Yes it is. But whether you do touch them or not doesn't really matter. If they use force on you they [i]have[/i] to file charge you with resisting arrest otherwise they've admitted to using excessive force (at the very least).
Read "Arrest-Proof Yourself: An Ex-Cop Reveals How Easy It Is for Anyone to Get Arrested, How Even a Single Arrest Could Ruin Your Life, and What to Do If the Police Get in Your Face", by Dale C Carson.
In this case, RMS is wrong. If RMS was truly about "Free" as in "freedom" he would have chosen BSD style license, which has even less restrictions.
Ah!, but freedom isn't about the abolishment of all restrictions. There's also the other side of the coin, aka, "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." If freedom was only about the abolishment of all restrictions, then a statement such as: "We are the most free state in the world, for we permit slavery!" would make perfect sense. You would be hard pressed to find much agreement though; few if any people would agree to that definition of "freedom".
There are always two sides: "Freedom from" as well as "Freedom to".
So what do I use? LaTeX and Emacs. I adopted them both specifically when writing my book because I didn't trust Word. It took a long time to become comfortable with both, but it was one of the best decisions I've ever made. My book is published using TeX and I can use the compositor's files to revise the book. I find this works incredibly well.
I always tell PhD students: you are going to a professional writer so use professional writer's tools: LaTeX and BibTeX. (I *never* recommend Emacs, though I personally love it.)
I can only heartily concur. When I started doing research (way back when, Office 97 was just out), about half of those in my corridor was using Word, and the other half LaTeX/BibTeX. Us LaTeX:ers didn't have any problems, but if I had a penny for every time that one of the Word crowd was shouting "WTF?" I'd at least have had a nice lunch. On at least two occasions Word, for all intents and purposes, crashed and took a whole thesis with it, backups not withstanding. In the end, about half of the word crowd sucked it up and switched to LaTeX, and the others lamented having too much invested in Word. Not one was happy with their original choice.
Now, for most of the work I've used Word for professionally, it worked just fine, as I just wrote short documents that weren't going to be professionally printed and that didn't contain much in the way of citations (or were going to be read for that matter). For everything else however, there's not much to beat LaTeX/BibTeX/Emacs (since the latter has so many nice addons that integrate nicely with LaTeX/BibTeX, such as reftex-mode, flyspell-mode, latex-mode, bibtex-mode, etc).
Word on the other hand is still not at the stage where what you'll see on one printer is what you'll see on another. You have to make sure that you go the pdf-route to be certain. And don't get me started on the handling of citations.
What's worse is that by default it goes through all that every time you type yum search. Not only that but it wants to shows you the full description of every package which means page after page of scrolling.
Well, in fairness, adding a '-C' to the commandline doesn't really qualify as a "backflip" in my book. Also, substituting 'list' for 'search' solves the other problem (you then do 'info' to have a closer look at something found with 'list'). What I like over 'apt' is that it actually lists (with 'list') the repositories it found the package in.
That said, I can't really argue the point that it's on the slow side.
It's pretty naive to think that their IP is so valuable that the source code would disclose it any more than the underlying binary code does.
Well, there's another side that's seldom discussed and that's the issue of patents. As in: everybody's in violation of everybody elses patents in the area. 3D in particular is a nightmare to navigate. Note that we're talking hardware here, where patents are well understood and not really contested to the same degree that they are when we come to software patents.
So, as it's much easier to determine what patents are being violated by studying source than by reverse engineering binaries, the first company to open their drivers would be at a large comparative disadvantage. They would have all the other players at their throats in no time flat, while they themselves wouldn't be able to defend themselves as they'd have to invest; first resources to fight each and every one of their accusors and even worse; second would have to invest more resources reverse engineering compared to just reading source. Reverse engineering is expensive, e.g. otherwise we'd have had open source drivers for most hardware a long time ago.
Add to that the fact that there are plenty of patent trolls in this space also which are immune to even a reverse engineering defence and you have a situation where no player is going to risk uppsetting the careful balance that is the status quo. Doing so would be akin to a commercial suicide charge.
So, it's not so much to protect their IP, it's to protect from giving away the fact that they're using other people's IP. As soon as one defects he's going to have all the others out for him, as he just made it cheaper for the other players to attack him, while they're still making it expensive to counter attack. If that's not a Nash equilibrium I don't know what is.
Free Energy won't solve all our problems....
Where are the minerals going to come from?
What about the materials for plastics, medicines?
What about drinking water?
