The doors may be closed (actually, they rarely are), but the cameras are still rolling inside.
Senate committee hearings are streamed live on their respective websites, and are archived shortly thereafter. If you need something that predates the Senate's streaming media operation, the Library of Congress or the National Archives can help you. Because there can be over a dozen hearings going on simultaneously (sometimes while the Senate floor is also in session), most of these do not make it to C-SPAN, although they are indeed available to anybody with the patience to watch them.
If something seems egregiously absent, send a FOIA request.
(Disclaimer: I work for the Senate Recording Studio who are responsible for the production of any TV or Radio broadcasts/recordings that take place in the Senate)
Where's this power going to? Is there a transmission grid in place to take it to a populated area that could use an extra 600MW? Orkney's in the middle of ^*$&ing nowhere.
Although it no longer may be the case, China has historically been extremely insular toward the rest of the world. It's only been during the past century that any sort of trade or interaction with the west has occurred at a significant level.
So, yes. There was actually a time when that statement could have been true. (I don't really have a point here -- just that your statement isn't quite as outlandish as you might think it is. If trade with the west breaks down, proves unsustainable for China, or is effected by some major world event, we could very well see the country turn introverted again.
The US, UK, Europe, China, and most of what we consider the "western world" use the same rail gauge (1435mm).
However, the UK's loading gauge (the biggest train that can fit through a tunnel or alongside a platform) is a bit smaller than what is typically seen in Europe or America (although passenger trains in the Eastern US have a similar de-facto limitation imposed upon them by the small Hudson River tunnels)
Similarly, the European rail system contains a mess of differing and incompatible signaling and communication systems. A standard has been set, and the rail systems are gradually moving toward standardization (typically as old equipment is retired, because although standardization and compatibility is a good thing, it's not a particularly high priority at the moment)
Like others here have said, I'm incredibly perplexed that they're planning to use this for freight, unless they're just planning to build a particularly straight and well-graded line on which freight trains can run at their maximum speed throughout the whole length (which is still well under 100mph).
Various HSR experiments have concluded that there's no way to transport freight at high speeds without it being obscenely expensive or dangerous. This reeks of a vanity project -- a direct freight line to Europe seems sensible enough, although this makes absolutely no sense as an application for HSR.
Really? There are legitimate and quantifiable reasons for the government to keep any current military information a closely-guarded secret.
Although this makes transparency extraordinarily difficult, I honestly see no way around it that wouldn't put the lives of soldiers and citizens at considerable risk.
Are you kidding? Merits of the browser aside, Opera has got to have the highest zealot-to-user ratio out of any mainstream web browser.
Seems like I hear about Opera all the time, but don't (actually) know a single person who uses it daily. I've used it a few times, and could never get over the weird UI... (it sure is fast though)
Sure, there's the talk of "transfer" payments from the North to the South, but the bulk of that is in federal entitlements and the Red States do not even want them.
Suspend Medicare and the farm bill (far and away two of the biggest entitlements), and watch what happens.
I can hardly fault the guy for canceling a program that many of NASA's own engineers claim was doomed from the start.
Obama's actually shown a fair amount of backbone for canceling bad or unnecessary projects (the F-22 being the other memorable example). Although I generally support NASA, we have far more pressing matters to address at hand -- I'm also not too upset, given that most of NASA's "hard science" missions are going ahead uninterrupted.
It's nice when a president is able to adapt and adjust to the current reality. If you haven't noticed, quite a bit has changed since 2008.
Remember when you're in LEO, you're halfway to anywhere (I forget who said that quote but from the viewpoint of orbital energistics it is true).
Well, that really depends on where/when you want to go, and whether or not you want to get back. Orbital mechanics is not as simple as escaping earth's gravitational field, and pointing in the right direction.
Mind you, it *is* a big obstacle that we have yet to overcome effectively, although it's hardly the only one. Think of how massive the Saturn V rockets were in comparison to the tiny spacecraft on top. Heck -- the US still hasn't mastered getting humans into LEO cheaply, safely, or effectively, while the Russians seem to have proved that Soyuz capsules are cheap and indestructible (albeit only good for a single use).
It's a particularly bad argument, given that Microsoft deliberately designed Excel to resemble (an "improved") 1-2-3 as closely as possible by making sure that it implemented most of the same functionality. Word featured a "WordPerfect compatibility mode" until fairly recently.
I should point out that unlike some of Microsoft's other quests for market dominance, Office seems to have succeeded by the simple virtue of being legitimately better than its competitors. While Lotus and Corel allowed their products to languish, Microsoft made a product that was initially "similar and just as good," and eventually "similar, but better in a number of respects."
