There's no war between the US and Yemen. And fighting organized crime is not a "war".
Terrorists are not "organized crime" in any historical sense. They have a command structure, foot soldiers, heavy weapons, and seek to overthrow the legitimate democratic government. They are more closely related to a foreign militia, waging actual war.
...except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;
This seems to fit all of the exceptions. You can't expect to treat quasi-military fighters the same way you treat shoplifters or even murderers. People engaged in organized combat operations have never been afforded the protections of the criminal law.
The big advantage that Firefox had were the extensions. With new versions coming out so often, and extension writers not keeping up, it becomes "plain firefox" vs "plain Chrome". And at that point, all the benefits of having an installed base go up in smoke.
There is, infact, a simple, straightforward way of getting all the advantages of electronic voting, while preserving the advantages of paper-voting.
Have the voting-machine print your vote as the last step, then deposit this printed vote in a ballot-box the old-fashioned way.
I like this idea, but it raises a problem: what happens when, inevitably, some people say "I voted X but the paper says Y" on election day? Are election staff supposed to disable that machine? Should they ignore the fist 1% or 0.1% of complaints? Do people get to cancel their vote? Which vote will have priority, paper or electronic?
I'm partial to the system used in Canada: fill-in-the-bubble paper ballots (like multiple choice exams). This gives a clear paper trail, and can be counted by machines if you want to go faster.
This causes a variance of anything from magically cured to cancer-like growths.
There is absolutely no danger in using stem cell to treat a fatal disease. So what if your stem cell injection may cause cancer in 2 years if your current disease will cause death in 6 months? Patients who are close to death should be allowed to opt into almost any treatment that has a plausible chance of success (unlike therapies which are proven frauds, like homeopathy, etc.)
And how many gallons of fuel a year are used making all of those 11,000 iPads and shipping them from China?
And how many gallons of fuel are used to transport the trees that become the paper, and the thousands of manuals that have to be made and updated every year?
This looks like a good deal for everyone. No need to be cynical.
People have the right to be anonymous, but organizations have the right to set up clubs where members have to identify themselves by name. If you don't like having to wear a name tag to use this golf course/club/video rental place/service, then don't use them. If you want the right to use any name you want, just use MySpace, or set up AnonymousFaceBook.com.
I'm part of the 50% of people who don't use Facebook. My life is just fine without it.
Gee, the quote in the summary makes it look like he's not in favor of R&D, but right after that he says "But I also know that if you fall behind, it becomes very difficult to catch up."
He also talks about the evolution of R&D "a deep commitment to both R and D means that it's not only important to innovate it's equally important to innovate how you innovate. "
In the end of course, like any long term investment, it take guts to spend on R&D when the returns are far from certain.
be sure that not some Monsanto makes a shitload of money from it by patenting the shit out of my dead body.
It takes work to turn a dead body into a potential cure, and then it takes lots of money to test that cure and make sure it's safe and effective. I expect that any company that undertakes such a project will want to be sure that they can get something back for their investment.
Personally, I'd give my DNA away for free, and hope that I or my descendants can benefit from the new discoveries even if we have to pay for them. It's much better than not having access to these discoveries at all because they don't exist.
So am I the only one still using Firefox 3.6.x ? I have a lot of extensions that I like, and I know they'll break if I update. But at the rate Firefox is updating, the extension writers just can't seem to keep up.
Without extensions, I might as well just switch to Chrome.
A more realistic and achievable project would be terraforming Mars: eg: developing bacteria that can live and Mars and transform it's atmosphere into something better for us (as happened on Earth billions of years ago).
First, the ban is unenforceable. How will you stop people on Facebook from posting exit poll results? Will you make it illegal to let people ask voters on their way out of the polling station how they voted?
Second, I'm sorry, but the reality is that where you live has consequences. You live far from the city? You get cleaner air, but the best hospital emergency room is far away. You live in BC or Quebec? There's a time difference.
Anyways, this whole "OMG! People shouldn't know how others voted until it's all done" is strange to me. Why not have election results released in near real-time, throughout the day? This would be fair to everyone and much more in keeping with the times and current technology.
Ending the ban on publishing early election results is a great idea: why shouldn't people in BC be able to vote with as much information as possible?
But online voting is a terrible idea. The only certain way to get an incorruptible paper trail is to use Canada's current paper ballot system. Electronic voting is open to all kinds of abuse, and you're stuck trusting some tech vendor that his code secure.
If a bank transaction is found to be corrupted, you can reverse it even months later. What do you do if you find out an election result was corrupted two years later?
