"But give me 5 dollar or I tell everyone about this post of yours on slashdot, that is a bit less clear. How can you extort someone with information they published themselves?"
There's a difference between accidental exposure of embarassing material and deliberate publication. This is more like if a love letter from my mistress fell out of my briefcase and you picked it up. Yes I should have been more careful, but you're still committing a crime.
"Go ahead bank, file charges against the hackers"
The bank doesn't decide whether this goes to court or not: a federal prosecutor does. He can charge either AmeriCash or Rex Mundi or both, and if AmeriCash doesn't want to cooperate, he can subpoena their records. He can also threaten AmeriCash with prosecution, then offer to drop the charges if they cooperate with the extortion case, because imprisoning extortionist hackers makes him look better on the evening news.
One crime doesn't excuse another. AmeriCash might receive a substantial fine, but Rex Mundi is looking at serious jail time if they get caught. Since they've done this more than once, they can be prosecuted under US racketeering law, which means decades in federal jail, forfeiture of assets, etc.
So basically, they're coming to the defense of customers being ripped off by this lender, and are they're going to show 'em who's boss by widening the customers' exposure to identity theft? Wow, there's some moral high ground there. The customers must be so grateful.
"Howdy neighbor. I happened to hear you beating your wife last night. You can give me $1000 and I'll go away quietly. Otherwise, I'll give her another beating myself."
You're kidding, right? This is clear-cut extortion. You don't have to threaten to commit a criminal act to be guilty of extortion: all you need to do is threaten to do something unpleasant and demand something in exchange for not doing it. "Give me $5 or I'll punch you" is extortion, but so is "Give me $5 or I'll tell everyone you have a crush on Suzie", even though saying so is not a crime, and even though Suzie may already know.
Dear hardware manufacturers: You are now utterly dependent on your biggest competitor to supply you with the software you need to run your product. If MS thinks you have a better product at a better price than theirs? Oops, sorry, our Windows OEM licensing system is having technical difficulties. Oh, wait, it's working again, but we had to double the price. You can only build what Microsoft allows you to build.
Unless you want to become a de facto division of Microsoft, you have only two choices: write your own operating system, or use one that's free.
Agree. You evacuate a network the same way you evacuate your building's other utilities (water, electrical, furniture) -- you don't. That's what insurance is for.
Your insurance company will pay to replace anything that's damaged by the fire. They probably won't replace anything that's damaged as you evacuate and re-occupy, or for the work needed to put it all back together. Yes, this is a "moral hazard" situation, but that's not your problem.
Lemme just back your statement up 150 years. "If you bring down all barriers to immigration, you're going to be a nation of Italians and Irish in a couple decades.... are you looking forward to a society full of Catholic drunks and criminals?"
The mass migrations of the 19th century proved that immigrants, no matter where they come from, do not spell the doom of American values: in fact, they strengthen them. Your average immigrant to the U.S. knows much more about what democracy and freedom really mean than someone who was born here. As for the Chinese in particular, the reason the US isn't packed to the gills with 'em isn't just that we won't let them in: it's that their own country makes it difficult to get *out*. I think anyone who runs that gauntlet is going to have a very good understanding of the value of liberty.
Have some faith in your fellow immigrants. They value the American ideal, just as you do, and they have no intention of turning the US into the country they left. After all, just like you, they left for a reason.
Give me your rich, your educated, your nation's promise for the future. Send these, for no more than three years, to me provided they have proof of employment and don't intend to have kids.
Screw that. There is only one immigration problem in the U.S.: the fact that we've made it difficult to get in. The anti-immigration argument "We shouldn't give people who break the rules amnesty, or let them cut in line!" assumes that there should be a line, or that immigration should ever be a crime.
The sum total of U.S. immigration policy should be: "Are you wanted for a crime in your home country? No? Welcome to America."
