Sorry it took a while to get back, thanks for the long answer, dp. Especially the part about algae: I feel (haven't done numbers) that plant sequestration is part of the long-term "final solution" for a kinder, gentler humanity. The trick will be getting the masses down off the fossil-fuel high they're addicted to.
Anyone worried about carcinogens in the environment, rather than worrying about low-level energy like infrared, should worry more 1. about all of the mutagenic chemicals in our environment; 2. hard radiation from nuclear weapons tests, and nuclear energy mining, operation accidents and oversights (Rocky Flats), and storage failures.
A small amount of a carcinogen can be highly dangerous to a few highly susceptible individuals while the rest of us escape noticeable damage. Amazingly, many of the people who get all excited about very-low-likelihood exposures -- to second-hand smoke, for example -- take much bigger risks regularly when they drive their cars.
If we were more regularly reminded of the sources of most significant risk, we could adjust our lives accordingly. Unfortunately, there are so many political axes being ground around these issues, the statistics are seldom seen. But they are available on the Internet... to help us worry less... and to take whatever measures are within our power concerning the bigger risks... like household accidents and eating the wrong foods.
"Why should people expect to get money from work they had nothing to do with producing?"
I dunno.. ask the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Astors, the Mellons, the Tudors, the Stewarts, et. al. They all benefitted from their parents.
Or ask the same of anyone whose great-great-grandfather built a house of stone that has housed part of the family ever since.
I'm not in favor of perpetual copyright... but this argument hold little water.
"because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind."
I can think of one very good case for ending copyright. The creator of any work did not invent the language, nor the medium, nor the memes and character of their art, nor the advertising and distribution channels, nor the education of their audience. All of these things made the creator's success possible. By contributing their work to the public domain, they make possible the success of new generations of artists... and retailers who will distribut their work... and the education of generations to come.
I suspect the definition of "conservative" has changed since that quotation. Because I'd rather die a fool's death a thousand times than be a greedy, stingy, hard-hearted misanthrope thinking I was better than almost everyone else.
... is the string of digits in question. Now: is that part of pi going to be censored? Are references to the location of the string going to be illegal? Are references to those references be illegal?
Meanwhile, the number can be posted in bathroom stalls, under the frame of 18-wheelers, on little pieces of paper scattered from cars on freeways, and engraved in sulphur atoms on substrates.
All encrypted information has to be decrypted -before- it is used: at which point it's a sitting duck.
Did any of these people ever read Ozymandias when they were in school?
I'm not much of physicist, but that's my reaction too... the more tightly the air the cars pass through are coupled with the generators, the air's inertia will absorb their momentum. And I question the cost-efficiency.
There's plenty of "ambient energy" in the environment to harvest. The power of waves and tides has a lot more energy than the draft from a Taurus.
Reading this reminds me what a tragedy it is that rocketry and space got tangled with nuclear weapons at such an early stage. It cast a sinister hue over the whole space program.
We'd probably be "out there" a whole lot more than we are now except for that piece of bad timing.
White space, fonts and text density are minor concerns to me (intense reader for decades). Computers are fine for relaxed reads, but for long texts, the medium's just wrong: I prefer paper books.
Computers breaks my study habits... intense focus and keeping my circulation moving... and so I find PDF manuals distasteful. Books: Grab, flip open, crawl inside... quickly, wherever. Maybe it's long habit, but considering the e-book flop, I 'spect I'm part of a majority.
School boards are dinosaurs, positions are filled by elections that are about popularity and political persuasion. Most people know little about the qualifications of board candidates. Many board candidates take the positions for prestige or to grind axes. Many know little or nothing about education. Many are rubber stamps for a Superintendent.
The people on this board clearly fit the bill. Most probably know little about Wikipedia except what they've been told, some probably don't have a net connection. What they've been told is has probably been filtered to serve a political agenda rather than an educational one.
Wikipedia, for all of it's problems, is a remarkable resource. It's especially remarkable because it can be edited by anyone, including high school students. If I were still teaching, I'd encourage my students to find and improve the quality of articles they are interested in. They'd learn from that, and instead of having it thrown in the wastebasket, the whole world could benefit from their work. The class could look at each chosen article, criticize it, and possibly work in small groups to tackle problems.
In what sense did part of the crime take place on *American soil*? Since when is there "soil" in cyberspace? Could this confusion be part of what's at stake in this case?
The "current Iran hostage crisis" bears the earmarks of a manufactured product.