What countries need fingerprints to enter? I've traveled in Asia and pretty much every shithole
I'm Canadian born and I still had to submit my fingerprints and had a photo taken just to be allowed to transit through NYC (not even exiting the airport) on a flight from Dubai to Canada. This was in 2010.
I politely asked if this was necessary and was told by the border officer (TSA?) that it was mandatory. (This might be a lie, but I had no choice either way)
Because it was announced in a news conference, and even over hyped by NASA itself (and even the President held a news conference, IIRC). It should have been done in a peer reviewed journal.
The more shocking the news, the more sober and careful the announcement has to be, if you want to maintain your credibility later in case it doesn't pan out. And that meteorite, mostly, unfortunately, did not live up to NASA's hype (let alone the media's hype)
This kind of science by press release is not something that should be encouraged.
I respect NASA a lot, but their "we found traces of ancient life in a martian asteroid from Antarctica" a few years back dented their credibility.
If you're just interested in keeping up in general, then you need good news sources. I like The Economist's science section ( http://www.economist.com/science-technology ), and Slashdot. Just by reading those, you'll never miss any major developments.
You can also watch the occasional TED lecture ( http://www.ted.com/index.php ).
Facial recognition is bad when used on CCTV in public places, because it permits the tracking of lawful activity (eg: finding out that person X went to Y political party's meeting).
But in an airport, you're showing ID to travel anyway. Even in the case of a false positive, you should be able to show your ID and clear things up quickly (false positives will be common, so even poorly trained personnel will be used to them).
Now, if you want to argue in favor of the right to anonymous air travel, that's a different story. I think that if security is really what we're after, there could be a system in place to permit anonymous air travel (at least when you're not crossing an international border).
Oh god,you just reminded me of that ST:TNG episode where Lt. Barclay used the holodeck to fantasize about his shipmates. When will we have the first "He took my Facebook pics and created a sex doll out of me" lawsuits?
No need to worry. Obama would surely veto such a law if passed by Congress. He said we didn't need to make a false choice between our security and our liberty.
I don't like the Apple mindset, and I use an Android phone. But I have to admit that the original iPhone was revolutionary. Don't they deserve a patent for that?
Slashdot Mirror
There's no war between the US and Yemen. And fighting organized crime is not a "war".
Terrorists are not "organized crime" in any historical sense. They have a command structure, foot soldiers, heavy weapons, and seek to overthrow the legitimate democratic government. They are more closely related to a foreign militia, waging actual war.
...except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger;
This seems to fit all of the exceptions. You can't expect to treat quasi-military fighters the same way you treat shoplifters or even murderers. People engaged in organized combat operations have never been afforded the protections of the criminal law.
The big advantage that Firefox had were the extensions. With new versions coming out so often, and extension writers not keeping up, it becomes "plain firefox" vs "plain Chrome". And at that point, all the benefits of having an installed base go up in smoke.
The Planetary Society should get kudos for getting the ball rolling early on this: http://www.universetoday.com/44551/planetary-society-to-launch-three-separate-solar-sails/
There is, infact, a simple, straightforward way of getting all the advantages of electronic voting, while preserving the advantages of paper-voting.
Have the voting-machine print your vote as the last step, then deposit this printed vote in a ballot-box the old-fashioned way.
I like this idea, but it raises a problem: what happens when, inevitably, some people say "I voted X but the paper says Y" on election day? Are election staff supposed to disable that machine? Should they ignore the fist 1% or 0.1% of complaints? Do people get to cancel their vote? Which vote will have priority, paper or electronic?
I'm partial to the system used in Canada: fill-in-the-bubble paper ballots (like multiple choice exams). This gives a clear paper trail, and can be counted by machines if you want to go faster.
This causes a variance of anything from magically cured to cancer-like growths.
There is absolutely no danger in using stem cell to treat a fatal disease. So what if your stem cell injection may cause cancer in 2 years if your current disease will cause death in 6 months? Patients who are close to death should be allowed to opt into almost any treatment that has a plausible chance of success (unlike therapies which are proven frauds, like homeopathy, etc.)
And how many gallons of fuel a year are used making all of those 11,000 iPads and shipping them from China?
And how many gallons of fuel are used to transport the trees that become the paper, and the thousands of manuals that have to be made and updated every year?
This looks like a good deal for everyone. No need to be cynical.
People have the right to be anonymous, but organizations have the right to set up clubs where members have to identify themselves by name. If you don't like having to wear a name tag to use this golf course/club/video rental place/service, then don't use them. If you want the right to use any name you want, just use MySpace, or set up AnonymousFaceBook.com.