The authors have a book coming out soon: "Science Left Behind: Feel-good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left" http://www.hankcampbell.com/science-left-behind/ It's pretty clear that they're forming their opinions based on politics, rather than based on interacting with students. Nobody who teaches college introductory physics, as I do, could believe that high school science education is in good shape.
And in addition, it's pretty unlikely that the brightest supernova in recorded history would happen to occur in the 5% of the sky that's obscured by the sun's glare.
How far does "known events" take you? Do they mean "events that have historically caused the effect" or "events that physically could cause the effect"? My guess is the former.
There are no historical events that have caused an event like this. None of the supernovae or solar flares we've seen have had such a large effect on 14C production, so whatever this is, it must be bigger than anything we've seen before, or a different category altogether.
As the paper points out, it's unlikely that an astronomical event big enough to cause this would go unnoticed. The visible signs of major supernovae (1054) and massive solar flares (1859) are so spectacular (new stars as bright as the Moon; bright aurorae visible even in the tropics) that anybody with a pen would have made a note of them. But these events were not nearly big enough to cause a spike in 14C. The 775 even must have been much, much bigger and more obvious.
I suspect the answer is simpler: unlike the 1054 supernova, nobody has had any reason to go looking through medieval documentation for crazy natural phenomena in 775. This paper will encourage historians to go scurrying off into their manuscript collections: probably in a few years they'll come back and say "Yeah, the great Persian astronomer Ibn Blahblah wrote about this in the Forgotten Tome of Celestial Mysteries"
Following up on some of your points, the paper is based on observations from just 2 trees, both in Japan.
With corroborating evidence from a different dataset, measured by different authors, based on trees in Europe and North America.
That right there eliminates most (but not all) of the chance of experimental error. If it was just "hey we measured these two Japanese trees", it wouldn't be published in Nature.
It's true that weapon steel contains carbon, but the amount of radiocarbon in it is set when the tree that created the carbon grew. If the blacksmith used charcoal, it'll be a mixture of carbon from the many years the tree was growing before the charcoal maker chopped it down. If he's using mineral coal, there will be no radiocarbon at all, because that carbon came from a tree that grew hundreds of millions of years ago.
Just so you anonymous cowards know, it's not like there's a big concrete wall at the equator that keeps people in the northern hemisphere from seeing the southern sky. If you're at latitude X in one hemisphere, you can see the sky up to latitude 90-X in the opposite hemisphere. Even here in New England (45 north), I can see down to 45 south celestial latitude, which means I can see 85% of the sky. (If that seems wrong to you, read up on solid angle trigonometry.)
Since the Maya were near the equator, they could see pretty much the entire sky (98%).
I agree that the year 775 is kind of a bad time for reliable recorded history, but it's still difficult to explain why nobody saw this.
Well that's like 50:50 odds right there, not "unlikely".
Not 50-50, because Eurasia is kind of big. People were recording history from Spain to Kyoto. There are only a couple of hours between sunset in Europe and sunrise in Japan; at any other time of day, someone in Eurasia would have seen the sun.
And even if they didn't, a massive flare would have created massive auroras visible at night around the world. The great solar storm of 1859 created northern lights down to the Carribean, and that one would have been tiny compared to this.
I had a geologist roommate once... I know just enough about geology to be really dangerous (like programmer with screwdriver)
Yeah, this probably won't work. Magnetostratigraphy typically gives you information about changes taking place over the timescale that rock formations are created -- millions of years. Those seafloor magnetic field stripes are 100,000 to a million years wide.
That said, if you found a place with intense, continuous volcanic activity, like Hawaii or Iceland, you might be able to find a series of lava flows the right age that would preserve the magnetic field data. The problem would be precisely dating the lava flows -- you can't use 14C dating for that.
If it was a supernova, the Arabs and Indians were writing a lot about astronomy at around that time, and were observing from latitude 30 degrees or so. From there, they would be able to see over 90% of the sky, all but the area right at the south celestial pole. So odds are they'd have seen it. Also, the full scientific article points out that if a supernova had occurred close enough to cause the 14C spike, it would still be bright and obvious today. And while medieval Arabs might miss something, our modern full-sky surveys don't.
