I can't moderate in this thread because I already posted, but this should be +5.
Furthermore, if you want an idea of what kind of speech the American Revolutionaries wanted to protect, just look at the kind of speech they were using. For every civil and well-reasoned "Common Sense", "Declaration of Independence" and "Federalist Papers", there are dozens of newspapers articles and pamphlets published that were crude, hyperbolic, and dripping with vitriol. They were nothing if not flamebait. The founders of this country clearly felt that no one should be above this sort of criticism, and that no government should be able to suppress this sort of dissent.
Admiral Ag is correct in saying that this sort of speech is nothing but a nuisance, but if someone thinks they need the government to step in and "protect" them from something as insignificant as trolling then they have bigger problems on their hands.
Furthermore, considering how the people you mentioned react to being moderated "Overrated", imagine the moral indignance that would be generated from moderating them as "Wrong". I think we are better off not adding more specific negative moderation tags. The Overrated moderation is abused, but so would any other tag. The only problem that I have with Overrated is that it doesn't show up in meta-moderating.
In 2005, the AZA delayed accreditation of the SF zoo, due to many cases of poor animal treatment. The documented results of the AZA inspections were available to the press. If there was anything in those documents about the cage height being inadequate, it would be all over the news after the attack. Both the AZA and the SF zoo have said that the cage height did not come up in their inspection, and it certainly did not make it into their reports. I find it very unlikely that it was mentioned in private and then swept under the table, when so many other complaints were made in the open.
You just hate it when anyone points out where privatization goes bad, don't you? No, I don't. I'm a big fan of market economics, but I've yet to see any significant advantages that corporate monopolies have over government monopolies, which is what most privatization efforts are. It just annoys the hell out of me when people get stuck on some pet issue and have to bring it into every discussion, or pick some bad guy and then blame everything on them even when the evidence doesn't support it. Especially when there are other legitimate reasons to criticize them.
This enclosure was built in the thirties. It was just as dangerous during the ~60 years that it was a public zoo, as it was the last ~15 years as a private zoo. The Association of Zoos & Aquariums, which sets standards for zoo design, first started it's formal accreditation program in 1974. So they should have been aware of the problem for a good 20 years before it was privatized.
There does appear to be problems with the way the SF zoo is being operated now, but this particular case is a long standing condition that neither the public caretakers, private owners, nor the AZA made any effort to fix.
(28.0-23.2)/23.2 = 20.7% It's total market share 20.7% in the last year. Yeah talking about percent increases of something already measured in percent is confusing.
Allowing a voter to verify their vote "after the fact" from any location (or by direct examination of a receipt that leaves the polling place with them) makes vote-buying (or coercion) much too easy. Some clever guy came up with a method of voting that does allow people to check that their vote was counted correctly after the fact, without revealing who they voted for. It also adds a couple more levels of verifiability beyond normal paper ballots.
Of course this is at the expense of added complexity, so while you would be almost certain to catch any mistakes, it does increase the chances that mistakes are made - and then what do you do with those invalidated votes?
Without the tally machines, you fill in the bubbles and put your ballot in the slot at the top of a box. With the tally machines you fill in the bubbles and then put your ballot in the slot on the tally machine. If it reads the ballot correctly it drops it into the box underneath and shows a green light. If it doesn't, it feeds it back out to you and shows a red light. That is how our scanners work. No attendant necessary.
If it keeps having problems and you can't figure it out then you can ask for assistance, which is better than unknowingly submitting an invalid ballot.
Not that I agree with any of this, but it is a fun game to play, so here's a slightly different take on this:
The engineer, although similarly powerless to enact change in, say, global politics, will do the only things he can, like annoy everybody around him trying to convince them to see his viewpoint. Engineers, perhaps more than any other type of person, are easily driven to believe that talking cannot solve the problem, due to the fact that they are not particularly persuasive and don't posses the types of people skills needed to operate in the political realm. Their experience "tells them" that the direct, hands on approach is much more affective, as that is what they are good at. Thus they are more likely to become disillusioned with diplomatic solutions and look for other approaches. Which isn't always terrorism of course. This could just as likely explain why more engineers than liberal arts majors support a strong defense.
Besides considering that the primary selling point of this gadget is the pure awesomeness of burning things with light, you'd think they could come up with something that looked a bit more menacing, like so. You know something less likely to be mistaken for a harmless toy.
He is trying to protect the privacy of users of his site, by keeping whatever information he has about them that isn't public (IP address, email, etc), out of the hands of the powers that be. Hosting in multiple locations doesn't address that problem - it makes it worse.
Would it be possible to shine IR light through the edge of a plexiglass surface, and then when the user touches the surface it would cause the IR to scatter at that point creating a point source for the Wiimote to track?