While I agree that free energy won't solve all our problems, most of which are social and political in nature. When it comes to the problems you posit you're not thinking big enough. With free energy we could: mine the asteroid belt (with free energy we could even mine the moon, any gravity well is inconsequential to someone with free energy). There are more minerals by a couple of magnitudes in the asteroid belt alone than has been mined by mankind throughout all of history. The oil you're refering to when asking for raw materials for plastics, medicine and the like can be gotten straight out of the air. There's plenty of CO2 there from oil already and hydrogen isn't that scarse. Same for drinking water, there's plenty of perfectly good water in the ocean, it just needs to be desalinated, which is a doodle for someone with access to free energy. In that case it's even easier as it doesn't even have to be a very good source of energy at that, plain old heat will do.
With free energy the whole equation of the materials based economy gets turned on its head as it's based on the relative cost of converting one arrangement of matter into another, i.e. aluminium is expensive not because there's a shortage (it's a very common element) but because there's a shortage (relatively speaking) of ore from which it's cheap enough to extract it (using massive quantities of energy). With free energy, you've removed the cost from the equation. Anyone could start producing aluminium anywhere at close to zero cost (relatively speaking, compared to today). That's what free energy would bring you.
Hell, the scenarios that open up are interesting enough that I'd just settle for an overabundance of energy, it doesn't even have to be free, cheap would do it. Economy as we know it would change, almost over night. It's no exageration to say it would be the greatest watershed in human history.
That's just of the top of my head, and I'm not even one of those that think in terms of an energy based economy, that hasn't worked out too well in practice (i.e. theory).
P.S. And no, I don't believe NASA has the secret to free energy, or that there's even necessarily such a secret to be found. Just doing nuclear the way it should be done would for all intents and purposes make energy overabundant enough to bring about many interesting changes.
BTW, for about 15 years there were only about 40 different door keys on all GM cars. We happened to have two at once that had the same door key (although they didn't use the same ignition key, GM used a two key system at the time).
SAAB was even worse, the 900 series is legendary in that respect. And to add insult to injury as keys and locks wore, they would become even more accepting of the wrong key so that you could basically use any key (though you'd stand a better chance with another SAAB key) to open and start any 900. I've done it on numerous occasions, and it even happened accidentally. A friend of mine got into his car on the factory parking lot, tired after the late shift, and it wasn't until he had backed out his car that he noticed the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. "What fuzzy dice?" he tought, "I don't have any fuzzy dice...", then it dawned on him that he was actually driving someone else's car.
You can talk all you want about how a Calendar should be a stand alone program but Outlook as made the intergration of of the two very useful and in some cases mandatory.
I have looked and looked for a good open source alternative and couldn't find one that was currently complete and worked for both Windows and Linux.
Have you looked at Evolution (Novell)? I haven't used it myself in many years, and when I did I was at a place (academia) that didn't use (or had much need for) calendaring, but by the look of things it should be there. If you have any insights as to why it isn't (if indeed it isn't), I'd appreciate to learn about them.
SSHv2 supports tunneling/port forwarding. If there's a machine on the other end that can listen on SSH, set up port forwarding so that you can use, say, localhost:10025 as your SMTP server.
I can only second that. It's the setup I used extensively myself and honestly never had a problem with, even when connecting from e.g. the US back home to Sweden. Now I've given up on that and use Gmail extensively instead. I can't really say that its an interface that's made me want to kill myself. Quite the opposite, works quite well.
Oh well not entirely. Because on the internet BOTH parties pay. Google pays a hosting bill as well. Bit like you would need to pay a subscription fee to receive mail as well pay for postage for sending mail.
Or rather Google would pay, if they were smaller. But since they're so big, they actually peer with the larger providers. Imagine two mail providers if you will (let's call them DPS and UHL), instead of DPS paying an extra fee to UHL for each letter that goes from a DPS customer to a customer on UHL's net (and vice versa), they instead come to the agreement that "Hey, as we're both sending each other a lot of mail, why not just call it even, and not pay each other anything for that."
That's what irks AT&T nee SBC, they actually don't get paid by Google. As Google is so big they can just threaten to take their ball and go home.
One might have the impression that Sweden is a free and modern welfare state, but those days are since long gone. Today's Sweden is the leading oppressor in Europe, with no-tolerance laws on everything from gambling to prostitution and drugs.
Look, things are far from perfect, and Bodström does need a reality check, but things are far from as bad as you make them out to be. In fact Sweden still receives top marks for freedom.
And Guillou and Bratt served two years for not revealing their sources and are long since out of prison. In fact, the Swedish consitution again receives top marks for protection of the press, even though you're not allowed to perform espionage, which one can debate is exactly what they did (even though their actions were IMHO justified).
