To be fair, the article ITSELF is pretty confused.
1st sentence: "Scientists have successfully made fish grow "hands" instead of fins in an experiment that may reveal how animals transitioned to living on land instead of only in water."
Near the end: ""Of course, we haven't been able to grow hands," Casares told New Scientists..."
So I'd submit that the summary being a little confusing isn't really the summarizer's fault this time.
Homosexual acts were in fact illegal at the time. Setting aside the reasonability of the law itself, on a binary "did he or didn't he" basis he WAS guilty of breaking that law.
To suggest that we're overturning some sort of precedent is sort of moot if the law no longer exists, certainly, or am I misunderstanding?
On the other hand, and taking YOUR argument further, if we proceed along this course and (as seems quite likely, for example) marijuana is legalized generally, are we in fact setting a precedent that we have to retroactively pardon the 000's (if not 00's of 000's) of people cited/convicted/imprisoned for marijuana distribution/use? Worse, would such a precedent logically lead into some sort of claim for retroactive damages?
OK in 2012, everyone's cool with Turing being gay today...but honestly, when does this shit stop? Retroactive pardons? Retroactive suspension of the conviction and expunging of the record?
I agree in principle, but what's the Statute of Limitations on historical grievances? Can we just settle on one generation or 50 years, whichever is greater?
Or are we going to go through history and insist on apologies for everything everyone ever did wrong or had wrong done to them? Go back far enough and everyone's a victim of something at SOME point.
Because frankly, the very idea is colossally stupid.
And if you manage high-bandwidth 125-mi range, the next step is obvious - a constellation of LEO (200-500mi altitude) satellites serving as a nearly-untouchable* backbone for the theater-WAN.
*ok not for peer-level opponents, but I'm pretty certain that a peer-level conflict a) will not be based on UAVs for long (my biggest concern about UAV-dependence of our forces), and b) will be over one way or another pretty fast if it's not going to turn SO nasty that any conventional force tech will be nearly irrelevant anyway (the not-so-comforting corollary that would invalidate my concerns above)
I noticed that some commercials may not actually be louder, but are skewed up toward the treble end so they SOUND much louder, particularly in noisy environments.
Well, as much as I probably agree with your general point, the fact is that we've had far more people killed by "Arab Rednecks" over the last 50 years than we have had by meteorites.
Considering that the modern world was pretty much born after 1945, and historical memory is short, our spending priorities make rough sense - not to mention that really it's only been the last 30 years or so that we've had the tech to (maybe) make a difference to an inbound meteorite anyway.
...more and more implicit or explicit class warfare crap in the news. I suspect it's not coincidence.
"...Whilst the tax arrangements are strictly legal..." - THAT is where blame for these corporations ends, period. Do you deliberately pay more for milk than you need to? Do you volunteer some extra taxes because the government is in a bind? Of course not. These corporations do what they do to save money however they can - and as long as they stay within the bounds of the rule/laws, disparaging them is pointing in ENTIRELY the wrong direction.
Look instead at the incompetent government that WROTE THE RULES, morons.
Hey, I "get it". I'd cheerfully decimate the companies that bundled their crap investments, the 'rating' agencies that rated them AAA, and the bond traders that cheerfully swallowed instead of spitting. Then I remember: they were all largely conducting LEGAL business according to the rules and laws set forth by... our incompetent government.
THEY would have suffered the natural result of their actions in the market, but then they were PROTECTED from their results (gotta make sure they get their bonuses, ya?) from...our incompetent government.
Want to know why I'm a libertarian conservative? Because in 45 years I've become convinced that while often it is well-meaning, almost all government is incompetent, and therefore the least possible government is best. Which is better, semi-anarchy where one is free to build ones own future as best one can, or some sort of perpetual serfdom to the landed classes that see us only as rubes to exploit, cows to milk, or votes to pander to?
"Anything that puts power into the hands of the otherwise disenfranchised is probably, on the whole, a good thing."
I've heard that a few places now. Unfortunately the term 'disenfranchised' (as you call them) depends strongly on whether they are 'poor victims of oppression' (if you agree with them) or murderous, brutal, desperate thugs and terrorists (if you don't).
