Dude, that's just the decoy ruin. The real SSC was built nearby, but far enough away that anyone looking for the known SSC site wouldn't see the people going in and out of the real site!
Why build one when you can build two at twice the price? I've seen that movie.
There is a reason why you pay property taxes only to things like cars and houses: there is a cost to the state to keep the infrastructure to this things. But now the intelectual property owners show themselves as a big cost to the state, since we need a special force to keep EVEN the concept of 'property' to intelectual creations. It's fair that if the state have costs, someone should pay for it. And it's fair that who pays to something is the one who wants.
Great idea, except that the second you try to tax something like "Intellectual Property" it will miraculously find its way out of the taxable jurisdiction. If the US instituted a tax on IP, you can bet that overnight basically all IP owned by American companies would be transferred to foreign holding companies and licensed back.
The only reason that property taxes work is that it is very difficult to transfer your house and land out of the county/state/country.
Not all U.S. companies are huge corporations that can do this. Non-profits can't afford this either.
I'm sure Microsoft would be happy to do it for them. For a fair fee, of course. Better yet, for a low monthly fee Microsoft would be happy to indemnify you against threat of a lawsuit based on your suppliers using pirated Microsoft products.
I don't see Microsoft actually pushing to shut down anyone for violating this law. Bad for business. They probably just see it as a way to open up a new revenue stream to cover what they see as losses to piracy. They don't actually want to stop GM from shipping cars because some minor supplier was using a pirated copy of Powerpoint, they just want to threaten GM (and every other company) with that possibility and then extract a little "protection" money.
While comparing video cards is all well and good, I make a formal nerd request that a decibel comparison be included in future reviews, say at idle fan speed, half maximum speed and full speed. Honestly it has gotten ridiculous - high end cards are just too damned loud. (switching to night-club mode) I MEAN WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING NICE GRAPHICS IF YOU CAN'T HEAR THE GAME YOU'RE PLAYING
The problem is that this mantle is under intense pressure because it has the weight of the Earth's crust bearing down on it. This pressure doesn't matter too much to us because of the weight of the rock being forced down by gravity is exactly balanced by the reaction force of the mantle pushing back up. Except where you get cracks and weaknesses in the rock - and some mantle seeps through, causing a volcano. This pressure is enough to drive the molten rock all the way to the surface.
Now consider drilling a hole - a hole filled with a tube and presumably some material that is not rock - like air or water (probably water since the distance to the mantle is less from the bottom of the ocean). While water has weight, it doesn't weigh as much as rock - we can prove that because undersea volcanoes exist, too. So basically what you will end up doing is creating your own instant-volcano, the minute you get close enough to the mantle that the remaining rock is weakened, all of that stuff is going to come up - following the path of least resistance.
I am not saying it's the end of the world - it's not. There are other forces at work too, the mantle will cool on its way up and might only reach the surface slowly, if at all. However you must understand that there will be a tremendous amount of upwards pressure in the shaft. It will be absolutely impossible to "drop something" down there. At best what you would get is a deep hole with your radioactive waste, sitting at the bottom of the sea. At worst you would get the mother of all dirty-bombs, driven by a volcano and spreading this waste all over the ocean floor. It was virtually impossible to drop concrete into the Deepwater Horizon shaft. Imagine the pressures of going much much deeper and what's coming out isn't oil but lava.
First, to keep magma out of the drill pipe you would just need to keep pressure on your drilling fluid. We already do this; it would just require a higher pressure system than what is needed for, say, oil drilling. Of course, this could be a problem if your drilling fluid is flash-boiling as it encounters the magma, as it would be very difficult to control that much pressure and could lead to a blow out. However, unlike with oil, you could fairly easily stop any leaking lava by circulating cold water, or worst case, it freezes when it reaches sea water and plugs up your hole that way. You might build a small sea mound, but that's probably about the extent of the danger.
So they went AC-DC to try and get back in (the) black? My concern is that the initial conversion would cost a touch too much, and it ain't no fun waiting for the energy savings to cover the investment - the down payment blues. Still, in my experience the power supply is often the point of failure that finally kills the whole computer, so goodbye & good riddance to bad luck.
And then I was like, "Oh! They're talking about the SEARS tower."
Also... it allows "diffuse daylight and horizontal light through." Does that mean I can only look directly out the window at things at the same level? What is the vertical viewing angle?
