That's short sighted. If you want a little titanium, sure. If you want a steady stream of high volumes of titanium, then things change quickly. It would be stupid to build a moon base to harvest raw materials to build a single ship, or ten, but if it reduces the long term costs of space travel by even a few percent, it would eventually pay for itself.
The flaw with that, is that there is little precedent for honouring claims to unclaimed land in cases where the claimant have no presence on those lands, and in deed have never even visited the lands, and have not in any way marked his property.
Add to that the outer space treaty and several other treaties that significantly limits any rights to claim land in outer space, and it's quite clear that this guy has no basis in international law at all.
I recently finally deserted to links for all my textmode browsing needs... Lynx gets too annoying because it insist on being a standards nazi and slows down to show me all kinds of useless status messages and ask if I want to accept cookies that aren't to it's liking etc. The only reason I stuck to Lynx as long as I did was Yahoo Mail, because Lynx will happily ignore their obnoxious redirect for non-javascript enabled browsers. However since they at some point made the annoying switch to their old (non broken) interface happen only on a per session basis, it's tolerable (the old interface is ok for text browsers, but it's hellish with a graphical browser).
Love the fact tht Links supports colours, and that I can happily control it with the mouse.
(And for people who wonders why I do insane stuff like accessing the web over ssh to my home machine, it's a very useful way of downloading stuff straight to my home computer rather than via whatever machine I happen to be on.)
Good point. A poker bot playing online casinos doesn't need to win at every opportunity. It only needs to win enough to create a nice return on investment.
You want to prey on the bad players - the ones that wouldn't in a million years recognise someone playing with mechanical precision, and that have all sorts of bad idiosyncracies in their play that can be picked up automatically.
And you want to lose every now and again to draw people in. Even intentionally, against players the bot "knows" reacts well (i.e. bets more, gets careless) by winning the occasional large pot.
Bots playing humans is as much (or more) about psychology and past history of the players as it is about odds.
I've always seen it as the jedi being too blinded to see the significance of the prophecy. Sure, Anakin is the person the prophecy talks about - he does bring balance to the force. However, it should be obvious that when you have two opposing sides to something, and one is very strong (the large number of jedi's) and one is significantly weakened (the sith nearly eradicated), then bringing balance is unlikely to be a very good for the the strong side.
It's not a plot hole as such - it's common for sects to interpret prophecies in a way that benefit them and overlook glaring errors in their interpretation - but it keeps annoying me.
But the stupidity is at least consistent: The jedi are throughout the series arrogant, overconfident, complacent and generally detached from reality. They had it coming.
One of the comments to the post about Canon specifically points out that they only released the printer specs after being put under pressure, though. It's not as if they were overly enthusiastic about it.
That is a short sighted view. While getting Mars to the point where it can sustain human life with no other assistance may be infeasible, terraforming can still be immensely beneficial. Consider how large parts of the earth humans can't survive on without artifical stuff such as warm clothes and shelter - including areas where it routinely gets below -40 to -50 degrees celcius in the winter.
Terraforming doesn't have to mean we can all walk around in shorts and t-shirts and marvel at the nice weather.
Getting Mars to the point where heavy, clunky EVA suits can be replaced with lightweight suits that don't need to be hermetically sealed, and getting the athmosphere to a point where a human can survive for minutes rather than seconds without a separate oxygen supply, or so that leaks in a habitat are a nuisance rather than catastrophic would all mean a tremendous difference in quality of life in a Mars colony, as well as long term sustainability.
How can we start terraforming Mars if we are not even able to terraform Terra.
That's just an astonishingly silly statement... Earth has vast amounts of different forms of life, as well as a complex athmosphere that combined makes it incredibly hard to make beneficial adjustments that doesn't have bad side effects. Mars has no known life, and hardly any athmosphere, and noone currently living there to be affected by mistakes.
On the contrary, terraforming Mars might provide useful data on the feasibility of controlling and "correcting" large scale climate changes that could help us better safeguard the climate on earth.
Librarians aren't braindead. I'm sure they'd start noticing a pattern and would be capable of realising that perhaps they should refuse to hold that particular book for people, or only allow a certain percentage of the books to be available for reservation.
Exactly what part of cash collateral was it you didn't get? If someone steals anything with one of those cards, the collateral is forfeit and the library has a chunk of cash to use on replacing the item. Why exactly would anyone steal a $15 book if they had to put down $15 or more in collateral to check it out with their anonymous card in the first place (possibly significantly more for out of print or rare books if the library has any sense)
For most people this isn't needed. For those who considers it a valuable alternative, the extra cost may not be something they consider a hindrance.