By and large, I'm not terribly fond of weapons in the hands of anyone 'motivated' enough to murder with them, 'correctly' motivated or not.
FWIW, Mohammed Atta would certainly agree with you.
Then again, so does the PRO globalwarming movement. First Katrina was 'proof' of global warming. Then the lack of hurricanes the next year was more proof. Now Sandy (according to the Mayor of New York) is 'proof'.
Not to mention climatological histrionics from the IPCC - the seas are going to wash over our coastal cities, as the glaciers all evaporate - based on raw data that (whups!) somehow accidentally got deleted.
I'm not saying climate change isn't real. I think it logically is. I think humans probably are having lots of different impacts from many things we do.
However, having a narcissist politician as your primary initial spokesman wasn't going to help credibility. Making it a political cause instead of a global one didn't help (omitting India and China from Kyoto immediately flagged this as a partisan issue, not an actual worldwide concern). Finally, having conference after conference all over the world in which - as I've watched - limousine after limousine drives up, depositing some 'expert' flown from halfway around the globe in a junket that alone generates more CO2 than a year's activity of a normal person...well, at the very least it has an odor of hypocrisy.
"First, the concrete here-and-now communication strategy is probably a good one for those whose opinions aren't firmly set â" fully 75 percent of Americans, according to the polling. But second, that tack is unlikely to get anywhere with the 8 percent or so of highly-engaged Americans who reject the idea of a warming planet, and are highly motivated to disregard anything that says otherwise."
Quick quiz, is it just as valid if I say: "First, the concrete here-and-now communication strategy is probably a good one for those whose opinions aren't firmly set â" fully 75 percent of Americans, according to the polling. But second, that tack is unlikely to get anywhere with the segment or so of highly-engaged Americans who accept the idea of a warming planet, and are highly motivated to disregard anything that says otherwise."?
I'm going to guess nobody at Nintendo said "hey, let's arbitrarily restrict content to certain regions at certain times! That's a GREAT idea!"
Perhaps customers' ire should be directed at their regional and national governments whose laws go overboard in 'protecting the childrenz' (in this case, from staying up too late...)?
You may already be aware, but it's worth mentioning to the gallery: Our current planet-finding tech is ONLY successful at finding planets whose ecliptic is in line with us.
Imagine solar systems are disks.
The ONLY ones we have a chance of (currently) detecting are the ones that happen to be 'edge-on' to us.
So, what proportion of systems do we even have a chance of detecting? 1%?
I'm not an astronomer, there's obviously a Milky Way ecliptic, but as I recall our solar system ecliptic is pretty far off this (45 degrees?) so this might suggest there's not much likelihood that the systems across the local galaxy are at all synchronized with the galactic ecliptic, their orientations may be distributed truly randomly...
....the entire mission cost -all the years in total - for Pioneer 10 was approximately $350 million (2001) USD. (It'll reach Aldebaran in about 2 million years.)
That's a little bit under a single week of NASA's budget this year. ($19bill)...or about 4 hours of the Defense budget ($677 bill)...or about an hour of the Social Security+Medicare budgets ($1.92 trillion).
I sincerely hope you weren't "one of the congressmen" Rep Scalise was approached by to remove Mr Khanna.
Copyright reform is a desperately-needed, serious issue. "Shooting the messenger" signals that the GOP is NOT the party interested in fixing the situation. To less charitable eyes, it might even seem that these Representatives are just doing the bidding of their lobbyists from the MPAA and RIAA donors. The *only* silver lining here is that the Democrats are even MORE obviously in the pocket of media producers.
I invite you and your peers to review the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution: (art I, sec 8, clause 8) "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Note, copyright is to PROMOTE THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE - not to promote the ongoing rent-seeking by the umpteenth-descendant of an artist. Further, the clause specifically says "LIMITED TIMES" - constantly revising copyrights out to longer and longer durations is complying with neither the letter nor the intent of the US Constitution.