Also, the data processing directive, while misguided in implementation, is actually there to protect you, from corporations and the like. Really a blessing, but alas heavily disguised.
The real issue is cost / benefit. What are the chances that a nation is going to develop such fanatical fever that it thinks nuking the US and promptly getting glassed over in response is a good idea? The US position on nukes is pretty clear. Nuke us, and we are going to glass you, so it isn't like they are going to be confused by the response.
Exactly, even insane dictators turn sane when they develop nuclear strike capability, or rather if they were that insane they wouldn't manage their job in the first place. One dictator doesn't a dictatorship make. A crash course in nuclear warfare can be found at 101, 102 and 103.
The scary scenario is a terrorist group aquiring a weapon, as there's no one to retaliate against with nuclear weapons.
I suspect that automatic gears save more fuel than they waste. Your estimate surely assumes that people would shift gears properly. This is unlikely to be the case.
That hasn't been the case here (well, up until automatics were improved a couple of years ago). In Sweden (well Scandinavia really) automatics are less very few and far between. In fact, if you opt to pass your drivers exam with an automatic transmission, that then becomes a condition on your driver's license; you're not allowed to drive anything else. Only those that cannot operate an manually shifted car (due to disability etc.) do that, so everybody on the road has learned to drive "stick."
Now, since petrol is several times more expensive here, try $4.30 per US gallon on for size, if automatics were actually saving fuel in real life, then people would be changing real quick. In fact, modern automatics aren't that far behind, but still not quite there yet. I remember an old study by the Swedish police that concluded that a bigger engine and automatic transmission wasn't actually as bad as you'd think (i.e. just by looking at the advertised numbers) due to the factors you mention (an automatic never misses to shift) it still wasn't a net gain.
you'll probably come to agree that the language WAS intended to include searches of whoever happened to be around:
"The search should also include all occupants of the residence as the information developed shows that [Doe] has frequent visitors that purchase methamphetamine."
I read the document you link to and to my mind at least, it leads me to the opposite conclusion. Look at the paragraphs on the bottom of page 3 and top of page 4, where the cover sheet that actually detail the decision first just refer to the affadavit (that contains the language you refer to), but then in the section that says what was the subject of search, specifically only lists John Doe. To me that says that what was granted was intended to be different than what was asked for in the affadavit, not the other way around.
just one part of the problem. Look at the sheer number of disputes now flowing through our judicial system. One of the most insightful studies of the system is aptly tided, The Litigation Explosion. In 1989 alone, more than 18 million civil suits were filed in this country - one for every ten adults - making us the most litigious society in the world. Once in court, many litigants face excessive delays - some caused by overloaded court dockets, others by adversaries seeking tactical advantage. In addition, many of the costs confronting our citizens are enormous, and often wholly unnecessary. And in resolving conflicts, Americans don't have enough access to avenues. other than the formal process of litigation.
Unfortunately it's a quotation of Dan Qualyes but I guess even a blind hen...:-)
The problem arises when Joe Shmo tries to sue Microsoft for stealing his idea and driving his company out of business and gets buried under a 100,000 dollar a day legal team, which he then has to pay for.
Well, coming from one of the (majority of) nations with a loser pays system, that's not usually how it works. In fact it's not even how it usually works in the US.
In fact, that's even how it works in criminal trials here, where the state will reinburse the lawer of your choice according to the same set standards (with the difference that you won't have to pay even if you lose). Since there is no market for criminal defense attorneys paid outside the system that's in fact how "everyone" gets their defense, their access to a hot-shot lawer only limited by the lawyer's willingness to take the case.
Together with the fact that what would be handled as a civil suit in the US, i.e. compensation of victims of crime, is handled by the crimila court as part of the criminal proceedings, the absence of a jury, and no punitive damages (again we make it a criminal case), we end up with a system though strikingly similar to the US one in actual law behaves very differently when it comes to civil cases, as in, we don't have any to speak of.
Yes, that is why they choose to call it a Parley-ment.
America's founding fathers were well aware of such a system. It was the one they were living under until independence was declared (with the caveat that they themselves were not allowed at the parley table); and so they were aware of its shortcomings and sought to obviate them
I wouldn't agree. The issue here isn't parliament or not. The issue here is proportional representation which the US founding fathers most certainly didn't live under as it wasn't used until 1900.
Now, of course there can be problems with PR systems, the so called "Polish richstag" whereby there isn't enough majority to get anything done. Hence the top level limits in most such systems, such as the Swedish whereby you need at least 4% of the total popular vote or at least 12% in any one district.
Even so, it's the current trend, many states are moving towards, or have moved towards, it, we'll see how long you hold out. I certainly find it more transparent, and hence encouraging voter turnout.