Some stuff gets "expired" from Netflix. The same goes for Hulu.
When you decide you want to watch something again, it might not be readily available.
This is usually the reason for having your own media collection. This seems pretty obvious for Music but it seems like a real revelation for anything else.
I've found Netflix to be extremely unreliable in terms of what is available for streaming. A recent example is the show The IT Crowd. I watched the first three seasons about the time the fourth was on TV, then had to wait for the fourth season to be on Netflix. It finally arrived, and I happened to be watching an episode when a friend stopped by; he got hooked, and started watching at his house. Unfortunately, it seems that at the same time they added the fourth season, they removed the second season. Really weird.
(And don't get me started on them only seeming to offer dubbed versions of most foreign films... grrrr! Almost enough to get me to drop the service entirely!)
Wait, they don't switch these off, when they go for a bombing run? Doesn't this defeat the whole idea of stealth?
I'm sure they turn off their transponders before entering Libyan airspace (or even coming close, probably). This guy is tracking them as they fly over the Continent, through civilian-controlled airspace, on the way to and from bombing runs.
Because you want them to be public. The other aircraft, including those of your "enemies" and the light aircraft being flown by Bob the gardener down the street need to be able to communicate to avoid smashing into each other.
Encrypting serves no purpose when the entire idea is for anyone to be able to receive the information.
Not sure about the "enemies" part... I'm sure military aircraft turn off their transponders before getting to "enemy" territory; this guy is just tracking them while they traverse the thousands of miles of civilian-controlled airspace between home base and targets.
But yeah; no reason at all to encrypt transponder transmissions, the whole point of which are to let people know where you are.
I was trying to decide that too, but without knowing how much material they are introducing for the fight w/ Sauron it is really tough to say. If they were just sticking to the story in the book, I could even see the break coming when they reach Beorn's; I think that happens about half way through, and marks the breakup of the "fellowship" when Gandalf takes off (as he told them he was going to do). Also represents the change from Gandalf being the leader to Bilbo being the leader. However, I don't think this would work timing-wise if they introduce a lot of material, as it would leave a heck of a lot to cover for the second movie.
My guess is that the first film will end when they reach Esgaroth, and the second film will backtrack to cover Gandalf's story, interspersed with the Dwarves going to the Lonely Mountain. This would make a lot of sense, as it would center the second movie around the fight with Smaug (an early Exciting Moment) and the buildup to the battle of five armies (which is really what Gandalf's role in the story is all about).
>>>then the taxpayers bail the investment banks out
Guess you should have listened to Ron Paul and his Republican "liberty" caucus. They all voted "nay" to the $700 billion banker bailout bill, and it went down in flames. Mr. Paul said the banks, especially the investment ones like AIG, should be allowed to fail so we could rebuild the economy on their broken bones.
But then the Democrats revived the Banker Bailout Bill, bribed the republicans with pork for their districts, and it passed ~10 days later.:-( Frickin' fraggin' mumble.... grrrr! I tried to vote-out my representative for that idiocy, but alas he's still there.
Ron Paul for President in 2016.
The problem here is that the bubble was already blown up. Refusing to bail out those companies, as undeserving as they were, would have lead to much bigger problems. The solution isn't to cut your own neck just to punish the wrongdoers, it is to prevent the situation from arising in the first place. Once you are in that situation, there are no good options.
Or plutonium. You probably think that here in high-tech Japan, we can just walk into the corner drugstore and buy plutonium. Unfortunately, even here it's a little hard to come by.
^_^;
That's okay. I hear there is a plan in the works to spread it more equitably about the country, perhaps even share some with the rest of the world.
It's certain this won't save the lives of any Afghans or Iraqis, whether the bullets are coming from a helicopter a mile away or a soldier that just kicked in his front door.
It might, actually. If the American soldiers are better able to determine where they are being shot at from, there is less likelihood of them shooting back at the wrong place. It should, to some extent, reduce "collateral damage".
Of course, I have my doubts about the usefulness in an urban environment (where it would have the most positive effect for reducing collateral damage), where I would think the complicated environment (lots of echoes) would confuse such a device. Maybe they get around that by concentrating on these wondrous sound waves that move faster than the speed of sound.