So, I ask MY PARTY representatives in Congress - what's your point here?
I would love to get a serious, considered response to this email, or would cheerfully like a chance to talk to you on the subject.
"If CoH was bringing in profit, however small it was, then there was no good reason to shut it down"
Then you don't really understand how business works. Here's a hypothetical example:
Let's say you have business X, and it's making $2 million a quarter. You might think "$2 mill/quarter, that's great!" Let's say you even have other businesses in Korea, making only $500,000/quarter. Which do you close, considering you need to try to grow your company?
The point is, you CANNOT answer it with the above data.
If that $2 mill/quarter business has an invested capital of $20 million, and the $500k/quarter business is based on invested capital of $2 million, if you want to grow your business you are FAR better off shutting down the (ostensibly) more 'profitable' one to invest those resources in systems similar to the lower-profit (but better performing) operations.
I'm not saying NCSoft did the right thing here; I'm saying you cannot tell from this information.
I have to spend a number of years in a small area, with pretty much nothing but computers, books and porn for entertainment. As there's no gravity, my physique will go to complete shit. I'll have to live on synthetic, packaged foods laced heavily with preservatives and flavor agents (as tastebuds tend to dull in space).
I won't get to go outside for years, and when I finally do, it will be with heavy protection from the elements. I'll never be exposed to the sun again in my life.
There will be no women, so I'll have to take care of those needs entirely by myself.
Honestly, for most of the mom's-basement-dwellers that volunteered, the only significant difference to their life now will be that they'll suddenly notice atrocious pings to the World of Warcraft servers.
Instead of just a "China laptop" that's a throwaway, I would imagine it would be interesting to have deep-installed monitoring software, stuff that can sit under the OS and record precisely what happens and when, even to the point of taking a surreptitious webcam pic of whoever is messing with your laptop.
Let's remember that this second mission is sort of a freebie.
Certainly they have a COMPLETE second mockup of the rover at NASA for troubleshooting, and *often* they have a third unit because in the development stage building a third is almost cost free (generally multiple copies of each component are made as backups, if they're never used you have essentially a full third device waiting in parts bins).
So aside from the launch costs, the equipment is PROBABLY already paid for.
Further, it's not a bad idea to throw another rover out there if we can, to cover more ground as a prep for a manned mission. If you can have 2 rovers crawling over Mars for 2 years, that doubles your chance they they find something interesting to both be WORTH investigating with a manned mission, and (if you're really lucky) find something that radically increases public (congressional) interest in sending that mission.
(Meanwhile, we're continuing to explore the rest of the system with, for example, a planned mission to Titan's ocean IIRC - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/ )
This is pretty radical and suggests a significant management change of philosophy within Disney.
Historically - with VHS, DVD, rentals, DivX, etc - Disney has *always* been a follower of tech advances, not a leader. In fact, it's appeared that they've been DRAGGED to every new advance, in a seeming effort to prevent their IP from moving to media that would allow piracy.
For them to push out to a streaming company is both a huge win for Netflix and for, I daresay, the viewing public.
There are only 7 billion people on the planet, and the vast majority of them don't dwell on the internet.
For those who do, I'd guess that they watch a youtube video once and voila, they don't need to install flash again*.
*Then again, it does seem like adobe patches air, pdf, and flash 600 times/day (for functionally the same bloody software that's been installed for 10 years...), so maybe the math DOES work out.
Slashdot Mirror
To be fair, the article ITSELF is pretty confused.
1st sentence:
"Scientists have successfully made fish grow "hands" instead of fins in an experiment that may reveal how animals transitioned to living on land instead of only in water."
Near the end:
""Of course, we haven't been able to grow hands," Casares told New Scientists..."
So I'd submit that the summary being a little confusing isn't really the summarizer's fault this time.
But hasn't the law been changed?
Homosexual acts were in fact illegal at the time. Setting aside the reasonability of the law itself, on a binary "did he or didn't he" basis he WAS guilty of breaking that law.
To suggest that we're overturning some sort of precedent is sort of moot if the law no longer exists, certainly, or am I misunderstanding?