Most countries require citizenship. I'd imagine that citizenship would at least have some basic language requirements.
No, not in Sweden. The "liberal party" tried to put it on the agenda a few years back, but got an earfull and had to back pedal.
With government contacts you could do everything in any of the official EU languages, and quite a few others (farsi, arabic etc), that's when it comes to get forms in your language, you won't necessarily have much luck on the phone.
English has a special status though. I'd say that all "ethnic" Swedes (whatever the hell that means) at least understands English, and most of us aren't too shabby at speaking it. The level of English is such that I have friends how haven't managed/bothered to pass the freely available "Swedish for immigrants" course, as they get by perfectly well with English (to the point that people tire of their poor Swedish and give up: "Just say it in English").
In fact, all higher technical education is performed in English (well, not lectured necessarily, but almost all textbooks are in English). Furthermore the official business language of all our major corporations, Ericsson, Volvo etc. is English. It's enough to have one none Swedish speaker on a meeting to switch the entire meeting to English. This has actually started to bother me as not all speak it well enough to be really effective; you typically take 20% or so off the top of the meeting when this happens as people can't express themselves well enough.
So if you're a native speaker of English, then you won't have much trouble. Of course, learning to be polite etc. won't hurt you one bit, but there's no real need. It's been my experience though that the Brits (etc) have it easier than the Americans since the former are more accustomed to hearing English spoken as a second language, and are in general much quicker to pick up the quirks of e.g. "Swenglish" than Americans who are more "tone deaf" in that regard (i.e. you'll see more blank stares from Americans than the Brits/Aussies etc).
Are you trying to say that there are stupid people out there that would rather carry an entire corpse to a authentication terminal,
Not really, that was (fairly obviously I thought) tongue-in-cheek. The more realistic scenario is bringing the live body up to the scanner and coerce said body to provide the credentials. The attacker can then proceed through, leaving a dead or live body behind has he pleases. The guard can protect against the most blantad of such attempts, but check the Red Cell reference for a case where they "kidnapped" the admiral in charge of the Naples naval base in Italy by having an operative sticking a gun in the admiral's side and drive him out of the base in his own car, complete with armed guard. They weren't stopped or questioned.
That's not to say that guards are worthless, they're valuable in detecting anomalies in some scenarios (the nightwatch that caught the Watergate burglars springs to mind, that was a good catch) but above all guards are unreliable as a security measure (or rather, reliability in guards cost money). Technological measures on the other hand are inflexible, once you've found an exploitable flaw, they cannot discover they're being tampered with and adapt. It's a tricky subject.
I suggest people move their fortunes with them wherever they may need it. This is all the fault of a world-ready currency and central banking
It's interesting that you mention banking as they address the issue slightly differently by focusing on risk rather than "security" (or trust). By assuming that measures and systems will fail and preparing to assert and absorb the consequences they're usually in much better shape than most others.
While you are correct, the main purpose of guards next to biometrics devices is to ensure that users can not tamper with the devices.
Yes, that's what I was trying to get to in my last sentence, i.e. that that won't work either. As the guard will have a tendency to become complacent given that the e.g. fingerprint scanner is "foolproof" and not even bother to look at it as the person scans his finger. Compare if you will the absymal successrates of photo id:s when put to the test. The guard there is actually required to look at it as a part of the procedure (i.e. it's not incidental to the procedure as it is here), but anything usually goes. Even cartoon pictures (I know of one instance of Donald Duck) have gotten people into military bases. If I was a betting man, I'd bet that just holding the severed finger between the thumb and forefinger on the hand (in effect presenting a six fingered hand) would let you in more often than not, even with a fairly "vigilant" guard.
A guard beside a finger print scanner will probably prevent someone walking up carrying a dead body, or taking a crowbar to the gate, but beyond that I wouldn't bet my life on it. People without technological support just aren't that good at routine surveillance (at a reasonable cost that is).
But the real security comes with a Marine standing guard. If you can get passed that guy, the biggest problem is already solved.
Then you're in trouble (scroll to near the bottom where they just drive through the main gate). The red team Red Cell were notorious in the eighties for getting into any base they set their sights on, in fact they were so successful that it played no small part in being shut down, they were just too much of an embarassement.
In fact, human security guards are notoriously unreliable, they'll get a few, but also let quite a few through. So I'm not sure that's necessarily the "biggest problem." It's a problem, but a combination of guard relying on technology that he's been assured is "foolproof" when in fact it is not, doesn't make for much in the way of security.