Now, Microsoft themselves have gotten a bit lazy. Although I hold the (unpopular) opinion that Office 2007 offered many needed improvements, Keynote and Numbers simply blow PowerPoint and Excel out of the water in terms of usability.
Pages is a sufficiently different product from Word that any direct comparisons are difficult. Although Word lacks many of Pages' page-layout and design functions, Pages also (perhaps intentionally) lacks Word's myriad of features for managing large documents. As much as I hate its quirks and idiosyncrasies, LaTeX is still hands-down the best tool for writing and managing a large document.
Because the decisions we make about our own health often extend far beyond our own lives, whether we want them to or not.
If you consent to the procedure, you also need to make sure that your spouse and children also consent to giving you the treatment, as they're the ones who are going to be forced to care for you if you become severely ill as a result of the treatment.
The FDA has historically been very good at what they do. I'd be inclined to trust their word.
Sorry, WHAT? How is this any different from the I-9 verification forms that you're required to complete when starting a new job?
I honestly can't see how this is any worse than a Social Security card, passport, credit card, or drivers license. If you don't have one of those things, you're probably living completely off the grid anyway, and won't be affected by this at all.
I'm mindful of civil liberties, but fail to see how this would do anything to change the status quo, apart from cutting down on counterfeiting.
Some engines encounter knocking and even occasional misfires if you put low-octane gas in them -- European cars in particular tend to be engineered for high-octane fuels. Given that this sort of behavior can be hell on your engine and exhaust system, your repair bills may very well be much higher than 5% of your annual fuel costs.
If Microsoft were to buy them we could see a re-run of IBM vs. SCO, with Microsoft playing SCO
Microsoft is trying to clean up its image, and avoid as much attention as possible from the EU and DoJ.
They won't do this. I'd put money on it.
PS. Mono/moonlight is safe. The absolute worst Microsoft could do would be to fork C#, which also hurt its image, attract regulators, and piss off windows-based.NET developers. A legally-binding promise not to sue is a legally-binding promise not...to...sue. Microsoft would have a tough time even finding a judge who would agree to bring such a case to trial.
In fact if Novell fails, along with what recently happened with MySQL and Open Solaris, MS can brag about how proprietary software is the way to go.
And, actually, Microsoft would have a good point. If I were a Sun admin right now, I'd be very, very worried. Similarly, if you built an enterprise around SuSE, you'd likely be facing some pretty steep transition costs to move over to Red Hat.
On the other hand, Windows will be around forever, and Microsoft (god bless/curse them) will ensure that binary compatibility is maintained until the apocalypse, and that upgrades are fairly trivial affairs. When we replace a server, we install whatever version of Windows is current, and forget about it. Win2008's got quite a few new features that make it extremely competitive with Linux and Solaris.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm an open source advocate through and through, and use a Mac at home. However, since working in a mostly-MS-based shop for a few months, I can honestly see the allure of the platform. It's here today, and it'll definitely be here tomorrow. Even if Windows isn't necessarily the best or shiniest option in town, it'll always be sitting comfortably in second place. Corporations like stability, and it's really not hard to see why.
That all said, it's no secret that competition from Linux, Solaris, and OS X have scared the pants off of Microsoft, which definitely shows in Windows 7 and Server 2008R2, both of which were fantastic upon first release (which is something that Microsoft has never done to my memory, and something that even the Linux and Apple folks have a tough time pulling off).
Have any of these claims actually been established and/or verified?
The money laundering thing occurred after a team of undercover reporters virtually coaxed it out of the volunteers (and had tried to do so several dozen times before one fell for the bait), while I've never seen any sort of verification of the other claims from a reputable (ie. non-pundit) source.
To be perfectly honest, it smells a lot like the swiftboat "scandal"
What's the big stink about ACORN anyhow? Are conservatives genuinely outraged that two people in an organization of over 400,000 members know what money laundering is?
As far as I see it, Democrats are peeved that Obama's been spending a lot of time and resources to appease conservatives and moderate democrats (he has), which has come directly at the expense of the democratic "base" (much tougher to prove). I honestly can't think of another president in recent history who has given so many concessions to the minority party and his political opponents.
Appointing a respected statistician like Tufte is a great strategy, and sends the message that "I have nothing to hide." I'd love to see Nate Silver directly involved with the administration as well...
None of those things are provable facts -- just vague, general statements.
