You should note that the person in TFA opposing the TSA and calling strongly for its dismantling is a Republican. I don't want to come across as partisan or anything: the inclination towards security theater is pretty much universal to all politicians (well, actually pretty much everyone as a group, even if individually they say they oppose it: group mentality is weird like that), which is why anyone who stands against it should be lauded. Even if he had something to do with starting the theater in the first place. If he ends the TSA, I'll be willing to assume maybe he actually was trying to help in the first place. Until then I would assume otherwise.
Not if we snip its purse strings. Fortunately, Congress (theoretically) controls those completely, and with the original creator of the TSA and pretty much every sane person opposed to it, that should be possible. Since it doesn't provide any (and I do mean any) vital service and can be replaced almost literally overnight, I don't think destroying it will be impossible. A few lobbyists will fight for it tooth and nail (such as those who make the "screening" booths"), but those aren't major players (compared to, say, defense contractors), and the TSA isn't even all that big an employer for a government agency, so I really think it could be shut down with fairly minimal effort.
That works well, until you consider that adding a slider to a phone makes it, what, 50% thicker than it needs to be otherwise? Not to mention additional possibilities for mechanical breakage. I mean, yes, it's nice and it works, but there is a reason most new smartphones don't go that route. Better touchscreen keyboards would be very nice, but I doubt this will help all that much. Simple physical size is the greatest problem, and there isn't much they can do to get rid of that, aside from even bigger and bulkier phones.
Also, a slider on a tablet (where this would also be useful), while an amusing thought, would be somewhat ridiculous. Not that tablets aren't somewhat ridiculous already. But other applications exist for touchscreens besides phones, so anything we can do to improve them is a good thing.
MAC address, most likely. The data is already collected (by StreetView cars), so you won't be giving them anything they don't already know. Presumably, anyways.
I really, really like what Gigabyte does with their BIOSes. They quite often have 2 on each motherboard, only one of which can be written to. In case of corruption of the primary, you can always boot using the secondary. Wouldn't stop this virus, of course, but it does prevent a corruption based one from hosing your system. Editing BIOS settings from Windows can be pretty convenient, especially if you want to overclock, but it isn't really necessary and probably shouldn't be possible.
Interesting as that graph may be (and mildly deceptive as well.. but I'll ignore that), that doesn't change the fact that NASA is spending quite a lot of money. Comparing it to the DoD budget is like saying "well, I'm spending $500,000 dollars on a house, so I should be able to buy 5 iPads, right? It's cheap by comparison, so I'm not wasting my money!" It isn't a valid argument, not by itself.
What you need for an argument is that NASA is far more important than the other sections of the budget. Which is true and false at the same time. Yes, space travel is important. Manned space travel? Well, maybe not so much. Sending robots to Mars? Cool. Helpful? Well, as an aspiring scientist, it is to me, but it isn't to the 300+ million others in the USA. The defense budget, on the other hand, is (ok, yeah, a lot, and I mean A LOT, is a waste, but having a military and a large one at that is kinda important to a nation as large as us, and that isn't cheap.) And a lot of DoD research ends up benefiting people in rather significant ways (the Internet comes to mind). NASA projects do have useful technologies too, but just how many and how worth it they are is a rather large debate in and of itself.
When talking about government spending, a good rule that should hold (but never does) is that the spending should benefit everyone indiscriminately. So, interstate highways, a military, education system, Social Security, et alia. Sending people into space? Sure, it has future benefits for research, but you really need to balance those potential benefits against the immediate ones you can get for the same amount or cheaper. Especially difficult since future benefits are potentially infinite... or potentially nothing. Point is: you need a bit more than just that chart to justify NASA's budget.
Actually, it's worse then that. They then replaced the file (they didn't own) with links to purchase their own works. IMHO (IANAL, though) that is commercial infringement of copyright, and commercial infringement is a criminal offense. So is perjury, for that matter.
Also, Warner Bros should loose their rights under the DMCA to issue takedown requests at all, since they clearly cannot be trusted to issue valid requests. Make them get a court order every single time. Hopefully, this will serve as a nice precedent against automated takedown tools in the future.