If it was a solar flare, northern hemisphere vs southern hemisphere doesn't matter: everybody can see the sun. I suppose if it was an event lasting less than a few hours, taking place during the nighttime in Eurasia, nobody would see it but native Americans and Pacific islanders. But that seems unlikely too.
He's not calling Christianity a myth, just the backstory of the Shroud of Turin. And the number of people who believe the Shroud of Turin is actually Christ's burial shroud is quite a bit smaller than the number of Christians in the world.
That said, though, "myth" has two definitions: one is a "false belief", but the other is "a traditional story, especially concerning early history or origins, typically involving the supernatural", with no judgement made on the story's truth or falsehood. The New Testament certainly qualifies as a myth in the second sense.
No, scientists have known for a long time that the 14C creation rate isn't quite constant, and have taken this into account in order to do accurate radiocarbon dating. In fact, it was by looking at this carbon-dating calibration curve that they first noticed something unusual in 775.
Mr. Rightsholder, look. I'm an upper middle class guy in my 30s, I've got disposable income to pay for entertainment. I don't want or need to pirate stuff. But I'll be damned if I'm going to drive my ass out to Best Buy every time I want to watch a movie. So here are your choices:
1) You can pay billions of dollars to buy senators and push through legislation to make it illegal for me to steal your content, which I'm not doing. Then you can spend billions more watching my internet connection to make sure I don't steal your content, which I won't be doing: I'll be playing video games, borrowing content from friends, or watching your competitors' video-on-demand.
2) You can give me a legal way to pay you for your content, and I'll give you a boatload of cash.
Option #1 means you pay. Option #2 means you get paid. How is this a difficult choice?
It's far worse than you realize, Fox: LUA is also heavily used by World of Warcraft! So, the Flame virus that's taking over your computer has ties to demon-worshipping warlocks, pagan druids, and heretical shadow priests.
Slashdot Mirror
This is not a small island. It's roughly the size of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens put together, or the Isle of Wight.
"But give me 5 dollar or I tell everyone about this post of yours on slashdot, that is a bit less clear. How can you extort someone with information they published themselves?"
There's a difference between accidental exposure of embarassing material and deliberate publication. This is more like if a love letter from my mistress fell out of my briefcase and you picked it up. Yes I should have been more careful, but you're still committing a crime.
"Go ahead bank, file charges against the hackers"
The bank doesn't decide whether this goes to court or not: a federal prosecutor does. He can charge either AmeriCash or Rex Mundi or both, and if AmeriCash doesn't want to cooperate, he can subpoena their records. He can also threaten AmeriCash with prosecution, then offer to drop the charges if they cooperate with the extortion case, because imprisoning extortionist hackers makes him look better on the evening news.
"Who is the bigger criminal here?"
One crime doesn't excuse another. AmeriCash might receive a substantial fine, but Rex Mundi is looking at serious jail time if they get caught. Since they've done this more than once, they can be prosecuted under US racketeering law, which means decades in federal jail, forfeiture of assets, etc.
So basically, they're coming to the defense of customers being ripped off by this lender, and are they're going to show 'em who's boss by widening the customers' exposure to identity theft? Wow, there's some moral high ground there. The customers must be so grateful.
"Howdy neighbor. I happened to hear you beating your wife last night. You can give me $1000 and I'll go away quietly. Otherwise, I'll give her another beating myself."
You're kidding, right? This is clear-cut extortion. You don't have to threaten to commit a criminal act to be guilty of extortion: all you need to do is threaten to do something unpleasant and demand something in exchange for not doing it. "Give me $5 or I'll punch you" is extortion, but so is "Give me $5 or I'll tell everyone you have a crush on Suzie", even though saying so is not a crime, and even though Suzie may already know.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion
Dear hardware manufacturers: You are now utterly dependent on your biggest competitor to supply you with the software you need to run your product. If MS thinks you have a better product at a better price than theirs? Oops, sorry, our Windows OEM licensing system is having technical difficulties. Oh, wait, it's working again, but we had to double the price. You can only build what Microsoft allows you to build.