So, what do we do? We lock them up in a sterile environment, where they're told not to question the teacher, and never to talk to the kids next to them. We prevent their natural curiousity, and instead, browbeat them into performing tricks like a circus animal. The apathy of the schoolchild is both detrimental and obvious.
If you haven't heard of it, I think you'd find The Underground History of American Education interesting. John Taylor Gatto puts forward the hypothesis that forced schooling is designed to produce just the kind of mindless robot you speak of (or at least keep the children away from the streets). The few that do manage to rise to the top can be trusted with the keys to the kingdom as they've proven their non disruptive nature before, and hence pose no threat to the powers that be. While that might not be that fresh a point of view, he's done a lot of research into the issue, and presents his case well. I'll be damed if I believe it (at least to the extent he argues) but it's a worthwhile read. And it's avaliable for online reading.
Re:Don't Forget The Cool Factor
on
Graphics in Science
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I've struggled with the same question as a computer consultant -- do images always convey anything useful just because they are based on scientific data? I've created a lot of really cool graphs and 3-D animations, but as far as analyzing the data, most times the computer is a lot better at processing multi-dimensional data than our old Mark-1 eyeball
Well, I've taken a slightly different tack in my research. While the computer might be better at actually analysing the data, visualisation can be a great tool in getting the results of that analysis to the user. In my case I've visualised the states of self learning intrusion detection systems so that the user can 'see for himself' why the system operates the way it does. Making under and overtraining and false alarms visible to an extent they weren't before.
But I agree. Even though I started out (PDF) doing straight up visualisation, I've come to believe that it's the combination of computer analysis and visualisation to better match the capabilities of the human operator and the machine that's the interesting field to explore.
As is your perogative. We'll continue to make billions beating our competition thinking the same thing. You have a point though, Erlang is a weak functional language with great support for concurrency/parallelism (depending on Erlang being functional in the first place). Oh and BTW, Erlang/Haskell etc. are emphatically not "special purpose" less so than C++ I'd say.
Anyway, why stop at assembly. Why don't you build your own processor from gates/FPGA. I mean a general purpose CPU is just some average kludge to make some imagine problem solvable. If you have domin knowledge then you can always do better. Why bother with someone else's "high level" circuit? Build your own I say!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes it is. But whether you do touch them or not doesn't really matter. If they use force on you they [i]have[/i] to file charge you with resisting arrest otherwise they've admitted to using excessive force (at the very least). Read "Arrest-Proof Yourself: An Ex-Cop Reveals How Easy It Is for Anyone to Get Arrested, How Even a Single Arrest Could Ruin Your Life, and What to Do If the Police Get in Your Face", by Dale C Carson.
Ah!, but freedom isn't about the abolishment of all restrictions. There's also the other side of the coin, aka, "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins." If freedom was only about the abolishment of all restrictions, then a statement such as: "We are the most free state in the world, for we permit slavery!" would make perfect sense. You would be hard pressed to find much agreement though; few if any people would agree to that definition of "freedom".
There are always two sides: "Freedom from" as well as "Freedom to".
I can only heartily concur. When I started doing research (way back when, Office 97 was just out), about half of those in my corridor was using Word, and the other half LaTeX/BibTeX. Us LaTeX:ers didn't have any problems, but if I had a penny for every time that one of the Word crowd was shouting "WTF?" I'd at least have had a nice lunch. On at least two occasions Word, for all intents and purposes, crashed and took a whole thesis with it, backups not withstanding. In the end, about half of the word crowd sucked it up and switched to LaTeX, and the others lamented having too much invested in Word. Not one was happy with their original choice.
Now, for most of the work I've used Word for professionally, it worked just fine, as I just wrote short documents that weren't going to be professionally printed and that didn't contain much in the way of citations (or were going to be read for that matter). For everything else however, there's not much to beat LaTeX/BibTeX/Emacs (since the latter has so many nice addons that integrate nicely with LaTeX/BibTeX, such as reftex-mode, flyspell-mode, latex-mode, bibtex-mode, etc).
Word on the other hand is still not at the stage where what you'll see on one printer is what you'll see on another. You have to make sure that you go the pdf-route to be certain. And don't get me started on the handling of citations.
What's wrong with 'yum list'? Not meant as a snoty remark, I'm genuinely interested.
Well, in fairness, adding a '-C' to the commandline doesn't really qualify as a "backflip" in my book. Also, substituting 'list' for 'search' solves the other problem (you then do 'info' to have a closer look at something found with 'list'). What I like over 'apt' is that it actually lists (with 'list') the repositories it found the package in.
That said, I can't really argue the point that it's on the slow side.