Ok, wow, a quick check on Engadget shows it has a 1366 x 768 (best on market ATM I think) rez screen and Tegra 2 processor. Not bad at all. Not the whole story, but still looks like it could be very nice.
Actually, "GridOS" is Android, and will in fact run Android Apps of Amazon Marketplace. As for whether it will be supported, who knows. But, then, most Android branded phones don't get supported well either, so for $299, if it has got decent specs, it might be alright.
The ONLY reason to buy a louis vuitton bag for $500 is to show off to other people (especially possible dating partners) that you have the money to buy one, or you're romantically involved with someone who can afford it.
EA is run and owned by businessmen. Therefore, everything they do is strictly regulated by how some MBA thinks it should work. The result is that many of their games, and it looks like their store as well (I haven't and won't use it, unless something changes) aren't properly designed. The rule for that kind of software is to remind you about it as often as possible and shove as many products to sell in your face as possible (just like most real stores.) In fact, many of their games are becoming digital store fronts made to sell you DLC (as this comic points out).
Steam on the other hand is made and run by gamers. People who love video games, and who make them because that is what they want to do. Gabe Newell himself plays on Steam. I'd be willing to bet most of the people running EA rarely, if ever, actually play video games. The result is that Steam tries to stay out of your way, and works how gamers expect it to work (for the most part). That is why so many gamers love it, even though it has DRM, and why praising it while ridiculing activation-based DRM is not as hypocritical as many people like to say it is.
On the other hand, it is also why Episode 3 has been delayed so much. They have no businessmen pushing them to release on a deadline. This is both good and bad. Mostly good, but gamers will still bitch about the delay.
It looks like an attempt to create a Matrix-style world where you can shape it in real time. I'd worry a bit about it being over-simplified, but it does look (from the video) like you can type actual real code, so a good start.
Reminds me (a bit) of Droidbattles. The problem in coding games is to create some objective for the code. Simply wandering around changing the world is cool, but it would get boring pretty quick, and it won't have many players without some goal behind the coding. So, a war between several sides, or battles between programs, something like that. Otherwise it's just a harder to use sandbox game. Which is cool and all, but not terribly interesting from a gameplay aspect.
I think the point is, you can use WriteCheck to see if it would count as plagiarism, then modify it to the point where it won't.
Of course, how much you need to modify each paper might mean that it would be simpler to just write the thing yourself... but never underestimate how much work a student will go through to avoid doing work.
I think it also has to do with deliberate underestimation of costs and time. If 2 contractors bid on a project, and one gives a $3.5 billion 3 year estimate, while the other gives, say, a $5 billion and 4 year estimate, government managers will go for the first. After 3 years, the first contractor (who bid low) can of course not finish with just $3.5 billion, so he asks for more money and time, which the government is forced to pay unless they want to have wasted money. Had they gone with the realistic contractor in the first place, it could have been made on time and on budget... but then they would have been asked why they spent more when they could have gone with a cheaper contractor. The entire government system rewards this behavior, since most of the people who actually make these kinds of decisions aren't elected and have little to no liability for their bad decisions. And those who are elected, just blame it on the contractors... then do the same thing (sometimes with the same contractor) next time.
The whole point is to maintain an appearance of frugality, without actually doing anything to cut costs (and in most cases increasing them). Without any personal liability, government employees feel no pressure to change. In the private sector, businesses who do this often go out of business (well, unless they receive a nice bailout check), so you don't see it quite as often, but in larger businesses it still happens quite a lot because there aren't any consequences for their actions.
As you said, in wartime this doesn't happen nearly as often, for a whole slew of reasons, not least of which is that when they do, they tend to loose the war.
Yes and no. It sounds like it's the same basic technique, but one order removed. Instead of observing the stellar wobble to find the planet, we observe variations in the stellar wobble, and from these observations we notice that there must be yet another planet that is affecting this planet's effect on the sun. So we are using indirect observations on a planet to create indirect observations of a different planet. Not entirely unprecedented, but difficult. It would be like observing Jupiter to find Saturn, and then noting (from watching Jupiter) that Saturn itself is being affected by another planet. Only several times more difficult than that.