The Japanese are number 1 when it comes to earthquake proofing. So if they are unable to build plants that can take a big natural disaster (very big sure, but certainly not unheard of) without turning into a catastrophy, I'm really wondering if the idea simply is not inherently flawed.
Conversely, no news is good news. How many times do you pick up the news paper and read the headline "All is well at the nuclear power plant"? How many success stories do you read about? Every time something involving nuclear power makes it into the news, even if it's (no, ESPECIALLY if it's) plans for a new reactor, the media is full of worst case scenarios and fears of another Chernobyl.
I actually think that is largely a good, normal thing - to some extent. When something happens, or when a new plant is being designed, we SHOULD be looking at the worst case scenario. Sometimes that is exactly what happens, as we are seeing now. The problem is that this reporting seems to scare some people into ignorant, knee-jerk reactions instead of leading them to investigate the issue and consider it rationally. For example, Chernobyl resulted in something like ~25-50 workers killed directly, and on the order of 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer attributed to it. A quick search indicates that, in the U.S. at least, thyroid cancer apparently has something like a 90-95% survival rate, and even higher if it is caught early - which presumably it would be after a nuclear accident, as you would be able to concentrate screening on those known to have been exposed. 650 deaths is terrible, but it is not the world-ending disaster that some portray it to be.
I lost a lot of respect for the German government with their knee-jerk reaction to the events in Japan (although it sounds like this may be as much about electioneering as real concern about safety). At this point, I feel like you can't really look at what has happened in Japan as anything but a success, although that can change at any moment. Yes, there is still danger of a nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi, but look at the three other major nuclear installations along the east coast of Japan between Sendai and Tokyo - basically, they survived the largest Japanese earthquake and tsunami in the last 300 years with minimal issues. It is doubtful that the plants in Germany are built to the same standards (no real danger of earthquakes there, and very little likelihood of any kind of tsunami - especially since only a couple of their plants are built along the coast), and yet they are using this massive disaster as a reason to completely abandon nuclear power. It just doesn't make any sense. If anything, the Japanese are showing that reactors can be designed to standards that protect public safety in even the worst disasters.
for 37$ a month my AT&T DSL is 3Mbs/768Kbs they best they have a 6Mbs but that runs ~50$ a month.
Funny, here I'm on AT&T and pay $35 a month for (effectively) 5Mbps/768Kbps. I say effectively because I don't recall what the advertised rate is - it might actually be advertised at 3 Mbps, but I get about 5 Mbps in practice.
I've been happy over the years with PacBell/SBC/AT&T, but one of the reasons for that is their lack of shenanigans like this - up until now no caps, no BS about not connecting multiple devices (back in the day this was an issue at some ISPs, not so much today), and no limits on what you can do with your connection (aside from Port 80 being blocked, I believe). I'm theoretically on a dynamic IP, but mine hasn't actually changed in over 6 months - I had a Minecraft server going for a while and never had to worry about a changing address.
Contrast that to Comcast, our only real alternative; they introduced a cap here several years ago, they have very onerous ToS that basically bans you from doing anything but consuming approved content, and they charge more for unknown connection speeds (the only information I can find on their website for connection speed is the "burst" speed for the first 10 or 15 megs of a download - nowhere can I find the sustained rate they offer, or, for that matter, the actual cost outside the initial "discount" period).
In Britain there was a case where the jury actually received instruction on Bayes' theorem and the correct statistical techniques for interpreting DNA evidence, instead of relying on gut notions and misunderstandings of how DNA matching works. When the judge discovered the jury had been given this knowledge, he threw the case out the window. Maybe someone else remembers more details. I just read this in a book.
I've heard of a similar case in the U.S., but in that case the important detail you are missing was that the statistical instruction came from one of the members of the jury, who was a statistician (or maybe microbiologist - I don't remember). The information he provided to the other jurors was correct, but the fact that the information was presented without the chance for cross examination was the sticking point. This information should have been provided by an expert witness during the trial - if it wasn't, then the defense (or prosecutor, depending on which way it goes I suppose) screwed up. Just because I'm an expert in something, doesn't mean I get to use that expertise to provide new information to the jury outside the court room - even if I'm right (and if it isn't presented in court, who will challenge it if I'm wrong?). It should, properly, be part of discovery - giving both sides a chance to review the information, ask questions, and present counter witnesses if necessary.