I think it would be very cool to have a game like Sim City but rather you are creating a colony on the Moon or Mars. You start with nothing and have to build a colony that is at first dependant on a (relatively) small fixed budget from earth, and then slowly ween it off the earthlings, first through trade, and then later as you become large enough to support industrialized economy. The scope of the game would change much more than Sim City as you would start with as little as zero people, and then grow to the size of a medium sized country.
And if you have Firefox, look into AdblockPlus, and NoScript. If you don't want cookies to bother you, set them to this-session-only. And lastly, Firefox has a lovely "Clear private data when closing Firefox" option if you want it. But these features (except Adblock) are all extremely annoying for day-to-day use. I don't like having to type data into forms twice because I find that they need javascript to submit the damn thing, and disabling NoScript reloads the page and clears what I typed in. I don't like not being able to navigate a site because some javascript menu, is hidden and I don't even know exists so I can turn NoScript off. I want slashdot and other sites to store my login name as a cookie. I don't really care if small random sites store cookies on my computer. The only ones I care about are the ad companies that are spread across the net and can thus use the info for tracking - so I blacklist them from setting cookies.
This article was pretty vague, but the idea does have merit depending on how you interpret it. You definitely shouldn't advocate using an insecure browser for normal day-to-day use. But I'll give the security researcher the benefit of the doubt and assume he was advocating using a normal secure browser (like firefox) for normal use, and then having a second browser configured with all the extra security features that no one will tolerate for day-to-day use when doing more dangerous or more private things.
For example when browsing porn sites, or warez sites (I only do the former), which are known to have more malware than your average website, using a more secure browser is a good thing - and having no record of this visit stored (ie cookie or url history) is also a good thing, especially for the later. Furthermore, when using tor (for all the reasons people use it) it is a good idea to use a browser with all tracking turned off, for obvious reasons. Again these are setting that I refuse to have enabled on my normal browser.
That said, I don't normally bother with using my locked down browser for my bank. If their site has cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, then I think I need to find another bank that values security over Web 2.0 fads.
The bar itself is nothing but two IR LEDs, so it shouldn't be difficult to build or modify an existing bar to be any length you wish. I've even seen someone who managed to get the Wii to work with two candles placed on top of the TV:)
Like bentcd said, that is a completely adequate waveform. If you output that using a perfect zero-order hold and a perfect anti-imaging filter, you will get a perfect 24kHz sine wave. Of course, you can't build a perfect hardware, and having more points than the Nyquist limit will relax the requirements on your D/A circuit. However, if you filtered and sampled the data correctly to begin with (ie no aliasing occurred), then upsampling will give you a waveform that is identical to what you would get by oversampling.
That is a good argument for why a studio should sample at a rate that accommodates the roll-off in their analog low-pass filters. However, once that is done you can use a can use a digital lo-pass filter / downsampler which can easily be designed to have very sharp cut-off rates. There is no reason at all for a consumer format to be more than 48kHz.
This ruling is about what is and isn't considered destruction of evidence in a court case. The only business which may be required to retain more data that they already would are those who are being investigated for a crime. There are two parts.
The first deals with data deleted prior to the start of an investigation. Basically if you have an data retention plan that states how long you keep documents for, and you follow that plan, then you cannot be charged with destruction of evidence. On the other hand if a bunch of documents relevant to an investigation just happen to be deleted in a manner that deviates from your normal behavior, then you can be.
It doesn't matter what the plan is - it could be that you delete emails from the server immediately after they are download, or you can back them up for eternity, or anything in between - it is entirely up to you. For the sake of CYA, it is a good idea to have this policy documented, and to make sure it is followed closely, but you are not required by law to do so.
The second part gives judges the ability to require companies to retain data relevant to an investigation that would otherwise be deleted as part of their normal data retention policy. This requires a court order, and is no different from dead-tree requirements. Again, you are not required by law to have a plan in place to do this, however, it is good idea to think about it so that you aren't scrambling to figure out how to deal with it if you ever are investigated.
Even if they were completely open about what phones and services you could use on their network, it wouldn't amount to much thanks to subsidized phones. How many people will really pay full retail price for a phone when they can get one that is just as good, but locked down, for "free"? Yay, I can save $2 on custom ringtones if I pay $150 more for my phone.
One significant difference between Linux on a PC and Linux on a mobile is that it is illegal to expose the core baseband processor architecture to open software,.. That makes it valid to be interested in mobile Linux because of familiarity with the architecture, the availability of low cost software, and a desire to expand the market for Linux based products, but there is little real political GPL-freedom argument for pursuing mobile Linux. I don't see how that is different from any other hardware that has open Linux drivers but closed firmware (apart from it being mandated by law rather than being a choice made by the developer). Especially when it comes to things like video chipsets and high performance radio / data acquisition cards, who really do have an entirely separate processor running on them that is not directly accessible to the OS on the main processor(s).