The company doesn't profit, but the people who ran it very well might. A corporation (be design) insulates those who run it from the financial difficulties of the company, meaning any million-dollar bonuses (which may or may not have happened, I have absolutely no idea) that the CEO or lawyers may have received, he/she/they don't have to pay back. Someone profited.
According to TFA they used all its fuel just getting it into a lower orbit. It's a pretty large satellite, so I imagine even that probably took a lot of fuel. Also, it's been dead since 2005, so even the de-orbit took quite a while.
Unlike many technologies, fusion power requires a certain technological threshold to achieve, where various different technologies (possibly in the order of hundreds) finally reach the point where they are advanced enough to achieve breakeven or beyond. We need an electromagnetic containment system, a fuel-production system, monitoring and control, ignition (probably laser), even the materials the reactor is made of need to be of a certain kind. Many of these technologies we do not have, making fusion power more than simply requiring one specific breakthrough like many other technologies do.
It's a bit like how smartphones were developed. We needed not only better touchscreens, but better batteries, smaller computers, faster wireless systems, and more compact storage. Once a certain threshold was achieved, it became possible to build the modern smartphone. Before, things like them were possible, but a certain level of many technologies was required before it could really become practical.
The additional problem with fusion is not only to achieve breakeven, but to do so competitively versus other sources of power (specifically, coal). Coal is pretty cheap in terms of raw cost (the long-term consequences are much more expensive, but the investors can safely ignore most of those.) This is why fusion has been perpetually 50 years in the future: because so many things need to come together to make it practical that one single breakthrough, even if it is massive, simply won't be enough to make it practical. It is a technology we should pursue with tremendous effort, and which should one day pay off in one form or another, but it isn't a magic bullet and won't be for some time.
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If the RIAA had its way, the design would be another $100,000 on top of that. Just to, you know, "pay back the artist..ha ha."
A solar-powered processor running 24/7? I didn't know polar bears and penguins owned computers.
You should note that the person in TFA opposing the TSA and calling strongly for its dismantling is a Republican. I don't want to come across as partisan or anything: the inclination towards security theater is pretty much universal to all politicians (well, actually pretty much everyone as a group, even if individually they say they oppose it: group mentality is weird like that), which is why anyone who stands against it should be lauded. Even if he had something to do with starting the theater in the first place. If he ends the TSA, I'll be willing to assume maybe he actually was trying to help in the first place. Until then I would assume otherwise.
Not if we snip its purse strings. Fortunately, Congress (theoretically) controls those completely, and with the original creator of the TSA and pretty much every sane person opposed to it, that should be possible. Since it doesn't provide any (and I do mean any) vital service and can be replaced almost literally overnight, I don't think destroying it will be impossible. A few lobbyists will fight for it tooth and nail (such as those who make the "screening" booths"), but those aren't major players (compared to, say, defense contractors), and the TSA isn't even all that big an employer for a government agency, so I really think it could be shut down with fairly minimal effort.
Shouldn't that be "CRASH!"?
I'm pretty sure that would destroy McAfee's entire business model.
That works well, until you consider that adding a slider to a phone makes it, what, 50% thicker than it needs to be otherwise? Not to mention additional possibilities for mechanical breakage. I mean, yes, it's nice and it works, but there is a reason most new smartphones don't go that route. Better touchscreen keyboards would be very nice, but I doubt this will help all that much. Simple physical size is the greatest problem, and there isn't much they can do to get rid of that, aside from even bigger and bulkier phones.
Also, a slider on a tablet (where this would also be useful), while an amusing thought, would be somewhat ridiculous. Not that tablets aren't somewhat ridiculous already. But other applications exist for touchscreens besides phones, so anything we can do to improve them is a good thing.
MAC address, most likely. The data is already collected (by StreetView cars), so you won't be giving them anything they don't already know. Presumably, anyways.
I really, really like what Gigabyte does with their BIOSes. They quite often have 2 on each motherboard, only one of which can be written to. In case of corruption of the primary, you can always boot using the secondary. Wouldn't stop this virus, of course, but it does prevent a corruption based one from hosing your system. Editing BIOS settings from Windows can be pretty convenient, especially if you want to overclock, but it isn't really necessary and probably shouldn't be possible.