... I don't trust them to get the statistics right. Hammering a DNA database looking for matches will produce many false positives (due to the birthday paradox), and recent history suggests that those doing the searching will try (and likely succeed) in presenting to the jury the statistics that are correct when you test a single pair of samples.
Hear hear!
IMHO DNA evidence should only be usable for defense.
- A mismatch makes it obvious that the accused (if not a chimera) is not the perpetrator.
- A "match" ("non-exclusion") makes a bunch of statistical assumptions, some of which have little or no evidence in science. (Not to mention that it does poorly for excluding twins and relatives.)
So convictions should be based on OTHER things than DNA evidence.
I disagree. DNA is just one more piece of evidence for prosecutors, and that is the way it should be. Obviously, finding someone's DNA on the murder weapon doesn't automatically mean they committed the crime - but it is evidence that ties them to the weapon. But you (should) need more evidence than that one piece to convict someone of a crime.
Likewise, a fishing expedition looking for matches in a DNA database (if such a thing existed) would really only give you a place to start - here are X number of people whose DNA matched what was found on this item used in the crime, or this location where the crime was committed, now let's look at these people and see if there is additional evidence that ties them to the crime. To me, this seems perfectly reasonable. If you only get one match, that still doesn't mean that person did it (there could be myriad reasons for their DNA to show up in these places) - but again, it is a piece of evidence that should be followed up. If you can't find any evidence aside from someone's DNA showing up at the crime scene, then obviously you haven't proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they perpetrated the crime.
I believe there's been at least one case in the UK of crooks spreading other people's DNA around in order to confuse the cops. I don't remember the details but I'm sure I read about it in the last year or so.
All you need to do is drop some skin flakes on the London underground and next you know you could be a suspect in a murder case.
I just had a picture of the scene in Fargo with the wood chopper.
You know, just spreading some innocent person's DNA around to throw the cops off...
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, that's just the decoy ruin. The real SSC was built nearby, but far enough away that anyone looking for the known SSC site wouldn't see the people going in and out of the real site!
Why build one when you can build two at twice the price? I've seen that movie.
There is a reason why you pay property taxes only to things like cars and houses: there is a cost to the state to keep the infrastructure to this things.
But now the intelectual property owners show themselves as a big cost to the state, since we need a special force to keep EVEN the concept of 'property' to intelectual creations. It's fair that if the state have costs, someone should pay for it. And it's fair that who pays to something is the one who wants.
Great idea, except that the second you try to tax something like "Intellectual Property" it will miraculously find its way out of the taxable jurisdiction. If the US instituted a tax on IP, you can bet that overnight basically all IP owned by American companies would be transferred to foreign holding companies and licensed back.
The only reason that property taxes work is that it is very difficult to transfer your house and land out of the county/state/country.
Not all U.S. companies are huge corporations that can do this. Non-profits can't afford this either.
I'm sure Microsoft would be happy to do it for them. For a fair fee, of course. Better yet, for a low monthly fee Microsoft would be happy to indemnify you against threat of a lawsuit based on your suppliers using pirated Microsoft products.
I don't see Microsoft actually pushing to shut down anyone for violating this law. Bad for business. They probably just see it as a way to open up a new revenue stream to cover what they see as losses to piracy. They don't actually want to stop GM from shipping cars because some minor supplier was using a pirated copy of Powerpoint, they just want to threaten GM (and every other company) with that possibility and then extract a little "protection" money.
While comparing video cards is all well and good, I make a formal nerd request that a decibel comparison be included in future reviews, say at idle fan speed, half maximum speed and full speed. Honestly it has gotten ridiculous - high end cards are just too damned loud. (switching to night-club mode) I MEAN WHAT IS THE POINT OF HAVING NICE GRAPHICS IF YOU CAN'T HEAR THE GAME YOU'RE PLAYING
You just need to find a better review site.
Looks like the 6990 is significantly quieter at low loads, but at very high loads (furmark) it isn't as far ahead.
A few more Moho Mines, a couple of fusion plants, and I'll be able to start work on my Krogoth...
At last, the Great Lord shall be free...
Don't be silly, I'm sure Mierin has a foolproof plan for dealing with any unexpected consequences.
On a similar note, I heard Lloyd's is looking into offering a new Balrog insurance product.