Furthermore, the fact that all the applications running on my computer are Free software has just as much, if not more, "political" value to me as a user and developer as having direct access to the hardware would, because my applications are what stores my data, the most valuable part of any computing system.
Perhaps he was thinking that since the generators will be removing energy from the ocean before it gets to the beach, the waves that form near the shore won't be as big? Although I wouldn't think they would be removing enough energy to matter.
I really don't know where I am going to go when I need something in a hurry. I used to go to some locally owned shops, but one by one they stopped having weekend hours, and the few that do hardly have any stock at all. A local cable shop is the only one I still go to, simply because the big box stores gouge so much on cables it's worth the hassle of going there during normal business hours.
Circuit city is almost completely worthless for computer supplies. We don't have Fry's out here in NM either. The only place left is Best Buy, and they aren't all that great either, not to mention that it is on the opposite side of town. CompUSA was the least bad of all the chains.
I've worked with a couple of the National Laboratories, and where Los Alamos really shines is basic research, while the others are better at engineering and have (somewhat) better security track records. This makes some sort of sense given the fact that they were operated by a university for so long while Sandia and Livermore have been over-seen by corporate entities. While it may make sense to move some of the more sensitive stock-pile stewardship programs away from there if they can't improve their security, it would be an absolute shame to shut the lab down altogether.
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I can't moderate in this thread because I already posted, but this should be +5.
Furthermore, if you want an idea of what kind of speech the American Revolutionaries wanted to protect, just look at the kind of speech they were using. For every civil and well-reasoned "Common Sense", "Declaration of Independence" and "Federalist Papers", there are dozens of newspapers articles and pamphlets published that were crude, hyperbolic, and dripping with vitriol. They were nothing if not flamebait. The founders of this country clearly felt that no one should be above this sort of criticism, and that no government should be able to suppress this sort of dissent.
Admiral Ag is correct in saying that this sort of speech is nothing but a nuisance, but if someone thinks they need the government to step in and "protect" them from something as insignificant as trolling then they have bigger problems on their hands.
Furthermore, considering how the people you mentioned react to being moderated "Overrated", imagine the moral indignance that would be generated from moderating them as "Wrong". I think we are better off not adding more specific negative moderation tags. The Overrated moderation is abused, but so would any other tag. The only problem that I have with Overrated is that it doesn't show up in meta-moderating.
This enclosure was built in the thirties. It was just as dangerous during the ~60 years that it was a public zoo, as it was the last ~15 years as a private zoo. The Association of Zoos & Aquariums, which sets standards for zoo design, first started it's formal accreditation program in 1974. So they should have been aware of the problem for a good 20 years before it was privatized.
There does appear to be problems with the way the SF zoo is being operated now, but this particular case is a long standing condition that neither the public caretakers, private owners, nor the AZA made any effort to fix.
(28.0-23.2)/23.2 = 20.7%
It's total market share 20.7% in the last year.
Yeah talking about percent increases of something already measured in percent is confusing.
Of course this is at the expense of added complexity, so while you would be almost certain to catch any mistakes, it does increase the chances that mistakes are made - and then what do you do with those invalidated votes?
Without the tally machines, you fill in the bubbles and put your ballot in the slot at the top of a box. With the tally machines you fill in the bubbles and then put your ballot in the slot on the tally machine. If it reads the ballot correctly it drops it into the box underneath and shows a green light. If it doesn't, it feeds it back out to you and shows a red light. That is how our scanners work. No attendant necessary.
If it keeps having problems and you can't figure it out then you can ask for assistance, which is better than unknowingly submitting an invalid ballot.
Besides considering that the primary selling point of this gadget is the pure awesomeness of burning things with light, you'd think they could come up with something that looked a bit more menacing, like so. You know something less likely to be mistaken for a harmless toy.
Oh wait.
He is trying to protect the privacy of users of his site, by keeping whatever information he has about them that isn't public (IP address, email, etc), out of the hands of the powers that be. Hosting in multiple locations doesn't address that problem - it makes it worse.
Would it be possible to shine IR light through the edge of a plexiglass surface, and then when the user touches the surface it would cause the IR to scatter at that point creating a point source for the Wiimote to track?
I think it would be very cool to have a game like Sim City but rather you are creating a colony on the Moon or Mars. You start with nothing and have to build a colony that is at first dependant on a (relatively) small fixed budget from earth, and then slowly ween it off the earthlings, first through trade, and then later as you become large enough to support industrialized economy. The scope of the game would change much more than Sim City as you would start with as little as zero people, and then grow to the size of a medium sized country.
That would be quite the bar trick if your liver started glowing when it processed alcohol, all ET style.
This article was pretty vague, but the idea does have merit depending on how you interpret it. You definitely shouldn't advocate using an insecure browser for normal day-to-day use. But I'll give the security researcher the benefit of the doubt and assume he was advocating using a normal secure browser (like firefox) for normal use, and then having a second browser configured with all the extra security features that no one will tolerate for day-to-day use when doing more dangerous or more private things.