Unless you want to become a de facto division of Microsoft, you have only two choices: write your own operating system, or use one that's free.
Gimme the cassssh!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=nah_3vO0uhM
Agree. You evacuate a network the same way you evacuate your building's other utilities (water, electrical, furniture) -- you don't. That's what insurance is for.
Your insurance company will pay to replace anything that's damaged by the fire. They probably won't replace anything that's damaged as you evacuate and re-occupy, or for the work needed to put it all back together. Yes, this is a "moral hazard" situation, but that's not your problem.
Lemme just back your statement up 150 years. "If you bring down all barriers to immigration, you're going to be a nation of Italians and Irish in a couple decades.... are you looking forward to a society full of Catholic drunks and criminals?"
The mass migrations of the 19th century proved that immigrants, no matter where they come from, do not spell the doom of American values: in fact, they strengthen them. Your average immigrant to the U.S. knows much more about what democracy and freedom really mean than someone who was born here.
As for the Chinese in particular, the reason the US isn't packed to the gills with 'em isn't just that we won't let them in: it's that their own country makes it difficult to get *out*. I think anyone who runs that gauntlet is going to have a very good understanding of the value of liberty.
Have some faith in your fellow immigrants. They value the American ideal, just as you do, and they have no intention of turning the US into the country they left. After all, just like you, they left for a reason.
Give me your rich, your educated,
your nation's promise for the future.
Send these, for no more than three years, to me
provided they have proof of employment and don't intend to have kids.
Screw that. There is only one immigration problem in the U.S.: the fact that we've made it difficult to get in. The anti-immigration argument "We shouldn't give people who break the rules amnesty, or let them cut in line!" assumes that there should be a line, or that immigration should ever be a crime.
The sum total of U.S. immigration policy should be: "Are you wanted for a crime in your home country? No? Welcome to America."
The authors have a book coming out soon: "Science Left Behind: Feel-good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left"
http://www.hankcampbell.com/science-left-behind/
It's pretty clear that they're forming their opinions based on politics, rather than based on interacting with students. Nobody who teaches college introductory physics, as I do, could believe that high school science education is in good shape.
And in addition, it's pretty unlikely that the brightest supernova in recorded history would happen to occur in the 5% of the sky that's obscured by the sun's glare.
Yes you can.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast18may99_1/
Actually GRBs do have a visible component. If one happened close by, we would definitely see it.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/1999/ast18may99_1/
There are no historical events that have caused an event like this. None of the supernovae or solar flares we've seen have had such a large effect on 14C production, so whatever this is, it must be bigger than anything we've seen before, or a different category altogether.
As the paper points out, it's unlikely that an astronomical event big enough to cause this would go unnoticed. The visible signs of major supernovae (1054) and massive solar flares (1859) are so spectacular (new stars as bright as the Moon; bright aurorae visible even in the tropics) that anybody with a pen would have made a note of them. But these events were not nearly big enough to cause a spike in 14C. The 775 even must have been much, much bigger and more obvious.
I suspect the answer is simpler: unlike the 1054 supernova, nobody has had any reason to go looking through medieval documentation for crazy natural phenomena in 775. This paper will encourage historians to go scurrying off into their manuscript collections: probably in a few years they'll come back and say "Yeah, the great Persian astronomer Ibn Blahblah wrote about this in the Forgotten Tome of Celestial Mysteries"
With corroborating evidence from a different dataset, measured by different authors, based on trees in Europe and North America.
That right there eliminates most (but not all) of the chance of experimental error. If it was just "hey we measured these two Japanese trees", it wouldn't be published in Nature.