The problem is that this mantle is under intense pressure because it has the weight of the Earth's crust bearing down on it. This pressure doesn't matter too much to us because of the weight of the rock being forced down by gravity is exactly balanced by the reaction force of the mantle pushing back up. Except where you get cracks and weaknesses in the rock - and some mantle seeps through, causing a volcano. This pressure is enough to drive the molten rock all the way to the surface.
Now consider drilling a hole - a hole filled with a tube and presumably some material that is not rock - like air or water (probably water since the distance to the mantle is less from the bottom of the ocean). While water has weight, it doesn't weigh as much as rock - we can prove that because undersea volcanoes exist, too. So basically what you will end up doing is creating your own instant-volcano, the minute you get close enough to the mantle that the remaining rock is weakened, all of that stuff is going to come up - following the path of least resistance.
I am not saying it's the end of the world - it's not. There are other forces at work too, the mantle will cool on its way up and might only reach the surface slowly, if at all. However you must understand that there will be a tremendous amount of upwards pressure in the shaft. It will be absolutely impossible to "drop something" down there. At best what you would get is a deep hole with your radioactive waste, sitting at the bottom of the sea. At worst you would get the mother of all dirty-bombs, driven by a volcano and spreading this waste all over the ocean floor. It was virtually impossible to drop concrete into the Deepwater Horizon shaft. Imagine the pressures of going much much deeper and what's coming out isn't oil but lava.
First, to keep magma out of the drill pipe you would just need to keep pressure on your drilling fluid. We already do this; it would just require a higher pressure system than what is needed for, say, oil drilling. Of course, this could be a problem if your drilling fluid is flash-boiling as it encounters the magma, as it would be very difficult to control that much pressure and could lead to a blow out. However, unlike with oil, you could fairly easily stop any leaking lava by circulating cold water, or worst case, it freezes when it reaches sea water and plugs up your hole that way. You might build a small sea mound, but that's probably about the extent of the danger.
-1, Bieber.
So they went AC-DC to try and get back in (the) black?
My concern is that the initial conversion would cost a touch too much, and it ain't no fun waiting for the energy savings to cover the investment - the down payment blues.
Still, in my experience the power supply is often the point of failure that finally kills the whole computer, so goodbye & good riddance to bad luck.
"huh?"
And then I was like, "Oh! They're talking about the SEARS tower."
Also... it allows "diffuse daylight and horizontal light through." Does that mean I can only look directly out the window at things at the same level? What is the vertical viewing angle?
Some stuff gets "expired" from Netflix. The same goes for Hulu.
When you decide you want to watch something again, it might not be readily available.
This is usually the reason for having your own media collection. This seems pretty obvious for Music but it seems like a real revelation for anything else.
I've found Netflix to be extremely unreliable in terms of what is available for streaming. A recent example is the show The IT Crowd. I watched the first three seasons about the time the fourth was on TV, then had to wait for the fourth season to be on Netflix. It finally arrived, and I happened to be watching an episode when a friend stopped by; he got hooked, and started watching at his house. Unfortunately, it seems that at the same time they added the fourth season, they removed the second season. Really weird.
(And don't get me started on them only seeming to offer dubbed versions of most foreign films... grrrr! Almost enough to get me to drop the service entirely!)
Yeah, GP should be looking for the ICAO code for the USS Kearsarge - but only if Southwest is flying Harriers these days.
Wait, they don't switch these off, when they go for a bombing run?
Doesn't this defeat the whole idea of stealth?
I'm sure they turn off their transponders before entering Libyan airspace (or even coming close, probably). This guy is tracking them as they fly over the Continent, through civilian-controlled airspace, on the way to and from bombing runs.
Because you want them to be public. The other aircraft, including those of your "enemies" and the light aircraft being flown by Bob the gardener down the street need to be able to communicate to avoid smashing into each other.
Encrypting serves no purpose when the entire idea is for anyone to be able to receive the information.
Not sure about the "enemies" part... I'm sure military aircraft turn off their transponders before getting to "enemy" territory; this guy is just tracking them while they traverse the thousands of miles of civilian-controlled airspace between home base and targets.
But yeah; no reason at all to encrypt transponder transmissions, the whole point of which are to let people know where you are.
I was trying to decide that too, but without knowing how much material they are introducing for the fight w/ Sauron it is really tough to say. If they were just sticking to the story in the book, I could even see the break coming when they reach Beorn's; I think that happens about half way through, and marks the breakup of the "fellowship" when Gandalf takes off (as he told them he was going to do). Also represents the change from Gandalf being the leader to Bilbo being the leader. However, I don't think this would work timing-wise if they introduce a lot of material, as it would leave a heck of a lot to cover for the second movie.