Interesting as that graph may be (and mildly deceptive as well.. but I'll ignore that), that doesn't change the fact that NASA is spending quite a lot of money. Comparing it to the DoD budget is like saying "well, I'm spending $500,000 dollars on a house, so I should be able to buy 5 iPads, right? It's cheap by comparison, so I'm not wasting my money!" It isn't a valid argument, not by itself.
What you need for an argument is that NASA is far more important than the other sections of the budget. Which is true and false at the same time. Yes, space travel is important. Manned space travel? Well, maybe not so much. Sending robots to Mars? Cool. Helpful? Well, as an aspiring scientist, it is to me, but it isn't to the 300+ million others in the USA. The defense budget, on the other hand, is (ok, yeah, a lot, and I mean A LOT, is a waste, but having a military and a large one at that is kinda important to a nation as large as us, and that isn't cheap.) And a lot of DoD research ends up benefiting people in rather significant ways (the Internet comes to mind). NASA projects do have useful technologies too, but just how many and how worth it they are is a rather large debate in and of itself.
When talking about government spending, a good rule that should hold (but never does) is that the spending should benefit everyone indiscriminately. So, interstate highways, a military, education system, Social Security, et alia. Sending people into space? Sure, it has future benefits for research, but you really need to balance those potential benefits against the immediate ones you can get for the same amount or cheaper. Especially difficult since future benefits are potentially infinite... or potentially nothing. Point is: you need a bit more than just that chart to justify NASA's budget.
Thank you. I think one part of the joke phased right through pretty much everyone, though.
Your right, but irregardless that doesn't affect my point nor does you're criticism phase me.
Actually, it's worse then that. They then replaced the file (they didn't own) with links to purchase their own works. IMHO (IANAL, though) that is commercial infringement of copyright, and commercial infringement is a criminal offense. So is perjury, for that matter.
Also, Warner Bros should loose their rights under the DMCA to issue takedown requests at all, since they clearly cannot be trusted to issue valid requests. Make them get a court order every single time. Hopefully, this will serve as a nice precedent against automated takedown tools in the future.
Ok, wow, a quick check on Engadget shows it has a 1366 x 768 (best on market ATM I think) rez screen and Tegra 2 processor. Not bad at all. Not the whole story, but still looks like it could be very nice.
Actually, "GridOS" is Android, and will in fact run Android Apps of Amazon Marketplace. As for whether it will be supported, who knows. But, then, most Android branded phones don't get supported well either, so for $299, if it has got decent specs, it might be alright.
The ONLY reason to buy a louis vuitton bag for $500 is to show off to other people (especially possible dating partners) that you have the money to buy one, or you're romantically involved with someone who can afford it.
So, the exact same reason people buy iPads, then?
EA is run and owned by businessmen. Therefore, everything they do is strictly regulated by how some MBA thinks it should work. The result is that many of their games, and it looks like their store as well (I haven't and won't use it, unless something changes) aren't properly designed. The rule for that kind of software is to remind you about it as often as possible and shove as many products to sell in your face as possible (just like most real stores.) In fact, many of their games are becoming digital store fronts made to sell you DLC (as this comic points out).
Steam on the other hand is made and run by gamers. People who love video games, and who make them because that is what they want to do. Gabe Newell himself plays on Steam. I'd be willing to bet most of the people running EA rarely, if ever, actually play video games. The result is that Steam tries to stay out of your way, and works how gamers expect it to work (for the most part). That is why so many gamers love it, even though it has DRM, and why praising it while ridiculing activation-based DRM is not as hypocritical as many people like to say it is.
On the other hand, it is also why Episode 3 has been delayed so much. They have no businessmen pushing them to release on a deadline. This is both good and bad. Mostly good, but gamers will still bitch about the delay.
It looks like an attempt to create a Matrix-style world where you can shape it in real time. I'd worry a bit about it being over-simplified, but it does look (from the video) like you can type actual real code, so a good start.