The problem with changing laws to prevent data from being handed over is that there's nothing preventing laws like that from being changed right back, and unless data being collected in the meantime immediately gets deleted, that's exactly the kind of situation you'd want to avoid - imagine another 9/11 style attack and a government reacting in panic forcing through more emergency legislation and deciding a crackdown on dissidents is an acceptable cost (or even a rogue agency taking matters in their own hands - it's not like the CIA and assorted other US agencies haven't demonstrated plenty of willingness to break laws in the past).
Just someone having the data may be a chilling effect for some.
Most internet cafe's I know wipe the harddrives clean between each user. One of the major chains in the UK, for instance, runs a completely automated system that overwrite the harddrive with a fresh image each time someone logs in.
That's not considered "extra effort". That's considered essential to ensure users identities, password details, credit card numbers and other stuff isn't stolen, and to ensure people don't leave illegal material all over the place.
Considering that any user that were conscious about security could clean up after themselves anyway if they had to, unless the operator of the terminals takes extra effort to carry out surveillance (key loggers, logging network traffic etc.), this is a pointless discussion unless you're suggesting active surveillance of all internet users is a good thing (in which case you're a lost cause).
You entirely miss the point. This isn't a funding mechanism. The point is that personal details on current library cards are there to ease recovery of the books, and to be able to fine you in the event the book is unrecoverable.
If there is cash collateral tied to your library card, then that need isn't there anymore except for rare books that can't reasonably be replaced.
The cost of operating the library is an entirely separate issue, and one of the points of having free libraries is exactly to ensure the availability of books for everyone.
It's certainly not the only way to preserve privacy.
But anonymous access to information is important, because historically the suppression of the unfettered exchange of information has been one of the most important tools for oppressive governments to prevent dissent.
Even if you make the assumption that no future government are going to make use of the ability to track you, there are also other privacy issues, such as your ability to protect your privacy against the press or against groups opposed to your lifestyle or views, and a wide range of others.
There are plenty of groups in todays society that have very real reasons to be worried about situations like that given the number of hate crimes and past incidents where the ease of availability of personal information have allowed hate groups to target individuals.
How would walking around with an anonymous library card with cash collateral tied to it be any different from walking around with (anonymous) cash?
Some people prefer not to, and get a card with features that reduces their potential loss at the cost of it being possible to trace transactions, and other prefer to walk around with anything from a few small bills to large wads of high denomination bills.
So what you are saying is that he seemed to behave a bit strangely when he was trying to focus intensely. Lots of people have weird idiosyncracies that only show up when they are too focused on something to keep their social guard up - that could mean he has Aspergers and did it because it's what he does, but it could just as well mean he is skilled at focusing on the issue at hand and socially strong enough to do it despite possibly being fully aware that he'll seem like a weirdo.
On what basis are you saying that the chances of life existing on such planets are very high? We have only one data point, possibly two if you accept the still rather controversial findings of microbes possibly from Mars and the latter could be due to exchange of material between the two. Also, keeping in mind that our one data point is "self-selected" - not that we had a choice in the matter, but it's not like we could have discussed this on the basis of being on a completely lifeless planet.
In other words, we have no basis for saying whether or not the odds of life arising on an earth like planet is almost non-existent or incredibly good.
Technology available to amateurs is more than good enough that any claim of "something" that supposedly is all over the place, but still mysteriously manages to avoid being captured on film without being sufficiently blurry to be impossible to identify whenever imaged by someone willing to talk isn't worthy much consideration.
I've seen plenty of things I could call UFO's. But the thing is, they were just that: unidentified. Just as I don't go around calling every strange coincidence a result of ESP, I don't go around calling every light I see in the night sky spaceships, because there is simply no proof of either.
And while the absence of proof isn't proof to the contrary, the likelihood that any of these UFO's were anything more than a plane, a helicopter, a weather baloon, an athmospheric phenomenon (such as seing flickers of aurora borealis hundreds of kilometers south of where you'd normally see any, which I know from experience lots of people wouldn't recognise for what it is), meteorites or any number of other possible explanations is so vanishingly small all the time we have not been able to image anything "interesting" clearly or pick up any kind of signals from any ET's.
