protest...
Of course I am better. Because what I wish to bring them is better — in both mine and your opinion. "Better" is in the eye of the beholder, but, I trust, we both agree, that government with free elections and freedom of the press is better, than China's system — however improved it may have become in recent years.
Uhm, well, put things into perspective. Spamming — any spamming — as "the means" is far less invasive, than an armed conflict, for example...
Who are "they"? China's population is over a billion. They have not had free elections nor even opinion polls for, uhm, ever. Democracy is not sufficient for decent governance, but it is required — if only to be certain, that the people really do have the government they want. (The sentiment may be too Neo-Conservative for this forum, but it is still observably true...)
Back to the particular example of spamming, well, it may just be, the key — if the entire Internet-using population of the country gets the spam, it stops being a crime to posses the message... People may be able to click on it with impunity. Not sure — but I can't dismiss it off-hand the way you do...
Then, again, even if the majority is "happy" now, it may well be because they just don't know any better. An isolated activist in China may be able to persuade fellow citizens and connect with other activists...
That's a wrong view. Excusable, but wrong. American colonies faced a fairly benign oppressors (the King and the Parliament), who would shy away from mass-murder — the list of greivances, while exposing the rule as ineffectual, mentions little bodily harm.
Cuban and North Korean governments, on contrast, are determined to apply whatever violence may be necessary to stay in power, which makes them stable in their rut. External agitation may or may not be enough kick them out of that stability, but it is certainly not wrong to try.
And yes, at some point, more tangible help may be needed. It was not just French King's money, mind you, but also French naval force and artillery that helped American colonies win their independence. And that would not be automatically wrong either.
Well then, the whole idea of subverting (covertly, overtly, or even militarily) a nasty government (even when its nastyness is not in doubt) is wrong — because there are always people, who agree with and support it and who will be annoyed, inconvenienced, or even killed in the process.
I really wish a method to reliably do what you describe existed. It would an end to the spamming problem, at least. Then I'll accept subverting the oppressive governments the old-fashioned way — via radio and TV broadcasts...
The ability to mount and dump filesystems did not amuse you enough? You better not dump it, while it is still mounted, by the way...
What's the DBA doing? He is taking a dump... Of the database...
Mmm, why can't you pay the (last) bill and cancel the service?
The low is provided by river's water — it is about 25C or 300K. The high is by nuclear reaction, which could be much higher (thousands of degrees) than it is currently, if the engineering problems around it were solved.
But that's irrelevant — if a plant was anywhere near the theoretical limit, the water coming out would not be noticeably hotter than what's coming in... The hotter it is, the further from the theoretical limit (whatever the limit) the plant is operating.
They don't, dear. Not any better, than I do, anyway. Although all three of us seem to know it better than yourself. Now, run along... There is always a Republican-bashing thread somewhere, and they always need your input, don't they?..
Uhm, that was just an example: if there is "waste heat", it should be re-used.
We now seem to have established, that a plant running at or close to the theoretical maximum (Carnot's) will not, in fact, have "waste heat" to speak of.
That the current plants don't are — as I originally stated — an engineering problem.
Yes. Both are minor points, however, because the core of a reactor can be much hotter than 1000C — it is only our present engineering limitations, that cause us to keep lower.
Yes, indeed. Well, back to the T_c/T_h ratio then. The ratio could be 10% and lower — there is nothing "fundamentally" impossible about that. And it means theoretical efficiency of above 90%...
Exactly! This was my point before I got dragged into discussing that maximum itself. If the "spent" water is hot, the plant must be not be working at the maximum theoretical efficiency (whatever it is). Pushing it closer to that limit is an engineering problem — whether it can be solved by deploying multiple heat engines or somehow else is not relevant.Yes, of course. But it does not explain your assertion, that the total efficiency of this converges to Carnot's. In fact, I don't think, Carnot's limit should even be used here because, once again, it applies only to closed systems. Does not it?
I am just glad, your name is not even available — because all you know is shit.