Well, there's another side that's seldom discussed and that's the issue of patents. As in: everybody's in violation of everybody elses patents in the area. 3D in particular is a nightmare to navigate. Note that we're talking hardware here, where patents are well understood and not really contested to the same degree that they are when we come to software patents.
So, as it's much easier to determine what patents are being violated by studying source than by reverse engineering binaries, the first company to open their drivers would be at a large comparative disadvantage. They would have all the other players at their throats in no time flat, while they themselves wouldn't be able to defend themselves as they'd have to invest; first resources to fight each and every one of their accusors and even worse; second would have to invest more resources reverse engineering compared to just reading source. Reverse engineering is expensive, e.g. otherwise we'd have had open source drivers for most hardware a long time ago.
Add to that the fact that there are plenty of patent trolls in this space also which are immune to even a reverse engineering defence and you have a situation where no player is going to risk uppsetting the careful balance that is the status quo. Doing so would be akin to a commercial suicide charge.
So, it's not so much to protect their IP, it's to protect from giving away the fact that they're using other people's IP. As soon as one defects he's going to have all the others out for him, as he just made it cheaper for the other players to attack him, while they're still making it expensive to counter attack. If that's not a Nash equilibrium I don't know what is.
While I agree that free energy won't solve all our problems, most of which are social and political in nature. When it comes to the problems you posit you're not thinking big enough. With free energy we could: mine the asteroid belt (with free energy we could even mine the moon, any gravity well is inconsequential to someone with free energy). There are more minerals by a couple of magnitudes in the asteroid belt alone than has been mined by mankind throughout all of history. The oil you're refering to when asking for raw materials for plastics, medicine and the like can be gotten straight out of the air. There's plenty of CO2 there from oil already and hydrogen isn't that scarse. Same for drinking water, there's plenty of perfectly good water in the ocean, it just needs to be desalinated, which is a doodle for someone with access to free energy. In that case it's even easier as it doesn't even have to be a very good source of energy at that, plain old heat will do.
With free energy the whole equation of the materials based economy gets turned on its head as it's based on the relative cost of converting one arrangement of matter into another, i.e. aluminium is expensive not because there's a shortage (it's a very common element) but because there's a shortage (relatively speaking) of ore from which it's cheap enough to extract it (using massive quantities of energy). With free energy, you've removed the cost from the equation. Anyone could start producing aluminium anywhere at close to zero cost (relatively speaking, compared to today). That's what free energy would bring you.
Hell, the scenarios that open up are interesting enough that I'd just settle for an overabundance of energy, it doesn't even have to be free, cheap would do it. Economy as we know it would change, almost over night. It's no exageration to say it would be the greatest watershed in human history.
That's just of the top of my head, and I'm not even one of those that think in terms of an energy based economy, that hasn't worked out too well in practice (i.e. theory).
P.S. And no, I don't believe NASA has the secret to free energy, or that there's even necessarily such a secret to be found. Just doing nuclear the way it should be done would for all intents and purposes make energy overabundant enough to bring about many interesting changes.
SAAB was even worse, the 900 series is legendary in that respect. And to add insult to injury as keys and locks wore, they would become even more accepting of the wrong key so that you could basically use any key (though you'd stand a better chance with another SAAB key) to open and start any 900. I've done it on numerous occasions, and it even happened accidentally. A friend of mine got into his car on the factory parking lot, tired after the late shift, and it wasn't until he had backed out his car that he noticed the fuzzy dice hanging from the rear view mirror. "What fuzzy dice?" he tought, "I don't have any fuzzy dice...", then it dawned on him that he was actually driving someone else's car.
Have you looked at Evolution (Novell)? I haven't used it myself in many years, and when I did I was at a place (academia) that didn't use (or had much need for) calendaring, but by the look of things it should be there. If you have any insights as to why it isn't (if indeed it isn't), I'd appreciate to learn about them.
I can only second that. It's the setup I used extensively myself and honestly never had a problem with, even when connecting from e.g. the US back home to Sweden. Now I've given up on that and use Gmail extensively instead. I can't really say that its an interface that's made me want to kill myself. Quite the opposite, works quite well.
Or rather Google would pay, if they were smaller. But since they're so big, they actually peer with the larger providers. Imagine two mail providers if you will (let's call them DPS and UHL), instead of DPS paying an extra fee to UHL for each letter that goes from a DPS customer to a customer on UHL's net (and vice versa), they instead come to the agreement that "Hey, as we're both sending each other a lot of mail, why not just call it even, and not pay each other anything for that."
That's what irks AT&T nee SBC, they actually don't get paid by Google. As Google is so big they can just threaten to take their ball and go home.