My guess is that the first film will end when they reach Esgaroth, and the second film will backtrack to cover Gandalf's story, interspersed with the Dwarves going to the Lonely Mountain. This would make a lot of sense, as it would center the second movie around the fight with Smaug (an early Exciting Moment) and the buildup to the battle of five armies (which is really what Gandalf's role in the story is all about).
I guess we'll find out soon.
>>>then the taxpayers bail the investment banks out
Guess you should have listened to Ron Paul and his Republican "liberty" caucus. They all voted "nay" to the $700 billion banker bailout bill, and it went down in flames. Mr. Paul said the banks, especially the investment ones like AIG, should be allowed to fail so we could rebuild the economy on their broken bones.
But then the Democrats revived the Banker Bailout Bill, bribed the republicans with pork for their districts, and it passed ~10 days later. :-( Frickin' fraggin' mumble.... grrrr! I tried to vote-out my representative for that idiocy, but alas he's still there.
Ron Paul for President in 2016.
The problem here is that the bubble was already blown up. Refusing to bail out those companies, as undeserving as they were, would have lead to much bigger problems. The solution isn't to cut your own neck just to punish the wrongdoers, it is to prevent the situation from arising in the first place. Once you are in that situation, there are no good options.
Or plutonium. You probably think that here in high-tech Japan, we can just walk into the corner drugstore and buy plutonium. Unfortunately, even here it's a little hard to come by.
^_^;
That's okay. I hear there is a plan in the works to spread it more equitably about the country, perhaps even share some with the rest of the world.
(Too soon?)
If this saves any lives, then I'm all for it.
It's certain this won't save the lives of any Afghans or Iraqis, whether the bullets are coming from a helicopter a mile away or a soldier that just kicked in his front door.
It might, actually. If the American soldiers are better able to determine where they are being shot at from, there is less likelihood of them shooting back at the wrong place. It should, to some extent, reduce "collateral damage".
Of course, I have my doubts about the usefulness in an urban environment (where it would have the most positive effect for reducing collateral damage), where I would think the complicated environment (lots of echoes) would confuse such a device. Maybe they get around that by concentrating on these wondrous sound waves that move faster than the speed of sound.
The Japanese are number 1 when it comes to earthquake proofing. So if they are unable to build plants that can take a big natural disaster (very big sure, but certainly not unheard of) without turning into a catastrophy, I'm really wondering if the idea simply is not inherently flawed.
But they are able to.
Conversely, no news is good news. How many times do you pick up the news paper and read the headline "All is well at the nuclear power plant"? How many success stories do you read about? Every time something involving nuclear power makes it into the news, even if it's (no, ESPECIALLY if it's) plans for a new reactor, the media is full of worst case scenarios and fears of another Chernobyl.
I actually think that is largely a good, normal thing - to some extent. When something happens, or when a new plant is being designed, we SHOULD be looking at the worst case scenario. Sometimes that is exactly what happens, as we are seeing now. The problem is that this reporting seems to scare some people into ignorant, knee-jerk reactions instead of leading them to investigate the issue and consider it rationally. For example, Chernobyl resulted in something like ~25-50 workers killed directly, and on the order of 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer attributed to it. A quick search indicates that, in the U.S. at least, thyroid cancer apparently has something like a 90-95% survival rate, and even higher if it is caught early - which presumably it would be after a nuclear accident, as you would be able to concentrate screening on those known to have been exposed. 650 deaths is terrible, but it is not the world-ending disaster that some portray it to be.
I lost a lot of respect for the German government with their knee-jerk reaction to the events in Japan (although it sounds like this may be as much about electioneering as real concern about safety). At this point, I feel like you can't really look at what has happened in Japan as anything but a success, although that can change at any moment. Yes, there is still danger of a nuclear catastrophe at Fukushima Daiichi, but look at the three other major nuclear installations along the east coast of Japan between Sendai and Tokyo - basically, they survived the largest Japanese earthquake and tsunami in the last 300 years with minimal issues. It is doubtful that the plants in Germany are built to the same standards (no real danger of earthquakes there, and very little likelihood of any kind of tsunami - especially since only a couple of their plants are built along the coast), and yet they are using this massive disaster as a reason to completely abandon nuclear power. It just doesn't make any sense. If anything, the Japanese are showing that reactors can be designed to standards that protect public safety in even the worst disasters.
for 37$ a month my AT&T DSL is 3Mbs/768Kbs they best they have a 6Mbs but that runs ~50$ a month.