How about that steam main that blew up in NYC a few years ago? Poorly-maintained 1920s technology at its finest. Go look up survivorship bias, and think about how it effects your argument. Although I won't deny that we've been increasingly building things on the cheap ever since the 1960s, there was plenty of shitty 1920s architecture that (rightfully) met the wrecking ball over the past 5 decades.
That's how progress works: Save what worked, and improve or eliminate what didn't. Right now, we're cleaning up the mistakes of the 60s-80s, most notably the Corbusier-inspired housing projects, and Moses-inspired urban freeways. However, there are plenty of excellent structures from those eras that are going to be around for a long, long time.
Similarly, today, we have shitty buildings being built on the cheap that will most likely need to be torn down in 40 years, while other buildings are being constructed to last hundreds of years. This isn't exactly a departure from the past way of doing things.
Thankfully, we're also realizing the necessity of preserving and restoring old buildings and infrastructure that were particularly excellent, rather than ripping them down in favor of a modern counterpart. The best examples of this are New York City's two train stations -- the highly-functional and architecturally-magnificent Penn Station was torn town, and replaced by a modern underground station that was neither efficient nor aesthetically-pleasing. On the other hand, Grand Central Terminal was preserved (and carefully improved), and is now an architectural landmark as well as a highly-functional train station.
New York City also has a subway system that was built on the cheap by a series of competing private companies in the 1920s that has been a maintenance nightmare for the city ever since it inherited the system, and has a level of complexity that borders on labyrinthine. On the other hand, the Washington Metro was constructed in the 1970s, cost quite a bit more to build, but also included much nicer stations, a simple map layout, and provisions that have allowed the system to grow. Despite coming from an era noted for architectural mediocrity, Metro's cavernous concrete stations are likely to last a great many years without requiring continuous maintenance.
Slashdot Mirror
The doors may be closed (actually, they rarely are), but the cameras are still rolling inside.
Senate committee hearings are streamed live on their respective websites, and are archived shortly thereafter. If you need something that predates the Senate's streaming media operation, the Library of Congress or the National Archives can help you. Because there can be over a dozen hearings going on simultaneously (sometimes while the Senate floor is also in session), most of these do not make it to C-SPAN, although they are indeed available to anybody with the patience to watch them.
If something seems egregiously absent, send a FOIA request.
(Disclaimer: I work for the Senate Recording Studio who are responsible for the production of any TV or Radio broadcasts/recordings that take place in the Senate)
Where's this power going to? Is there a transmission grid in place to take it to a populated area that could use an extra 600MW? Orkney's in the middle of ^*$&ing nowhere.
It is clear that their presence in China was creating harm.
Is it?
At the very, absolute worst, it was maintaining the status quo, which I believe Google hoped it would be able to gradually change.
Although it no longer may be the case, China has historically been extremely insular toward the rest of the world. It's only been during the past century that any sort of trade or interaction with the west has occurred at a significant level.
So, yes. There was actually a time when that statement could have been true. (I don't really have a point here -- just that your statement isn't quite as outlandish as you might think it is. If trade with the west breaks down, proves unsustainable for China, or is effected by some major world event, we could very well see the country turn introverted again.
The US, UK, Europe, China, and most of what we consider the "western world" use the same rail gauge (1435mm).
However, the UK's loading gauge (the biggest train that can fit through a tunnel or alongside a platform) is a bit smaller than what is typically seen in Europe or America (although passenger trains in the Eastern US have a similar de-facto limitation imposed upon them by the small Hudson River tunnels)
Similarly, the European rail system contains a mess of differing and incompatible signaling and communication systems. A standard has been set, and the rail systems are gradually moving toward standardization (typically as old equipment is retired, because although standardization and compatibility is a good thing, it's not a particularly high priority at the moment)
Like others here have said, I'm incredibly perplexed that they're planning to use this for freight, unless they're just planning to build a particularly straight and well-graded line on which freight trains can run at their maximum speed throughout the whole length (which is still well under 100mph).
Various HSR experiments have concluded that there's no way to transport freight at high speeds without it being obscenely expensive or dangerous. This reeks of a vanity project -- a direct freight line to Europe seems sensible enough, although this makes absolutely no sense as an application for HSR.
Really? There are legitimate and quantifiable reasons for the government to keep any current military information a closely-guarded secret.
Although this makes transparency extraordinarily difficult, I honestly see no way around it that wouldn't put the lives of soldiers and citizens at considerable risk.