It is important because it helps those who want to explore in their chances of convincing politicians or private interests to fund exploration projects.
To compare with your mention of the belief that earth was flat, if there had been widespread support for the idea that there were plenty of wealth to be had within reach of a sailing expedition to the west, as opposed to - depending on whom you'd ask - monsters, open water or the end of the world, then Columbus wouldn't have had such a hard time getting support and might have been able to leave years earlier.
Doesn't matter a great deal in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly matters to those who are spending years of their life trying to secure funding for these kinds of projects.
As an Aussie, I remember once buying a shirt in a shop in California. When I got to the checkout, I was charged for state tax on top of the price that was on the ticket. I didn't complain, because I realised at the time that that's how things are done in California.
This never seizes to annoy me whenever I visit the US. Of course with the weakness of the US dollar now any miscalculation due to states sales taxes are more than compensated for by me mentally overestimating the value of USD...:)
In Australia, however, it is universally assumed that advertised prices include all taxes. That's how things are done here. For an Australian website to advertise prices otherwise would be, IMHO, misleading.
This is the same in almost all of Europe as well. Though of course here it has an even bigger impact since the VAT (GST equivalent) rates range from around 16% to 25%.
If you're so concerned about money being spent on anything besides cancer research, the why are you here? Surely it would be better if you spent the money you spend to go online on cancer research instead, and donated your computer to charity, and spent the time you'd otherwise spend on writing comments here working for a cancer charity?
Now, if you want to donate your time and money to cancer research, great. But don't whine because others care about other causes.
Not storing information that can directly identify a person unless there is a well defined business need for it is the general rule in all EU/EEA countries, not something exceptional for Germany. The only thing that differs between the countries is how strictly it is being enforced.
In other words I would not be surprised to see this extend in some form or other to ISP's in other parts of Europe as well.
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That's short sighted. If you want a little titanium, sure. If you want a steady stream of high volumes of titanium, then things change quickly. It would be stupid to build a moon base to harvest raw materials to build a single ship, or ten, but if it reduces the long term costs of space travel by even a few percent, it would eventually pay for itself.
Add to that the outer space treaty and several other treaties that significantly limits any rights to claim land in outer space, and it's quite clear that this guy has no basis in international law at all.
Love the fact tht Links supports colours, and that I can happily control it with the mouse.
(And for people who wonders why I do insane stuff like accessing the web over ssh to my home machine, it's a very useful way of downloading stuff straight to my home computer rather than via whatever machine I happen to be on.)
You want to prey on the bad players - the ones that wouldn't in a million years recognise someone playing with mechanical precision, and that have all sorts of bad idiosyncracies in their play that can be picked up automatically.
And you want to lose every now and again to draw people in. Even intentionally, against players the bot "knows" reacts well (i.e. bets more, gets careless) by winning the occasional large pot.
Bots playing humans is as much (or more) about psychology and past history of the players as it is about odds.
It's not a plot hole as such - it's common for sects to interpret prophecies in a way that benefit them and overlook glaring errors in their interpretation - but it keeps annoying me.
But the stupidity is at least consistent: The jedi are throughout the series arrogant, overconfident, complacent and generally detached from reality. They had it coming.
One of the comments to the post about Canon specifically points out that they only released the printer specs after being put under pressure, though. It's not as if they were overly enthusiastic about it.
Terraforming doesn't have to mean we can all walk around in shorts and t-shirts and marvel at the nice weather.
Getting Mars to the point where heavy, clunky EVA suits can be replaced with lightweight suits that don't need to be hermetically sealed, and getting the athmosphere to a point where a human can survive for minutes rather than seconds without a separate oxygen supply, or so that leaks in a habitat are a nuisance rather than catastrophic would all mean a tremendous difference in quality of life in a Mars colony, as well as long term sustainability.
That's just an astonishingly silly statement... Earth has vast amounts of different forms of life, as well as a complex athmosphere that combined makes it incredibly hard to make beneficial adjustments that doesn't have bad side effects. Mars has no known life, and hardly any athmosphere, and noone currently living there to be affected by mistakes.
On the contrary, terraforming Mars might provide useful data on the feasibility of controlling and "correcting" large scale climate changes that could help us better safeguard the climate on earth.
Librarians aren't braindead. I'm sure they'd start noticing a pattern and would be capable of realising that perhaps they should refuse to hold that particular book for people, or only allow a certain percentage of the books to be available for reservation.