On the other hand, and taking YOUR argument further, if we proceed along this course and (as seems quite likely, for example) marijuana is legalized generally, are we in fact setting a precedent that we have to retroactively pardon the 000's (if not 00's of 000's) of people cited/convicted/imprisoned for marijuana distribution/use? Worse, would such a precedent logically lead into some sort of claim for retroactive damages?
OK in 2012, everyone's cool with Turing being gay today...but honestly, when does this shit stop? Retroactive pardons? Retroactive suspension of the conviction and expunging of the record?
I agree in principle, but what's the Statute of Limitations on historical grievances? Can we just settle on one generation or 50 years, whichever is greater?
Or are we going to go through history and insist on apologies for everything everyone ever did wrong or had wrong done to them? Go back far enough and everyone's a victim of something at SOME point.
Because frankly, the very idea is colossally stupid.
And if you manage high-bandwidth 125-mi range, the next step is obvious - a constellation of LEO (200-500mi altitude) satellites serving as a nearly-untouchable* backbone for the theater-WAN.
*ok not for peer-level opponents, but I'm pretty certain that a peer-level conflict
a) will not be based on UAVs for long (my biggest concern about UAV-dependence of our forces), and
b) will be over one way or another pretty fast if it's not going to turn SO nasty that any conventional force tech will be nearly irrelevant anyway (the not-so-comforting corollary that would invalidate my concerns above)
I noticed that some commercials may not actually be louder, but are skewed up toward the treble end so they SOUND much louder, particularly in noisy environments.
Well, as much as I probably agree with your general point, the fact is that we've had far more people killed by "Arab Rednecks" over the last 50 years than we have had by meteorites.
Considering that the modern world was pretty much born after 1945, and historical memory is short, our spending priorities make rough sense - not to mention that really it's only been the last 30 years or so that we've had the tech to (maybe) make a difference to an inbound meteorite anyway.
I heard that both people still playing Diablo 3 are *thrilled*.
...more and more implicit or explicit class warfare crap in the news. I suspect it's not coincidence.
"...Whilst the tax arrangements are strictly legal..." - THAT is where blame for these corporations ends, period. Do you deliberately pay more for milk than you need to? Do you volunteer some extra taxes because the government is in a bind? Of course not. These corporations do what they do to save money however they can - and as long as they stay within the bounds of the rule/laws, disparaging them is pointing in ENTIRELY the wrong direction.
Look instead at the incompetent government that WROTE THE RULES, morons.
Hey, I "get it". I'd cheerfully decimate the companies that bundled their crap investments, the 'rating' agencies that rated them AAA, and the bond traders that cheerfully swallowed instead of spitting. Then I remember: they were all largely conducting LEGAL business according to the rules and laws set forth by ... our incompetent government.
THEY would have suffered the natural result of their actions in the market, but then they were PROTECTED from their results (gotta make sure they get their bonuses, ya?) from...our incompetent government.
Want to know why I'm a libertarian conservative? Because in 45 years I've become convinced that while often it is well-meaning, almost all government is incompetent, and therefore the least possible government is best. Which is better, semi-anarchy where one is free to build ones own future as best one can, or some sort of perpetual serfdom to the landed classes that see us only as rubes to exploit, cows to milk, or votes to pander to?
"Anything that puts power into the hands of the otherwise disenfranchised is probably, on the whole, a good thing."
I've heard that a few places now. Unfortunately the term 'disenfranchised' (as you call them) depends strongly on whether they are 'poor victims of oppression' (if you agree with them) or murderous, brutal, desperate thugs and terrorists (if you don't).
By and large, I'm not terribly fond of weapons in the hands of anyone 'motivated' enough to murder with them, 'correctly' motivated or not.
FWIW, Mohammed Atta would certainly agree with you.
Then again, so does the PRO globalwarming movement.
First Katrina was 'proof' of global warming.
Then the lack of hurricanes the next year was more proof.
Now Sandy (according to the Mayor of New York) is 'proof'.