It's true that weapon steel contains carbon, but the amount of radiocarbon in it is set when the tree that created the carbon grew. If the blacksmith used charcoal, it'll be a mixture of carbon from the many years the tree was growing before the charcoal maker chopped it down. If he's using mineral coal, there will be no radiocarbon at all, because that carbon came from a tree that grew hundreds of millions of years ago.
Just so you anonymous cowards know, it's not like there's a big concrete wall at the equator that keeps people in the northern hemisphere from seeing the southern sky. If you're at latitude X in one hemisphere, you can see the sky up to latitude 90-X in the opposite hemisphere. Even here in New England (45 north), I can see down to 45 south celestial latitude, which means I can see 85% of the sky. (If that seems wrong to you, read up on solid angle trigonometry.)
Since the Maya were near the equator, they could see pretty much the entire sky (98%).
I agree that the year 775 is kind of a bad time for reliable recorded history, but it's still difficult to explain why nobody saw this.
Not 50-50, because Eurasia is kind of big. People were recording history from Spain to Kyoto. There are only a couple of hours between sunset in Europe and sunrise in Japan; at any other time of day, someone in Eurasia would have seen the sun.
And even if they didn't, a massive flare would have created massive auroras visible at night around the world. The great solar storm of 1859 created northern lights down to the Carribean, and that one would have been tiny compared to this.
Yeah, this probably won't work. Magnetostratigraphy typically gives you information about changes taking place over the timescale that rock formations are created -- millions of years. Those seafloor magnetic field stripes are 100,000 to a million years wide.
That said, if you found a place with intense, continuous volcanic activity, like Hawaii or Iceland, you might be able to find a series of lava flows the right age that would preserve the magnetic field data. The problem would be precisely dating the lava flows -- you can't use 14C dating for that.
If it was a supernova, the Arabs and Indians were writing a lot about astronomy at around that time, and were observing from latitude 30 degrees or so. From there, they would be able to see over 90% of the sky, all but the area right at the south celestial pole. So odds are they'd have seen it. Also, the full scientific article points out that if a supernova had occurred close enough to cause the 14C spike, it would still be bright and obvious today. And while medieval Arabs might miss something, our modern full-sky surveys don't.
If it was a solar flare, northern hemisphere vs southern hemisphere doesn't matter: everybody can see the sun. I suppose if it was an event lasting less than a few hours, taking place during the nighttime in Eurasia, nobody would see it but native Americans and Pacific islanders. But that seems unlikely too.
He's not calling Christianity a myth, just the backstory of the Shroud of Turin. And the number of people who believe the Shroud of Turin is actually Christ's burial shroud is quite a bit smaller than the number of Christians in the world.
That said, though, "myth" has two definitions: one is a "false belief", but the other is "a traditional story, especially concerning early history or origins, typically involving the supernatural", with no judgement made on the story's truth or falsehood. The New Testament certainly qualifies as a myth in the second sense.
No, scientists have known for a long time that the 14C creation rate isn't quite constant, and have taken this into account in order to do accurate radiocarbon dating. In fact, it was by looking at this carbon-dating calibration curve that they first noticed something unusual in 775.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11123.html
Mr. Rightsholder, look. I'm an upper middle class guy in my 30s, I've got disposable income to pay for entertainment. I don't want or need to pirate stuff. But I'll be damned if I'm going to drive my ass out to Best Buy every time I want to watch a movie. So here are your choices:
1) You can pay billions of dollars to buy senators and push through legislation to make it illegal for me to steal your content, which I'm not doing. Then you can spend billions more watching my internet connection to make sure I don't steal your content, which I won't be doing: I'll be playing video games, borrowing content from friends, or watching your competitors' video-on-demand.
2) You can give me a legal way to pay you for your content, and I'll give you a boatload of cash.
Option #1 means you pay. Option #2 means you get paid. How is this a difficult choice?
It's far worse than you realize, Fox: LUA is also heavily used by World of Warcraft! So, the Flame virus that's taking over your computer has ties to demon-worshipping warlocks, pagan druids, and heretical shadow priests.