Reminds me (a bit) of Droidbattles. The problem in coding games is to create some objective for the code. Simply wandering around changing the world is cool, but it would get boring pretty quick, and it won't have many players without some goal behind the coding. So, a war between several sides, or battles between programs, something like that. Otherwise it's just a harder to use sandbox game. Which is cool and all, but not terribly interesting from a gameplay aspect.
I think the point is, you can use WriteCheck to see if it would count as plagiarism, then modify it to the point where it won't.
Of course, how much you need to modify each paper might mean that it would be simpler to just write the thing yourself... but never underestimate how much work a student will go through to avoid doing work.
I think it also has to do with deliberate underestimation of costs and time. If 2 contractors bid on a project, and one gives a $3.5 billion 3 year estimate, while the other gives, say, a $5 billion and 4 year estimate, government managers will go for the first. After 3 years, the first contractor (who bid low) can of course not finish with just $3.5 billion, so he asks for more money and time, which the government is forced to pay unless they want to have wasted money. Had they gone with the realistic contractor in the first place, it could have been made on time and on budget... but then they would have been asked why they spent more when they could have gone with a cheaper contractor. The entire government system rewards this behavior, since most of the people who actually make these kinds of decisions aren't elected and have little to no liability for their bad decisions. And those who are elected, just blame it on the contractors... then do the same thing (sometimes with the same contractor) next time.
The whole point is to maintain an appearance of frugality, without actually doing anything to cut costs (and in most cases increasing them). Without any personal liability, government employees feel no pressure to change. In the private sector, businesses who do this often go out of business (well, unless they receive a nice bailout check), so you don't see it quite as often, but in larger businesses it still happens quite a lot because there aren't any consequences for their actions.
As you said, in wartime this doesn't happen nearly as often, for a whole slew of reasons, not least of which is that when they do, they tend to loose the war.
Well, since the hacker only seems to have claimed (according to TFA) that he got access to their webserver, how about both?
Yes and no. It sounds like it's the same basic technique, but one order removed. Instead of observing the stellar wobble to find the planet, we observe variations in the stellar wobble, and from these observations we notice that there must be yet another planet that is affecting this planet's effect on the sun. So we are using indirect observations on a planet to create indirect observations of a different planet. Not entirely unprecedented, but difficult. It would be like observing Jupiter to find Saturn, and then noting (from watching Jupiter) that Saturn itself is being affected by another planet. Only several times more difficult than that.
The company doesn't profit, but the people who ran it very well might. A corporation (be design) insulates those who run it from the financial difficulties of the company, meaning any million-dollar bonuses (which may or may not have happened, I have absolutely no idea) that the CEO or lawyers may have received, he/she/they don't have to pay back. Someone profited.
According to TFA they used all its fuel just getting it into a lower orbit. It's a pretty large satellite, so I imagine even that probably took a lot of fuel. Also, it's been dead since 2005, so even the de-orbit took quite a while.
Unlike many technologies, fusion power requires a certain technological threshold to achieve, where various different technologies (possibly in the order of hundreds) finally reach the point where they are advanced enough to achieve breakeven or beyond. We need an electromagnetic containment system, a fuel-production system, monitoring and control, ignition (probably laser), even the materials the reactor is made of need to be of a certain kind. Many of these technologies we do not have, making fusion power more than simply requiring one specific breakthrough like many other technologies do.
It's a bit like how smartphones were developed. We needed not only better touchscreens, but better batteries, smaller computers, faster wireless systems, and more compact storage. Once a certain threshold was achieved, it became possible to build the modern smartphone. Before, things like them were possible, but a certain level of many technologies was required before it could really become practical.
The additional problem with fusion is not only to achieve breakeven, but to do so competitively versus other sources of power (specifically, coal). Coal is pretty cheap in terms of raw cost (the long-term consequences are much more expensive, but the investors can safely ignore most of those.) This is why fusion has been perpetually 50 years in the future: because so many things need to come together to make it practical that one single breakthrough, even if it is massive, simply won't be enough to make it practical. It is a technology we should pursue with tremendous effort, and which should one day pay off in one form or another, but it isn't a magic bullet and won't be for some time.