Not to mention climatological histrionics from the IPCC - the seas are going to wash over our coastal cities, as the glaciers all evaporate - based on raw data that (whups!) somehow accidentally got deleted.
I'm not saying climate change isn't real. I think it logically is. I think humans probably are having lots of different impacts from many things we do.
However, having a narcissist politician as your primary initial spokesman wasn't going to help credibility. Making it a political cause instead of a global one didn't help (omitting India and China from Kyoto immediately flagged this as a partisan issue, not an actual worldwide concern). Finally, having conference after conference all over the world in which - as I've watched - limousine after limousine drives up, depositing some 'expert' flown from halfway around the globe in a junket that alone generates more CO2 than a year's activity of a normal person...well, at the very least it has an odor of hypocrisy.
It's always, nakedly, been about wealth redistribution.
Why do you think India and China - the fastest growing (and now largest) emitters of CO2 - were omitted from the original Kyoto accord?
Oh, there's a pastiche of 'let's save the planet' but then the road to hell has always been paved with what, again?
There's a reason they so bitterly hate the term ecomarxists....it strikes waaay too close.
Go ahead mod me down as 'flamebait' and 'troll'. As the 'climate changers' keep telling everyone, truth isn't based on popular opinion.
"First, the concrete here-and-now communication strategy is probably a good one for those whose opinions aren't firmly set â" fully 75 percent of Americans, according to the polling. But second, that tack is unlikely to get anywhere with the 8 percent or so of highly-engaged Americans who reject the idea of a warming planet, and are highly motivated to disregard anything that says otherwise."
Quick quiz, is it just as valid if I say:
"First, the concrete here-and-now communication strategy is probably a good one for those whose opinions aren't firmly set â" fully 75 percent of Americans, according to the polling. But second, that tack is unlikely to get anywhere with the segment or so of highly-engaged Americans who accept the idea of a warming planet, and are highly motivated to disregard anything that says otherwise."?
I'm going to guess nobody at Nintendo said "hey, let's arbitrarily restrict content to certain regions at certain times! That's a GREAT idea!"
Perhaps customers' ire should be directed at their regional and national governments whose laws go overboard in 'protecting the childrenz' (in this case, from staying up too late...)?
...of course, it becomes a 'privacy concern' to the government, when a government official is the one whose 'privacy' is being exposed.
You know, one of those 'elected public officials' who probably should have the least expectation of privacy from their voting public?
Well they pay lip-service to it, which is still a shitload better than Democrats.
You may already be aware, but it's worth mentioning to the gallery: Our current planet-finding tech is ONLY successful at finding planets whose ecliptic is in line with us.
Imagine solar systems are disks.
The ONLY ones we have a chance of (currently) detecting are the ones that happen to be 'edge-on' to us.
So, what proportion of systems do we even have a chance of detecting? 1%?
I'm not an astronomer, there's obviously a Milky Way ecliptic, but as I recall our solar system ecliptic is pretty far off this (45 degrees?) so this might suggest there's not much likelihood that the systems across the local galaxy are at all synchronized with the galactic ecliptic, their orientations may be distributed truly randomly...
....the entire mission cost -all the years in total - for Pioneer 10 was approximately $350 million (2001) USD. (It'll reach Aldebaran in about 2 million years.)
That's a little bit under a single week of NASA's budget this year. ($19bill) ...or about 4 hours of the Defense budget ($677 bill) ...or about an hour of the Social Security+Medicare budgets ($1.92 trillion).
Dear Mr Kline,
I'm deeply disappointed in my GOP caucus at the dismissal of Derek Khanna for his writing of a paper discussing copyright reform.
(ref http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/12/staffer-axed-by-republican-group-over-retracted-copyright-reform-memo/)
I sincerely hope you weren't "one of the congressmen" Rep Scalise was approached by to remove Mr Khanna.
Copyright reform is a desperately-needed, serious issue. "Shooting the messenger" signals that the GOP is NOT the party interested in fixing the situation. To less charitable eyes, it might even seem that these Representatives are just doing the bidding of their lobbyists from the MPAA and RIAA donors. The *only* silver lining here is that the Democrats are even MORE obviously in the pocket of media producers.