For example when browsing porn sites, or warez sites (I only do the former), which are known to have more malware than your average website, using a more secure browser is a good thing - and having no record of this visit stored (ie cookie or url history) is also a good thing, especially for the later. Furthermore, when using tor (for all the reasons people use it) it is a good idea to use a browser with all tracking turned off, for obvious reasons. Again these are setting that I refuse to have enabled on my normal browser.
That said, I don't normally bother with using my locked down browser for my bank. If their site has cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, then I think I need to find another bank that values security over Web 2.0 fads.
The bar itself is nothing but two IR LEDs, so it shouldn't be difficult to build or modify an existing bar to be any length you wish. I've even seen someone who managed to get the Wii to work with two candles placed on top of the TV :)
Like bentcd said, that is a completely adequate waveform. If you output that using a perfect zero-order hold and a perfect anti-imaging filter, you will get a perfect 24kHz sine wave. Of course, you can't build a perfect hardware, and having more points than the Nyquist limit will relax the requirements on your D/A circuit. However, if you filtered and sampled the data correctly to begin with (ie no aliasing occurred), then upsampling will give you a waveform that is identical to what you would get by oversampling.
That is a good argument for why a studio should sample at a rate that accommodates the roll-off in their analog low-pass filters. However, once that is done you can use a can use a digital lo-pass filter / downsampler which can easily be designed to have very sharp cut-off rates. There is no reason at all for a consumer format to be more than 48kHz.
This ruling is about what is and isn't considered destruction of evidence in a court case. The only business which may be required to retain more data that they already would are those who are being investigated for a crime. There are two parts.
The first deals with data deleted prior to the start of an investigation. Basically if you have an data retention plan that states how long you keep documents for, and you follow that plan, then you cannot be charged with destruction of evidence. On the other hand if a bunch of documents relevant to an investigation just happen to be deleted in a manner that deviates from your normal behavior, then you can be.
It doesn't matter what the plan is - it could be that you delete emails from the server immediately after they are download, or you can back them up for eternity, or anything in between - it is entirely up to you. For the sake of CYA, it is a good idea to have this policy documented, and to make sure it is followed closely, but you are not required by law to do so.
The second part gives judges the ability to require companies to retain data relevant to an investigation that would otherwise be deleted as part of their normal data retention policy. This requires a court order, and is no different from dead-tree requirements. Again, you are not required by law to have a plan in place to do this, however, it is good idea to think about it so that you aren't scrambling to figure out how to deal with it if you ever are investigated.
Even if they were completely open about what phones and services you could use on their network, it wouldn't amount to much thanks to subsidized phones. How many people will really pay full retail price for a phone when they can get one that is just as good, but locked down, for "free"? Yay, I can save $2 on custom ringtones if I pay $150 more for my phone.
That makes it valid to be interested in mobile Linux because of familiarity with the architecture, the availability of low cost software, and a desire to expand the market for Linux based products, but there is little real political GPL-freedom argument for pursuing mobile Linux. I don't see how that is different from any other hardware that has open Linux drivers but closed firmware (apart from it being mandated by law rather than being a choice made by the developer). Especially when it comes to things like video chipsets and high performance radio / data acquisition cards, who really do have an entirely separate processor running on them that is not directly accessible to the OS on the main processor(s).
Furthermore, the fact that all the applications running on my computer are Free software has just as much, if not more, "political" value to me as a user and developer as having direct access to the hardware would, because my applications are what stores my data, the most valuable part of any computing system.
and found this was discussed ad nauseum below.
Perhaps he was thinking that since the generators will be removing energy from the ocean before it gets to the beach, the waves that form near the shore won't be as big? Although I wouldn't think they would be removing enough energy to matter.
I really don't know where I am going to go when I need something in a hurry. I used to go to some locally owned shops, but one by one they stopped having weekend hours, and the few that do hardly have any stock at all. A local cable shop is the only one I still go to, simply because the big box stores gouge so much on cables it's worth the hassle of going there during normal business hours.
Circuit city is almost completely worthless for computer supplies. We don't have Fry's out here in NM either. The only place left is Best Buy, and they aren't all that great either, not to mention that it is on the opposite side of town. CompUSA was the least bad of all the chains.
hmm, you're right. I wonder why I was thinking otherwise.
I've worked with a couple of the National Laboratories, and where Los Alamos really shines is basic research, while the others are better at engineering and have (somewhat) better security track records. This makes some sort of sense given the fact that they were operated by a university for so long while Sandia and Livermore have been over-seen by corporate entities. While it may make sense to move some of the more sensitive stock-pile stewardship programs away from there if they can't improve their security, it would be an absolute shame to shut the lab down altogether.