Exactly what part of cash collateral was it you didn't get? If someone steals anything with one of those cards, the collateral is forfeit and the library has a chunk of cash to use on replacing the item. Why exactly would anyone steal a $15 book if they had to put down $15 or more in collateral to check it out with their anonymous card in the first place (possibly significantly more for out of print or rare books if the library has any sense)
The problem with changing laws to prevent data from being handed over is that there's nothing preventing laws like that from being changed right back, and unless data being collected in the meantime immediately gets deleted, that's exactly the kind of situation you'd want to avoid - imagine another 9/11 style attack and a government reacting in panic forcing through more emergency legislation and deciding a crackdown on dissidents is an acceptable cost (or even a rogue agency taking matters in their own hands - it's not like the CIA and assorted other US agencies haven't demonstrated plenty of willingness to break laws in the past).
Just someone having the data may be a chilling effect for some.
That's not considered "extra effort". That's considered essential to ensure users identities, password details, credit card numbers and other stuff isn't stolen, and to ensure people don't leave illegal material all over the place.
Considering that any user that were conscious about security could clean up after themselves anyway if they had to, unless the operator of the terminals takes extra effort to carry out surveillance (key loggers, logging network traffic etc.), this is a pointless discussion unless you're suggesting active surveillance of all internet users is a good thing (in which case you're a lost cause).
If there is cash collateral tied to your library card, then that need isn't there anymore except for rare books that can't reasonably be replaced.
The cost of operating the library is an entirely separate issue, and one of the points of having free libraries is exactly to ensure the availability of books for everyone.
But anonymous access to information is important, because historically the suppression of the unfettered exchange of information has been one of the most important tools for oppressive governments to prevent dissent.
Even if you make the assumption that no future government are going to make use of the ability to track you, there are also other privacy issues, such as your ability to protect your privacy against the press or against groups opposed to your lifestyle or views, and a wide range of others.
There are plenty of groups in todays society that have very real reasons to be worried about situations like that given the number of hate crimes and past incidents where the ease of availability of personal information have allowed hate groups to target individuals.
Some people prefer not to, and get a card with features that reduces their potential loss at the cost of it being possible to trace transactions, and other prefer to walk around with anything from a few small bills to large wads of high denomination bills.
Why does it have to be either/or?
In other words it doesn't tell anything.
In other words, we have no basis for saying whether or not the odds of life arising on an earth like planet is almost non-existent or incredibly good.
I've seen plenty of things I could call UFO's. But the thing is, they were just that: unidentified. Just as I don't go around calling every strange coincidence a result of ESP, I don't go around calling every light I see in the night sky spaceships, because there is simply no proof of either.
And while the absence of proof isn't proof to the contrary, the likelihood that any of these UFO's were anything more than a plane, a helicopter, a weather baloon, an athmospheric phenomenon (such as seing flickers of aurora borealis hundreds of kilometers south of where you'd normally see any, which I know from experience lots of people wouldn't recognise for what it is), meteorites or any number of other possible explanations is so vanishingly small all the time we have not been able to image anything "interesting" clearly or pick up any kind of signals from any ET's.
To compare with your mention of the belief that earth was flat, if there had been widespread support for the idea that there were plenty of wealth to be had within reach of a sailing expedition to the west, as opposed to - depending on whom you'd ask - monsters, open water or the end of the world, then Columbus wouldn't have had such a hard time getting support and might have been able to leave years earlier.
Doesn't matter a great deal in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly matters to those who are spending years of their life trying to secure funding for these kinds of projects.
See, there are always some hacker far ahead of ideas like that :)
This never seizes to annoy me whenever I visit the US. Of course with the weakness of the US dollar now any miscalculation due to states sales taxes are more than compensated for by me mentally overestimating the value of USD... :)
In Australia, however, it is universally assumed that advertised prices include all taxes. That's how things are done here. For an Australian website to advertise prices otherwise would be, IMHO, misleading.
This is the same in almost all of Europe as well. Though of course here it has an even bigger impact since the VAT (GST equivalent) rates range from around 16% to 25%.
Now, if you want to donate your time and money to cancer research, great. But don't whine because others care about other causes.
English comedy is only considered bland by those who don't understand it.
Being registered doesn't say anything about whether or not they'd still be enforced by a court.
In other words I would not be surprised to see this extend in some form or other to ISP's in other parts of Europe as well.