I invite you and your peers to review the Copyright Clause of the US Constitution: (art I, sec 8, clause 8) "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."
Note, copyright is to PROMOTE THE PROGRESS OF SCIENCE - not to promote the ongoing rent-seeking by the umpteenth-descendant of an artist. Further, the clause specifically says "LIMITED TIMES" - constantly revising copyrights out to longer and longer durations is complying with neither the letter nor the intent of the US Constitution.
So, I ask MY PARTY representatives in Congress - what's your point here?
I would love to get a serious, considered response to this email, or would cheerfully like a chance to talk to you on the subject.
"If CoH was bringing in profit, however small it was, then there was no good reason to shut it down"
Then you don't really understand how business works.
Here's a hypothetical example:
Let's say you have business X, and it's making $2 million a quarter. You might think "$2 mill/quarter, that's great!"
Let's say you even have other businesses in Korea, making only $500,000/quarter.
Which do you close, considering you need to try to grow your company?
The point is, you CANNOT answer it with the above data.
If that $2 mill/quarter business has an invested capital of $20 million, and the $500k/quarter business is based on invested capital of $2 million, if you want to grow your business you are FAR better off shutting down the (ostensibly) more 'profitable' one to invest those resources in systems similar to the lower-profit (but better performing) operations.
I'm not saying NCSoft did the right thing here; I'm saying you cannot tell from this information.
Let's see...
I have to spend a number of years in a small area, with pretty much nothing but computers, books and porn for entertainment. As there's no gravity, my physique will go to complete shit. I'll have to live on synthetic, packaged foods laced heavily with preservatives and flavor agents (as tastebuds tend to dull in space).
I won't get to go outside for years, and when I finally do, it will be with heavy protection from the elements. I'll never be exposed to the sun again in my life.
There will be no women, so I'll have to take care of those needs entirely by myself.
Honestly, for most of the mom's-basement-dwellers that volunteered, the only significant difference to their life now will be that they'll suddenly notice atrocious pings to the World of Warcraft servers.
Instead of just a "China laptop" that's a throwaway, I would imagine it would be interesting to have deep-installed monitoring software, stuff that can sit under the OS and record precisely what happens and when, even to the point of taking a surreptitious webcam pic of whoever is messing with your laptop.
A spanner that uses light?
Hm, now if only they can develop a screwdriver using sound. THAT might be useful.
Let's remember that this second mission is sort of a freebie.
Certainly they have a COMPLETE second mockup of the rover at NASA for troubleshooting, and *often* they have a third unit because in the development stage building a third is almost cost free (generally multiple copies of each component are made as backups, if they're never used you have essentially a full third device waiting in parts bins).
So aside from the launch costs, the equipment is PROBABLY already paid for.
Further, it's not a bad idea to throw another rover out there if we can, to cover more ground as a prep for a manned mission. If you can have 2 rovers crawling over Mars for 2 years, that doubles your chance they they find something interesting to both be WORTH investigating with a manned mission, and (if you're really lucky) find something that radically increases public (congressional) interest in sending that mission.
(Meanwhile, we're continuing to explore the rest of the system with, for example, a planned mission to Titan's ocean IIRC - http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/ )
This is pretty radical and suggests a significant management change of philosophy within Disney.
Historically - with VHS, DVD, rentals, DivX, etc - Disney has *always* been a follower of tech advances, not a leader. In fact, it's appeared that they've been DRAGGED to every new advance, in a seeming effort to prevent their IP from moving to media that would allow piracy.
For them to push out to a streaming company is both a huge win for Netflix and for, I daresay, the viewing public.
8 million a day seems a little absurd.
There are only 7 billion people on the planet, and the vast majority of them don't dwell on the internet.
For those who do, I'd guess that they watch a youtube video once and voila, they don't need to install flash again*.
*Then again, it does seem like adobe patches air, pdf, and flash 600 times/day (for functionally the same bloody software that's been installed for 10 years...), so maybe the math DOES work out.