Are you kidding? Merits of the browser aside, Opera has got to have the highest zealot-to-user ratio out of any mainstream web browser.
Seems like I hear about Opera all the time, but don't (actually) know a single person who uses it daily. I've used it a few times, and could never get over the weird UI... (it sure is fast though)
Although I still prefer Firefox, IE8 is actually more or less tolerable.
Sure, there's the talk of "transfer" payments from the North to the South, but the bulk of that is in federal entitlements and the Red States do not even want them.
Suspend Medicare and the farm bill (far and away two of the biggest entitlements), and watch what happens.
I can hardly fault the guy for canceling a program that many of NASA's own engineers claim was doomed from the start.
Obama's actually shown a fair amount of backbone for canceling bad or unnecessary projects (the F-22 being the other memorable example). Although I generally support NASA, we have far more pressing matters to address at hand -- I'm also not too upset, given that most of NASA's "hard science" missions are going ahead uninterrupted.
It's nice when a president is able to adapt and adjust to the current reality. If you haven't noticed, quite a bit has changed since 2008.
Remember when you're in LEO, you're halfway to anywhere (I forget who said that quote but from the viewpoint of orbital energistics it is true).
Well, that really depends on where/when you want to go, and whether or not you want to get back. Orbital mechanics is not as simple as escaping earth's gravitational field, and pointing in the right direction.
Mind you, it *is* a big obstacle that we have yet to overcome effectively, although it's hardly the only one. Think of how massive the Saturn V rockets were in comparison to the tiny spacecraft on top. Heck -- the US still hasn't mastered getting humans into LEO cheaply, safely, or effectively, while the Russians seem to have proved that Soyuz capsules are cheap and indestructible (albeit only good for a single use).
It's a particularly bad argument, given that Microsoft deliberately designed Excel to resemble (an "improved") 1-2-3 as closely as possible by making sure that it implemented most of the same functionality. Word featured a "WordPerfect compatibility mode" until fairly recently.
I should point out that unlike some of Microsoft's other quests for market dominance, Office seems to have succeeded by the simple virtue of being legitimately better than its competitors. While Lotus and Corel allowed their products to languish, Microsoft made a product that was initially "similar and just as good," and eventually "similar, but better in a number of respects."
Now, Microsoft themselves have gotten a bit lazy. Although I hold the (unpopular) opinion that Office 2007 offered many needed improvements, Keynote and Numbers simply blow PowerPoint and Excel out of the water in terms of usability.
Pages is a sufficiently different product from Word that any direct comparisons are difficult. Although Word lacks many of Pages' page-layout and design functions, Pages also (perhaps intentionally) lacks Word's myriad of features for managing large documents. As much as I hate its quirks and idiosyncrasies, LaTeX is still hands-down the best tool for writing and managing a large document.
Not sure I like unblocking an application that the government is sponsoring either.
Run a packet sniffer, and if you find anything particularly damning, there will be plenty of media outlets that will want to buy the story from you.
Honestly, between Comcast and the government, I know which of the two I'd trust.
The cpu "cooler." The misspellings on the box. This was fraud.
Are you sure?
Ah, you must be the guy who designed Windows Vista!
Because the decisions we make about our own health often extend far beyond our own lives, whether we want them to or not.
If you consent to the procedure, you also need to make sure that your spouse and children also consent to giving you the treatment, as they're the ones who are going to be forced to care for you if you become severely ill as a result of the treatment.
The FDA has historically been very good at what they do. I'd be inclined to trust their word.
Because we have many inconsistent ID schemes that are difficult to verify and easy to counterfeit?
Sorry, WHAT? How is this any different from the I-9 verification forms that you're required to complete when starting a new job?
I honestly can't see how this is any worse than a Social Security card, passport, credit card, or drivers license. If you don't have one of those things, you're probably living completely off the grid anyway, and won't be affected by this at all.
I'm mindful of civil liberties, but fail to see how this would do anything to change the status quo, apart from cutting down on counterfeiting.
Some engines encounter knocking and even occasional misfires if you put low-octane gas in them -- European cars in particular tend to be engineered for high-octane fuels. Given that this sort of behavior can be hell on your engine and exhaust system, your repair bills may very well be much higher than 5% of your annual fuel costs.
If Microsoft were to buy them we could see a re-run of IBM vs. SCO, with Microsoft playing SCO
Microsoft is trying to clean up its image, and avoid as much attention as possible from the EU and DoJ.
They won't do this. I'd put money on it.