And so does the example being made of McKinnon. The US Military certainly has the budget and talent to secure its computers. Most likely they were waiting for McKinnon, or someone like him, like they were waiting for a terrorist attack in 2001. The words applied to Mick Jagger's arrest come to mind.
Urrrgh! You could probably earn a higher Salieri if you weren't such a pun-Mahler. I think you should Offenbach off when you get such ideas if you're Abel. You sure ain't no Saint-Saens as you got such taste in jokes; your mind starting to un-Ravel from de Strauss. Pride goeth before De Falla you know.
"propulsed by nuclear fusion and featuring artificial gravity, oceans and cities, for a travel of seven centuries -- where many generations of men and women would live ? This new speculation uses some actual physics and math..."
New speculation? let me be the 42nd person to severely chastise the editor...
Poor Groff Conklin, spinning in his spindizzy...
That's quite the utilitarian approach to doing science you've got there.
Some people actually do science for the intellectual stimulation, and could care less about engineering outcomes.
If you'd like to puzzle about why some theories get attention, like I do, consider Eddington's "Fundamental Theory"... which didn't, though (I've been told) it "works".
It's a slacker thing. It's because if Richard Dawkins didn't exist, we'd have to invent him.
That and because fundies become incensed at the mere sight of his name. Which is, of course, great fun... and which, in turn, automatically increases Dawkins' exposure, which is the most endearing fundy trait of all.
"Confusing Mac OSX with OSX"... easy enough to do, since that's the first time I've seen that distinction anywhere. In fact I'm not sure (not a developer) that you're not making it up.
Jobs made a big deal out of it running OSX. That creates certain expectations based on what 99.9999% of us think of as OSX. For example: OSX runs 3rd party applications. Otherwise a more honest description would have been "stripped-down OSX", or "core features of OSX".
Slashdot Mirror
DAMN! Do ... you suppose he'd consider pissing on anything else?
Maybe they're a really nice person with way too much bitch-tolerance!
Sorry it took a while to get back, thanks for the long answer, dp. Especially the part about algae: I feel (haven't done numbers) that plant sequestration is part of the long-term "final solution" for a kinder, gentler humanity. The trick will be getting the masses down off the fossil-fuel high they're addicted to.
Maybe their repair people are trained as well as geek patrol?
How much carbon will be removed from the atmosphere by moving to biodiesel?
Anyone worried about carcinogens in the environment, rather than worrying about low-level energy like infrared, should worry more 1. about all of the mutagenic chemicals in our environment; 2. hard radiation from nuclear weapons tests, and nuclear energy mining, operation accidents and oversights (Rocky Flats), and storage failures.
... to help us worry less ... and to take whatever measures are within our power concerning the bigger risks ... like household accidents and eating the wrong foods.
A small amount of a carcinogen can be highly dangerous to a few highly susceptible individuals while the rest of us escape noticeable damage. Amazingly, many of the people who get all excited about very-low-likelihood exposures -- to second-hand smoke, for example -- take much bigger risks regularly when they drive their cars.
If we were more regularly reminded of the sources of most significant risk, we could adjust our lives accordingly. Unfortunately, there are so many political axes being ground around these issues, the statistics are seldom seen. But they are available on the Internet
"Why should people expect to get money from work they had nothing to do with producing?"
.. ask the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Astors, the Mellons, the Tudors, the Stewarts, et. al. They all benefitted from their parents.
... but this argument hold little water.
I dunno
Or ask the same of anyone whose great-great-grandfather built a house of stone that has housed part of the family ever since.
I'm not in favor of perpetual copyright
"because no good case can exist for treating with special disfavor the work of the spirit and the mind."
... and retailers who will distribut their work ... and the education of generations to come.
I can think of one very good case for ending copyright. The creator of any work did not invent the language, nor the medium, nor the memes and character of their art, nor the advertising and distribution channels, nor the education of their audience. All of these things made the creator's success possible. By contributing their work to the public domain, they make possible the success of new generations of artists
Re your quotation:
I suspect the definition of "conservative" has changed since that quotation. Because I'd rather die a fool's death a thousand times than be a greedy, stingy, hard-hearted misanthrope thinking I was better than almost everyone else.
In the defense of "professional astronomers", their job is a lot like taking the inventory of a Wal-Mart by peering through a keyhole.
... is the string of digits in question. Now: is that part of pi going to be censored? Are references to the location of the string going to be illegal? Are references to those references be illegal?