Funny, here I'm on AT&T and pay $35 a month for (effectively) 5Mbps/768Kbps. I say effectively because I don't recall what the advertised rate is - it might actually be advertised at 3 Mbps, but I get about 5 Mbps in practice.
I've been happy over the years with PacBell/SBC/AT&T, but one of the reasons for that is their lack of shenanigans like this - up until now no caps, no BS about not connecting multiple devices (back in the day this was an issue at some ISPs, not so much today), and no limits on what you can do with your connection (aside from Port 80 being blocked, I believe). I'm theoretically on a dynamic IP, but mine hasn't actually changed in over 6 months - I had a Minecraft server going for a while and never had to worry about a changing address.
Contrast that to Comcast, our only real alternative; they introduced a cap here several years ago, they have very onerous ToS that basically bans you from doing anything but consuming approved content, and they charge more for unknown connection speeds (the only information I can find on their website for connection speed is the "burst" speed for the first 10 or 15 megs of a download - nowhere can I find the sustained rate they offer, or, for that matter, the actual cost outside the initial "discount" period).
It appears that one way to improve your chance of survival in a tsunami is to not have a white car.
http://i.imgur.com/ddHiq.jpg
Nah, it's just that lighter cars float so you can see more of them. The dark ones sink.
Elementary psychics.
In Britain there was a case where the jury actually received instruction on Bayes' theorem and the correct statistical techniques for interpreting DNA evidence, instead of relying on gut notions and misunderstandings of how DNA matching works. When the judge discovered the jury had been given this knowledge, he threw the case out the window. Maybe someone else remembers more details. I just read this in a book.
I've heard of a similar case in the U.S., but in that case the important detail you are missing was that the statistical instruction came from one of the members of the jury, who was a statistician (or maybe microbiologist - I don't remember). The information he provided to the other jurors was correct, but the fact that the information was presented without the chance for cross examination was the sticking point. This information should have been provided by an expert witness during the trial - if it wasn't, then the defense (or prosecutor, depending on which way it goes I suppose) screwed up. Just because I'm an expert in something, doesn't mean I get to use that expertise to provide new information to the jury outside the court room - even if I'm right (and if it isn't presented in court, who will challenge it if I'm wrong?). It should, properly, be part of discovery - giving both sides a chance to review the information, ask questions, and present counter witnesses if necessary.
Hear hear!
IMHO DNA evidence should only be usable for defense.
- A mismatch makes it obvious that the accused (if not a chimera) is not the perpetrator.
- A "match" ("non-exclusion") makes a bunch of statistical assumptions, some of which have little or no evidence in science. (Not to mention that it does poorly for excluding twins and relatives.)
So convictions should be based on OTHER things than DNA evidence.
I disagree. DNA is just one more piece of evidence for prosecutors, and that is the way it should be. Obviously, finding someone's DNA on the murder weapon doesn't automatically mean they committed the crime - but it is evidence that ties them to the weapon. But you (should) need more evidence than that one piece to convict someone of a crime.
Likewise, a fishing expedition looking for matches in a DNA database (if such a thing existed) would really only give you a place to start - here are X number of people whose DNA matched what was found on this item used in the crime, or this location where the crime was committed, now let's look at these people and see if there is additional evidence that ties them to the crime. To me, this seems perfectly reasonable. If you only get one match, that still doesn't mean that person did it (there could be myriad reasons for their DNA to show up in these places) - but again, it is a piece of evidence that should be followed up. If you can't find any evidence aside from someone's DNA showing up at the crime scene, then obviously you haven't proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they perpetrated the crime.
I believe there's been at least one case in the UK of crooks spreading other people's DNA around in order to confuse the cops. I don't remember the details but I'm sure I read about it in the last year or so.
All you need to do is drop some skin flakes on the London underground and next you know you could be a suspect in a murder case.
I just had a picture of the scene in Fargo with the wood chopper.
You know, just spreading some innocent person's DNA around to throw the cops off...