PS. Mono/moonlight is safe. The absolute worst Microsoft could do would be to fork C#, which also hurt its image, attract regulators, and piss off windows-based .NET developers. A legally-binding promise not to sue is a legally-binding promise not...to...sue. Microsoft would have a tough time even finding a judge who would agree to bring such a case to trial.
In fact if Novell fails, along with what recently happened with MySQL and Open Solaris, MS can brag about how proprietary software is the way to go.
And, actually, Microsoft would have a good point. If I were a Sun admin right now, I'd be very, very worried. Similarly, if you built an enterprise around SuSE, you'd likely be facing some pretty steep transition costs to move over to Red Hat.
On the other hand, Windows will be around forever, and Microsoft (god bless/curse them) will ensure that binary compatibility is maintained until the apocalypse, and that upgrades are fairly trivial affairs. When we replace a server, we install whatever version of Windows is current, and forget about it. Win2008's got quite a few new features that make it extremely competitive with Linux and Solaris.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm an open source advocate through and through, and use a Mac at home. However, since working in a mostly-MS-based shop for a few months, I can honestly see the allure of the platform. It's here today, and it'll definitely be here tomorrow. Even if Windows isn't necessarily the best or shiniest option in town, it'll always be sitting comfortably in second place. Corporations like stability, and it's really not hard to see why.
That all said, it's no secret that competition from Linux, Solaris, and OS X have scared the pants off of Microsoft, which definitely shows in Windows 7 and Server 2008R2, both of which were fantastic upon first release (which is something that Microsoft has never done to my memory, and something that even the Linux and Apple folks have a tough time pulling off).
Have any of these claims actually been established and/or verified?
The money laundering thing occurred after a team of undercover reporters virtually coaxed it out of the volunteers (and had tried to do so several dozen times before one fell for the bait), while I've never seen any sort of verification of the other claims from a reputable (ie. non-pundit) source.
To be perfectly honest, it smells a lot like the swiftboat "scandal"
What's the big stink about ACORN anyhow? Are conservatives genuinely outraged that two people in an organization of over 400,000 members know what money laundering is?
As far as I see it, Democrats are peeved that Obama's been spending a lot of time and resources to appease conservatives and moderate democrats (he has), which has come directly at the expense of the democratic "base" (much tougher to prove). I honestly can't think of another president in recent history who has given so many concessions to the minority party and his political opponents.
Appointing a respected statistician like Tufte is a great strategy, and sends the message that "I have nothing to hide." I'd love to see Nate Silver directly involved with the administration as well...
Were there actually any substantive lawsuits regarding GIF? I always remember the threat being there, but can't think of any specific cases.
That said, you can't judge Apple on one lawsuit. Everybody in the industry has been involved in one of these suits at some point or another.
None of those things are provable facts -- just vague, general statements.
How about that steam main that blew up in NYC a few years ago? Poorly-maintained 1920s technology at its finest. Go look up survivorship bias, and think about how it effects your argument. Although I won't deny that we've been increasingly building things on the cheap ever since the 1960s, there was plenty of shitty 1920s architecture that (rightfully) met the wrecking ball over the past 5 decades.
That's how progress works: Save what worked, and improve or eliminate what didn't. Right now, we're cleaning up the mistakes of the 60s-80s, most notably the Corbusier-inspired housing projects, and Moses-inspired urban freeways. However, there are plenty of excellent structures from those eras that are going to be around for a long, long time.
Similarly, today, we have shitty buildings being built on the cheap that will most likely need to be torn down in 40 years, while other buildings are being constructed to last hundreds of years. This isn't exactly a departure from the past way of doing things.
Thankfully, we're also realizing the necessity of preserving and restoring old buildings and infrastructure that were particularly excellent, rather than ripping them down in favor of a modern counterpart. The best examples of this are New York City's two train stations -- the highly-functional and architecturally-magnificent Penn Station was torn town, and replaced by a modern underground station that was neither efficient nor aesthetically-pleasing. On the other hand, Grand Central Terminal was preserved (and carefully improved), and is now an architectural landmark as well as a highly-functional train station.
New York City also has a subway system that was built on the cheap by a series of competing private companies in the 1920s that has been a maintenance nightmare for the city ever since it inherited the system, and has a level of complexity that borders on labyrinthine. On the other hand, the Washington Metro was constructed in the 1970s, cost quite a bit more to build, but also included much nicer stations, a simple map layout, and provisions that have allowed the system to grow. Despite coming from an era noted for architectural mediocrity, Metro's cavernous concrete stations are likely to last a great many years without requiring continuous maintenance.