I'm part of the 50% of people who don't use Facebook. My life is just fine without it.
Gee, the quote in the summary makes it look like he's not in favor of R&D, but right after that he says "But I also know that if you fall behind, it becomes very difficult to catch up."
He also talks about the evolution of R&D "a deep commitment to both R and D means that it's not only important to innovate it's equally important to innovate how you innovate. "
In the end of course, like any long term investment, it take guts to spend on R&D when the returns are far from certain.
be sure that not some Monsanto makes a shitload of money from it by patenting the shit out of my dead body.
It takes work to turn a dead body into a potential cure, and then it takes lots of money to test that cure and make sure it's safe and effective. I expect that any company that undertakes such a project will want to be sure that they can get something back for their investment.
Personally, I'd give my DNA away for free, and hope that I or my descendants can benefit from the new discoveries even if we have to pay for them. It's much better than not having access to these discoveries at all because they don't exist.
So am I the only one still using Firefox 3.6.x ? I have a lot of extensions that I like, and I know they'll break if I update. But at the rate Firefox is updating, the extension writers just can't seem to keep up.
Without extensions, I might as well just switch to Chrome.
A more realistic and achievable project would be terraforming Mars: eg: developing bacteria that can live and Mars and transform it's atmosphere into something better for us (as happened on Earth billions of years ago).
First, the ban is unenforceable. How will you stop people on Facebook from posting exit poll results? Will you make it illegal to let people ask voters on their way out of the polling station how they voted?
Second, I'm sorry, but the reality is that where you live has consequences. You live far from the city? You get cleaner air, but the best hospital emergency room is far away. You live in BC or Quebec? There's a time difference.
Anyways, this whole "OMG! People shouldn't know how others voted until it's all done" is strange to me. Why not have election results released in near real-time, throughout the day? This would be fair to everyone and much more in keeping with the times and current technology.
Ending the ban on publishing early election results is a great idea: why shouldn't people in BC be able to vote with as much information as possible?
But online voting is a terrible idea. The only certain way to get an incorruptible paper trail is to use Canada's current paper ballot system. Electronic voting is open to all kinds of abuse, and you're stuck trusting some tech vendor that his code secure.
If a bank transaction is found to be corrupted, you can reverse it even months later. What do you do if you find out an election result was corrupted two years later?
What countries need fingerprints to enter? I've traveled in Asia and pretty much every shithole
I'm Canadian born and I still had to submit my fingerprints and had a photo taken just to be allowed to transit through NYC (not even exiting the airport) on a flight from Dubai to Canada. This was in 2010.
I politely asked if this was necessary and was told by the border officer (TSA?) that it was mandatory. (This might be a lie, but I had no choice either way)
why?
Because it was announced in a news conference, and even over hyped by NASA itself (and even the President held a news conference, IIRC). It should have been done in a peer reviewed journal.
The more shocking the news, the more sober and careful the announcement has to be, if you want to maintain your credibility later in case it doesn't pan out. And that meteorite, mostly, unfortunately, did not live up to NASA's hype (let alone the media's hype)
This kind of science by press release is not something that should be encouraged. I respect NASA a lot, but their "we found traces of ancient life in a martian asteroid from Antarctica" a few years back dented their credibility.
If you're just interested in keeping up in general, then you need good news sources. I like The Economist's science section ( http://www.economist.com/science-technology ), and Slashdot. Just by reading those, you'll never miss any major developments.
You can also watch the occasional TED lecture ( http://www.ted.com/index.php ).
Facial recognition is bad when used on CCTV in public places, because it permits the tracking of lawful activity (eg: finding out that person X went to Y political party's meeting).
But in an airport, you're showing ID to travel anyway. Even in the case of a false positive, you should be able to show your ID and clear things up quickly (false positives will be common, so even poorly trained personnel will be used to them).
Now, if you want to argue in favor of the right to anonymous air travel, that's a different story. I think that if security is really what we're after, there could be a system in place to permit anonymous air travel (at least when you're not crossing an international border).
Custom sex dolls with more realistic faces?
Oh god,you just reminded me of that ST:TNG episode where Lt. Barclay used the holodeck to fantasize about his shipmates. When will we have the first "He took my Facebook pics and created a sex doll out of me" lawsuits?
No need to worry. Obama would surely veto such a law if passed by Congress. He said we didn't need to make a false choice between our security and our liberty.
I don't like the Apple mindset, and I use an Android phone. But I have to admit that the original iPhone was revolutionary. Don't they deserve a patent for that?