Look, things are far from perfect, and Bodström does need a reality check, but things are far from as bad as you make them out to be. In fact Sweden still receives top marks for freedom.
And Guillou and Bratt served two years for not revealing their sources and are long since out of prison. In fact, the Swedish consitution again receives top marks for protection of the press, even though you're not allowed to perform espionage, which one can debate is exactly what they did (even though their actions were IMHO justified).
Also, the data processing directive, while misguided in implementation, is actually there to protect you, from corporations and the like. Really a blessing, but alas heavily disguised.
Exactly, even insane dictators turn sane when they develop nuclear strike capability, or rather if they were that insane they wouldn't manage their job in the first place. One dictator doesn't a dictatorship make. A crash course in nuclear warfare can be found at 101, 102 and 103.
The scary scenario is a terrorist group aquiring a weapon, as there's no one to retaliate against with nuclear weapons.
That hasn't been the case here (well, up until automatics were improved a couple of years ago). In Sweden (well Scandinavia really) automatics are less very few and far between. In fact, if you opt to pass your drivers exam with an automatic transmission, that then becomes a condition on your driver's license; you're not allowed to drive anything else. Only those that cannot operate an manually shifted car (due to disability etc.) do that, so everybody on the road has learned to drive "stick."
Now, since petrol is several times more expensive here, try $4.30 per US gallon on for size, if automatics were actually saving fuel in real life, then people would be changing real quick. In fact, modern automatics aren't that far behind, but still not quite there yet. I remember an old study by the Swedish police that concluded that a bigger engine and automatic transmission wasn't actually as bad as you'd think (i.e. just by looking at the advertised numbers) due to the factors you mention (an automatic never misses to shift) it still wasn't a net gain.
I read the document you link to and to my mind at least, it leads me to the opposite conclusion. Look at the paragraphs on the bottom of page 3 and top of page 4, where the cover sheet that actually detail the decision first just refer to the affadavit (that contains the language you refer to), but then in the section that says what was the subject of search, specifically only lists John Doe. To me that says that what was granted was intended to be different than what was asked for in the affadavit, not the other way around.
I'm reminded by the quotation
Unfortunately it's a quotation of Dan Qualyes but I guess even a blind hen... :-)
Well, coming from one of the (majority of) nations with a loser pays system, that's not usually how it works. In fact it's not even how it usually works in the US.
In fact, that's even how it works in criminal trials here, where the state will reinburse the lawer of your choice according to the same set standards (with the difference that you won't have to pay even if you lose). Since there is no market for criminal defense attorneys paid outside the system that's in fact how "everyone" gets their defense, their access to a hot-shot lawer only limited by the lawyer's willingness to take the case.
Together with the fact that what would be handled as a civil suit in the US, i.e. compensation of victims of crime, is handled by the crimila court as part of the criminal proceedings, the absence of a jury, and no punitive damages (again we make it a criminal case), we end up with a system though strikingly similar to the US one in actual law behaves very differently when it comes to civil cases, as in, we don't have any to speak of.
I wouldn't agree. The issue here isn't parliament or not. The issue here is proportional representation which the US founding fathers most certainly didn't live under as it wasn't used until 1900.
Now, of course there can be problems with PR systems, the so called "Polish richstag" whereby there isn't enough majority to get anything done. Hence the top level limits in most such systems, such as the Swedish whereby you need at least 4% of the total popular vote or at least 12% in any one district.
Even so, it's the current trend, many states are moving towards, or have moved towards, it, we'll see how long you hold out. I certainly find it more transparent, and hence encouraging voter turnout.
No, not in Sweden. The "liberal party" tried to put it on the agenda a few years back, but got an earfull and had to back pedal.
With government contacts you could do everything in any of the official EU languages, and quite a few others (farsi, arabic etc), that's when it comes to get forms in your language, you won't necessarily have much luck on the phone.
English has a special status though. I'd say that all "ethnic" Swedes (whatever the hell that means) at least understands English, and most of us aren't too shabby at speaking it. The level of English is such that I have friends how haven't managed/bothered to pass the freely available "Swedish for immigrants" course, as they get by perfectly well with English (to the point that people tire of their poor Swedish and give up: "Just say it in English").
In fact, all higher technical education is performed in English (well, not lectured necessarily, but almost all textbooks are in English). Furthermore the official business language of all our major corporations, Ericsson, Volvo etc. is English. It's enough to have one none Swedish speaker on a meeting to switch the entire meeting to English. This has actually started to bother me as not all speak it well enough to be really effective; you typically take 20% or so off the top of the meeting when this happens as people can't express themselves well enough.