Meanwhile, the number can be posted in bathroom stalls, under the frame of 18-wheelers, on little pieces of paper scattered from cars on freeways, and engraved in sulphur atoms on substrates.
All encrypted information has to be decrypted -before- it is used: at which point it's a sitting duck.
Did any of these people ever read Ozymandias when they were in school?
I'm not much of physicist, but that's my reaction too ... the more tightly the air the cars pass through are coupled with the generators, the air's inertia will absorb their momentum. And I question the cost-efficiency.
There's plenty of "ambient energy" in the environment to harvest. The power of waves and tides has a lot more energy than the draft from a Taurus.
Reading this reminds me what a tragedy it is that rocketry and space got tangled with nuclear weapons at such an early stage. It cast a sinister hue over the whole space program.
We'd probably be "out there" a whole lot more than we are now except for that piece of bad timing.
White space, fonts and text density are minor concerns to me (intense reader for decades). Computers are fine for relaxed reads, but for long texts, the medium's just wrong: I prefer paper books.
... intense focus and keeping my circulation moving ... and so I find PDF manuals distasteful. Books: Grab, flip open, crawl inside... quickly, wherever. Maybe it's long habit, but considering the e-book flop, I 'spect I'm part of a majority.
Computers breaks my study habits
School boards are dinosaurs, positions are filled by elections that are about popularity and political persuasion. Most people know little about the qualifications of board candidates. Many board candidates take the positions for prestige or to grind axes. Many know little or nothing about education. Many are rubber stamps for a Superintendent.
The people on this board clearly fit the bill. Most probably know little about Wikipedia except what they've been told, some probably don't have a net connection. What they've been told is has probably been filtered to serve a political agenda rather than an educational one.
Wikipedia, for all of it's problems, is a remarkable resource. It's especially remarkable because it can be edited by anyone, including high school students. If I were still teaching, I'd encourage my students to find and improve the quality of articles they are interested in. They'd learn from that, and instead of having it thrown in the wastebasket, the whole world could benefit from their work. The class could look at each chosen article, criticize it, and possibly work in small groups to tackle problems.
But no. The dinosaur has spoken.
In what sense did part of the crime take place on *American soil*? Since when is there "soil" in cyberspace? Could this confusion be part of what's at stake in this case?
What record emigration levels? I'd welcome some evidence.
The "current Iran hostage crisis" bears the earmarks of a manufactured product.
And so does the example being made of McKinnon. The US Military certainly has the budget and talent to secure its computers. Most likely they were waiting for McKinnon, or someone like him, like they were waiting for a terrorist attack in 2001. The words applied to Mick Jagger's arrest come to mind.
2012, 2012, 2012 ... 5 years off and already I *hate* the Mayan calendar.
*Now* I can finally understand all those bodies gyrating on the dance floor and at rock concerts ... they're puppets on strings!
Urrrgh! You could probably earn a higher Salieri if you weren't such a pun-Mahler. I think you should Offenbach off when you get such ideas if you're Abel. You sure ain't no Saint-Saens as you got such taste in jokes; your mind starting to un-Ravel from de Strauss. Pride goeth before De Falla you know.
"propulsed by nuclear fusion and featuring artificial gravity, oceans and cities, for a travel of seven centuries -- where many generations of men and women would live ? This new speculation uses some actual physics and math ..."
...
New speculation? let me be the 42nd person to severely chastise the editor
Poor Groff Conklin, spinning in his spindizzy...
That's quite the utilitarian approach to doing science you've got there.
... which didn't, though (I've been told) it "works".
Some people actually do science for the intellectual stimulation, and could care less about engineering outcomes.
If you'd like to puzzle about why some theories get attention, like I do, consider Eddington's "Fundamental Theory"
It's a slacker thing.
... and which, in turn, automatically increases Dawkins' exposure, which is the most endearing fundy trait of all.
It's because if Richard Dawkins didn't exist, we'd have to invent him.
That and because fundies become incensed at the mere sight of his name. Which is, of course, great fun
"Confusing Mac OSX with OSX" ... easy enough to do, since that's the first time I've seen that distinction anywhere. In fact I'm not sure (not a developer) that you're not making it up.
Jobs made a big deal out of it running OSX. That creates certain expectations based on what 99.9999% of us think of as OSX. For example: OSX runs 3rd party applications. Otherwise a more honest description would have been "stripped-down OSX", or "core features of OSX".