So if you're a native speaker of English, then you won't have much trouble. Of course, learning to be polite etc. won't hurt you one bit, but there's no real need. It's been my experience though that the Brits (etc) have it easier than the Americans since the former are more accustomed to hearing English spoken as a second language, and are in general much quicker to pick up the quirks of e.g. "Swenglish" than Americans who are more "tone deaf" in that regard (i.e. you'll see more blank stares from Americans than the Brits/Aussies etc).
Not really, that was (fairly obviously I thought) tongue-in-cheek. The more realistic scenario is bringing the live body up to the scanner and coerce said body to provide the credentials. The attacker can then proceed through, leaving a dead or live body behind has he pleases. The guard can protect against the most blantad of such attempts, but check the Red Cell reference for a case where they "kidnapped" the admiral in charge of the Naples naval base in Italy by having an operative sticking a gun in the admiral's side and drive him out of the base in his own car, complete with armed guard. They weren't stopped or questioned.
That's not to say that guards are worthless, they're valuable in detecting anomalies in some scenarios (the nightwatch that caught the Watergate burglars springs to mind, that was a good catch) but above all guards are unreliable as a security measure (or rather, reliability in guards cost money). Technological measures on the other hand are inflexible, once you've found an exploitable flaw, they cannot discover they're being tampered with and adapt. It's a tricky subject.
It's interesting that you mention banking as they address the issue slightly differently by focusing on risk rather than "security" (or trust). By assuming that measures and systems will fail and preparing to assert and absorb the consequences they're usually in much better shape than most others.
Yes, that's what I was trying to get to in my last sentence, i.e. that that won't work either. As the guard will have a tendency to become complacent given that the e.g. fingerprint scanner is "foolproof" and not even bother to look at it as the person scans his finger. Compare if you will the absymal successrates of photo id:s when put to the test. The guard there is actually required to look at it as a part of the procedure (i.e. it's not incidental to the procedure as it is here), but anything usually goes. Even cartoon pictures (I know of one instance of Donald Duck) have gotten people into military bases. If I was a betting man, I'd bet that just holding the severed finger between the thumb and forefinger on the hand (in effect presenting a six fingered hand) would let you in more often than not, even with a fairly "vigilant" guard.
A guard beside a finger print scanner will probably prevent someone walking up carrying a dead body, or taking a crowbar to the gate, but beyond that I wouldn't bet my life on it. People without technological support just aren't that good at routine surveillance (at a reasonable cost that is).
Then you're in trouble (scroll to near the bottom where they just drive through the main gate). The red team Red Cell were notorious in the eighties for getting into any base they set their sights on, in fact they were so successful that it played no small part in being shut down, they were just too much of an embarassement.
In fact, human security guards are notoriously unreliable, they'll get a few, but also let quite a few through. So I'm not sure that's necessarily the "biggest problem." It's a problem, but a combination of guard relying on technology that he's been assured is "foolproof" when in fact it is not, doesn't make for much in the way of security.
If you haven't heard of it, I think you'd find The Underground History of American Education interesting. John Taylor Gatto puts forward the hypothesis that forced schooling is designed to produce just the kind of mindless robot you speak of (or at least keep the children away from the streets). The few that do manage to rise to the top can be trusted with the keys to the kingdom as they've proven their non disruptive nature before, and hence pose no threat to the powers that be. While that might not be that fresh a point of view, he's done a lot of research into the issue, and presents his case well. I'll be damed if I believe it (at least to the extent he argues) but it's a worthwhile read. And it's avaliable for online reading.
Well, I've taken a slightly different tack in my research. While the computer might be better at actually analysing the data, visualisation can be a great tool in getting the results of that analysis to the user. In my case I've visualised the states of self learning intrusion detection systems so that the user can 'see for himself' why the system operates the way it does. Making under and overtraining and false alarms visible to an extent they weren't before.
But I agree. Even though I started out (PDF) doing straight up visualisation, I've come to believe that it's the combination of computer analysis and visualisation to better match the capabilities of the human operator and the machine that's the interesting field to explore.
As is your perogative. We'll continue to make billions beating our competition thinking the same thing. You have a point though, Erlang is a weak functional language with great support for concurrency/parallelism (depending on Erlang being functional in the first place). Oh and BTW, Erlang/Haskell etc. are emphatically not "special purpose" less so than C++ I'd say.
Anyway, why stop at assembly. Why don't you build your own processor from gates/FPGA. I mean a general purpose CPU is just some average kludge to make some imagine problem solvable. If you have domin knowledge then you can always do better. Why bother with someone else's "high level" circuit? Build your own I say!